Succeeding in e-commerce without reinventing the wheel

If you are anything like me, you rarely learn lessons the easy way. If a parent warned you something was hot, you touched it anyway. If a teacher told you not to procrastinate on an assignment, you waited until the last minute. If a friend told you to get all your ducks in a row before making a big life decision, you packed up your car and moved to a big city with no residence and no plan.

While I certainly don’t regret any of those experience (or the person I grew up to be), I do have an admiration for those who could and did learn things the easy way.

When I decided to start my own e-commerce business, I wanted to do things my way. After a long time of “spinning my wheels” and making no progress, I finally admitted there was a better way. Below I have compiled a short guide to succeeding in e-commerce without reinventing the proverbial wheel.

Let a Provider Do the Heavy Lifting

Right off the bat, let’s settle on a definition of ecommerce. According to Shopify, e-commerce is the online sale of goods, facilitated by digital money transfers, data transfers, and physical shipping of products. By now, almost everybody has either bought or sold something online. But what if you wanted to make a business of it?

In days past, you had to purchase a web domain, learn programming languages, set up a website, troubleshoot it for issues and security flaws… all before even thinking about turning a profit or closing a sale.

Fortunately, those days are dead and gone thanks to companies like Shopify. These companies provide an easy path to starting your own e-commerce business. Sure, you still have to handle the products and customers, but these providers will set you up with a website, a domain, a theme, a logo, payment processing, security features, business tools, and a plethora of helpful add-ons.

In other words, these services do all the heavy lifting for you… so you can focus on your business itself.

Tap into Existing Audiences

Marketing your nascent e-commerce business is a whole other matter. Basically, you want to establish an online presence across a number of social media platforms, set up subscription email marketing, and occasionally spend some dollars on online advertising. To grow your customer base quickly, you should also consider tapping into existing audiences.

There are a few ways to do this. The first is through influencer marketing. Start by identifying popular social media personalities in your market space. For example, if you sell in-vehicle security cameras online, find YouTubers and Instagram profiles already discussing consumer electronics or home security tips. These folks already have an audience; and they probably work with other businesses to review products. So, do yourself a favor and connect with them to see if you can tap into their pre-fabbed audiences.

In that same vein, you could also find existing online communities dedicated to what you’re selling. Continuing with the in-vehicle security cameras example, Reddit has dozens (if not hundreds) of sub-Reddits discussing cars, security hacks, dashcam videos, and more. Be careful though; trying to “hard sell” in these groups is likely to get you banned. But if you provide a gently suggestive touch, you might just get somewhere.

Hopefully, this brief guide to succeeding in e-commerce has been helpful to you. After all, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. However, if you are too headstrong to take anyone’s advice, I don’t blame you. Some of us are just built that way, myself included.