WORDPRESS
Top 11 Best eCommerce Website Builders that Build Perfect Store
You may quickly and easily overcome the challenges of e-commerce with the aid of a reliable e-commerce website builder. By doing this, you might attract customers and start making profit right immediately.
You may stand out by using one of the many user-friendly website builders for online retailers.
Are you interested in learning which website builders work best for e-commerce? Check through the list of online storefront builders you may use to launch an e-commerce firm instead if you’re searching for a detailed assessment.
Top 11 best ecommerce website builders
1. Shopify
The greatest e-commerce website builder for creating integrated stores
Using Shopify to put your business online is the quickest and safest option. With Shopify’s e-commerce platform, you can easily create an online store without knowing how to code or having a large budget. More than a million companies use the Shopify platform, which is renowned for its low rates, gorgeous website designs, and practical marketing tools.
If you want to start a Shopify store, you can select from more than 100 expert templates that come with built-in features like SSL certificates, domain hosting, custom domains, abandoned cart recovery, and other strong tools to help you attract customers, close deals, and run your daily business. Through Shopify’s native partner integrations, you can sell an infinite number of items through your online shop and on several marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
Features include:
- More than 100 premium themes were created by illustrious creators like Happy Cog and Pixel Union.
- Customers may make purchases using any smartphone or tablet thanks to the built-in mobile commerce shopping cart.
- Full access to the HTML and CSS for your store, allowing you to completely customize your online store.
- Stores that are optimized for search engines to make it easier for internet users to discover you
- Easy inventory management that allows you to monitor stock levels and stop product sales when they run out.
- There are no restrictions on the number of things you may sell in your shop.
- You will never be charged based on how much traffic your business receives because of the unlimited bandwidth.
- Analytics and reporting made simple
- Integration of the Shopify POS system to link physical and online stores
- An app shop with more than 4,000 tools for marketing, sales, and customer service
- Mobile application for company management while on the go
- Accessible customer service personnel are available. Through email, live chat, and phone, every day of the week, around the clock.
Through Shopify Payments, accepting payments online is also made simple. More than 100 worldwide payment options and gateways, including Shop Pay, PayPal, and Bitcoin, are available for you to interact with. Additionally, you may utilize one of the over 4,000 free Shopify applications to increase online sales and expand the functionality of your business.
- Price:- Sign up for a free trial of Shopify now; no credit card is needed. Paid plans begin at only $39 per month.
- G2 rating:- 4.3/5 ⭐
2. 3dcart
Best e-commerce website builder for physical stores
3dcart is a basic shopping cart for merchants looking to sell online. Its capabilities aren’t as broad as those of other site builders like Shopify or Wix, but with appealing pricing, decent sales reporting, and mobile-responsive templates, For business owners who need to rapidly create an online presence, this builder is their go-to option.
Features include:
- 160+ payment alternatives, all linked to your store without the need for coding
- Over 90 free website layouts to get you started.
- Built-in SEO features to boost website search visibility
- Abandoned cart notifications to help get back lost sales
- Good Zapier connectors can help you increase the functionality of your store.
While 3dcart offers several useful e-commerce tools, you don’t have much creative control over your businesses. The builder is difficult to use because the templates are restricted.
- Price:- 15-day free trial. Paid plans start at $19/month.
- G2 rating:- 3.8/5 ⭐
3. Weebly
The most effective free online e-commerce builder for small enterprises
Weebly is an easy online store builder that is powered by Square. It’s great for small to medium-sized enterprises who want a simple online store but don’t want to deal with a lot of upkeep. Weebly is a fantastic alternative if you’re a newbie who doesn’t want to get bogged down in technical details.
Weebly allows anybody to create a free website. However, you won’t be able to use your domain name (or remove the obnoxious advertising) unless you purchase a subscription. The free plan includes a few useful services, such as real-time delivery and discounts, but if you want to go beyond that, you must subscribe.
Features include:
- Simple website builder and management platform for inventory and orders
- Bulk inventory capabilities for editing large batches of items and importing/exporting data Mobile-friendly websites
- Simple coupon creator (for premium plans) for creating store promotions
- A simple drag-and-drop builder and media library will guide you through the process of creating a website.
Square is also available online for business owners that use it for payments. You can create a professional e-commerce website with no frills in minutes, similar to Weebly.
- Price:- Free. Paid plans start at $6/month.
- G2 rating:- 4.2/5 ⭐
4. Squarespace
Best e-commerce website builder for designers
Squarespace is the next e-commerce site builder on the list. Its drag-and-drop builder makes it simple to use even for those with no technical skills. Like Wix, it began as a standard website builder rather than an online selling platform, so there may be a minor learning curve when putting up an online store.
Squarespace provides well-designed templates to help you get started developing your store. After selecting a design, you may change the colors, text, and graphics to match your brand. You cannot, however, sell anything online unless you switch to a premium subscription.
You can only take payments using Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Afterpay while utilizing Squarespace as your e-commerce solution. When you join the Commerce Advanced plan, you will be able to offer gift cards and subscriptions.
Features include:
- To design your store, use a drag-and-drop builder with configurable templates and basic layouts.
- Image scaling and automatically responsive web design
- WYSIWYG editing that is specific to content types and complicated layouts
- The capacity to market an endless number of goods
- Email sequences are sent automatically after a purchase
- Finance, marketing, shipping, and sales expansions are all possible.
You can always convert your basic website into an online shop if you don’t want to deal with setting up Squarespace’s e-commerce functionality. You can add the Shopify Buy Button for $5 per month and have access to over 100 payment choices, sales and growth tracking, simple shipping connections, currency support, and more.
- Price:- a three-day free trial. The Basic Commerce package costs $26 per month.
- G2 rating:- 4.4/5⭐
5. BigCommerce
Best e-commerce website creation software for large businesses
Large enterprises may create online storefronts using BigCommerce. It provides web hosting as well as several customization possibilities for tech-savvy business owners looking to grow. You cannot register a domain name with BigCommerce, therefore you must purchase one elsewhere and connect it to your store.
Advanced features of BigCommerce include worldwide selling capabilities, SEO applications, optimized storefronts, and multichannel sales capabilities on social and online selling sites—but these features are more sophisticated.
Features include:
- A visual editor featuring a drag-and-drop tool for editing website pages
- Themes that support HTML, CSS, and JavaScript customization
- Customize your checkout experience with a server-to-server checkout API and SDK.
- Payment possibilities using digital wallets such as Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and others
- Cross-channel commerce using marketplaces like Amazon and Google Shopping
- Support for several languages and currencies to facilitate worldwide sales
BigCommerce’s lack of flexibility and ease of use were big issues for retailers such as Grace & Lace. Grace & Lace opted to switch to Shopify Plus, Shopify’s enterprise offering, after attempting to work with the platform. This provided them with sophisticated business tools and add-ons for its new Shopify Plus shop, as well as confidence in achieving 20% year-over-year growth since transferring.
- Price:- The cost is a 15-day free trial. Monthly fees for paid plans start at $29.95.
- G2 rating:- 4.2/5 ⭐
6. Wix
Individual sellers should choose the best e-commerce website builder.
With its non-technical website builder, Wix is now taking on online stores in accordance with the e-commerce sector trend. You may design an online store that suits your requirements by using Wix’s simple drag-and-drop builder. Wix provides customizable templates, domain name registration, and web hosting to make it simple to go online.
The major disadvantage? You can create a free e-commerce website, but you won’t be able to sell anything unless you switch to a premium plan.
Features include:
- Make use of a user-friendly editing interface to build your online store.
- Templates from the storefront through the checkout that may be altered to meet your needs.
- Integrations to help with product sales on eBay, Google Shopping, Facebook, and Instagram.
- Customer’s personal information and payments are protected by a free SSL certificate.
- Product pages that have been SEO optimized will rank better in search engines.
- The ability to import inventory CSV files into your shop
Wix provides a few useful tools for managing your e-commerce business. It lets you track orders, accept online payments, sell across numerous channels, and create abandoned cart campaigns. Wix’s basic plan, on the other hand, lacks critical inventory management tools such as low-stock notifications, tax calculators, and dropshipping options. If you have a large inventory, you’ll need ecommerce software with better inventory-tracking features.
- Price:- Business Price The basic plan starts at $23 per month.
- G2 rating:- 4.2/5 ⭐
7. GoDaddy
The best platform for beginners to start an e-commerce website
GoDaddy is a website builder that you might be familiar with, but it can also be used to launch an online store. Building an e-commerce site with GoDaddy is quick and simple thanks to its beginner-friendly construction that makes use of artificial design intelligence. You must provide information to quickly create a personalized website.
Features include:
- More than 100 mobile-friendly designs for e-commerce websites
- interactions to social media sites like Instagram and Facebook
- across all platforms and markets, automatic control of sales and inventory
- A variety of payment options, such as Google Pay and Venmo
- the connection between retail and internet enterprises through integration with Square Point of Sale
The drawback is that you don’t have a lot of artistic freedom. GoDaddy provides built-in capabilities for SEO and email marketing campaigns, but its features aren’t very robust. Even though you may launch quickly, a GoDaddy website can only support the sale of up to 1,500 goods. Therefore, GoDaddy wouldn’t be the finest e-commerce site builder for you if scalability is what you’re searching for.
- Price:- The e-commerce plan starts at $24.99/month.
- G2 rating:- 3.9/5 ⭐
8. WooCommerce
Best open-source e-commerce website builder
WordPress sellers may use the open-source WooCommerce platform. It is a WordPress plug-in that you may use to add e-commerce functionality to a website; it is not a standalone website builder. If you utilize this e-commerce website builder, you’ll probably want to collaborate with a developer.
Features include:
- Mobile-friendly stores to make your items seem beautiful on any device that supports HTML5 were specifically developed for WordPress and are connected to its environment
- Total control over consumer and corporate data; no third-party software is allowed. 350+ contributors worldwide.
- 100% open source for total control over the design and functionality of your website.
You have the freedom to manage website features like shipping connections, secure payments, inventory management, and tax administration with WooCommerce. Similar to how dozens of WordPress plug-ins, templates, and other extensions can be used to extend WordPress functionality, so can WooCommerce. If you need to make complex adjustments to your WooCommerce store, you may readily use its well-known wide pool of developers.
- Price:- Free
- G2 rating:- 4.4/5 ⭐
9. Volusion
Fastest e-commerce website builder available
One of the original e-commerce website builders is Volusion. It assists you in quickly launching your business online and was founded in 1999. You can build a homepage and product pages, interface with over 30 payment channels, and sell an infinite number of items using its site-building tools. However, navigating the builder might occasionally be difficult.
Features include:
- Drag-and-drop content blocks for reviews, photographs, texts, and other types of material to alter page layouts.
- Transaction fees are not a part of any of Volusion’s initiatives.
- Mobile consumers should use responsive themes.
- CSS editor to customize certain website elements to your company’s requirements
- Possibilities for constant pricing for subscription-based enterprises
To observe how your online business is performing and where to make improvements, you can quickly access and analyze inventory and statistics. Additionally, it has an integrated “suggested products” function in its stores. A disadvantage of Volusion is that it cannot support the selling of digital products. So if you want to sell music, art, or ebooks, you might want to consider utilising a different builder.
- Price:- Plans start at $26/month.
- G2 rating:- 3.2/5 ⭐
10. Zyro
Best website builder for analytics and customer data
If you don’t have time to build from scratch then Zyro is a good option for you. You can simply create a lightweight website with the help of multiple e-commerce tools. The tools include the following features drag-and-drop builder with 24 expert-designed templates to build with. Within an hour you can create your online store.
Features include:
- It offers great features such as drag-and-drop, and a grid to add, edit and remove web elements.
- You can easily customize templates as per your project requirements.
- It provides CRM and manages emails, discounts, and coupon codes.
- You can work on advanced reporting and integration with tools like MoneyData, and Google Analytics.
- You can use marketing and SEO tools to launch campaigns easily.
- You will get access to a single dashboard for everything from inventory to tracking customer service.
Also, Zyro offers connectivity with Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads to help you understand more about your audience and enhance your marketing and advertising initiatives. But, Zyro doesn’t have a free plan. You have to go for paid plans or premium plans for building your store.
- Price:- $11.49 per month.
- G2 rating:- 4.7/5 ⭐
11. Magento, now Adobe Commerce
It is one of the best options for selling digital products.
Magento, is an e-commerce builder aimed mostly at novices. It’s simple to use and allows you to sell across many e-commerce platforms to enhance sales. Magento is the greatest choice if you’re seeking complex e-commerce capabilities like bespoke report builders and integrated shipping services.
Features include:
- Integrated blogging platform
- Store builder with drag-and-drop functionality
- Possibility of managing all social media from a single dashboard
- Selz Pay (powered by Stripe) accepts major payment cards.
- Integrated shopping cart
- Sales insights in real time
Magento may be used to create an online presence with a website theme. Magento allows you to add Buy buttons to a typical company website or develop full-fledged storefronts to sell things.
- Price:- Free
- Magento Commerce:- $1,988
- Magento Commerce Cloud:- $2,688
- G2 rating:- 5/5 ⭐
How to Select an Online Store Builder
When choosing a platform, whether you’re a startup or building your tenth e-commerce site, keep the following factors in mind:
- Budget, business plans, and pricing:- How much money are you willing to spend on your store each year? What are your expansion plans? Some website builders charge more as you add more products to your site. Consider not only what your company needs to launch today, but also how many products you’ll offer in the future.
- Website-building skill level:- What level of technical expertise do you possess? Many builders employ drag-and-drop technologies to assist you in creating the finest e-commerce site possible, but you’ll still need fundamental abilities to design product pages, add goods to your shop, and configure any applications or plug-ins. Consider your previous experience with software and back-end developers.
- Customization:- Do you want a simple website to showcase your products? Or do you want more sophisticated capabilities such as adding sizing charts to product pages and a live chat window? Consider how you want your website to appear and feel, as well as what extra features you’ll need to make it happen.
- Support:- If you’re new to building an e-commerce website, you’ll most likely want assistance. Is your preferred web builder offering live assistance and tutorials? Consider a platform that can assist you in swiftly and simply resolving issues so you can have your store up and running and begin selling online.
- Payment gateways:- Payment gateways are required to securely collect payments from customers and to make payments simple for customers. Shop Pay’s express checkout function. Shopify also integrates with over 100 payment gateways, allowing you to provide the best alternatives for your customers no matter where they are in the globe.
Final words
Now that you know the options for the best e-commerce website builder, it’s time to put them to the test. Each choice has advantages and disadvantages, but perhaps you have a clearer understanding of which store builder is appropriate for your company.
A competent e-commerce website may propel your company forward. With all of these free website builder alternatives accessible, there’s no question you’ll discover the perfect one to create an online store that you’re proud of, impresses clients, and generates revenue for you automatically.
WORDPRESS
WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power
Web hosting provider WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against Automattic, and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, accusing them of extortion and abuse of power. The lawsuit comes after nearly two weeks of tussling between Mullenweg, who is also CEO of Automattic, and WP Engine over trademark infringement and contributions to the open-source WordPress project.
WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of not keeping their promises to run WordPress open-source projects without any constraints and giving developers the freedom to build, run, modify and redistribute the software.
“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the last ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its people, agency partners, customers, and the broader WordPress community,” the company said.
The case document, filed in a court in California, also accused Mullenweg of having a “long history of
obfuscating the true facts” about his control of WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org
The story so far
Mullenweg had criticized WP Engine for infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. He called them the “Cancer of WordPress” and also called out WP Engine’s private equity partner, Silver Lake, for not caring about the open-source community.
Later, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter, asking Mullenweg and Automattic to withdraw these comments. Automattic then sent its own cease-and-desist, accusing WP Engine of infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Notably, Mullenweg banned WP Engine on September 25 from accessing WordPress.org resources, including plug-ins and themes, and preventing WP Engine customers from updating them. Two days later, Mullenweg provided a temporary reprieve and unblocked WP Engine until October 1.
On Wednesday, Automattic published a proposed seven-year term sheet that it had sent to WP Engine on September 20, asking the hosting company to pay 8% of its gross revenues per month as a royalty fee for using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Alternatively, WP Engine was given the option to commit 8% by deploying employees to contribute to WordPress’s core features and functionalities, or a combination of both people hours and money.
WP Engine didn’t accept these terms, which included a probation on forking plugins and extensions from Automattic and WooCommerce.
You can contact this reporter at [email protected] or on Signal: @ivan.42
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Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark
“WPE’s nominative uses of those marks to refer to the open-source software platform and plugin used for its clients’ websites are fair uses under settled trademark law, and they are consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines and the practices of nearly all businesses in this space,” the lawsuit said.
Mullenweg told Ars that “we had numerous meetings with WPE over the past 20 months, including a previous term sheet that was delivered in July. The term sheet was meant to be simple, and if they had agreed to negotiate it we could have, but they refused to even take a call with me, so we called their bluff.” Automattic also published a timeline of meetings and calls between the two companies going back to 2023.
Mullenweg also said, “Automattic had the commercial rights to the WordPress trademark and could sub-license, hence why the payment should go to Automattic for commercial use of the trademark. Also the term sheet covered the WooCommerce trademark, which they also abuse, and is 100 percent owned by Automattic.”
Automattic alleged “widespread unlicensed use”
Exhibit A in the lawsuit includes a letter to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner from a trademark lawyer representing Automattic and a subsidiary, WooCommerce, which makes a plugin for WordPress.
“As you know, our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights,” the letter said.
The letter alleged that “your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client.” It also alleged that “WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using our Client’s trademarks… to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic.”
WORDPRESS
5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!
In today’s digitalized world, starting a business doesn’t always mean you have to have a good chunk of money and years of experience in the field. Yeah, it’s good if you have them, but even without them, you can start a business and make money. Not just a few hundred dollars; some businesses can even make you a millionaire if you invest your time and available resources into them.
You need to have the right approach and the proper set of skills to make that happen. And you can learn such skills for free on the internet. So, all you need is the willingness to put in the work and effort it needs.
In this post, you’ll see 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. You don’t need anyone to help you with these businesses when you’re starting out; you can do it all alone, and you can manage these businesses from the comfort of your home.
Even if you don’t know a single thing about these businesses, you can learn them for free on YouTube, Udemy, and the Interent. There’s more than enough free resources out there about these topics to take you from 0-10 real quick.
So, sit down and grab your popcorns, because this article might be the only thing you need to launch your first online business, today itself!
Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable and easy-to-start businesses out there. In affiliate marketing, you need to promote someone else’s product in order to make money. The person who promotes the product in exchange for some commission is called an affiliate.
When you sign up to be an affiliate of any program, you’ll get a unique link to promote the products called an affiliate link. You need to use your affiliate link to send customers to the seller’s page. That link tracks the amount of sales you generate to determine the money you make.
You don’t need to create, package, or ship the products yourself. The seller who is selling the product will do these all. All you need to do is, refer customers to the seller. And when the customer referred by you through your affiliate link makes a purchase, you get a small percentage of the sale amount as a reward. That’s it. That’s what affiliate marketing is!
Through affiliate marketing, you can promote both physical and digital products.
You don’t always have to sell products to earn affiliate commission. Sometimes, you get commission to make people download something. That can be an app, software, or browser extension. Sometimes, you get commissions to make people sign up for particular websites or services. Sometimes, you get commission to generate leads for businesses and agencies, etc. All these things need to be done through your affiliate link in order for you to make a commission.
How to Get Started?
1. Choose your Niche
You need to choose a niche to start affiliate marketing. You can’t promote everything from workout gear to making money online courses yourself! So, choosing a niche is very important to succeed in affiliate marketing. Some popular niches for affiliate marketing are: health & fitness, finance, home & kitchen, technology, relationships, etc.
2. Find the Product
After choosing a niche, you need to find a product to promote. If you decide to get into the health and fitness niche, then you can promote workout plans, weight loss supplements, keto meal plans, hair loss products, and so much more. So, decide what you want to promote and find a good product for it.
3. Build a Platform
Now, you’ve decided your niche, and your product is ready to promote, so all you need is a platform to promote it. You can promote affiliate products either through a blog or through social media. You can write articles on your blog or grow your social media accounts to share your affiliate links.
Here are some popular affiliate marketing platforms you can join.
The affiliate marketing industry is worth nearly $17 billion. So, you can start your affiliate marketing journey today to get a small chunk of that seventeen billion dollars for yourself!
2. Selling Digital Products
Selling digital products is another great way to make a hefty amount of money online. Digital products are a great way to share your knowledge and creativity with the world while making some money.
Digital products are products that are created and sold online. They don’t exist in the real world, except for printables. Printables are graphics that are created digitally but needs to be printed out in the real world to be used.
From ebooks to online courses and printables to music, there’s a wide variety of products that you can create and sell.
Here are some digital products that you can create and sell easily.
If you’re wondering which digital product sells the best and which one you should sell, consider this analysis done among 96,000 creators by influencers.club. According to the analysis, online courses were the most sold digital products, with 35.7% of the entire digital products sold, followed by ebooks (7.3%) and cookbooks (3.8%).
Here are a few more:
Check out 16 Best Digital Products to Sell in 2024
How to Get Started?
1. Choose Your Niche
The first step to building a profitable digital product business is to choose a niche that you’re interested in and have a demand in the market. You can select a niche based on your expertise, passion or to profit from an untapped market opportunity. Make sure that there are enough people willing to pay for your products so that you can make a good amount of money selling them.
2. Create Your Product
After choosing a niche to get into, you need to create a solid product to sell. In order to get constant sales, your product needs to be highly valuable. Either it needs to solve your customer’s problem or it needs to add significant value to their life. Make sure that your product is up-to-date, functional, and user-friendly.
3. Set up a Platform to Sell
Now that you have decided your niche and your product is ready to sell, all you need is a platform to host and sell your products. You can either sell digital products through your own website or through platforms like Etsy, Gumroad, Teachable, etc.
You can sell ebooks, printables, planners, digital arts, wallpapers, templates, etc. through Etsy and Gumroad. And to sell online courses, you can use platforms like Teachable or Udemy.
You can use graphic design tools like Canva and Adobe Illustrator to create printables, stickers, templates, wallpapers, etc. And you can write your ebook on Google Docs or Notepad and save it as a pdf to sell it.
4. Price Your Products
After your product is ready and you’ve decided a platform to sell, you need to set a price to sell your products.
Pricing is a really crucial part. You can’t price it too high or too low. If you price it too high, very few people are likely to buy it, and if you price it too low, you won’t make enough profit.
So, while pricing your product, evaluate the product yourself and do your market research to analyze your competitors pricing to determine your own product’s pricing.
You can promote your digital products by creating video/image content, writing blog posts, email marketing, paid ads, SEO, and through social media marketing.
Digital products can be a great way to make money online passively without needing much work and attention. So, this might be something you would love to get into! The best part is, there is no limit on how much money you can make. Ana from TheSheApproach has made over $55,000 selling ebooks alone through her small blog.
3. Print on Demand
Print on Demand, or POD, is gaining immense popularity in recent times due to its business model. Print on demand business has less to no startup cost, which makes it easier for anyone to get into it.
In Print on Demand business, you create designs to print on mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, caps, pants, etc. After your design is ready, you find a print-on-demand supplier to print and sell your products.
Unlike other type of businesses, in POD, the products are not produced first and listed for sale later. Instead, the products are promoted first and only produced or printed when a customer places an order.
In POD, your job is to create designs and market your products. Your POD supplier will do everything else, from printing, packaging, and delivering the product. They will even handle the returns if they have to.
How to Get Started?
1. Choose a Niche
First of all, choose a niche you want to start your business in. Choose a niche that has huge demand in the market and something you’re interested in. For example, if you’re interested in sports, you can create designs related to sports, print them, and sell them.
2. Create Your Designs
After you’ve chosen your niche, you need to create designs to print on products. Good designs attract more eyeballs and generate more sales compared to plain, low-quality designs. So, put your maximum effort into creating good designs. Your designs might be the only differentiator between success and failure of your POD business.
3. Choose a Print on Demand Supplier
After your design is ready, you need to find a good and trustworthy POD supplier to print and supply your products. Choose a supplier that uses high-quality materials to create products, has less fees, low shipping time, good customer support, and large area coverage. These things are crucial for your business’s success.
Here are some popular print-on-demand suppliers:
4. Set up Your Store
Now that your product is ready to sell, you need to find a platform to sell it. You can sell your POD products on Etsy, WooCommerce, or eBay, or setup a Shopify store to sell them. Your store must be clean and colorful to convert more visitors into customers.
5. Price Your Products
After your store is setup, you need to price your product. Make sure to check your competitors prices before pricing your own products. You can’t sell your products for significantly more than what your competitor is selling for. If you do so, you won’t get as many sales as you would have with a lower price point.
You can market your Print on Demand products mainly through social media and paid ads. You can start and grow a social media account to promote your POD products for free.
The print-on-demand market is worth more than $7.24B in 2024 and is projected to reach $43.4B by 2030 with a growth rate of staggering 26.8%. So, this might be the chance to dip your toes into the world of ecommerce with print on demand.
4. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is one of the hottest and most popular online business right now. It has made thousands of teenagers and 20-year-olds millionaires, and its craze is not going down anytime soon.
Dropshipping is a business model where you find a product, advertise it, and generate sales, but someone else produces, packages, and ships them for you.
You buy products for less price from retailers or even manufacturers and sell them for a higher price through your own store. For example, if I find a cool watch on Alibaba.com that I can buy for $7 a piece, then I will create my own store to advertise that product and sell it for $20, $30, or even more. That is how you make money with dropshipping.
In dropshipping, you don’t have to worry about producing product, packaging, shipping, or keeping a product inventory because whenever an order comes in, you forward that order and customer’s details to your supplier, and then your supplier will produce, package, and deliver the product to your customer. There are several tools and softwares to automate this entire process. Here you’re basically a middleman reselling the products.
How to Get Started?
1. Find a Product
To start a dropshipping business, first you need to find a product that solves a specific problem of your customers. Sometimes the product can be a fashionable or decorative item like a watch. The product has to have a high potential to sell. In the world of dropshipping, a product that solves a problem and has a high potential to sell is called a winning product.
2. Find a Supplier
After finding a good product to sell, you need to find a supplier who can supply you the same product for a cheaper price. A supplier can be the making or breaking point of your business because your job is to promote the product and bring customers. Everything except that is done by your supplier, so if you find a good supplier, you won’t have or have very few problems in your business, and vice versa.
So, before choosing your supplier, check their product quality, delivery time, packaging style, and customer service. A good supplier must have high-quality products, low delivery time, good packaging quality, and good customer support.
AliExpress is the go-to platform to find suppliers and products at a cheaper price, for dropshipping.
3. Build Your Store
After you’ve found a good product and a reliable supplier, you need to build a store to market your products. You can create your store on platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, GetResponse, and Wix or sell them directly on Amazon or eBay. The design of your store must be clean, simple, and colorful to get more sales.
4. Market Your Store
After your store is setup and ready to sell, you need to advertise it, to bring customers to it. To advertise your store, you can use social media, paid ads, content marketing, SEO, and more.
Most dropshippers advertise their store through either Facebook or TikTok ads and through content marketing by creating viral pieces of content for TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts.
That’s it! That’s how you can start your own dropshipping business and profit from the $250B dropshipping industry.
5. Dropservicing
Now you know what dropshipping is, but have you ever heard about dropservicing? Huh? Dropshipping deals with selling physical products, but dropservicing is all about selling services.
Dropservicing, also known as service arbitrage, is a business model where you sell services to clients. But instead of doing the work yourself, you outsource the work to a third-party service provider, either a freelancer or an agency. In dropservicing, you’re basically a middleman, just like in dropshipping, who acts as a service seller in front of clients to make money without doing any work yourself.
Whatever remains after paying your service provider from the amount your client paid is your profit. For example, if you find a client who is ready to pay you $1000 to edit a video for him. Then you find a freelancer or a video editing agency who can edit the same video for $400, then you can keep the remaining $600 with yourself. The more you charge your client and the less you pay your service provider, the more money you make. Didn’t understand? Read it again, you’ll get it!
How to Get Started?
1. Choose a Niche
To start a dropservicing business, you must be good at some kind of skill or a particular niche. That can be web designing, video editing, graphic designing, content writing, etc. Even though you’re not the one doing the work, you need to have proper knowledge and skill in the field to convince your client that you’re capable enough and a perfect fit for the work.
2. Find Your Service Provider
After you’ve decided your niche, you need a service provider to do the required tasks for you. While choosing a service provider, you need to make sure that they are good at what they do; otherwise, you’ll end up with a low-quality output that may not satisfy your clients and may not fulfill their requirements. You can find service providers on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, etc., or on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
3. Setup a Platform
After you’ve decided your niche and found the service providers, you need to market your services in order to get clients. To do so, either you can create your own website, create a profile on freelancing platforms, or promote your services through social media.
While setting up a platform, you need to add your portfolio, past works, pricing, client testimonials, and contact information. Don’t worry if you don’t have any of these! You can add your service provider’s portfolio and client testimonials as yours while setting up your platform.
4. Set Your Prices
Before you launch your dropservicing business, you need to set a price for your services. While setting up pricing your services, find out how much your service provider is charging for the service you’re going to sell, and set your prices accordingly. For example, if your service provider charges $400 to edit a video, you can set your video editing price at $600, $700, or more.
You can promote your dropservicing business through content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, cold outreach, paid advertising, and freelance platforms.
Cold outreach is a process where you reach out to or contact someone via email who doesn’t have any connection with your business. The email is meant to aware them about your product or service and provide them with an offer.
Best Platforms to Start Your Business
If you’re thinking of starting a blog to get into affiliate marketing, then I would highly suggest you create your blog on either Wix or WordPress. These two are the best blog builders out there.
And if you’d like to create your own website to promote your digital products, dropshipping/dropservicing business, and print-on-demand products, then I would suggest you use GetResponse’s simple drag-and-drop website builder. It’s very easy to use and completely free to create and manage a website for lifetime. Getresponse also has its own email marketing tool, so, if you want, you can even start email marketing with it for completely free!
Tips to succeed:
1. Stay Consistent: You won’t see results overnight, so you need to be consistent to get results and make money.
2. Learn, Learn, Learn: Whatever business you get into, learn about it as much as you can. Learning will help you gather more knowledge about the topic, which ultimately helps you to get better results and earn more.
3. Be Patient: Many people give up too early because they are really, really impatient. Remember, great things take time, and if it were so easy and fast, then everyone would have done it.
4. Provide Value: If you want to make money, then you need to provide something that is equally valuable to your customers. So, make sure your main motive is to provide value along with making money.
So, these were the 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. Let me quickly recap them for you. 1. Affiliate marketing 2. Selling digital products 3. Print on Demand (POD) 4. Dropshipping 5. Dropservicing. Make sure to give them a try if you’re thinking of starting an online business. And tell me in the comments, which one of these businesses would you start if you have to?