If you’re reading this chances are you’d like to start your own eCommerce business. There has never been a better time to hop on the eCommerce train than right now. There are many different models, solutions, and strategies. In this article, we’ll break down starting an eCommerce business into 3 easy and actionable steps so you can be on your way to owning a seven-figure store. 

Step One - Laying the Foundation 

First thing first let’s decide what eCommerce model you’d like to pursue. Here are the most popular. 

In-house - you make or order the product in-house and ship the product yourself.

Dropshipping -you have the manufacturer send the product directly to your customer

Ex: https://www.oberlo.com/ 

Print on Demand- similar to dropshipping but more for fashion and design brands where you upload custom design files onto popular products and the print-on-demand service ships the product directly to your customer

Ex: https://www.printful.com/ 

Warehouse Outsourcing-  ( I’m sure there is a more technical name for it that’s just what we call it :) it’s where you ship or send your product to a third-party logistics company and they handle the product fulfillment and shipping for you 

Ex: https://www.shipmonk.com/ 

These options can also help you find where to source or how to create a product for example, with the popular model of drop shipping you can find just about any product in the entire world on https://www.alibaba.com/ here you can work and collaborate with suppliers to get your logo, changes to products, and negotiate pricing for your desired products. 

Many eCommerce businesses send Alibaba bulk orders directly to Amazon FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) and create an Amazon store through this method. However, this article is more focused on building your own brand. 

Hopefully, you know what you’d like to sell and have a good idea of where to source the product from. 

Now let’s talk about Shopify 🤑 

We would only ever recommend Shopify as your all-in-one platform to manage your entire eCommerce business from your website design, to fulfillment, to marketing. This is by far the best solution on the internet to start your eCommerce business especially if you are a beginner.

Check out Shopify for yourself and all its benefits here:  https://www.shopify.com/ 

Shopify can integrate with all major software and fulfillment companies/solutions. Now that your foundation is laid with your Shopify platform in place and your logistics setup depending on what eCommerce model you chose you are ready for step 2. 

Step 2 - How Do I Get Sales? 

Paid advertising will always be the quickest way to results. Some great places to start are with 

Facebook Advertising 

Instagram Advertising 

Google PPC 

If you have a smaller marketing budget I would recommend creating an influencer campaign. This is where you reach out to social media individuals or entities with a larger following or “influence” in your niche to promote your products 

Another budget-friendly option is creating an affiliate program and get affiliate marketers or influencers to agree to a profit-sharing agreement. A great application to manage this entire process is https://apps.shopify.com/affliate-by-secomapp 

For even more actionable advice on how to get sales on your Shopify store read our previous blog post: https://www.webvio.io/post/how-to-get-more-sales-on-shopify