Thread by @onwocheicollins

How To Start Your Wildly Successful ECom Business With $10 (N3,700)

A thread coming up 8pm tonight.

I'm going to have to push to get it done but I'll do so to answer many questions I've been getting from a lot of you here.

Set a reminder.
Retweet to tell your friends.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls...

😉

We begin!

First, I want to thank you all for the amazing response to the announcement of the thread.

Thanks for RT and invitations to friends.

Now our message is reaching more people. I couldn't have done it without you.

Hopefully, what we are going to share here can bring you value.

To start of the conversation on How To Start A Wildly Successful ECom Business With $10 or approximately 3,700 naira, I will assume this one thing:

That you know how to source and/or import products from China - our source for most items we sell here.

As ecommerce is technically buying and selling. You the entrepreneur buy cheap and sell locally for reasonable profit.

If you don't know how, that's one of the easiest parts of ecom but that's not the focus of today.

Let me begin with a story...

About 18 months ago, I was at an eCom conference consulting with a top dog in the industry.

It was my first serious foray and I was eager to learn secrets of the masters.

The program took nearly the whole day. Hall was packed full with young men and women looking for additional or alternative source of income.

At the end of the day we got a list to explore and we were told to "choose 1 or 2 to start with. don't be greedy."

Don't laugh... but I and some other guys, I learned later, chose sex related products.

Men and sex, right? 🤪

My thinking was that it would be easiest to sell.

We quickly realized that the cheap sources of paid ads have zero tolerance for health products advertised a certain way.

My ad account was banned after several shut downs of the ad.

Beginning of my wahala...

Anyways, fast forward to today and we've spent about 3,000 USD on ads in the last few months with no regrets.

If an ad pays, the cost doesn't matter.

How does this relate to the promise I made in the title of this thread?

Here's a vital lesson I learned:

Never put money into importing a product before getting a hold on demand + how to reach the market cheaply, effectively.

If you've been following me for any length of time, you will know that the business strategy that works is one that sells to a hungry market.

One that sells what people want to buy.

If you identify a product YOU THINK people will likely buy, don't go off to set up the business of importing it massively without first testing.

No one, no matter how experience in business knows exactly what the market wants.

That's why big companies stop making certain product lines because demand fails after they have started producing.

Big companies can afford that kind of rough play.

You can't.

The testing, I'm talking about will save you a huge cost if the market doesn't like the product.

So the better way to improve your business chances of success is to take the product of interest to the audience in test ads.

Facebook ads, Google ads, Twitter RTs, Twitter ads, influencer marketing - all have their benefits for different kinds of businesses.

But the FB and google ads allow for small budgets as small as 5 dollars a day.

Use those to reach a wide sample of your ideal customers through pin pointed targeting.

If they bite, you have the jury's verdict.

If not, move on to the next product. If you ignore the warning, it will be like flushing your money down the toilet.

So the meat of this strategy is that you don't set you hard earned money down and risk losing it all.

You don't even need to have a website to do the test.

Website will take you time and money to set up when you are not even sure of the product's success.

For many people who ask, how much do I need to start, there is you answer.

- Set up a facebook page (FREE)
- Create your offer in a post (FREE - but the better your offer, the better your chances. So learn how to create great offers)
- Tell the audience how to buy in the post...

their options can be messenger chat, WhatsApp, call, even a google form which is also free.

- Push the post with an ad and blast to your target audience. Make your budget $10 per day. $5 per day has given me the response I needed many times - so you could even use that.

- Then sit back and listen to the judge and jury. Their response will determine your next move.

To wrap up...

Don't spend months "researching" products. That's only going to lead to analysis paralysis.

Take your most likely product out to the people who will be paying. They will give you the best research answers.

This is the advantage we have today with the internet.

This is the opportunity for small businesses to make big money.

I rest my case.

Your move?

So, what if I have no money to actually get loads of products when I want to start.

The good thing about this method is that if you test your product and get good response, you can actually take small money from family and friends (50k may be), import and sell.

Best thing is to use your money for business so this is the last resort for people who may have that excuse.

The test confirms for you that you have a market and can reach them cheaply.

Get the product, sell, make 50 - 100% profit, return money you borrowed and go back again.

As long as you are disciplined with other people's money, getting that initial money shouldn't be a problem but if you have damaged your reputation in that regard, well, pray for divine intervention.

Apart from that, you can almost go in with confidence after a successful test.