Answer
Feb 27, 2019 - 06:31 AM
My two cents:
First, have you checked out Gumroad? They help creatives like your wife monetize their work. To date they have paid out $182 million (over the last few years). They make it super simple to set up a store front, display your ware and accept payments.
The founder (Sahil Lavingia) is a creative himself and deeply understands his customers' needs.
I would suggest doing the following:
1. Set up your Gumroad store
2. Pick 5 different items, promote them and then see which does best.
3. Once you have a feel for what is most in demand, eliminate the others and double down on that. The 80/20 rule holds in commerce (20% of your efforts will produce 80% of your sales) so it is best to stay lean.
4. Wait for orders and produce on demand. One of the guests on our How We Made It in Ecommerce series used this very strategy in the early days (because she didn't have money to hold lots of inventory) and did $4.7 million last year. We will publish it tomorrow but here is an excerpt from it:
She was the quintessential bootstrapper, starting in her kitchen with no outside capital, making just one or two products at a time. “I was smart enough to put on the website that it’s made fresh when ordered, so it could take two weeks to ship your order,” she says. She invested her own money in her website, products, and ingredients.
However, not having capital also meant that every dime the business made had to go right back into the business. “For probably the first year and a half to two years, I didn’t pay myself,” Felber adds. Instead, she used the money to do things like upgrade labels and buy new inventory.
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