Easy Guide for Launching your E-Commerce Business!
AKA How Can I Turn my Hobby Into Money?
Whether you already have an established business or you want to start your own, having an online store has become something essential in order to thrive and grow your business. More and more businesses are moving away from physical stores to expand their online presence in order to both attract and reach to thousands of new potential customers.
With people spending more and more time at home due to quarantine and new habits like increased home-office, why not take advantage of that free time? This is the perfect chance to adapt and reinvent yourself, breathing new life into your project, or just find new ways to earn to earn some passive income.
In this post, we’ll guide you step by step of how to start or expand your online business. You’ll learn about:
- What Do You Need to Start?
- Finding Your Niche
- The Importance of Your Brand
- Building Your Shop
- Social Media Marketing
- Google Positioning
So let’s get started!
What Do You Need to Start?
So, you might ask yourself, "do I need to have an established business?" and the answer is no! This is not only for people who are already selling stuff, but also for the ones that want to take advantage of their hobbies or free time around the house (something that increased dramatically during the last months), that way you can make use of that time to transform it into a new source of income!
In this day and age, the market of digital goods and services is one that moves millions of dollars a year. You may think you don’t have anything to offer, but maybe you haven’t realized that your cooking, painting, drawing, designing and much more skills that you might do for fun can be monetized!
Finding Your Niche
To find out what are you going to offer, you should know the three major product categories for e-Commerce:
Physical Goods: This is comprised of tangible products that you’ll need to ship in order to get to the customer, like crafts, prints, jewelry, soaps, candles, among many others. Here are some examples: Otherland (a scented candles store) and The Merriweather Council (a hand embroidery shop).
Digital Goods and Templates: This includes products that you can sell one or multiple times and the customer gets instantly after purchasing it, like stock photos, design templates, lettering, logos and more. Some examples are: Nerd or Die (packages and resources for streamers) and Nicky Laatz (lettering and graphic design).
Subscriptions and Courses: This includes things like services where you receive products over time or courses like video tutorials or classes. People can subscribe to receive a (for example) monthly product, or you can also offer a onetime buy option, like an e-book. Examples are Refactoring UI (a PDF book and video tutorials pack) and Trade Coffee (a personalized and curated coffee subscription).
The Importance of Your Brand
If you are starting: Branding is crucial and it’s what it will make you rise above your competition. This should reflect both your style and the image you wanna portray about your product. Is it going to be professional? Playful? Modern? We suggest you write a brief text about your brand and what you expect and send this to your designer, this way this person will be able to focus on your vision and maximize time by not delivering you mockups of logos that you will and up straight rejecting.
If you already have one: A professional design can make or break your brand, so if you feel that your logo is a bit outdated, now it’s the perfect time to re-brand yourself and breathe new life into your business.For this you will need to hire a designer or team to work in it. Here are some Fiverr picks from the Logo Design section:
Top Rated Seller
Seller: anabellamadeo
Rating: 5.0 out of 115 reviews
Fiverr’s Choice
Seller: logosyfirmas
Rating: 5.0 out of 297 reviews
Bonus Pick: If you are looking for a gaming-style logo with a super cool mascot, we recommend you to take a look at:
Seller: atrhaz
Building Your Shop
Of course you’ll need to have a platform where you’ll redirect your customers to buy your products. You have lots of platforms to choose from, like WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Wix, Squarespace and more, each with its pros and cons that will depend on your needs and what kind of business you’d like to start.
Here you’ll have two options, one is to create the shop from the ground up (which generally is a bit more expensive), and the other is choosing/buying a pre-made theme (on sites like Themeforest) and hire a developer for them to customize it to fit your needs (which is generally cheaper). These will all depend on your budget and if you’re just starting out or not.
One of the most important things we suggest you to have is a wide range of payment options and gateways and a simple checkout. This could make or break your business, as many people become frustrated at the checkout stage due to instructions are not clear, or that the site doesn’t offer worldwide accessible payment options.
Depending of what you choose, you will need a developer to build it. Here are some Fiverr picks from the E-Commerce Development section:
Seller: eileen_lue
Rating: 5.0 out of 71 reviews
Top Rated Seller
Seller: websiterz
Rating: 5.0 out of 33 reviews
Social Media Marketing
Now more than ever, having an important social presence is crucial to expand and grow your business. Creating and constantly updating your social accounts, like Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, not only builds awareness, helping new prospective customers know more about your business and what you offer, but also improves brand loyalty! For example, a customer that leaves a positive comment or review will help other people on the fence to increase their trust on your brand.
Engaging with your customers will help you grow your traffic exponentially. To increase engagement we encourage you being creative! Write and share a blog post or personal experience regarding the product that you sell, feature clients’ stories, or make small videos to showcase your product (unboxings, tutorials, tips and tricks, etc).
In order to create a strategy or edit post graphics, videos, thumbnails and more, you will need a designer or social media manager. Here are some Fiverr picks from the Social Marketing section:
Top Rated Seller
Seller: mlandsmriseup
Rating: 5.0 out of 161 reviews
Seller: tommysiu
Rating: 5.0 out of 1363 reviews
Top Rated Seller
Seller: s3ncillom3dia
Rating: 5.0 out of 1077 reviews
Google Positioning (SEO)
The boom of online stores is making it increasingly difficult to stand out, and for that you’ll need SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to make it easier for your target audience to find your site leading to more conversions (this is when you achieve your marketing goal, in this case, when a visitor of your shop makes a purchase).
A SEO optimization increases your organic traffic (not paid ads) by improving your site’s ranking on search results; this means that, by becoming better positioned, more people will visit your site. A higher positioning also helps you increase your reputation and credibility (as users trust is higher in the search engine’s top positioning) and stay ahead of your competitors.
To help you with your site optimization and creation of a successful strategy, here are some Fiverr picks from the SEO Services section:
Top Rated Seller
Seller: ozzieuk
Rating: 4.8 out of 2033 reviews
Seller: howtodoseo
Rating: 5.0 out of 930 reviews
Top Rated Seller
Seller: seosupremacy
Rating: 5.0 out of 36 reviews
Final Thoughts & Why Use Fiverr?
To round things off we’ll say that it’s never been easier to take that first step to launch your online business. With the increase of online services and wide array of options available, you don’t even have to leave your home to kickstart your project!
In this post, we featured services (or gigs) from Fiverr because of several advantages you’ll have in the platform:
Protected Payment: You’ll need to pay upfront, but your payment won’t be released until you approve the work, that way you can rest assured that you’ll get what you’re paying for.
Messaging: With the option to contact the seller via message, you’ll have the chance to talk to them to tell them about your need even before having to “buy” the service!
For All Budgets: With a wide range of budget options, you’ll see the prices for the services offered upfront and what they include, that way you can know upfront what you’ll be receiving for your money.
User Reviews: You can easily check out reviews of people who already worked with the seller and read about their opinions. Sometimes, you can also see a small preview of the previous works.
Support: Fiverr has 24/7 support, available to help you with anything you need. They also have a forum where buyers and sellers exchange experiences and questions.
We hope that you enjoyed our post and most importantly, that it’s useful to you! Let us know what you think in the comments section!
Image Credits: Supro by LoganCee, Unsplash, Shopkeeper by getbowtied, Vikinger by Odin_Design, I Am Creator by Ruslan Latypov, Chin Up Buttercup Font Duo by Nicky Laatz
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