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Patience Is Key To E-Commerce Success

Many people get into e-commerce expecting overnight success. After all isn't that what everyone wants? Get rich quick. The schemes are as old as time itself. And hasn't the internet made more people rich than anything else? Well yes it probably has, hard to say. It is definitely one of the most easily accessible tools for creating wealth ever invented. And out of all the schemes and ideas of creating wealth on the internet, I believe e-commerce is the easiest.

You have products your customer wants, they have cash you want. They buy you sell, old as civilization itself. Everyone immediately understands commerce, and e-commerce is no longer considered cutting edge technology. You don't have to explain to people what your site is trying to do. They get it, you are selling products, and they are buying them.

The problem is it does not happen overnight. No matter how great your product is, your idea is, your business plan is. Overnight success in e-commerce does not happen. After three plus years in my latest and my greatest online store, the one that supports me, I still only have about 4% conversion. That means only 4% of folks who click on my website buy something during that visit. And I have over 5,000 repeat customers. That is 5,000 people who trust my company. The website receives over 5,000 unique visitors monthly, over 10,000 during the busy season, and yet only 4% are going to buy something.

All of this took time. About six years to be exact. Now when I started it never was meant to be full-time. For one thing I produced all the products I sold, and that was a huge bottleneck. Working 50 plus hours in my real job meant only so many hours I could make products. It was a full three years later, when I stopped altogether. After a two month break, I purchased products instead.

It started on eBay, the easiest, cheapest place to begin your e-commerce career. Or test a new product line, or a new idea. Nothing is better at gauging demand than eBay. Once you have gotten some eBay success, then and only then should you start an online store. In my opinion a separate website store, with your own domain name is the only way to have an actual e-commerce career. After awhile eBay commissions will eat up too much profit, the whole cost of doing business on eBay is expensive. Use it for the methods I wrote of earlier in How to use eBay as a Marketing Tool. Once you do all the set up of an online store, you still have to drive traffic to it, get customers to buy, build up a reputation etc.

All of this takes time, takes patience, and takes perseverance. You can't depend on overnight success to pay your bills; this project is in addition to how ever you pay your bills now. It is a long term investment in your future. Even if your first venture fails, heck even if your first nine ventures fail, you are learning something important, something you can use in your tenth venture. By the time you have finally figured out all the ins and outs of e-commerce, you will have built something of value, which you can be proud of. Which can support you, which is selling your products when you are asleep, you are at the beach, or out for the night.

But it is not going to happen over night. You must have patience.