Starting an Ecommerce Business; The Beginning

So I might as well just jump right into it. This is something that we have thought about doing and thought that it may bring value to some of you who are either in a similar situation or are thinking about launching a new business based online. For me, this was laid out to be much easier and more direct than all of the articles that I have read online with the glamorous headlines of “From $0 to $50,000/month on Amazon!” and other such things…easy right?

For some people it definitely comes easier than others but for me, someone with no experience in the field of brand creation, Amazon selling, purchasing, importing, working with suppliers etc. This requires a lot of learning and with a constantly changing market/environment, the learning will never stop if you want to make it to the top.

Although this blog will offer no professional advice, it will go through a lot of the struggles that went along with creating a business and trying to get started to set up to be in a competitive position.

Just graduating college, having little to no money before starting the new job and a 2 week grace period before starting work, I got into a few online selling and importing classes through the next web deals for about $35 that showed how to source and sell items on Amazon which looked very easy and enticing. The classes were held on stack skills. I sat through the classes taking notes and getting pumped up about how easy this was going to be. There were videos of how to find products that will earn big which was all fine and dandy until the classes were over, no more videos, just time to do.

This is where the analysis paralysis kicked in…fast. There were so many things to choose from, so many directions to go, so many products that looked like “Home Runs” but which ones do you choose? What direction do you want to go? Do you go through a business or an individual and how would that look to the customers? How much money would it take to start? How many products do I need to order? How the heck do I import goods without accidentally spending a fortune for mishaps in the process?

First and foremost, what do I want to do. In the beginning one of the biggest hangups was to decide what products/overall theme do I want to go for. I have always been very interested in environmental things since I could remember and have always wanted to help out with cleaning it up. Great, environment themed things…but what?

I sat around furiously digging through articles and blogs and Amazon posts for things that I could get into that may make a difference and I finally came across straws. Paper straws looked to be doing very well and with all of the environmental bans looming, I thought that this may be a good direction to go. So I went with it. But now to find the suppliers that could even come close to offering a competitive price. This took a lot of digging and contacting many suppliers, getting samples to determine which was the best at the best price and so fourth. Before getting into all of that, I chose to form a business around this and will go through all of the hassles that went along with that and why I thought it was worth it.