HOW TO START AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS IN 2023 (Beginners Guide)

I want this video to serve as a basic guide for anyone out there that's looking to start an Ecommerce business .

Now , I truly believe that Ecommerce business is one of the best ways to make money online .

I was able to leave my full time job around four or five years ago , mainly due to the fact that I started an Ecommerce business that was able to grow to over seven figures and sales , which is over a million pounds .

So this video is gonna be able to help any beginner out there that's thinking about starting an ecommerce business because I want to go for the initial steps that you need to be aware of some mindset things as well as some practical things that's gonna help you out on your ecommerce journey .

Let's go .

What is going on people ?

Welcome back to my channel .

If you're new , my name is Sam .

And what I do here is break down various different tips and tricks when it comes to making money online in today's video .

What I'm gonna be doing is going through four maybe five different things that you need to know before you start your ecommerce business .

These are the things that I wish I knew before I started many years ago because it would have just sped up the process .

It would have allowed me to realize certain things that would have helped me out in the early days and ultimately helped me make a lot more money over my entire e-commerce journey so far .

So make sure you stick around to the end so that you don't miss anything .

As always , I don't wanna waste any more time .

I wanna get right into it .

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Let's not waste any more time .

Let's get right into it .

All right .

So first things first , what exactly does e-commerce mean ?

What's the true definition of it ?

So I'm gonna give you my definition for anyone that's new to the world of ecommerce and wants to get a better understanding of what it means .

So to me , it basically means you're gonna be doing commerce online .

So commerce is essentially trading goods for money .

So e-commerce is trading goods for money on the internet .

So that's basically what it means .

Very simple .

You're essentially going to build a business that's going to sell physical products to people that want to buy those physical products .

And it's very important for you to be aware of this because once you understand exactly what e-commerce is , you're gonna be able to now approach it with the right mindset .

As soon as I realized what it truly meant , that's when I now started building the foundations of my ecommerce stores around products that people actually needed because I knew that that's where I was gonna be able to build a long term business .

So that's one of the first most important things I want you guys to be aware of , try to make sure that whatever business you're gonna build , it's items that people need and they're gonna need today and they're most likely going to need five years time , maybe 10 years time .

So , one of the first things that you're gonna need to think about is which platform that you're gonna choose to build your business on .

Now , there's various different ones that you can choose from , but the three main ones is either ebay , Shopify or Amazon .

So these are the three that I personally use with all of my businesses and ebay and Amazon are marketplaces .

However , Shopify is gonna be your own independent website and this is important to know because this is going to influence which direction that you're gonna take when it comes to choosing an initial platform .

Now , when I say that ebay and Amazon are both marketplaces , what that means is you're not gonna have to think about getting people over to your store because ebay and Amazon have already built up a customer base that visit those websites on a consistent daily , weekly and monthly basis .

However , if you decide to go down the direction of building your own Shopify website , you're gonna have to think about how you're gonna get customers onto your website .

So these are a few things that you need to think about before you decide on building up your ecommerce business .

Now , one thing that I will tell you before you even do anything is that you need to make sure that you focus on just one platform form .

This is something that you should do initially and this is something that I did .

I started off my Ecommerce journey by selling on ebay .

I built that up to around $50,000 per month , maybe $60,000 per month .

And then I realized that it wasn't really safe for me to rely on just one platform .

That's when I now branched out to Amazon and Shopify .

But if you're completely new to the world of building up online businesses , you need to make sure that you put all your focus , all your energy and all your effort into one platform initially .

Because if you try and focus on various different things at the same time , that's why you're not gonna be able to see any success at all .

Now , you're probably asking yourself .

But Sam , which one do I choose ebay , Amazon or Shopify .

Now , I can't give you a direct answer for that .

All I can really do is give you some advantages and some disadvantages of all three so that you guys can go away , think about it and decide on which one that you're gonna put your energy into initially .

So the main benefit with ebay and Amazon is the same thing .

You're gonna be able to benefit from the free traffic that passes through on a daily basis .

So you don't have to worry about using any paid ads to get your store up .

And however , the disadvantage is that you're gonna have to deal with competition .

Now , the differences between ebay and Amazon , is that in my opinion , I believe that ebay is a little bit easier to get started , which means that within a couple of weeks you're gonna be able to get your store up and running .

However , Amazon is somewhat a little bit tricky when it comes to getting things up and going .

But at the same time , you're gonna be able to maybe get your store up and going within a month , maybe four weeks depending on how fast Amazon approve your application .

Ebay don't necessarily have to approve any apple .

You're gonna be able to get started , get things selling maybe within the first week or so .

The main benefit to Shopify I would say is that it's your own website , it's your own asset , which means that you own it .

There's not much competition because it's only your website that customers are gonna be on when it comes to them , deciding on whether they want to buy from you or not .

However , the main disadvantage is that once you get your store set up , you now have to think about how you're gonna get customers onto your website , whether through paid ads , which is not really a bad thing , but it's just something that you need to consider .

And it's just one of the main difference is between Shopify and ebay and Amazon .

But one of the most important factors that you should consider before deciding on any one of these platforms is that you should ask yourself , which one are you more familiar with ?

For me , many years ago , I was a buyer on ebay , which meant that when it came time for me to be a seller , it was a lot more easier for me to get things started because I understood how things worked from a buyer's perspective .

So if you shop on Amazon regularly , but you've never ever shopped on ebay , then it might make more sense for you to go with Amazon because you're gonna understand exactly how structure things .

Or if you shop on ebay more often than Amazon , it may be better for you to start with ebay because one of the most common things that I've noticed amongst a lot of the Ecommerce millionaires is that they were actually buyers before they started to build their business , which meant that they understood how to market their business in the best way , how to do things in a way to convince any potential buyer to buy from them rather than a different seller .

So this might be something else that you might want to consider when it comes to choosing whatever platform that you're gonna build your ecommerce business on .

So moving on to one of the next things that you need to do when it comes to building your ecommerce business , which is that you need to go into whatever platform you've decided to use and find a seller or find a company that is selling similar products to what you see yourself selling in the future and then what you're gonna do from that point is emulate their success .

Now , I'm not saying that you should copy them outright and copy their store , but you can copy their products and you can copy the success that they've had .

And the reason why I know that this works is because before I even sold any item on ebay , I found a seller that will doing over a million dollars per month , selling a particular item within a specific category .

And even though I wasn't selling , at this point , I could see myself in the future selling those exact same items .

And because I knew that they were successful by selling these items I knew that I could also be successful too .

So what I started doing is studying the way that they branded their store , studied the way that they listed their items , studied the type of items that they were selling .

And I slowly built up my inventory base trying to emulate the type of inventory that they were selling .

And even though at the beginning I wasn't selling anything , eventually , I was able to build my ebay store up to over seven figures and sales .

So this is why I always advise anyone that's looking to build an Ecom store to find a company that's bigger than you , a company that you can see yourself running in the future and use them as a blueprint to your own success .

So I'm gonna quickly jump into the laptop now and show you two examples of two different companies , one on ebay , one on Amazon , and I'm gonna show you exactly what you need to do when it comes to understanding how you can see exactly how much money they're making , what type of items they're selling .

And then from there , you can go away and start building your own ecommerce business .

So first things first , we're gonna start off on Amazon and I've come across this store right here and they're called Igloo Mill Prep .

So these are the type of items that they're selling right here .

So let's say , for example , I was interested in selling these food storage containers .

And I wanted to build a similar business to this .

And I was inspired by this and I looked at this and I was like , wow , this is amazing .

I wanna run this type of business in the next two years .

One of the first things that I would do is double check to see if they're actually making money .

So what I'll do is just click on any one of the items , ideally , one that has the most reviews .

So I might click on this one right here .

And then the next thing that I'll do is come up here to my extensions and click on my Jungle Scout extension tool .

And by the way , Jungle Scout is an Amazon product research tool that helps you do various different bits of research when it comes to finding the best product to sell .

And right there , as you can see , they're able to show me that with this one item , this seller is able to make £63,000 .

So imagine if I now double check all the other items that they're selling , they're potentially making over 100 grand on Amazon by selling these food storage containers .

So if I was a beginner that I was looking to build a brand new store , this right here would inspire me to go away , try and find a supplier and try and build my store with similar branding , not the exact same one , but build my own company , but use this one as inspiration to get me to the point that they're at right now .

And you can also do the same thing with ebay too .

So I'm on this ebay seller store .

And as we can see , they've sold over 2.1 million individual items and their store is called direct lighting .

And they basically sell light bulbs and all of these different things .

So let's say , for example , I wanted to build an ebay store that sold light bulbs because I know that this is a long term product .

People are gonna need it over the next five years , 10 years because light bulbs haven't really changed over the past 1020 30 years .

From what I know anyway .

So what I'll do is I'll copy their user name just like that .

And then I'll head over to Z Analytics , which is a product research tool specifically for ebay .

And then from there , I'm gonna be able to see how much money this ebay seller is making .

All right .

So I'm on Z Analytics right now .

I've typed in direct lighting and as you can see in the last 30 days , they've been able to sell over £130,000 worth of goods , which is around $150,000 .

So straight away , this is a strong indication right here that I should also build a store that sells light bulbs because they're making money , which means that I may be able to make a fraction of what they're making , maybe even £20,000 per month , maybe £30,000 a month .

Who knows ?

And just to clarify the main point that I'm trying to make with this stage right here is that you want to make sure that you're actually finding the sellers that are making money as well as finding the sellers that are selling the right items .

You don't want to build your store , selling items where people are not even buying them .

So make sure that you do the right research before doing anything else .

And if you want to sign up to either Z Analytics or Jungle Scout , I've got trial links as well as discounted links in my description down below and moving on to one of the final steps that you need to be aware of when it comes to starting your ecommerce business that I'm going to speak about in this video is that you now need to decide on which exact products you're gonna sell and exactly how you're going to find the supplier that's going to associate you with those items .

Now , obviously , the step that I'm going to speak about now needs to be done after you've signed up and you've registered to whatever platform you decided to go with .

But once you've done all of that , you now need to figure out exactly which product you're gonna sell .

So let's say , for example , you decided to go with sticking on Z analytics .

What they're going to be able to show you is the top performing items in any seller store .

So , as we can see , these are the top 50 items in this ebay seller store right here .

And what I will personally do from this point is look at the top five best performing items .

So as we can see right here , there's a ceiling spotlight , there is a led light bulb over here , there is another led frosted candle light , et cetera , et cetera .

And we can see that with all of these individual items , they've been able to sell over 549 in the last month , 349 282 of each different one .

So these would be the exact same items that I would look to add to my own store to get things going because I know that they're obviously performing well .

But the way that I will find the supplier is by going over to alibaba.com .

And there's a certain step by step process that you need to follow when it comes to knowing exactly which supplier is the best one and which one you should go with .

Now , I'm , I'm gonna go too much into detail in today's video .

Otherwise , this video is going to end up being 20 or 30 minutes long .

I've already made a step by step video showing you exactly how you can find a supplier on alibaba.com that I'm gonna link right there so you can check that one out straight after this one .

Or if you ever watch a free webinar where I explain my story as to how I got started on Ebay and how I scaled my first ever ebay store from zero to over $3000 per day in sales .

And I'm going to leave that free webinar link down below .

It should be the first one in the description .

And if you enjoyed this video , don't forget to press the like button , don't forget to subscribe as well .

Hit the bell notification and don't forget that for you to see any sort of results or any sort of success with your ecommerce business .

You need to take the first step .

A lot of people will go on youtube , watch videos just like this and not take any action .

You need to make sure that you take the first step straight after watching this video , even if it's a small step and before you know it , you're gonna be living the life of your dreams .

All right guys , I'll see you on the next one .

Make sure you stay safe out there .

Peace .