Selling products on an eCommerce site is great way to earn in income from home. Maybe you already have a product in mind, or you have an awesome idea but you’re not sure where to start? Today I’ll give you some basic recommendations to get your started.
My Experience Selling Products Online
Our family business has sold go karts and ATVs for nearly 50 years. With the advent of online shopping, our brick and mortar stores became less and less profitable. As I moved into real estate, it just made more sense for our family to transition the powersports business over to eCommerce. For over a decade enow we have sold go karts, mini bikes, parts and accessories online!
Start your Store
First you should decided on a platform to use. There are plenty of options to look at: WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix. Our favorite is BigCommerce. We have tried both Shopify and WooCommerce for WordPress and found that BigCommerce is the most user friendly. However, you should shop around and find what’s right for your goals and price range.
To set up your store you’ll need to purchase a domain name, design the website, add products and publish the site. This process requires a lot of work but consists of mostly simple steps. You will have to take photos of products, write descriptions, weigh the items, add pricing and options. You’ll also need to add in shipping, return, warranty, and terms and condition policies.
You platform should make all of these steps very simple to complete. Most e-commerce platforms offer video tutorials or onboarding guides. Once you have the website set up and payments are directed to your bank accounts, you’ll need to figure out how to ship the products. That’s the focus of today’s article.
Shipping your Products from your online store
Once you have orders come in from customers, you’ll have to determine how to ship the products. There are again many options. You can fulfill orders yourself, you can dropship products through another company, or you can sell digital products that you upload once for automatic download. Although we do participate in some drop shipping programs, our main operations involve personally shipping products out from our own warehouse.
Get your Shipping Station Started
To being, you’ll need 2 things: shipping software and physical shipping station with supplies and equipment. Our favorite shipping software is ShipStation, which seamlessly integrates with BigCommerce through and add-on app. ShipStation can connect to your store and import all of the order information easily. Next, you just need to setup your workflow and get to packing.
Your workflow can be streamlined by using the Scan Barcodes features in Ship Station. First you can print all of your packing slips. Each packing slip will list the customer info, products ordered, shipping details, and a barcode. You can scan the barcode to open the order on your computer screen. Next, you’ll locate each item on the order.
You can use your scanner to scan the barcode of each item to verify the correct items have been pulled from inventory. This feature is called “scan to verify”. Next, you’ll pack the order in a box or mailer and place it on the scale. The USPS offer free boxes for flat rate priority mail. You can also choose cute mailers to match your branding, or get custom mailers printed. Check out StickerMule below. We use many of their products to put our customer branding on. Click to get $10 off your first order!
You can get a scale that connects to your computer or not. For our powersprts store, we can ship order that weigh quite a lot, so we use this scale that has a 100 pound limit. However, if you’re shipping lightweight items, you cold try this version. If your scale connects to your computer, you can have a master barcode sheet with shortcuts. Simply scan the “scan to weigh” barcode and the weigh ton your scale will upload to the order.
Next, you’ll scan “scan to print label” on your master barcodes list. You can print 4×6″ shipping labels on a thermal printer. Our favorite, tried and true thermal printer is the Munbyn Thermal Label Printer. Shipstation will automatically purchase a shipping label, fill in all of the customer and product details, and print your label. Simply close the package and put the label on it! Repeat this easy process until all of your orders are packed! This workflow also makes it easy to stop at any step in the process, and let another person take over!
Equipment needed for this workflow
Now, I just mentioned quite a few tools and products that you’ll need to ship your orders out and linked to amazon listings for each item. These links above are my favorite tools for my shipping station. I am an Amazon affiliate, so I may earn commission off of any links you click through!