Want to Try eCommerce? Here Are a Few Tips For Online Business

eCommerce means selling online. You can sell anything online from a hairpin to luxury cars. However, in order to generate sales, you need to spend a lot of money on advertising. I have seen a lot of people who try selling online fail miserably. This is not everyone's cup of tea, only the expert salesperson can generate eCommerce sales. But in any case, if you want to try eCommerce, here are a few tips to get started

Online Business or eCommerce

It is quite easy to create an online business, or eCommerce for that matter, compared to an offline business. An online business can be started with little investment. There are a lot of ways to sell online, you can either sell from your own store, or through the marketplaces like ebay, amazon, etsy, zazzle etc. You can even sell through social sites like facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.

eCommerce Platform: Shopify

Ecommerce or online business needs a website. You don't need programming skills even to build an eCommerce site, you can use premium software like Shopify.

If you are new to this online business model and if you are trying to start low, Shopify is not for you. You will have to pay $29 per month just for Shopify subscription. You will also have to spend just about $500 to build a website (money spent on templates, add ons, etc).

If you use a premium eCommerce platform like Shopify, trust me you cannot survive even for 3 months. You will have to pay for subscriptions as well as themes and add ons. Unless you are backed up by big businesses or individuals with a lot of money, you cannot make your Shopify store survive for long.

Woocommerce: Free eCommerce Platform

If you find shopify expensive, you can try free software Big Commerce, or even wordpress. Wordpress with woocommerce is a better option.

You need money for domain and hosting, however, the rest of the things are free as long as you are using Wordpress and woocommerce for your e-commerce. Woocommerce has an inbuilt payment system that uses paypal and stripe payment. You do not have to spend any money unless you want to use a premium theme which might cost you $60 on average.

You might also have to pay for plugins that will import products to your store automatically. However, there are also free plugins, as well as premium plugins that offer limited free service, for instance, Dropshix and Esyzu. The premium versions of these plugins are affordable. I have created a lot of ecommerce websites for my clients using a free plugin and they are absolutely amazing. You can also try a premium plugin like Alidrop.

Marketing Your eCommerce Business

Here is my take on marketing your online business:

Use Social Media: Social Media can help you brand your business. Just by having a Facebook page, Instagram page, or Twitter account, you will be able to brand your business. Branding not only helps you to spread awareness about your business but also generates sales.

Run Video Ads: You can run video ads on Facebook videos or Youtube videos. Facebook is the world's number site in terms of user base and traffic. Youtube is second to Facebook.

Build Website: Online business can be run through marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Shop, eBay, Amazon, Zazzle, Eysy, etc. However, having your own store helps better for your eCommerce. If you are selling from third-party sites, consider building an online store.

Sponsor social cause: Corporate Social Responsibility is also a marketing gimmick.

Advertising Your eCommerce Business

Running Ads will be very necessary when you are doing eCommerce. However, using a lot of ads does not mean you will be earning a lot of money. What ultimately matters is traffic. As long as you receive traffic, you can earn from any type of ads. However, sometimes you can maximize your revenue when you are using different kinds of ads. For example, you earn from CPM from visits only but in order to earn from CPC you need clicks.

First published on Trendri, in author's name