Why Become an eCommerce Entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. It takes guts, skill, and drive to succeed, especially in the retail marketplace. But with the rise of the eCommerce marketplace, it’s more viable than ever for average folks to succeed as entrepreneurs.
Not sure whether becoming an eCommerce entrepreneur is the right path for your professional goals? Let’s explore what it means to be an eCommerce entrepreneur and break down the unique advantages of eCommerce entrepreneurship.
By the end, you’ll know whether eCommerce entrepreneurship is right for you.
Understanding the Value of the eCommerce Marketplace
Online shopping is a juggernaut, and it’s only going to grow in the future. For example, 2020 saw retail eCommerce sales amount to well over $4 trillion. E-retail revenue is also expected to grow to over $5 trillion by 2022 alone.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a trend that was already in progress. People love being able to shop comfortably from their own homes, and eCommerce is certainly the way of the future.
Therefore, up-and-coming entrepreneurs who want to be ahead of the curve should be looking at the eCommerce marketplace right now.
The eCommerce marketplace:
- Allows unprecedented access to a worldwide audience
- Doesn’t have the same startup requirements as a traditional brick-and-mortar store
- Is a place where you can sell anything to anyone at any time
In other words, it’s the perfect marketplace for a go-getter who won’t stop until they find success. If you want to make money and grow a business for years to come, eCommerce is the way to go.
What Does it Mean to be an eCommerce Entrepreneur?
There have been thousands of books about the perils and promises of traditional entrepreneurship. But what does it mean to be an eCommerce entrepreneur, and is it drastically different from being an entrepreneur in retail or traditional industries?
Not exactly. To be an eCommerce entrepreneur, you need many of the same factors and personality traits to see success, including:
- A drive to succeed and lots of ambition
- The ability to wear many hats in your organization, especially at the beginning when you may not have the staff to fulfill certain roles
- A clear business idea and a knowledge of the benefits your business or product could bring to your target audience
- Adaptability and flexibility to rise above the challenges of the market
At its core, eCommerce entrepreneurship is just like retail entrepreneurship. You have to come up with an idea you think you can sell to people, then sell it effectively. But eCommerce entrepreneurship opens up so many different doors compared to retail entrepreneurship.
Here are just a few examples of the kinds of businesses you can start as an eCommerce entrepreneur:
- A personalized online store where you create and ship your products directly to your customers
- A dropshipping store, where you sell products to customers on behalf of larger marketplaces like Amazon and eBay
- An online agency or service that provides valuable insights or services to clients and customers, such as a digital marketing agency
To be an eCommerce entrepreneur, you’ll take advantage of the unique benefits of the online marketplace and use those benefits to start and grow a business to fruition. From there, you can stick with the business or sell it for a profit.
The Advantages of eCommerce Entrepreneurship
ECommerce entrepreneurship has several major advantages compared to traditional entrepreneurship – where you open a store, pay upfront expenses to produce and sell your products, and must market aggressively to get people physically in your store.
eCommerce Offers Flexibility
For one, eCommerce entrepreneurship is incredibly flexible. No matter what kind of business you want to jumpstart and run, the odds are you can do it in the eCommerce sphere.
- You can run a dropshipping store, in which you don’t have to create or even store products. You just accept customer orders, fulfill those orders with vendors or wholesalers, and pocket the difference
- You can create your own products like a traditional store, paying for storage space and product creation. Your online store is your only storefront, cutting down on costs and allowing you to send your products to your customers as they place orders
- You can create digital products like written content, advertisements, or even decoration designs
- You can provide digital services or your expertise, as is the case with a digital marketing agency
Because you can build or run any business online, eCommerce entrepreneurship offers you the real flexibility you need to achieve your business dreams.
eCommerce Has Low Start-Up Costs
eCommerce entrepreneurship is comparatively more budget-friendly and low cost than retail entrepreneurship.
With traditional entrepreneurship, you typically must acquire expensive loans to buy a storefront, purchase products, and storage space, and hire employees. This is all true, even for the smallest startups.
With eCommerce entrepreneurship, you pay for hosting server space (which isn’t all that expensive in the grand scheme of things) and web design and development. Those last two factors can cost quite a bit, but you can also build your website depending on your skills and interest in the art of website design.
Regardless, you’ll save money starting an eCommerce store. Since you never have to worry about having space to accommodate your customers, all you have to do is focus on your products and ensure that your online space is attractive and comfortable for those customers.
eCommerce Offers Fast Access to Worldwide Markets
The Internet is a worldwide marketplace where you can market to target customers and random members of the general public alike through effective, cheap online ads.
You have access to worldwide markets and a huge potential customer base compared to a retail startup or company. You are necessarily limited by who can drive to your location and walk to the front door at a retail store. But with an online store, there’s no limit.
If you play your cards right, this access to global markets can result in fantastic sales and explosive growth. That’s doubly true if you manage to dominate your niche or focus, which you can achieve with consistent search engine optimization, another marketing tactic you’ll learn from Building Blocks.
eCommerce Has Scalable Growth
Another big benefit of being an eCommerce entrepreneur is that your business will scale as you bring in revenue and develop it for better customer satisfaction.
As you develop your marketing and search engine optimization tactics, you’ll make money. You can then funnel that money back into your business faster than with a brick-and-mortar store, which often has ancillary taxes and fees to pay before you can put any remaining profits toward expansion.
With an eCommerce store, it’s easier than ever to expand your website or shop by adding products, hiring employees, or adding functionality to your store to make it a more enjoyable customer experience.
Simply put, if you want to dominate a niche and master your market, you can certainly do that as an eCommerce entrepreneur.
Is eCommerce Entrepreneurship a Viable Route to Success?
Even with all those benefits, some might wonder whether eCommerce entrepreneurship is truly viable if they want to be profitable and successful. The answer: it depends.
All entrepreneurship is a gamble at its core. That’s part of what draws many entrepreneurs to the profession in the first place. By its very nature, entrepreneurship is risky since you are starting a business and trying to develop a product for the first time.
You strike out on your own and run your company to the best of your ability. Your success depends on your skill and ambition and on mastering a variety of market factors.
Just like retail entrepreneurship, eCommerce entrepreneurship is rife with risk factors. There’s no guarantee you’ll be successful, even if you pick a successful niche and have a top-tier website designed by a professional.
With that said, it’s extremely plausible to find success as an eCommerce entrepreneur, especially compared to other entrepreneurship avenues. More people than ever before start off as eCommerce entrepreneurs as a side gig, keeping their day jobs while they build up revenue enough to quit and focus on their ventures full-time.
You could definitely do this starting today, especially if you already have an idea and just need the motivation to cut it off the ground.
Is eCommerce Right for You?
Ultimately, it is difficult to know whether eCommerce entrepreneurship is truly right for you without giving it a shot or starting a business on the side. But what if you don’t know how to start an eCommerce business successfully, let alone grow it to financial profitability?
Online learning programs like Building Blocks offer eCommerce marketing and brand growth masterclasses that teach you everything you need to know to grow a startup online. Visit Building Blocks now to check out its free modules and insights.