Are you interesting in selling physical products online?
If so, you’re in the right place. Ecommerce can be a lucrative side hustle with great potential to scale into a full-time business.
In these archives, we cover Amazon FBA business models, ebay selling, dropshipping, and of course the traditional ecommerce model of setting up your own online storefront.
You’ll discover print-on-demand ecommerce models and how some side hustlers have found success in the homemade and handmade marketplaces.
Now these different “flavors” of ecommerce can vary widely in terms of how much they cost to start. With print-on-demand and dropshipping, you essentially have zero upfront inventory cost. With Amazon FBA private labeling, you might be looking at a minimum order of several thousand dollars to get your product imported and up for sale on Amazon.
Your time involvement on the fulfillment side is another factor to consider. With shops like Etsy, you’re in charge of making and shipping the product for each order that comes through. With ebay, it’s off to the post office each time an auction ends. At the other end of the spectrum, the print-on-demand services and Amazon FBA handle the fulfillment for you — but at a cost.
Keep these concepts in mind as you explore the ecommerce archives here at Side Hustle Nation.
How do you make money on eBay?
Buy low, sell high, repeat.
The formula is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy!
To help me learn more about selling items for a profit on eBay, I turned to serial side hustler Daniella Flores. With the help of several part-time businesses, she and her wife have been able to pay off $31,000 in debt in the last two years.
Amy Feierman and Kristin Ostrander of MommyIncome.com have generated over $2 million in sales on Amazon over the last 12 months – not through retail arbitrage, not with FBA, but with a unique strategy that has high margins and lower costs per sale.
What are they selling on Amazon?
Bundles — Think shampoo and conditioner, peanut and butter, or any 2-6 products that compliment each other and provide some added value and convenience to the buyer.
“Everyone is researching a product, I’m telling you to research a problem,” Chad told me.Chad Rubin runs ThinkCrucial.com, a profitable e-commerce business that he’s built by selling products that solve a pain point for people while following a direct-to-consumer strategy that lets him source and sell in-demand products efficiently and inexpensively.
Jessica Larrew and her husband of TheSellingFamily.com have sold more than a million dollars worth of stuff on Amazon.
The surprising – and I think exciting – way they’ve done this is by finding products to resell in nearby retail stores.
Mitch Davis is selling around $9,000 per month with private label products using the Amazon FBA platform as a side hustle from his day job.
This is impressive, but his story is a little different to the other FBA sellers I’ve had on the show.
Can you find Amazon FBA profit from the comfort of your couch?
Amit Desai of CreditCard101.us has built a business doing exactly that, and now he’s on track to sell $250k worth of stuff this year – all on the side from his day job.
Rene Delgado started an online drop shipping store with no ideas and no inventory and went from $0-300k in sales in his first year in business.
It was the search for an extra stream of income that led Rene Delgado to consider e-commerce; selling physical products online.
Storage unit auctions are happening near you every month and somebody’s making money from them.
Why not you?
I’ve flipped over 100 storage lockers in my spare time; here’s how to get started without losing your shirt.
Recently a friend of mine posted about how he sold his 2.5-year-old Amazon FBA business for over $400k, which I thought was incredible.
The twist was it turned out the buyer was a familiar face as well. Spencer Haws of NichePursuits.com was the seller, and Ace Chapman of AceChapman.com was the buyer.
They are both previous guests of the show. Spencer was on episodes 18 and 70 of The Side Hustle Show talking about niche sites and software, and Ace was a guest on episode 182, talking about investing in digital real estate.
It’s no secret that Amazon FBA is one of the hottest side hustles going right now, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
FBA is Fulfillment by Amazon, the program that allows you to list your own products for sale on Amazon, tap into their giant audience of customers, and have them handle all the shipping when orders come in.
The trick is figuring out which which products to sell, and that’s where Greg Mercer comes in.