Don't know what road to go down

[chrisbiz4444]

I am completely lost again. I do not know what road to go down. I want to create an actual business. I do not want to create 1000 little things making $5 each. I am not organized enough to keep track and manage tons of micro business's nor do I want too.

I was thinking about starting an eCommerce business but drop-shipping sounds like it can become a nightmare. Are there any books or ways to learn about eCommerce that you would recommend ? I have no clue. The closest I've ever gotten to this was eBay. I would like to learn before jumping in. Makes the possibility of success a little greater.

I have a profitable niche but I feel so lost when it comes to eCommerce and drop-shipping. Also I work full-time, can an eCommerce store be ran by someone with full time obligations?

The plain is eventually to build a fast-lane business and leave my job when it starts to cash flow.

We all know online stores are great due to scale-ability. I know many here own and operate eCommerce businesses. So can this be started part-time? And what are your recommendations on learning material?

 

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[FarBeyondDriven]

I feel your pain, lately I've been completely incapable of making a decision. I have major indecision issues.

If you believe you have a profitable niche then go for it, I've heard of many people that are doing very well with eCommerce.
It just comes down to sacrificing your time outside of the job to build the website etc. There are many how to's all over the web that's were I would start.

 

[3things]

Yes you can run an ecommerce business on the side of a full time job. I used to work 10-12 hour days at my job years back and managed to create and run 2 physical product based ecommerce stores 100% on my own completely from scratch. And it wasn't just dropshipping, I held all the stock for both sites [laptop bags, 26 styles and knives, 20 styles], got myself set up with a credit card terminal and all the packaging supplies in my spare room. I'd come home from work, process and pack all my orders (10-40/day), put all the stuff in my car and the next day take it to the post office in my lunch hour. I look back now and it seems pretty stupid/naive to do it the way i did it - but then it was fun, a challenge and I learned a ton. And made some good money along the way.

You can do it much easier with fulfilment houses, payment processing like stripe etc etc, but like anything it takes work and some dedication to the cause. It's easier though, cos it's YOUR cause

 

[Disobey]

I am completely lost again. I do not know what road to go down.

Choose one path and go for it. Forget everything else. Sure you might be more succesful with another business model, but keep going. Do not chase the next shiny idea everytime or you'll end up being stuck at square one. Once your business is running by itself then you can start diversifying. It's wise to not put all your eggs in the same basket, but be sure to have at least one chicken able to produce those eggs first.

Are there any books or ways to learn about eCommerce that you would recommend ?

I don't know any good books about it, but you might find interesting nuggets on this blog http://mywifequitherjob.com/. Biophase has a great thread on this forum, https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/ask-me-about-ecommerce.38312/ , read it completely.
But whatever you do, be sure not to get stuck in a paralysis by analysis mode.

Also the best way to learn anything in life is by DOING it. Take action. NOW!

Don't worry about the time it's going to take. If you don't have time to run an ecommerce, you wont have time to run any other business either. Do you want to be stuck at you job until you retire?

Your choice my friend.

 

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[chrisbiz4444]

Yes you can run an ecommerce business on the side of a full time job. I used to work 10-12 hour days at my job years back and managed to create and run 2 physical product based ecommerce stores 100% on my own completely from scratch. And it wasn't just dropshipping, I held all the stock for both sites [laptop bags, 26 styles and knives, 20 styles], got myself set up with a credit card terminal and all the packaging supplies in my spare room. I'd come home from work, process and pack all my orders (10-40/day), put all the stuff in my car and the next day take it to the post office in my lunch hour. I look back now and it seems pretty stupid/naive to do it the way i did it - but then it was fun, a challenge and I learned a ton. And made some good money along the way.

You can do it much easier with fulfilment houses, payment processing like stripe etc etc, but like anything it takes work and some dedication to the cause. It's easier though, cos it's YOUR cause

Thanks for the response. Do you recommend any reading material before starting just for the basics and technical stuff ? Like how to set-up credit payment ect?

 

[chrisbiz4444]

Choose one path and go for it. Forget everything else. Sure you might be more succesful with another business model, but keep going. Do not chase the next shiny idea everytime or you'll end up being stuck at square one. Once your business is running by itself then you can start diversifying. It's wise to not put all your eggs in the same basket, but be sure to have at least one chicken able to produce those eggs first.



I don't know any good books about it, but you might find interesting nuggets on this blog http://mywifequitherjob.com/. Biophase has a great thread on this forum, https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/ask-me-about-ecommerce.38312/ , read it completely.
But whatever you do, be sure not to get stuck in a paralysis by analysis mode.

Also the best way to learn anything in life is by DOING it. Take action. NOW!

Don't worry about the time it's going to take. If you don't have time to run an ecommerce, you wont have time to run any other business either. Do you want to be stuck at you job until you retire?

Your choice my friend.

Should a LLC be setup for an eCommerce store? or is that not really necessary?

 

[Disobey]

I wouldn't worry about an LLC right at the beginning, but take this advice with a grain of salt. I'm from europe so i'm not sure about your obligations in the US.

Worry about making a sale first.

Just my 2 cents.

 

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[3things]

I operated rightly or wrongly as a sole prop (UK). I didn't really know what I was doing, i just did it! There's nothing really to read about taking cc payment - when I did it years back I knew absolutely zip pretty much beyond basic web design. I went to the bank, got a merchant account from HSBC and a credit card terminal that i set up in my house to process people's payments! lol I bought all my stock upfront on credit cards, without doing any sort of validation and without really even thinking 'what if this fails'. Now, you just use shopify and it's all done for you instantly.

I focused on one specific brand of laptop bag I spotted in a gadget magazine one day and wanted to buy - discovered they had no retail sales channel so I built one. I became the defacto destination for that brand in the UK for a while, the manufacturer liked it so much they even allowed me to use the brand name in my URL. Magazines and newspapers who reviewed the products mentioned my site as the place to buy. I was younger and stupider, I should have much built more out of it. Live and learn.

For my laptop bag store I managed to hack together a pretty basic little store out of oscommerce, set up SSL and literally printed the orders off with cc #, and processed them by hand. For my pocket knife store, I learned a bit and just built it on wordpress, hooked it up to paypal with 'fat free cart' so I didn't have to worry about security etc. Labour saver!

Now you have services like stripe, shopify and others that take all the pain out of the process I went through. They're so easy to set up, anyone can do it. If only they'd been around all those years ago There's NO barrier now - you can literally have an online store on shopify or squarespace right the f now this afternoon.

My advice would be to just do it. Do it, learn from your mistakes and do it again better. In many ways I wish now i was more like i was then - just go and do stuff. I knew nothing then, but learned a huge amount. I didn't get rich by any means, but i had a lot of fun and gained a lot of confidence and pride from having built something myself from nothing.

 

[chrisbiz4444]

I operated rightly or wrongly as a sole prop (UK). I didn't really know what I was doing, i just did it! There's nothing really to read about taking cc payment - when I did it years back I knew absolutely zip pretty much beyond basic web design. I went to the bank, got a merchant account from HSBC and a credit card terminal that i set up in my house to process people's payments! lol I bought all my stock upfront on credit cards, without doing any sort of validation and without really even thinking 'what if this fails'. Now, you just use shopify and it's all done for you instantly.

I focused on one specific brand of laptop bag I spotted in a gadget magazine one day and wanted to buy - discovered they had no retail sales channel so I built one. I became the defacto destination for that brand in the UK for a while, the manufacturer liked it so much they even allowed me to use the brand name in my URL. Magazines and newspapers who reviewed the products mentioned my site as the place to buy. I was younger and stupider, I should have much built more out of it. Live and learn.

For my laptop bag store I managed to hack together a pretty basic little store out of oscommerce, set up SSL and literally printed the orders off with cc #, and processed them by hand. For my pocket knife store, I learned a bit and just built it on wordpress, hooked it up to paypal with 'fat free cart' so I didn't have to worry about security etc. Labour saver!

Now you have services like stripe, shopify and others that take all the pain out of the process I went through. They're so easy to set up, anyone can do it. If only they'd been around all those years ago There's NO barrier now - you can literally have an online store on shopify or squarespace right the f now this afternoon.

My advice would be to just do it. Do it, learn from your mistakes and do it again better. In many ways I wish now i was more like i was then - just go and do stuff. I knew nothing then, but learned a huge amount. I didn't get rich by any means, but i had a lot of fun and gained a lot of confidence and pride from having built something myself from nothing.

Great info. Thanks for sharing your experience. Now I know this question is impossible to answer directly, but roughly speaking what could a first year e-store owner expect to make ( Drop-shipping).

 

[3things]

Great info. Thanks for sharing your experience. Now I know this question is impossible to answer directly, but roughly speaking what could a first year e-store owner expect to make ( Drop-shipping).

I think you already know the answer to that I never did dropshipping personally but the same as any website it could be anything, depending on product, market size, competition, margin, running costs, costs to acquire customers, etc etc etc. Give something a try. Better to try and maybe fail [learn] than never try anything and regret.

 

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