My first profitable business was importing products from China and selling them online – mostly through Amazon and eBay. I started being exposed to counterfeiting at the age of 12, and by the time I was 17, I had built several different e-commerce brands into an empire I could be proud of.
When I first started, I was very confused. I have hundreds of questions racing through my head:
- What product should I sell first?
- How do I know which products will sell (and which won’t)?
- How to find and negotiate with trustworthy suppliers?
- How to avoid scams and low quality products?
- How on earth do I start!
When you’re trying to start a new business from scratch, you’ll find your mind spinning in circles unless you have a clear direction to hit…
So, my goal is to make it the definitive A-Z guide for starting an importing and eCommerce business from scratch. If I start from scratch, I will do it step by step.
I’ll walk you through each step of the process and give some insight into the “why” behind my strategy. I’ll also be adding to this over time (as I get questions from readers), so be sure to bookmark it for future reference.
Finally – I encourage you to follow this guide step by step and avoid jumping around. Importing products from China and selling them online is a very simple business model – it only gets messy and complicated when you don’t do things right.
So without further ado – here’s my rise and fall story in the import/e-commerce industry and how I 🙂started this business for myself
Basic Overview: Your Roadmap
First, let’s wrap our minds around this concept…
This is a simple business model that is prone to overthinking. There are a lot of moving parts that can feel dangerous or confusing. This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
“Everything is simple until you make it complicated”
Understand that starting this business, like starting any business, involves taking some risks. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s easy to see a $1,000 iPhone knockoff (or $1,000 at all) in your garage…
Having said that – if you are careful, have a solid roadmap (this post), and a little hustle – you can build yourself a profitable business with relatively little time/work.
E-Commerce Empire Roadmap
It’s important to know your battle plan before going to war…
Here’s the basic game plan:
- Find a good product – You need to brainstorm, research, and choose a product to import and sell. Most people find this step frustrating and overwhelming (for good reason), but luckily I have some tools that help make this step easier.
- Find a good supplier – Once you have decided on a product, you need to source that product from a great supplier. Finding them may take some digging, but there are ways to ensure you avoid scams and increase your odds of finding a great supplier.
- Sell some samples – You’ll need to place a small sample order to test and verify your product (I’ll show you how I did it). This is the part of the “secret sauce” that most new entrepreneurs miss.
- Scale up – Once you have validated your product, you can confidently increase order quantities and make changes to differentiate your product. We’ll even discuss private labels and expanding your product line
Here are the big pitfalls to avoid (explained in more detail below):
- Don’t buy in bulk from the factory until you have samples in your hands and love them.
- Don’t let any supplier convince you they can’t ship small sample orders, they just want to squeeze you.
- Do not use any other method of payment but Trade Assurance or PayPal with the supplier for the first 3 months. This removes a lot of risk.
- Don’t buy from companies that don’t accept Trade Assurance or PayPal. What this really means is that they were shut down due to complaints.
- Don’t buy fake crap. Not that there’s no money to be made, it’s just a bad business (and illegal).
- Don’t buy a lot of inventory at first. I started buying 5-10 units at a time until I had accumulated capital to reinvest in inventory.
- Do not provide these suppliers with your personal email. The email will effectively be nuked and unusable for years, trust me…
Well, I hope this puts you in the right frame of mind.
