More often than not, people tend to wonder how to make money doing ecommerce, and most of these folks are first-time entrepreneurs in India, that’s why I’ve decided to pen down this article, jotting down the nuances of making a D2C ecom brand, and not just a dropshipping store.
A fantastic approach to making money with Ecom in India is to launch an e-commerce store using Shopify and running Facebook ads to drive sales. I’ve curated a step-by-step guide catering to first-time entrepreneurs in India who have no prior experience of making money with online sales or ecom.
Getting the Basics Right: You need to start your research by choosing a product category that interests you greatly and has a sizable audience in the Indian markets. Look for products that solve a pressing issue. And, the next logical step is to find out what the competition is offering and how much they are charging for it.
Choosing an online storefront: Choose the e-commerce system you will employ to sell your goods. You can create your own e-commerce website or select from well-known ones like Amazon, Flipkart, or eBay, but I highly recommend Shopify, because it’s a proven system.
You may also consider MyDukaan, which is an Indian alternative to Shopify, and the founder Suumit Shah is a dear friend as well, so let’s see everything one by one in a systematic manner.
Step 1: Choose a niche, which you understand well, such as pets, or home decor, or women cosmetics, and decide what you intend to sell, and how to make money doing ecommerce.
Step 2: Go to Adspy or any spy tool of your choice, and spy on the ads that are currently doing well in your segment, such as dog collars, if you’re running a pet store focused on selling dog merchandise.
It’s also recommended to narrow it down to a specific breed like German Shepherd, so that you’ve a loyal fan following of your store, and real users, who can relate to your offerings very strongly.
Example: Custom Dog collars
Step 3: Identify what’s selling like hot cakes & replicate it: This store Wumbo Woof is currently selling custom dog collars, targeting single moms or women in their 40s who feel lonely, to give a custom dog collar bone to their pet in the United States.
Step 4: Create Your Shopify Store: You can basically copy this product, identify a supplier from Aliexpress.com or Alibaba.com or 1688.com and create a shopify store with 8-10 such dog products, and the good news is that with current promo, you can start a Shopify store for just $1 for 2 months, and do the entire testing without spending a dime extra.
Step 5: See the target audience from ad spy, and ad copy from FB ad library
In this example, it’s so simple: Custom Dog Collar! 🐶
Target: Women 45+ United States
Ideally, it’s recommended to run ads on popular video content, or user generated (UGC) videos rather than images, but if you see something is working well for a competitor, then there’s no harm in directly duplicating the strategy
Step 5: Launch your first FB ad campaign from Meta Business Manager, and set a budget = product price for the first day
In this case, if we’ve to sell this custom dog collar at $20 price point, so our target CPA must be under $5 to be profitable.
However, sometimes, people sell at breakeven and then make profits from the up-sells only and try to create a brand first.
If we were to sell these custom dog collars in India, I’d sell it at a price point of Rs 1899-1999, and try to procure the product under Rs 250, so that on every sale, we can generate a profit of around Rs 300-400, considering FB advertising cost of Rs 300-400, 18% Gst, Rs 100 shipping, and Rs 100 operations and warehousing costs.
One of our latest ecom stores is currently doing about Rs 1L/day at 21% profit margins, and this was my first million dollar store, and i’m coincidentally relaunching a new viral store tonight, and hoping to achieve these numbers before end of 2023.
P.S. – i’ll update this post at the end of May, when we hit our first milestone of $50k in sales, so that you will believe me more, when I say I can teach you how to make money doing ecommerce in India in 2023.
The Bottom-Line
So, now that you’ve seen the entire gamut of activities, you must be wondering what’s the Most Critical Element When You’re Trying to figure out how to make money doing e-commerce
The key to success is to TEST rigorously, and not give up until you succeed.
You might lose $25-50/day for the first 15-20 days, and might have to invest in a good training like Numerique Academy’s Ecom World Program, which may cost $700-999, so with an overall investment of $2000, you should be on your way to make money doing ecommerce, when if you’ve ZERO prior knowledge.
If you think I missed any critical points, feel free to drop in your comments, and I’ll be happy to include them, and keep updating this article, with most relevant info in 2023, and beyond.