Today marked my first milestone of $1,000 from my online business,my website, giaytot.com, built in Magento extensions on the first days and right now in Magento 2 extensions, which sells shoes for man. Well, i built the website from the ground up in my free time as a project, then realized that it could be profitable. A few notable tips that I came across while doing this.
1.Pick a boring business
First of all, I picked a boring business, i sell shoes for man. Everyone is always on the lookout for “the next big thing.” The next big thing is finding rare earth minerals on Mars. That’s hard word. I didn’t do it! I didn’t come up with the new, new thing. I just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else. When you are smaller than the behemoths that are stuck with bureaucracy, you can often offer better sales and better service, and higher touch to your customers. Customers will come to you.
2.Choose a common e-commerce platform
It is estimated that magento is a leading e-commerce platform. Magento have took 29.8% percentage out of all e-commerce platform. Yeah, there are many online stores choose magento because of it’s outstanding benefits
Magento is Community. Yeah, It’s big, it’s talented, and it’s growing fast. In addition, It is support well. If code were stock, the Magento community would be wealthy.Besides, Out-of-the-box feature set. Magento handles concepts properly and in an organized manner. And stock Magento comes with Simple, Configurable, Grouped, Bundled, Virtual and Digital Products.
Moreover, You might use it to sell amusement park tickets and digital music at the same time, without any extensions. You know, Magento have a lot Extensions, free extensions. You knew it was coming. If Magento doesn’t already do it, go find someone else who already has. 90% chance it’s already available, and most of these extensions are dirt cheap
If you just don’t have an magento, take this course, it is free and should help:
- Magento download
- Magento user guide
- Magento Free extension
3.Design everything before you build it.
I designed my homepage in Photoshop in about an hour and was happy with it – at the time. I really thought I liked the design until I stumbled across competition or other online businesses with websites that, frankly, blew mine out of the water. Long story short, I completed three live redesigns of my website, taking an extensive amount of wasted time, due to something that could have been taken care of at the start if I just put in enough effort. While my website still is not perfect , I am happy with the results. I just wish I took the extra time from the beginning.
If you don’t know how to design or don’t have free time, don’t worry!
Check out for Banner slider , it is nice and totally free
4.Negative feedback should not discourage you
My initial feedback regarding my designs was pretty poor. I submitted a few of them to programming and received awful feedback. I then got a little discouraged and took a break from the project. My main piece of advice here is that obviously not everyone will find a need, or even like, your product. But there are certainly people out there that will… and enough people to make money off of!
5.Selling products? Utilize your resources
If you are selling products at your online store, you must make sure using all of the available resources online. Amazon, ebay, Etsy, Fab, Fancy, OpenSky, etc. Etsy results in a large portion of my current profits… and people tend to forget about these sources of income by focusing all of their effort on their own website
6.Customer Service.
Oh do I wish I could go back in time and slap myself in the face. I didn’t care about old customers anymore. I only sold the shoes but nothing else, and it was a big mistake.
A great way to acquire new customers while retaining the loyal ones is to set up a gift card program. The many benefits of the gift card are often overlooked by merchants. For retail stores and special-service online business, such as book stores and day spas, gift cards are extremely effective marketing tools that can be displayed at the cash register or front desk for easy access
Online Stores that use retail Gift cards are more likely to see better sales results.
A previous survey performed by the market research showed that 82 percent of small to mid-sized online business who use retail gift cards experienced increased sales. The firm also states that to enjoy the most revenues from retail gift card sales, a business should begin marketing them in November and also aggressively promote them two weeks before Christmas.
You might treat each customer, new and old, like a real human being. The best new customers are your old customers, and the best way to touch your old customers is to provide quick help when they need it. Yes, Customer service in online business is the most reliable touch point to keep selling your service to them.
Obviously these won’t apply for everyone here, but any up and coming online business should benefit from these… as I know I would have!
If you have any questions, you might comment below, i will reply very soon 🙂
