Tag Archives: e-commerce

ECommerce Financing: How to Grow Your Business When You Need Cash

Financing Your Business

This article originally appeared on eCommerceFuel.

One of the perks of an eCommerce business is that you can often get started with very little upfront costs. But at some point, nearly everyone with a growing business has to consider financing. A monetary boost empowers you to invest in essential resources for your company, such as inventory, marketing, and technology.

Without adequate financing, your eCommerce business may struggle to compete or fail to reach its full potential. In this article, we will explore the basics of financing for eCommerce businesses, what financing options are on the table, and when you might use each of these financing options to help you grow.

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Amazon FBA or Shopify? Which Fulfillment Network Is the Best?

Amazon FBA vs Shopify Fulfillment Network

If you are are an eCommerce merchant you've probably heard about fulfillment networks or 3rd party logistics (3PLs). Fulfillment networks like Amazon FBA & Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN) are incredibly powerful. If you can afford the cost they’ll store, pack, and ship all of your orders for you.

They handle an entire area of your business for you. For a merchant this is 25-35% of your responsibility. So being able to outsource this obligation and focus on other areas of your business can be massively helpful.

But calculating if a 3PL is worth the cost is complex. Shipping costs themselves are a nightmare of complexity. If you have more than 1 item in your store you will probably just understand the range of shipping costs to get several items from point A to point B. Trying to figure out a fair cost for the 3PL on top of regular shipping costs is challenging to say the least.

And there are challenges beyond just costs. You have to order and send in your products according to their schedule and in their preferred formatting. With all of that overhead switching 3PLs is painful and costly.

So fulfillment networks have some serious costs. But they also allow eCommerce entrepreneurs to live that idyllic lifestyle where you order piña coladas on the beach while your business continues to generate revenue. 🏖

Let’s look at the costs, procedures, and the tradeoffs for two of the biggest fulfillment networks: Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN) and Amazon FBA so you have a baseline understanding of when and how you'd set up a 3PL for your own e-commerce store.

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Metorik: The Missing Analytics for WooCommerce

Metorik Banner

I've written about WooCommerce reporting in the past. And at that time the best solutions were plugins you installed yourself. That's no longer the case. Metorik is a service designed specifically to understand your WooCommerce data.

Metorik was created by Bryce Adams who used to work for WooCommerce. So it's well built, well designed, and it enhances the reporting experience in WooCommerce. And not just a little bit. But a lot.

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How to Process Credit Cards Manually with Stripe

Entering Credit Card with Smartphone

Most e-commerce platforms let you create orders manually. That way even if you're at a conference or a potential customer calls you you can capture those orders.

While many systems let you create orders manually they don't always let you charge a credit card which kind of defeats the purpose. But even if your e-commerce platform doesn't let you process credit cards if you use Stripe you're in luck. They make processing credit cards really easy.

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How Shutterstock Does Coupons Right

Light Bulb With Blue Background

There I was – minding my own business buying some stock photos to make my blog posts a bit prettier. And as I went to the checkout I noticed that there was a question:

Do you have a coupon code?

Shutterstock Order Summary

Well, I didn't but the fact that they asked the question means that they exist. So I did what any person does when they see an opportunity to save a little money. I went to google and I typed in:

Shutterstock coupon code

Hoping to find a site that would give me a discount. And I did actually in the very first search result.

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WordPress eCommerce Fundamentals Course Released

Just over one year ago I released the WooCommerce Cookbook and I heard from lots of store owners about how much they liked it. And after hearing the feedback I decided to create something a bit less technical and more abstract. Something that would help people understand the fundamentals of e-commerce. Several months later I'm proud to say that I published WordPress eCommerce on Lynda.com.

The Course

The course covers everything you need to think about before you build an e-commerce site for yourself or for a client:

  1. Understanding Your Market
  2. Marketing Your Site
  3. Selling Products
  4. Shipping & Orders & Taxes
  5. Securing Your Site
  6. Using WordPress for eCommerce
  7. Testing & Optimization

This is a video course so all of the lessons include me showing example sites and visual aids. It's over an hour long so there's plenty for you to digest before you make your first e-commerce site. Chapters 3 & 4 go into lots of detail about the types of products you can sell and the best way to do it. Ex. How can I sell a monthly subscription box? And which way is best?

Here's a sample video:

 

Why I Created This Course

I created this course is because e-commerce is no longer limited by technology. You aren't spending your time figuring out technical problems. The technology is relatively straight forward and as a store owner or a developer building a store for a client you have to figure out marketing & positioning problems to make sure that your product solves a need and that people can find it.

Only once you know that people really want to buy your product and you can get them to your site do you worry about the technical problems.

For those people who just want to know all about the different WordPress platforms I cover WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, iThemes Exchange, & WP eCommerce.

I also cover third party platforms that can integrate in your WordPress site such as Gumroad, Clickbank, and Shopify.

If you're a store owner this course will make you ask questions about your product market fit and what you need to do to sell as many widgets as possible.

If you're a developer you will learn all of the same lessons which you can pass along to your clients and make them successful. Building a $10,000 site is great but it's even better if you can build the right site for $10,000 and get more work next year after your client's product makes a killing. 🙂

If this sounds good sign up for a free 10 day trial of Lynda.com and get access to this course and many others – or if you're already a member just watch. 🙂

Delay

If you're detail oriented you might notice that this course actually came out last summer! I held off on the announcement of this post because it came out right around the time of the WooThemes acquisition and I was quite busy with all of that. Not a good excuse I know but better late than never right?

Happy selling!