How To Start Ecommerce Beginners Guide in 2021
If you don't have too much knowledge or you're not an expert in eCommerce and marketing, it's all good i got you! I'll be going over everything you need to know to get started with e-commerce today in this video we're going to be going over how to create a product you want to sell and start an e-commerce store this year as a beginner the aim of this video is to be the only video you need the one-stop shop basically to start e-commerce as a beginner. Hey friends, Andrew here, hope you're all well! Now, if you're new to this channel welcome we talk about all things e-commerce digital marketing and tech gear lately the e-commerce business model has been absolutely crazy with everyone moving online saving more money and spending more of it through online stores there is a growing business opportunity here and it doesn't look like it'll be slowing down anytime soon i'm hearing a lot of success stories from my friends and within our private mastery community who have had their stores explode over the last year making tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and i don't want those of you who are interested in starting an e-commerce business to miss out and so i still strongly believe we are very far from the peak of this growth also a quick thanks to today's video sponsor hatch who has very kindly offered my audience a free business checking account for a full year worth 120 dollars you can learn more about this at the end of the tutorial what is e-commerce and how does it work so let's start this all off with the background of e-commerce and how it all actually works e-commerce literally stands for electronic commerce and commerce is the activity of buying and selling on a large scale a big reason e-commerce is so lucrative is because it's digitized if you were to buy and sell through a physical store as a small business for example you're completely restricted to that specific location and the foot traffic that comes through your store it's near impossible to easily scale that physical store into a multi-million dollar store within a few months but with e-commerce however it is a completely different story fun fact the first e-commerce transaction was actually made on august 11 1994 by phil bradenberger i can never pronounce that his last name so hopefully i'm doing it justice basically he used his mastercard to buy a sting album for 12.48 cents actually let me know down in the comments below if you know who sting is i personally don't and maybe that shows my age so if you know who sting is let me know down in the comments below but this single purchase of a music album on august 11 1994 opened up the floodgates to the internet and e-commerce sales so e-commerce sales now globally equates to roughly five trillion dollars every year for comparison with amazon's market cap of 1.6 trillion dollars alone and alibaba at 615 billion in market cap alone that's absolutely mind-boggling and for comparison's sake the crypto market cap globally is roughly just half of e-commerce at 2.5 trillion dollars in total at the time of this video so let's take a quick look at the different e-commerce models there are a fair few the main differences are really on how things are delivered how the supplier communicates with us how us as the business owners communicate with the consumers and customers but by far the most common is either drop shipping or the wholesaling and warehousing model so let's take a look at this one because this is what we're focusing on so what's going to happen here is online store orders direct from the supplier so we order direct from the supplier that creates our product the supplier then sends product to an online store warehouse or an online warehouse of some sort and then the customer will place an order let's say from an ad that we've created right so they'll place that order then that order will be uh sent over to the warehouse and over to our online systems as well where the supplier then sends a customer order from warehouse supply by the way this supplier this could be us depending on how you want to store your inventory and then once that's all shipped out then you know it goes back to step number one okay now we have an idea of what e-commerce is it's history and how it actually works we also need to talk about marketing later in this video which is how we'll get a large flow of customers to our store but before that what are you planning to sell well we have to find or create our product to sell to the world so let's find out how we can do exactly that finding and validating a product to sell you may already know the products you want to sell or you may have to run some r d research and development for example right now you could be selling homemade candles at the market well you could outsource the creation of these candles to an external supplier and start shipping these in bulk and selling online on the other hand you may already have a product in mind you want to create from scratch like a custom face mask for example this could also be done by working closely with a supplier or you may want to simply resell items as a bo at bulk as a middle man all these approaches work but each of them will need a very different strategy to ensure you're building a successful business and not one set for failure whether you have found a product or still need brainstorming you need to run some research so you need to one validate your product and demand number two run a cost analysis and find your profitable margins number three run market research and number four competitor research going into all of this in complete detail is going to take literally hours and something we go into detail on in our mastery class but a great place to start is by asking yourself these questions and answering them are you ready i want you to write down these questions and then answer them so number one what problem does the product solve and then number two at what price would you buy this product number three what makes your product different to the competition and then finally what is the ideal customer they'll definitely buy this product these are really extremely important questions that you should sit down and answer before you actually start and then afterwards start to use basic tools like google trends to start off with and validate that product demand all of this done right is going to make sure you've got a profitable product idea that could make you six to seven figures in profit in the long term rather than a failed business my advice here is don't stress over the numbers but sell a product that you're proud of and that you yourself would buy and then back it up with research finding a supplier there are again many different ways to find your supplier to create your product profitably and the keyword here is profitable otherwise you'll be selling at a loss and obviously no one wants that by far the easiest and most cost efficient way to source your products for beginners is through a platform called alibaba think of alibaba as this mega factory and warehouse where you can find tens of thousands of suppliers and manufacturers who are ready to create your product or have ready to go products that you're able to emboss your own logo onto it's an absolute playground to find winning products to create an empire and brand around there are things to take into consideration here unfortunately it's not as simple as pointing out a random supplier and saying hey i want you to create my product here's the money it's easy enough to find the products you want to sell but it's another to find the right supplier for you so it's like it's kind of like buying cars sure you may want a mercedes and that's you know you want a mercedes but exactly which model do you want there are so many different models that achieve slightly different things and this is the same thing with a supplier so once you have finally found your golden supplier hold on to them and develop that relationship you two will be relying on one another for big wealth creation here so create a solid line of communication with them we have a dedicated slack channel with them and then learn how to communicate with them because each supplier communicates differently you know the level of english fluency is going to range and once you have that communication set down establish that trust at the end of the day money talks so make sure you keep delivering business i.e you make sales deplete your inventory and consistently go back to this supplier to restock
up ideally bumping up that moq or otherwise known as minimum order quantity soon they'll be like hey look at this business and partnership they're growing and we're growing alongside them so the suppliers probably thinking we'll do whatever we can to support this business and continue growing alongside them this is a great point at your business i want to mention something though because i get asked this question all the time hey andrew can you give me a script to reach out to suppliers you know how do you effectively reach out to suppliers i just want you to know that scripts are limited they do help you start but you don't need them to help you grow you need to go beyond scribs to grow that relationship with your supplier by using different strategies we do provide scripts in e-commerce mastery but our private community is actually where it's at where we discuss the more intricate details if you want to join that private community i'll leave a link down below but depending on when you watch this video the community may or may not be closed at the time being but either way it's totally worth checking out if you're serious about building an online business and we also just have loads of fun talking about entrepreneurial topics tech gear investing and all that good stuff so i'll leave a link down below if you're interested in that community paying the supplier okay so i'll briefly go over how to pay the supplier because this is extremely important when working with new suppliers the most common methods to pay with when it comes to alibaba and their platform is escrow alibaba payment links and online transfer links and what payment method that you use really does depend on things like how trustworthy is the supplier you're working with the different fees and what insurance do you need one tip i'll give you though is to try and avoid wire transfers otherwise known as tt bank transfers it's by far the most insecure because suppliers will only dispatch your products when the full transfer has been made so you're putting a lot of trust into the supplier especially when you're making five thousand ten thousand dollars twenty thousand dollars worth of orders in one go so only ever do this if you're completely if you completely trust your supplier if you have a relationship with them if you've ever read shoe dog by phil knight who's the founder of nike if you didn't know he's run into countless supplier issues and payment issues during his time starting up nike so make sure you type you take your time to select the right payment method for you and your business before you commit to this order right this is extremely important i'll leave resources down in the description box below if you want to learn more about this but before you go ahead and start placing your orders with your supplier make sure you're watching to the end of this video first to properly set up your business finances building your store now we know the basics to sourcing your products through suppliers let's build out that storefront if you're still here following on drop a like on this video and comment e-commerce empire so i know you've got this far into this video okay so we want to build out a beautiful looking store that entices your customers right just like you put in a lot of effort into building a nice pop-up store in real life we don't want to bring our customers to a dingy dark store with broken walls and no decor right so i'll show you a few great examples of beautifully built storefronts as an example that you can expire to depending on what you want to sell so let's check out two very well done e-commerce websites and this one i found actually when i was researching electric toothbrushes the other day it's called the poma brush and this is a really well done landing page so there's not much on it but it does invite you to continue scrolling to understand more about your product so it's very product orientated it's just a single product with a few different variations and immediately you can see that there is a unique selling point which is it can be it only needs to be recharged three times a year you know it's the most effective clean for sensitive teeth and gums and it's very visual by the way so when we're scrolling through you can see that it's extremely visual there's a lot of unique selling points to this and it is very minimal text so i personally think this is a really great website that really shows the unique benefits of this specific product and also just really looks aesthetic and this is something you want to focus on you don't want a really bad looking website there's also social proof down here as well and it's a very easy process to purchase as well if you click check out the next one is black paris so this one is they have great branding it's very simple products pretty straightforward basically white label private label products and it is they also have print on demand apparel but what they've done really well here is branding so everything is obviously in black and they have this really nice aesthetic and tone to their store and just the overall user experience of this store is very accessible so if we click into men's for example and just click new new arrivals just to check it out very nicely laid out very easy to read you can have a quick glance at the entire product range this is a great sort of store for a large product range and if you click into it of course you get more details here and it's got a 50 50 split set up where you have the images on the side and the description on the other right hand side of course again you're social proof but the point here is these are really nice looking stores and and it's extremely important that you do build your store very carefully and as you can see here this one is built specifically by shopify so i'll talk about that in just a moment but yeah this is a really great looking store as is pome brush and i just wanted to stress that it's extremely important to have a really nice looking stall there are pros and cons with each platform so i'll leave a link to a video i shared where i broke down the pros and cons of the most popular platform so you have a better idea of which platform you should be using if however you're just ready to jump in and you're pretty keen to get started well shopify most likely will be all you need so i'll leave a link to a free 14 day trial in the description box below to get you kickstarted and start building that dream store of yours i'd get stuck into the platform and play around with it for starters if i was you to see how you feel with the platform and then begin to build out your business once you're ready create ads to drive traffic this okay this is arguably the most difficult part marketing and digital marketing an amazing product won't speak for itself initially you need customers to come to you when you start an e-commerce business and as they say you can sell almost anything with great marketing and ads pair this up with a great product that makes your customer happy and you'll have a business that you can definitely scale up like crazy marketing is a huge umbrella term but for the sake of this video we'll be focusing on digital marketing specifically paid ads so the most common platforms you'll see include facebook ads instagram ads google ads and snap ads across instagram and facebook alone there are a total of 3.2 billion active monthly users and so this basically means 3.2 billion potential customers we can get your business in front of considering there's almost 8 billion humans on earth that is a lot of people facebook ads can reach i myself i typically recommend facebook ads to start off with because once you learn the basics the digital marketing through facebook ads you can transfer those skills to other platforms such as snap ads learning facebook ads will allow you to grow just about any type of business from scratch and build a predictable income source keyword again here is predictable by investing into ads and putting your money into your pocket every single day and to do this the plan is to place your new product in front of your ideal audience at the right time with the right offer it works by targeting users based on their location demographics and other profile data serving an ad that we've created and then we bid for impression which is basically serving the ad in front of a facebook user they'll click on your ad and then purchase from your online business we then repeat this process automatically and scale up your ecom store soon reaching your ideal customers every single minute and optimizing so you establish a passive income stream to feed your ecommerce store on autopilot so the plan is to do this at scale for your business and practically automate everything with facebook ads and paid ads in general so obviously many of these social media companies will incentivize you to sign up with their platform but by far the best offer i've seen recently is from snapchat who are giving my audience the chance to double their ad credit for free up to a thousand dollars so if you deposit let's say 500 into your ad account and start advertising they'll give you a bonus five hundred dollars on top of your initial deposit for free so if you choose to deposit a thousand dollars you'll get an additional a thousand dollars for a total of two thousand dollars at credit which is more than enough to get started with especially if you're making a return through your e-commerce sales already and at that point you are basically printing money i urge you to take advantage of this offer it's very generous of snapchat and a very smart way to get started and learn the ins and outs of digital marketing platform and almost everything you learn on snapchat can actually be applied to facebook ads and even google ads to an extent although there are unique challenges to each platform i'll leave that special link to the free ad credit down below if you go through the snapchat website directly you're not going to get that doubling of ad credit so make sure you use that unique link down below literally just by signing up you'll be getting free ad credit up to a full thousand bucks how to get paid okay so well done on getting this fight into this video i know it's a pretty bulky video but we're going to be talking about the most rewarding part of the process which is getting yourself paid where exactly will all the sales go and how should we be collecting the sales and fees it is extremely important you set up your finances and your accounts correctly really with any business that you start not just e-commerce and by the way a mandatory disclaimer i'm sure you've heard this before but this is definitely not financial advice if you're looking for financial advice then please head to a qualified financial advisor accountant but broadly speaking to correctly process and take payments with a new e-commerce business you will need two things here so you need a business checking account and a payment processor so this is essentially how the payment will be made so the customer makes the payment it goes through the merchant store which is shopify in this case then it goes to the payment gateway and payment processor which i'll tell you about in a moment then it finally goes to your bank and then into your personal account so the two go-to payment processes that i definitely highly recommend is firstly of course stripe and then of course also paypal you want to set up both of these to give the customer more options to pay and this will in turn increase the number of orders you receive so in the past i had turned off paypal when i was running a store and saw the number of orders immediately nosedive on the daily simply because customers that wanted or planned to pay with paypal didn't have that option on the back end and by having more payment options overall you increase the conversion rate and the number of orders you receive even take a look into buy now pay later options like after pay once you've established your business but before you actually set up those payment processes you need to make sure that you have a business checkings account okay so don't fall into the rookie era of using your personal checkings account for business or even choosing the wrong business checking account i've been there in the early days and trust me it just gets really really messy this is something that you want to take your time with and get right at the beginning rather than fix fix it up when it's messy later down the track and seriously your accountant is going to love you for this the inconvenient thing though here is business checking accounts charge higher fees and are overall more complicated compared to you know our personal checking accounts and at this point in the business journey i've personally paid thousands of dollars in business checking fees alone and the reason for this is because there's generally more upkeep to a business account versus a personal account among other reasons the good news is though today's video sponsor hatch is offering you a complete business checking account for free for an entire year which you can claim in the link below in the description box which leads you to this page here that you can see on screen hatch is all about business growth and providing a business checking account that helps your business grow by saving us fees and providing rewards and discounts too their account is specifically designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs with no nsf fees which by the way stands for non-sufficient fund fees there's also up to five percent cash back rewards on gas restaurants hotels car rentals and discounts on business software like square yelp and indeed so not only are you going to be saving on that annual fee and nsf fees you'll also be saving on software discounts and getting cash back up to five percent honestly my first time signing up to a business checking account was painful slow and expensive so take a look into hatch if you're looking to set up a business checking account quickly they make it super simple with online registration so you're up and running with a business checking his account in no time i'll leave that link down below in the description box to sign up for a free business checking account with all the perks mentioned and thanks again to hatch for providing this exclusive offer to my viewers so once you have that all set up make sure that you go into the back end of your shopify and replace your bank account or add in your bank account if you haven't already set this all up but like i said get that business checkings account first then set up stripe and paypal accounts and finally add this all into your shopify backend and then you are ready to go and get paid all right that is essentially how you sign ecommerce business from scratch for beginners everything i've said in this video will be absolutely evergreen so whether you start an e-commerce business today or in five years time this guide will still work for you except maybe the ad voucher i mentioned so if you want to double your credit make sure you claim it in the description box asap below and start advertising your business today again e-commerce is a crazy hot business model to get into today i'd be over the moon if just one person out there started their successful ecommerce business after watching this video honestly i hope it changes your life for the better like it has for me even if that means a little side hustle that brings you a few more thousand dollars a month for you that is that honestly means a lot to me and i hope you're able to achieve that so i'll leave that link to the private mastery community down below for those who are absolutely serious about creating their own e-commerce empires and i'll also drop a link to our mastery programs below again depending on when you're watching this video the community and programs may or may not be opened it really depends depending on our intake and our ability to serve our students but if it's not get onto that wait list and we'll email you as soon as spots have opened up if you found value from this video don't forget to leave a like and subscribe to this channel for a whole heap more content on all things online business e-commerce digital marketing and tech year if you're still here make sure you drop that comment e-commerce empires down below and i'll go ahead and like that comment since you're still here i read all the comments and appreciate all of your support too i'll leave on screen here more useful videos for you to binge if you're in the mood to learn or kick back plus follow me on instagram at andrew ethan zane where i post more behind the scenes business and tech related stuff and as always thank you for watching
2021-06-27 01:42
