Are you considering starting a webshop? E-commerce is an exciting option today for us all who wish to be independent or fancy building a business as a side gig. If you would like to start your own webshop that yields constant income with relatively little work, then don’t miss this article on a particularly newby- friendy solution, the mono-product webshops.
A Webshop as a carrier
E-commerce is a wonderful opportunity for self-fulfillment. Here, in Central Europe we have gotten accustomed to the fact that even if economically things are temporarily on the upswing, a crash is usually never too far away. Traditional carrier paths are not as predictable as before. Of course, the bright side of all this is that the development of digital technologies has enabled many people to be in a more suitable job even while commuting or working remotely.
Making money from home - freelancers on the rise
We associate home office with confinement, but if you can create the right environment for it, it can be a pleasant way of being geographically independent, or cohabiting one of the many coworking offices springing up in big cities. Here, where while working on the development of our new business in an inspiring atmosphere, we can also make valuable connections. If you are interested in knowing more about our experiences transitioning into home office, you can read about it here.
The number of this mobile “freelancer” type has grown by the thousands in Hungary too. Mostly communication, marketing and IT specialists, translators, language teachers and trainers used to be the ones in this group. However, significant technological development in e-commerce of the recent years have also made it possible for people taking an interest in commerce to take control into their own hands.
Simple webshops
First of all, we can find more and more user-friendly and versatile webshop engines, like the Hungarian-developed Shoprenter, or the American Shopify. Therefore, you can build the webshop itself with absolutely no knowledge to start with. In a couple of days (or hours, if we know what we are doing and are fine with a simpler webshop to begin with) you have an up and running webshop.
Purchasing the product(s) for the webshop
Following the launch of the webshop, the next step is to purchase the products. However, there is an option – dropshipping – that has gloriously simplified this laborious and challenging decision-making and negotiation process to a few clicks.
Webshippy’s online marketplace is an entirely online wholesale market place from where you can easily transfer items to your own webshop. What’s more, you only need to pay the purchase price after the sale. Delivery is done by the original distributor, with the help of Webshippy. In other words, you can sell items without even having touched them or consulted with anyone about them. If available on the marketplace, it’s free prey for everyone.
Of course, if you develop a completely unique and ground-breaking product yourself, or you have your direct purchasing source, dropshipping for you will remain a complementary option, through which you can get additional products to grow your basket value. In this case though, obviously, you’ll have to deal with storage, packaging, and delivery. But the good news is that Webshippy can do all this for you.
This will only cost you a small package handling fee with a quick return, as soon as you liberate yourself from the constant pressure of order fulfillment. On top of all this, you can count on the most favorable delivery costs available on the market, which makes an incredible difference.
The mono-product webshop: advantages of maximum focus
All successful webshops have one thing in common: a well-defined concept of what and whom they are selling to. We don’t know of too many mingle-mangle, conceptless webshop businesses. The key is in building an easily-identifiable product scope.
And what could be a better identified product scope than one focusing on a single product?
There are many ‘single-product’ webshops among successful webshops. It seems like, in spite of some risks, it’s well worth dabbling with. In case of one product, all auxiliary tasks are simpler too, translating into less work and resources. If we can reach a similar profit rate to a multi-product, more traditional webshop, it’s a huge plus. What’s the secret to the success of these specialized shops?
Why is it a good thing to sell only a single product?
Nowadays, dropshipping is trendy and the promise of e-commerce attracts a lot of people. But by only copying others, we can’t reproduce their success. We must adapt and learn from others’ experiences to create something more one-of-a-kind. The mono-product webshop can be your concrete project where you can test the waters and see if e-commerce is your cup of tea.
You have infinite freedom in choosing the product and target group, enabling you to create something a little bit different from everything that already exists.
Business trends are greatly influenced by certain books that later become the basis of reference. In the world of freelancers, Tim Ferriss’s The 4 – Hour Workweek is the “Bible”. The international bestseller ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ offers everyday mortals financial wisdom. Similarly successful is Gary Keller’s ‘The One Thing’ in which he shares his brilliant thoughts on time management, project management, and business development.
One of the game-changing messages of this book is that as our world gets more and more complicated and we are stretched thin between millions of responsibilities (work, family, studies, business development, own brand, lifestyle etc.). Therefore, identifying what’s really important to us becomes an essential skill. The sense of success will fuel us to reach for the next ‘One Thing’.
This is a superb approach for those of us who are embarking on the journey of e-commerce, as a possible complementary-income generating activity.
What should be the ‘one product’ and how to sell it?
Below we’ve listed the principles and aspects that if you follow consistently, your mono-product webshop can be successful.
- Your product should not be widely and easily available
As a rule of thumb, the one product you sell in your mono-product webshop should not be also available in all corner stores or large supermarkets. You can sell something similar, but not exactly the same. Probably the best option for you in Hungary is Webshippy’s online wholesale market place, as you can make your selection among available products. You just transfer one of the items into your own webshop and you’re good to go. You don’t have to deal with purchasing, storing and packaging, Webshippy does it all for you. You just need to follow the next steps to build your shop and find your target audience. - Your product should be innovative, visually enticing – and do take advantage of this!
If you have many different kinds of products, then it is unlikely that you’ll be able to shoot a cool video on all of them. But if you have only one, you can go big and max out the marketing! You can even shoot several awesome videos with your product in the spotlight. Currently, it is highly likely that this video is going to be your heavy hitter exploiting YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, ads and posts.Make it fresh, tight, funny, include interesting details, draw people’s attention to what makes your product stand out and most importantly, make it your own, don’t aspire to be like the “hotshots”.
Honest authenticity goes way further than impersonal professionalism! This 2–3-minute video is the essence of your whole communication so don’t be shy and invest all the energy and creativity you possibly can. You can even work with pro camera people. From this point on, you’ll only want to spend money on ads, and the efficiency of your ads ultimately depends on their quality.
- You should be able to sell your product in large numbers
One of the most common e-commerce products are smartphone cases, especially the iPhone case. There are businesses among Webshippy’s suppliers who have specialized exactly in this. Why? Because there are hundreds of millions of iPhone owners in the world, who cherish and take good care of their valued gadgets. This is also the reason they are more than willing to buy accessories to improve the everyday user experience, costing only a fraction of the basic product.What’s more, the case cannot break, doesn’t need maintenance, is fairly cheap and easy to store. These are all factors that make it an ideal product for e-commerce.
Another concrete example that doesn’t require too much creativity is the surgical mask. In the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit Hungary, there was an immediate shortage of quality masks and auxiliary products. Opening a webshop selling these was a no-brainer, just like one of Webshippy’s partners did. If you are interested in the success story of Viseljmaszkot.hu, you can read it here.
- Price your product aggressively
If you’re operating a mono-product shop, your profit can be clearly foreseen. You know the cost of entry and the margin. You multiply this with the number of products you plan to sell and you’ll see what you can expect. Other sellers try to balance a whole portfolio of products with sales, discounts and so on. Your job is simply to make sure that your pricing is on the lowest – or at least on the lower end of the scale among all other competitors’ offers
Another reason why it’s good to start with one, simpler product is that in the beginning the ad campaign starts generating information through the Facebook pixel and email addresses start compiling. The goal of aggressive pricing is – even with a small profit – to jump start the system. As you get to know your audience better, you can target your ads more efficiently and increase the return by gradually optimizing your prices and advertisement costs. - You can keep the structure of your mono-product webshop simple and puritan: grasp this opportunity
You can devote all your energy to creating the landing page. In your case, all ads, posts and all other appearance lead to this page. The customer doesn’t even have to click away. There are no other offers, search options or alternatives. Having your buyer not distracted by other options is clearly an advantage. It helps them to commit to buying. The chance of decision paralysis is zero. You have nothing else to do than to make this one page awesome and finalize the process with the ‘buy’ button. - Use Facebook pixel!
Currently, Facebook pixel is a hidden secret of online advertisements. It’s a short set of codes that enables you to gather information on the visitors on your website through their Facebook data. Obviously, not by name and in an unidentifiable way, but that is not even what you need: what’s important is that you can discover patterns and characteristics regarding age, gender, geographical location and other attributes that your potential buyers have in common.And this comes very handy when you target your ads, since you can provide this same data, or even target the visitors of your site with a reminder-type ad.
The great advantage of the mono-product webshop is that it offers the visitors only two options. This significantly increases the efficiency of the Facebook pixel and you can steer your audience towards shopping with greater and greater efficiency. You’ll find super useful tips on targeting Facebook ads in this post.
By following these few steps, you can get to the point where your shop is basically running on its own while you constantly increase profit with minor finetuning. Once the system is up and running, there is no reason it cannot go on working without your involvement. If you feel like dabbling with a mono-product webshop, you can get help finding your key product in this post, as well as getting 5+1 tips on how to identify a good product.
