How to ensure your online business grows and brings you the rewards you deserve
Well I hope you had a lovely break over Easter and you managed to implement a few of those fee saving tips I detailed in last weeks eletter…
You know, there’s really nothing quite like the feeling of making your first sale online – whether on eBay, Amazon or from your own website and particularly if that sale brought in a nice bit of profit. When orders start to come in it’s very motivating and is usually enough for you to make the decision to keep on purchasing that one particular product to resell. After all that first successful product is also the first in a reliable income stream for you.
There’s no resting on your laurels though! Once you’ve got that first product up and running and it’s bringing you a profit, that is the time to start adding more items to your inventory to bring in even more money. One product is great, but you must ask yourself, will this single product bring you profits of £1000 or £2000 per month? The answer to this question is that unfortunately it’s unlikely.
Making that amount of income per month (and more) is absolutely achievable, but you won’t see figures like that unless you continually add new items to your online inventory and that’s the one important thing you should do in order to become successful.
Make sure you do the correct maths
It is essential to make as much profit as possible on every one of your online sales which I know sounds really obvious but can often get overlooked. This applies to all your products, large or small. So, the price your buyer pays you must always cover what you initially paid for your product, plus your postage and packaging costs, any online sales fees and also still leave you with a decent profit.
Let’s say that one of your products is making you approximately £5.00 net profit per sale. If your item is in demand and you have plenty of stock you can easily sell at least fourteen items a week (that’s only 2 a day!) making you a tidy £70 per week.
That’s not very much you might say – but actually it is if you’re just topping up your regular full or part time income – think about what you could you do with an extra £3640 a year – because that’s what £70 a week amounts to. It’s a holiday, some meals out in a nice restaurant, treats for the children, new clothes…
So now think about this. What if you were to source a second product that you also sell fourteen (or more) of in a week? Suddenly your extra income has doubled to £140.00 a week. That’s £7280.00 per year which is on a par with some part time salaries – just for posting 4 parcels a day or 28 parcels a week.
So, continue this process and, before you know it, you could be selling ten different products fourteen times a week and finding an extra £700 a week delivered to your bank account within that timeframe.
That’s £36,400 a year before tax. That really puts it into perspective.
But of course if you want to be successfully selling ten or fourteen lots of different products every single week then you’ll need to find consistently in demand products that will sell over and over again on a daily basis or you’ll need to tailor your stock to the seasons and trends so that once a product dips in seasonal popularity you have another one lined up ready to replace it.
Sourcing those hot products
It’s challenging and frustrating and most importantly it takes time and practice. I’m talking about researching and sourcing those in demand products and I would love to promise you that your very first product will make you a huge fortune from the moment you advertise it online but this is simply not the case.
It takes time to build your business, it’s not magic and the key to success is to gradually add products to your inventory and therefore, gradually increase your profits over time. I have years of experience of research and sourcing and I know that it does take time to research and pin down new products and then find suppliers who can provide those products for a competitive price. Plus you’ll also find it a bit overwhelming if you suddenly leap from selling, shipping and monitoring the sales of ten items a week to one hundred items a week in a very short space of time.
So, by building up gradually you will be able to put good practices in place that will help you to maintain an excellent level of customer service and stock control as your business expands.
You must learn to love your research. Every successful online seller spends hours doing the proper research. Whether you are just starting out or have been selling online for years, this fundamental principle never changes and so finding the hot products that you need in order to bring in the sort of profits that I am talking about here will take a little time.
But look, this is all part of planning and then running a successful business. Richard Branson didn’t wake up one morning with an idea and instantly have a viable business making him money the following week. You must be patient and treat your online business exactly as you would any other business start-up.
The challenging bits have to be done, in order for you to reach the non-challenging bits – like seeing your orders come in and getting them dispatched. That’s the really enjoyable part! But if researching and sourcing fills you with fear and dread or you’ve tried to research a hot product without success then I can help you. As an eletter subscriber you may already know about my online membership site The Source Report. One of the unique benefits I offer through membership is the opportunity to take advantage of products that I’ve already researched and sourced for you so if this aspect is a real challenge, you could really benefit from this – because I do everything for you.
I intentionally keep membership places to a minimum so that every member has the best opportunity to utilise the resources, products, suppliers and tools I suggest however I’ve currently got a few places available, so if you think I can help you, please take a look.
You can read all about it here
I’ve got the experience and the know-how which I simply pass on directly to you making it really easy for you to get that first product off the ground, or to add to an inventory you are already building. In no time at all you could have multiple products selling on a continual basis and you’ll be on your way to the kind of income you deserve.
As always I wish you the very best of success,
