How to Start A Business with No Money (Better Than Ecommerce)
Gold Rush Opportunities
In the 19th century there was a gold rush where everyone went to the West of the United States to find gold. The thought was that everyone was going to find gold everywhere. Some found gold but most did not. Rod, from the Daily Business Hustle Open Facebook group, is selling the shovels to dig up the gold, but in current markets.
In the real world today the gold rush is actually e-commerce. E-commerce is big money right now but the most money being made is through selling e-commerce solutions.
Rod is making about 50-60% more money than he was six months ago when he was just doing AdWords because he figured out how to sell e-commerce solutions. He says that a lot of people are trying to set up e-commerce websites because they are trying to pursue the passive income that comes with it. The problem though, is that these people do not realize they need to invest money and time in order to see a sustainable income from an e-commerce website.
The quickest way for him to make money is to sell the e-commerce solution as opposed to selling a product for a niche market. Rather than spending money and many months testing to see if a product will succeed, he is now selling complete e-commerce solutions like creating e-commerce websites and marketing.
Be the authority
Rod says once you have delivered value to your customers and advise them, you become the authority in the relationship and not the person who apologizes for everything. This authority leads you to step two, which is bringing clients back to you for more service help. Because a client trusts that you know what you are talking about, they are more likely to come back to you when they have a new product or service and ask how it can be incorporated into their marketing and website. From here you can advise them to use a marketing strategy that uses Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Instagram, Pinterest, Ad Reach, Growth Hacking, search engine optimization and more. Each one of these is a new service that you can upsell to the returning client.
The clients you have will only spend up to what your fee is though. This makes it so you cannot say after the fact, that more services should be done when you have only offered one or two services. If you offer the extra services upfront, more than likely you will be able to charge more for each marketing route. The more services you offer and know how to deliver on, the higher your income cap becomes.
We are not trying to demote e-commerce or say that people are wasting their time on it, though. E-commerce has been around for awhile but it is becoming trendy right now. A lot of people go into e-commerce and the opportunities are great, but offering the services to set up e-commerce is guaranteed to bring you income and is guaranteed to not fail. If you take the time to invest into leads, get on the phone, and close a sale, the sale is completed and you get paid. If you are offering the services to set up e-commerce sites you do not need to hope your site gets enough traffic. Getting more traffic on your client’s websites is good for them, but with more, or less, traffic you are still getting paid. This is a recurring theme for gold rushes. Most people are focusing on the gold, or passive income dream, and not.
Learn the Craft
At first, do not get into the e-commerce websites but get into offering the service and actual value to the people who are setting up their own e-commerce sites. When you have the experience from working with the clients yourself, and you get a little bit of money, then you can invest into e-commerce.
After five years of working with e-commerce customers, it will be easy for Rod to start an e-commerce website. If he would have tried to do so right out of college all by himself, then it would take him at least a half a year to start seeing any real revenues.
Get an expert on your team to help with the delivering of value. See what they are doing and what is working for the industry. Learn from their actions as they provide value to your customers. Learning on your customer’s dime is not a bad thing but is an opportunity you can take and use to your advantage. Either this, or you can invest a couple hundred thousand dollars and take your 10-15% chances of seeing the money again and learn by yourself.
This is the reality of business.
Often people believe you can press a magic button and it will make you money. If you are just starting from scratch, start by learning enough about e-commerce’s general overview. Learn enough to be able to talk to clients and show you know what you are talking about. From a marketing and website development side of business you can hire people you can trust will deliver for you.
If you just help other people start and give them the tools to then this is fantastic. Later when you charge more, be sure to expect to deliver more value. Shopify is doing this on a bigger scale than Rod right now. You can go to Shopify, look through their blog section, and get an idea of what is involved in the process of starting an online store. Shopify is built for beginners and you are not building the store for yourself, but your developers will build them on behalf of your clients.
If you are just getting started, the value you are offering is that you did all the research, you found the developer who is capable of providing the right value, you are the one who is good at sales and is able to bring people over the threshold to buy. Your value is getting them started, getting them the physical result, and getting them to actually implement. Starting at the bottom you can replace what a client would do on their own, like setting up a Shopify website to save them time. If you can save the person 10, 20, 30 hours then you can charge for that.
In the beginning you need to understand that you are going to be selling to people who are completely nontechnical. They are fully capable of running an e-commerce company but they cannot do the technical part. If you can replace that part in their business and save them time then you can charge for it. Eventually as you develop your skills you are able to charge more money and then the value is that you can guarantee some kind of result: traffic, ROI, etc. In the beginning you charge less money because you can probably only guarantee the delivery of the actual website but as you guarantee more you can charge higher prices.
