Hoping to hear from all the e-commerce site owners and managers out there. I have several review sites that generate traffic for particular products. (500 to 3,000 visits per day) I currently make money from adsense and amazon referals. I am thinking of taking the next step to set up a store and sell these items. Price point of $75 to $300 each relatively small around 3 to 7 pounds. I am willing to carry inventory or drop ship. Any suggestions or best way to approach the situation? Since the products are consumer electronics are people willing to purchase from a specialty site rather than Amazon com or BestBuy com? Is it best to set up the store on the review site or create a new site with the name store in it? (www themyproductstore com) I am a web developer so setting up a new site or ecommerce site is not a big expense. Is it worth the headache for the extra money or am I better off sticking with the 7.5% from Amazon? All comments and suggestions are welcome!
Hmm, interesting concept. I would personally do both. Sell them via your review site - but on a different domain. So say, on your review website. You review a Sony TV, then underneath the review they have the option to buy it which redirects it to your main shop. Thats how i would do it. Good luck.
A simple analysis will give you the answer to make the right decision. There are 2 approaches. The first is the margin approach. Break everything down to cost per unit. So if the product sells for $300, you need to know on a per unit basis its costs: Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Storage / Carrying Costs Shipping Costs 3rd Party Fees The difference is then your margin per unit, and then multiply that number by the number of units you expect you sell per month, and you get a profit per month number. In the same example, if the product sells for $300, and you can source it for $200, and your other costs are $50. You are left with $50 profit per item. The decision is then clearer for you to make to pursue or drop the plans, but it is still your informed decision, nonetheless. === Second approach is the multiple approach. If I can source a product at a price we'll call x, and if the market can support the retail price of 4x, for example. I know that I will have 1x for COGS, 1x for affiliate marketing costs (25%), 1x for incidentals (shipping, storage, amazon selling fees, merchant account fees, etc..), and 1x for me. It does not matter what x is, because we are working with multiples. You should concern yourself with whether or not the market will pay in the amount of multiples that you will need in order to make a profit. Then, estimate the number of products you can move per month and you will get your expected monthly profit number. Again, using the above example, if you source the product at $200 per unit, and market price is $300, you only have 1/3x for incidentals plus your margin. Obviously, you can't even offer a commission on the sales of this product bc it would leave you with nothing, even losing money on each sale. If you can have a product that can command a market price of 10x, you can do a lot of creative things, and still make a lot of $ because you have room to wiggle. like offering a 50% off sale, or 50% commission structure, etc...
if you want to start a new website,you should look for a merchant account(payment gateway).And I suggest you use ctopay payment gateway.I would like to make friends with you.
Yes if you looking for long term profit then you should setup your own site. Beside that,you should integrate the 2 site of you become one ( review site and store ). But there is also downside of it,visitor will suspect that you giving unhonest review to increase the sales. Well,the best is setup another site that specialise in selling and link it under your review site.
Thanks to Everyone that posted. I think the approach will be to create the new store site and then add "buy it now" buttons to the review sites for the products I sell. If the store does not work out then I can remove the buy it now buttons and the review sites are back to where they were. @LithiumCove Thanks very much for your post. It reminded me that the next step it to do more research on minimum purchase quantities and price will be from different manufacturers. I need to learn the numbers better. I always enjoyed working with numbers and took more calculus classes than I think I needed, so it will be a fun project. @mentos There may be some perception issues about the reviews. My plan is to sell the higher quality speaker systems otherwise I could be looking at a lot of returns. Thanks again to all! Other thoughts and comments are still welcome.