It’s hard not to fantasise about having your own moneymaking website, but the idea isn’t as unreachable as you might think.
You constantly read about people who build these type of ecommerce websites, earning tens of thousands of pounds each month and you dismiss the idea of that ever being you. Surely they must have spent a fortune, have warehouses full of products or have inhuman website creating superpowers, but in reality it’s a lot easier than you may think.
Sure, you may not become a millionaire over night, but you could earn a significant amount of income from a website. With the amount of tools available at your fingertips, you’ll find with a little bit of time and effort nothing is impossible. Below I go through the 5 main steps of how to set up a successful moneymaking website.
1. Find a niche
If you haven’t already got one in mind, the first step is to find a sizable niche. You will want to be specific as possible here and choose one that has a significant audience. For example, don’t just target broad keywords such as “Sunglasses” or “Watches”. Instead, you can target keywords such as “Handmade wooden watches for women” or “Handmade Bamboo sunglasses for men”. This will filter down the amount of people you are targeting, but your content will be much more relevant. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is very helpful with this.
2. Dropshipping
What is dropshipping you ask? Well, this is the easiest way for you to sell and ship products. You won’t need to have a warehouse full of stock, package any of your orders or even ship them to you customers. Your suppliers literally do everything for you!
Finding the right supplier is key. When looking for suppliers on websites such as aliexpress.com, you’ll need to make sure they have a vast selection of products. Contact them and make sure they offer dropshipping, so they don’t send any of their own branding or advertising on the packaging. Only use two or three suppliers and build a good relationship with them and keep them happy. After all, there will be times when orders will have to be resent or refunded and you don’t want to be swallowing that cost if it isn’t your fault.
3. Choose the right platform for your website
There are many platforms out there that support selling products like Magento or WordPress, but for a dropshipping website, I strongly suggest Shopify. It is extremely user friendly and you don’t have to be technically gifted to use it. You also have the ability to send abandoned cart emails; access to advance reporting and have hundreds of amazing plugins to choose from.
The main reason Shopify trumps other Content Management Systems when dropshipping, is because of the plugin Oberlo. This plugin connects your store with AliExpress. With a few clicks of a button, Oberlo will automatically place all of your orders on AliExpress, saving you from manually entering your customer’s details and ordering each item individually. In addition to this, you can easily import your desired products on AliExpress to your Shopify store, transferring across all of the images, titles and text with a single click of a button. As you can imagine, this saves you a lot of time!
4. The Design
Now you have a clearer picture of the niche you’ll be targeting, found the perfect suppliers and decided on the ideal platform to build your website with, it’s now time to start planning how you want your moneymaking website to look.
As expected, you’ll need to have a very clean and simple looking website with clear call to actions and great imagery. If you’re looking for something quick and easy, Shopify provide hundreds of free and paid templates to choose from. The downside to using one of these is that they have been widely used by thousands of other stores, so your website won’t be very unique at all. If you would want a unique and brandable store, it’s probably best to hirer a web designer who will be able to customise everything to your needs and desires. In addition to this, they’ll also make sure your website is search engine friendly.
Once you’re happy with the design, you can start loading all of your products. Give your customers options by adding a wide variety of products for each category you have. The more products you provide the better! At the bottom of each page, it’s also a good idea to have a “Related Products” or “Other items you may be interested in” area, so when a user lands directly on a product page (and they certainly will when you start advertising), you are inviting them to browse through your other items.
5. Advertising & Social Media
Congrats, you’ve successfully built your moneymaking website! It’s now time to start driving traffic to your store with Social Media and advertising.
Social media has become a big part of companies and storeowners marketing strategy, so it’s definitely a good idea to set up at least Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Make sure you post regularly and at the best converting times. Experiment with different post types and with different content to see what works best for your target audience and niche.
There are many different advertising channels out there to use, but the best one to start with is probably Facebook. The key to advertising with Facebook is experimenting. Create multiple different Ads with different variations and target different countries. After a while you’ll be able to see what is converting and what isn’t. You’ll also find advertising to certain countries is more expensive compared to others. An extra bonus of advertising your products with Facebook is that you’ll find more and more people will start liking your Facebook page. Your page will go from 0 to over 1,000 likes in no time!
Conclusion
As you can see, the idea of having a successful moneymaking websites isn’t as unreachable as you initially thought. And if you’re not in it for the long haul, many people create these types of startup websites, run them for 2-3 months and sell them for a significant profit on auction websites such as flippa.com.
Let us know in the comments below how you get on with your first moneymaking website. If you need any additional help or want to hire us to design and develop your website, contact us today!
