In 2018, we started our second online store. In roughly 7 months my second store had somewhere in the range of 25k total sales. At the top of my new years resolution is to add another 5k to our yearly profits. While adding another 5k to our existing store is in fact difficult, its definitively not out of the realm of possibilities. Whats the fun in that? With that being said I am going to completely start a new store from the ground up and document as much as possible along the way. The goal is to somehow motivate and show you the processes I go through while I try to take a store from 0 to hopefully at least an extra 5k a year ( because who couldn’t use an extra 5k a year?).
I would like to add that I will be all over the place with this blog series. I will post things that I am doing also explanations on what I am doing / what you could do.
List of things I need to do:
Select the name of the store.Try getting one where the domain and Instagram are available.Buy Domain Name.Important! – .com if at all possible. Privacy Protection is a MUST.Register Instagram.Name as close to store and domain as possible.Register Facebook.- Select a niche.
- Start listing product.
Track my expenses of the new project by bookmarking this.
Selecting a niche:
Targeting a niche should be your primary focus. Try to make and or sell products that are specific to a particular person or group of people. You’re going to want to target very loyal and borderline obsessive people within their hobby or niche. The best way to select the niche is to find something you’re passionate about. When you’re apart of the select few, you understand the terminology and can understand what is good and not.
If you decide to start your own store and cant find a niche you’re passionate about the best thing to do is start doing research! A quick google search for popular hobbies shows:
Going over the list there are some that stand out to me. Knitting, Exercise, Sewing, Hunting, Dance, and Soccer. Because what I try to sell I try to personalize I always look for niches or markets that tend to buy personalized items. I also tend to look for niches that might not have a lot of personalized items made for.
Whats NEXT?
So you have selected your niche…. Now what the heck are you going to sell? If you plan on going the personalization route, there are some defacto items you can do to start getting your foot in the door. Hats, Bags, and T-shirts are good ways to start getting into selling for these markets. If you have the capital, you could buy the machinery make the products yourself.
- Make it yourself: The advantages of making your own product is the absolute full control of the entire process. The downside is that you have to do the entire process. From creating the item to shipment. Its all on you.
- Print on demand: You create the design, drive traffic to your store, once the customer purchases the design you have the company ( IE: Printful) create the final product and ship it to the customer. This normally tends to be less margins…. But after the design is made you just do customer service and collect a paycheck.
Disclaimer: This is my journey to make another 5k a year. I might not make it and I might lose out on all the money I invest. Online stores do take a lot of time at the start and progressively go down a little. This will never be a 100% passive way to gain money. You will at some point or another have to handle customer service and in some cases all of the production details.
5k logo taken from – https://www.khcpl.org/resources/databases/250-pebblegoanimals
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