Ecommerce Pulse

Entrepreneurs are a different kind of people. They are never completely satisfied with the normal, acceptable lifestyle commonly called "successful" by the rest of society. This traditional "success" often includes a good job, a nice house with a 30-year mortgage, a couple of nice cars (on which it's considered OK to owe a lot of money), a few weeks of vacation every year from the job you don't really enjoy, etc.

I'm very excited to share with you that I've recently settled on a niche for my new online store. For the past two months or so, I've been doing a good bit of brainstorming, research, and analyzing of ideas for potential products to sell, and I think (slash hope) that I've done a decent job of selecting a niche.

Before starting an online store, it's important to find out if there is enough demand for your product. I would highly recommend NOT ordering $10,000 worth of doggy snowsuits from a Chinese manufacturer without first knowing if people are going to want to buy them! Spending money on R&D or inventory without first determining demand is a great way to flush all your startup capital down the toilet.

No matter how great you think your idea is, make sure you know some solid facts about the demand for your product before investing a lot of time and money in your idea.

I'm going to explain several different ways to test market demand, but it's probably best to use some combination of these.

In my experience working with numerous budding ecommerce entrepreneurs, I've seen one mistake trip people up over and over again. It's something that we've probably all experienced at some point in our lives (in general life circumstances), and if you aren't careful there's a good chance it will kill your chances of success with ecommerce. What is this dangerous problem? 

I firmly believe that deep down inside, most people have the desire to own their own businesses. Maybe it's something about human nature--we like freedom, we like control, we like success. If you ask any random person on the street if they'd rather work for someone else or own their own business, I'd bet almost anything that most people would choose the latter.

You know what that feels like--that's why you're reading this sentence right now. You have that desire, and I completely understand, as I have the same gnawing urge. So how can you do this successfully? Is it really possible to build a business to where you can quit your job, be your own boss, and even make a lot of money?