If you are one of the millions who have read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, you know that one of the strategies he promotes is manufacturing a product and selling it via an online store. He doesn’t stop there, though. He also advocates outsourcing/automating the entire process from the manufacturing of the product to the fulfillment of orders and finally the handling of customer complaints.
Today this side hustle is more realistic than ever before. Finding a product to sell, creating an online store to engage in e-commerce, and utilizing services that help automate tasks is much easier today than at any time in the past.
With that being said, whether or not an e-commerce business is right for you is an individual question that only you can answer. There are alternatives, such as affiliate income, that might suit you better. On the other hand there may be more profits in selling your own product or you may already have a product in mind that you are looking to sell online.
Establishing an Online Store
The first step in running an e-commerce business is learning how to start an online store in any type of field. Without an online store you obviously won’t be making any sales. Online stores, along with blogs and pretty much any website, have content management systems (CMS) behind them. Content management systems make it much easier to upload, change, and manage content on a website.
Creating an online store is more difficult than starting a blog for various reasons. Blogs are fairly easy to implement because you can use a CMS like WordPress that manages written blog content really well. There are other CMS that are catered towards online stores that have products and need to have the ability to process transactions.
Finding a Product to Sell
You might already have a product in mind that you want to sell. My wife creates personalized wedding, baby shower, and bachelorette invitations. She also creates some other products like custom coasters. These are all things that she has started to consider selling online to leverage the relatively huge number of consumers in the online marketplace.
Tim Ferriss suggests creating a ‘muse,’ or some product that hasn’t been created before. For example someone created a yoga mat that is big enough for two people. Having some sort of specialized product that can be produced on-demand is a key aspect of creating passive income through an e-commerce website.
How exactly do you think of a product to sell? There’s no science to this and a product can potentially ‘come to you’ when you least expect it. I personally think keeping a brainstorm list handy and constantly adding to it whenever an idea comes to mind is the best way to go.
Ferriss’ specifically suggests trying to combine two different interests. For example, what about combining the idea of travel and a baby/small child? One problem is baby carriers aren’t that easy to travel with. Why not create a travel baby carrier that is easy to transport? That’s exactly what someone created. These are the kind of products that can be turned into very profitable e-commerce ideas.
Leveraging Outsourcing Services
I wrote a post about 5 tools that help you manage your company from anywhere in the world. In this post I mention web-based tools like Drop Box and Google Drive. If you do not have to physically deliver products yourself you can potentially live anywhere while managing your business. Even if initially you are the one producing/manufacturing your goods, you could eventually move this to an employee or a team of employees. Once you outsource that function you can focus more on business development and creating a more efficient operations process.
There are other tools that can be used to help outsource other things like administration and delivery. Hiring a virtual assistant to help with the administrative side of your online store can be a huge bonus. You can hire virtual assistants overseas for as low as $3 to $5 an hour. This is possible from lower cost-of-living in other areas of the world. An administrative assistant can do many things for you such as answering emails, addressing customer complaints, tracking orders, billing, and more. Having a virtual assistant can benefit your company even if you produce and ship your product domestically, especially if you are working through an online store.
If you’re willing to put in the time you will be able to successfully implement an e-commerce for just about any product, whether it’s produced here or abroad. If you have an idea for a product that you think others would like to buy, there’s really no reason not to pursue setting up shop. Who knows? You just might create a side income that turns into a full-time income.
Check out DC’s new book Hustle Away Debt to learn everything you wanted to know about making money through side hustles!
____________
Photo by Karlis Dambrans
Check out some of our favorite personal finance resources:
Are you getting the best credit card rewards? Check out the top cash back credit card offers (updated daily)
Make extra money: 15 ways to make money from your computer
Get the First Chapter Free!
Join our online community and get the first chapter of the book Student Loan Solution absolutely FREE!
