Startup e-commerce:How profitable can this be in the beginning?

Hi

I launched an urban online video website covering Hip Hop about a year ago. I get some traffic to my website. The problem is I don't make money or to little. I decided to change the site to an e-commerce. I always loved fashion. I've seen and heard of websites that get less traffic than me make good money. Do you think its profitable?

 

Straight e-commerce based sites are dated and on their way out. If you want to be really successful look at building a community online and integrating your shopping solution into it. You will drive more traffic to the site and your returning visitors will go up significantly. Best part about this strategy is that it drops your marketing costs and increases your conversion rates. My suggestion go back to the video website and add a e-commerce component on to it.

 

Thanks for your great advice!

 

Ecommerce can be very profitable if you do it right and spend the time to gain customer trust. I disagree that ecommerce is on the way out. I'm not going to say that it's easy to get a ton of traffic, because it's not. If you are going to have an ecommerce website selling products though, you need to submit you products to Google shopping, and you need to make sure your site is 1. easy to use. 2. quick for your customers to find what they are looking for. 3. and your prices have to be competitive. It takes time and patience to build your Google pagerank. Too many people think sales will take off overnight, and this is incorrect unless your going to spend a fortune on Adwords and marketing. If your not going to sell a product, then add a blog to your site and give people a ton of USEFUL information about the Hip Hop your site refers too. Research keywords and see what is popular that day, because they change constantly. Hope this helps and good luck.

 

thanks thiss helped me out also, cheers

 

Definitely you should have targeted pallet of products. Research website's visitors, their age, interest and so on. Then make a decision what you will offer them and what would they buy.

 

Do you sell fashion clothes?
Oh it's too large, ( shipping, phone, services....) Why don't you build an automatical system like Ebooks to resell ?

 

Blogging is a great way to not only get clients to your site on a regular basis it is also a good mechanism to boost sales. When you feature a product and write great content about it then people are more likely to buy it. Regular blogging with fresh content can also improve your page rank. Also consider posting on Niche related forums to drive that type of interest group to your blog and website.

 

My personal experience says that e-commerce is totally unprofitable at the beginning. But, at the same time, if you haven't made money with it after the first year it will not profitable at all. So the standpoint is the first year. During it you mostly do not earn or earn little money, after it the process of money-making have to develop rapidly.

 

It depend what traffic you bring . If you bring the correct traffic visitors to your site as what we call as quality traffic. It usually will increase the conversion rate.
But no doubt to said that , the more traffic you get the more sales you get just the conversion rate will depend on which types of traffic you bring in to your websites.

 

It takes time to become profitable. You need to build up a customer base, build up product images, descriptions, reviews, content, and search engine rankings.

To be profitable, you need to have an edge. You can't just sell what everyone else is selling and expect to do well. You need to bring an edge in terms of cost, quality, differentiation or education to your site to make it something people will buy from

 

ANYTHING online can be successful. Just depends what work you put in. If you know what your doing you can make alot of money. For example I have a website that sells magazines and makes a few hundred dollars a year on auto. Now on the other hand I have a friend that owns a nail supply website and makes 12 million a year. Just depend if you know what your doing and how you do it. I do not understand why people put themselves down and say things do not work anymore when they do. People still make money with every ideal they have online. It depend how good YOU are not the business. Did you ever hear you can sell water to a fish and ice to a escomo? Well it is true. Hope this helps.

 

Definitely you should have focused pallet of items. Analysis site's guests, their age, attention and so on. Then determine what you will provide them and what would they buy.