Hi
First off, sorry for making a long post - I guess I have a lot on my mind ;p
Quick about me and my trading experienceI've tried to learn as much as I can about making money over the Internet over the last 5 years or so. I've been through the mill of everything from 'make 1000/hour' nonsense offers to building several e-commerce stores for other companies for over 9 years, mostly with the ZenCart application and by creating custom modules for their needs.
This has often let me hung dry with the short end of the money-making while making others richer than myself. I really want to change this, and turn things around to my own and my family's benefit.
Guilty as charged, by myself...While I'm not proud of it, I will be honest about it - I am guilty of major procrastination. I'm careful, very careful. On the bright side, this has caused me to loose minimal amount of money while learning about the darker forms of online marketing and money-making which only leads to failure or short-term success. And it has protected me against bad contracts and business deals.
On the negative side, I'm having a hard time initiating any kind of serious business. 'There's always something better that can be done...' something I'll probably never find.
A definitive problem I've had - MarketingIt is my belief that pretty much anything can be sold, if marketed to the right target. Where I always seem to fail, is on the marketing bit. This is truly my biggest challenge to overcome in order for success.
Even with proper SEO and content driven web managment, it just doesn't seem to cut it alone. I always seem to reach for PPC, which I have a hard time of converting into a profit.
I've never actually had my own stock of products, I've always tried to make my business happen purely through affiliates/dropshippers and store-scripts such as BANS and scripts I've made myself towards CJ products. You can check it out here on my devblog:
Link hidden: Login to viewThese sites made a small buck for me, about $140 USD over a 3-4 week period. I still felt like I was drowning in the big Internet sea of similar sites. And have now decided to move on. A big problem with affiliate-only sites and blogs, is that they are frowned upon by both engines and consumers it seems.
A continuous battle for successSo now I have registered on Salehoo in order to perhaps try buying a small stock of starter-products and import them to Norway (expensive toll fees to be sure, 25% of product value as minimum). I'm still searching for nice wholesale sites and thinking about how I want to play it out.
Question about marketingMy ultimate goal is to earn just over $15.000 USD monthly, by selling and marketing almost exclusively online. I got 2 challenges, products/targeted market and the marketing itself.
For products, I'd like to find a low-risk return niche like knives, tools, things that can't break easily (e.g. electronic goods) and will need many costly returns on my behalf. Also perhaps a high return value per item, instead of many sales in order to make a profit. But these are choices I'll have to make for myself.
My question is mainly about marketing. Is it naive to think that I might be able to cover the marketing I need, by using purely online auction houses? I was thinking eBay.com and 2 big, very popular online auction sites within Norway. Maybe stretch out to ebay.co.uk and some other branches as well if eBay.com turns out good for me.
I know this will drive a lot of traffic, and perhaps a high return profit if I choose my products carefully with low competition or competitive prices at least. I was thinking of setting up my own online store of products, and perhaps try make it known through the auction houses as a cheap way of marketing.
Any constructive input is appreciatedI've had these thoughts in my head for some time now, and it would be nice to get some fresh perspective on them from someone else with more experience than me at online trading. Even just to let me know if I'm on the right track, or just thinking crazy.
On an additional note, I've been thinking about selling my own resources as well. Perhaps writing a few guides of how to perform simple IT tasks, e.g. within web development. And try to sell them... I got plenty of knowledge, but I imagine it's hard to sell stuff like that, as it's easily stolen and redistributed by someone else after first purchase... But that thought might just be another product of my procrastination nature, holding me back. I created an IT support system a while ago marketed only through PPC, through submitting tickets you'd have to pay for on a website. There were many questions, but noone that actually wanted to pay for any answers.
I hope I can within a few weeks start something that can be long-term and less stressful and exhausting for me than my current dayjob. Thank you to anyone who bothered reading this entire post :) And thank you for any tips and help you may have for me.
PS
I'd very much like to reach other norwegian traders from this forum who already are successful, to learn from. I might be able to offer some technical services for free in return.