It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur. The Internet and the rise of e-commerce and online retail have made it easy to reach customers the world over from the comfort of your couch or a coffee shop. If you want to start a business for the first time, making it digital is a good beginning. Online businesses help you keep your overhead costs low while leveraging a global marketplace.
Here are two profitable online businesses to kick-start your entrepreneurship
Dropshipping
This is one of the most popular forms of eCommerce business because of the flexibility of the business model. You don’t have to stock inventory or run your own warehouse like the traditional e-commerce model. People running a dropshipping business liaise with manufacturers and list their products on their online store.
When people make orders, they forward those orders to the manufacturers who ship it to the customers. They don’t handle inventory management, they merely upload product data on their online store or marketplace, promote their store, and relay orders to their suppliers who then fulfill the orders. This model offers one of the highest savings in overhead costs for any online business, hence increasing profit margins.
To start a dropshipping store, you’ll need a trusted supplier. There are hundreds of suppliers and vendors you can get off aliexpress, but choosing one could get tricky as several vendors make empty promises. You must also ensure that your supplier can scale as quickly as you. For example, if your orders increase from 150 to 750 because of great marketing, you’ll need a supplier that can keep up with the increase.
Next, you’ll need dropship software. A dropship software is an automated software that facilitates transactions in the supply chain between you, your customers, and your suppliers. With a dropship automation software, you can automate the fulfillment of your orders i.e. automatically forward your orders to your suppliers. This is necessary as your business scales and processes more orders. If you sell multiple types of products or use multiple suppliers like aliexpress and others, then you’d need an automated software that simplifies communication with them.
Your dropship automation software should be easy to install and use. Aim for those than support API integrations. Your dropshipping automation software should also support integrations with popular online stores like shopify and WIX.
While real time automated services that facilitate communication within your supply chain has made dropshipping easy, don’t forget that good customer service is a contributing factor to success. So while focusing on getting orders to suppliers and marketing, don’t forget to provide customer support and create a great experience, that is what will retain customers.
Online Auto Sales
If you can automate an already successful business model or make it more efficient, then you have a gold mine, and this is especially true for car retail. The car retail industry is headed for a change, if you can get ahead of the bunch you can make a whole lot of profit. This what we mean.
Traditional dealerships use a brick-and-mortar business model where they buy or lease a space, build a showroom and sell vehicles from there. When people want to get a car, they visit the dealership.
By adopting an online retail approach, you streamline the entire process, making it easier for the customers. Give customers instant access to your vehicle inventory by uploading it online, and let customers make orders there. Include as much product information as necessary in your catalog.
Online orders make the entire process transparent and removes hidden fees (your customers don’t like it). When your customers place an order, relay it to your auto transporter. There are several trusted vehicle transport services on the market, one of them is easy car shipping who ships any commercial vehicle. You could also include a pickup option for people who prefer coming to get their cars.
With an online car store, you could include useful automation that relay orders to your auto transporter without you having to do it yourself. You can also include a delivery date calculator that uses order details to calculate the delivery time of vehicles, so customers know exactly when their cars will arrive.
