Advice to Would-Be E-Commerce Merchants - Plan Your Success!

Advice to Would-Be E-Commerce Merchants: Plan Your Success!

The keyword is online. If you stop and think about it, doing business online and the brick and click way are kinda different. But if you look closer, the similarity of doing business between the two can be astonishing! The only difference may lie from the fact that online business people would have to deal with more computer technology than they can ever think of. In reality though, the most effective online entrepreneurs hardly spend more than 4 hours in front of the computer!

What makes a successful online businessman then? I hear various opinions from everyone. One, you should find multiple streams of income. Two, you should bank on your talent and persistence as your capital. Three, like learning how to swim, everything is about technique, technique, technique! Which would you rather believe? I'd say all of these work in conjunction with one another. But without a plan or goal, success in doing business online isn't as easy as it seems!

Sure, you get a domain. You design your website. You have infrastructure built such as shopping cart, payment gateway, third party credit card processor. You may even apply for a merchant account with a high risk merchant account provider. You employ SEO tactics and other forms of online advertising. You provide good customer service and ship goods efficiently. But what's your next move?

They say doing business online successfully is no big secret. If you are a born salesman but are not educated with e-commerce skills, the learning curve can be steep. But if you've sold T-shirts to strangers, it's not impossible to do it on the Internet! Better yet, you can bank on your expertise and use it to sell digital products/services at practically zero capital. Doing business online is an art as much as it is a way to earn and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Behind every high risk merchant's success is a great deal of planning before execution. You don't just jump into every opportunity you see. Yes, there are so many ways to make money online, but don't sweat the small stuff! Many have made the mistake of doing this and ended up more broke than they were before. It takes experience to succeed yes, but high risk merchants can also learn from other people's mistakes. Would you rather suffer or read between the lines?

The worst case scenario when it comes to planning to succeed as an online e-commerce merchant is that your plans never came into fruition. Or, it takes forever to execute every single step. I've known businessmen (and this is funny), who planned their businesses, having unique products and services to sell, but took eternity to make things happen. The financial capital and manpower are present, but the e-commerce merchant's mentality put a crimp on the operations. Even though success is dependent on well-designed plans, it does have its funny and disastrous moments too.

Advice to future money makers: Read about success stories of e-commerce merchants and learn from their experience and mistakes. That way you don't have to commit them and suffer the losses. What better way to get conserve resources! Planning your online business takes time, but it pays eventually. Although selling online and making a profit can be fun, it can be a serious path to losses and misfortune too. Sit down and think about it!