Over the past few years it has been proven that ecommerce businesses that capitalize on industry trends and growth frequently achieve profitability more quickly. While ecommerce businesses generate considerable interest among prospective entrepreneurs, these ventures are far from uniform. While some ecommerce businesses can be started with a small financial investment and a simple wordpress or a shopify website, others may require more time and money to grow.
Consider the following ecommerce business ideas for 2022 to determine which one meets your interests the best. When it comes to building a successful ecommerce business, the sky is the limit. While you should follow your passion and be inventive, these 10 ecommerce company ideas can assist you in capitalizing on current trends and industry growth.
10 profitable ecommerce business ideas for 2022
1. Subscription-based business models
There is a reason that an increasing number of businesses are choosing a monthly or quarterly subscription model. In essence, it’s a simple approach to ensure recurrent revenue from clients. According to a 2019 survey, subscription-based revenues have increased by more than 300 percent over the last seven years.
Subscription models are adaptable to a wide variety of online enterprises. They function as follows: a consumer agrees to pay a predetermined amount that the corporation automatically charges to the credit card on file each time the next installment is sent out—typically monthly, but subscriptions can also be weekly or quarterly. After the customer has been charged, they will either receive a physical product (or collection of things) or obtain access to online platforms and digital products.
This is an excellent ecommerce company concept because the opportunities are nearly limitless. Subscription models are appropriate for things that require regular use, such as razors or toothbrushes, as well as pleasurable items like makeup or apparel. Certain subscription services are only available for digital products: Subscription services have helped music, movies, online communities, and even retail platforms such as Multichoice’s Showmax and DSTV App. If this approach works for you, you have the potential to earn and save a significant amount of money. After all, acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. And in case you’re curious, according to Businesstech, Multichoice will earn almost R22 billion in 2021 from subscription services alone.
2. Meal distribution
One-time orders or subscription-based strategies can benefit a meal delivery business. Many working people are willing to invest a little additional money on convenience in an increasingly busy and frantic world. Frozen meals, meal preparation kits, and fresh food delivery are all more popular than they have ever been. If you can successfully fill a niche in this area (gluten-free, vegan, paleo, etc. ), you may be able to attract a committed audience with unmet demands. By 2025, the worldwide online meal delivery market is estimated to reach a value of R2 trillion.
3. Education via the internet
Do you possess important expertise that you are willing to share with the rest of the world? This ecommerce company concept may be ideal for you. Education encompasses much more than literary analysis and arithmetic. There are numerous individuals seeking to improve themselves without returning to a real classroom. Creating online courses, ebooks, and other forms of instructional content (such as blog articles or videos) can assist your audience in learning—and also help you earn large money.
While you may always host this type of educational content on your own website, platforms like as Teachable simplify the process of generating and selling online courses. Additionally, you can sell your course via online education marketplaces such as Udemy. If you prefer to sell ebooks, you can do so directly from your website or through third-party platforms such as Amazon or Etsy.
According to Forbes, sales of e-learning are expected to reach $325 billion by 2025. Because online education is delivered via web portals, there is no need to invest in high-cost production or supply costs. This is a cost-effective ecommerce business opportunity for anyone willing to give their valued skill set.
4. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is another low-cost ecommerce business concept you might pursue. If you already have an online presence and have built authority on a particular subject, this could be an extremely simple method to supplement your income. Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which individuals act as representatives for other businesses. In essence, you can join affiliate programs (also known as referral programs) with brands that correspond with the interests of your audience. For instance, a fashion blogger might collaborate with a retailer to promote their clothing. They can share their favorite gowns or shoes on their blog or social media and give links to the products or discount codes to help their audience save money on their purchase.
Affiliate marketers track the number of clicks and sales they send to a brand using specific links and codes. The brand will then compensate the content producer for their efforts. It’s critical to collaborate with companies that complement your personal brand and target audience; otherwise, you risk appearing inauthentic. A fashion blogger who is constantly attempting to get her audience to check out the latest outdoor equipment or financial software is likely to alienate her following. However, those products may be ideal for other content makers. If you currently have a successful business website or blog, affiliate marketing may be the logical next step in monetizing the visitors to your website.
5. Organic products
Consumers have developed a growing interest in things that assist them in living a more natural or ecologically friendly lifestyle. Cleaning, housekeeping, cosmetic, and personal hygiene products manufactured with safe and clean components capitalize on a rapidly growing trend. The global market for natural cosmetics is expected to expand from R4.2 trillion in 2019 to R630 trillion in 2027.
Emphasizing natural and organic foods is also a worthwhile trend to capitalize on.
6. Health and wellness services
Wellness is triumphant. As with natural and organic products and foods, many customers are investing in wellness-related products. From gym gear to essential oils to meditation applications, there’s something for everyone. Anything that can assist customers in unwinding, feeling better, and living a healthy lifestyle is attractive at the present. The worldwide health and wellness business is predicted to be valued R52 trillion in 2019. Therefore, cultivate your Zen and launch a fitness or other wellness-related ecommerce business.
7. Guidance and mentoring
In a similar fashion to online schooling, you can sell your coaching or mentoring services via an ecommerce website. This type of business involves significantly less effort than generating ebooks or e-courses and can be operated entirely through a website and a series of phone calls or in-person meetings.
However, this structure precludes passive revenue. To earn money, you must consistently supply services. Whereas with online education choices such as video material or an e-course, you may build a product once and profit from it for years to come. However, coaching and mentoring are a more straightforward method to test the waters of online education and build a devoted customer base. Appointment scheduling software can assist you in managing your calendar and allowing clients to verify your availability simply.
8. Services relating to creativity
Are you a creative individual? Are you adept at creating eye-catching logos, writing persuasive content, and arranging flowers like nobody’s business? You appear to be a creative at heart—and to possess some marketable skills that you can sell online. Numerous creative professionals sell their wares and services online. Designers, photographers, and writers, among others, can advertise their skills and sell any existing products online. For instance, a web designer can give clients custom website designs or sell pre-made templates at a discount through their ecommerce business.
9. Technical assistance
Thus, you may not be the creative type. However, if you’ve acquired a technical skill set, you can market your in-demand abilities online. Are you able to provide technical support? Are you a whiz at coding? Perhaps you have software or an application that you are interested in selling. Even if your product or service is only available via a device, you can launch a thriving ecommerce business. Fortunately, without the associated costs of production, warehousing, packaging, and shipping.
10. Dropshipping
As an example, suppose you want to launch an ecommerce firm selling physical things but are hesitant to commit to product development, sourcing, and manufacturing. Not to mention the fact that inventory must be stored and products must be shipped. There is an excellent method for simplifying the process of selling things, and it is called dropshipping. If you’re a dropshipper, you’ll sell things directly from a manufacturer or supplier to clients. You’ll earn a commission on each transaction but are not required to purchase merchandise (although some initial charges may apply) that you may be unable to sell.
For the record, the global dropshipping market is expected to develop at a compound annual rate of 28.8% from 2019 to 2025. Collaboration with larger merchants enables you to take advantage of their more inexpensive and expedited shipping options, warehouses, and other valuable resources. This ecommerce company concept is an excellent way to get your feet wet in the field with minimal risk.
6 tips to start a successful ecommerce business in South Africa
E-commerce is on track for tremendous growth over the next few years, but only if you approach it in the appropriate manner. That involves focusing on the following ecommerce success recommendations on how to start a successful ecommerce business.
1. Don’t hurriedly introduce your product
Forcing or hurrying the launch of a website is one of the most common blunders made by failing ecommerce companies. You only get one chance to launch your website, so don’t blow it. While it’s fine to buy a domain name and put up a “Coming Soon” page, you should hold off on the big reveal until you’ve created some solid groundwork. Put together your digital marketing strategy (SEO, content marketing, social media, paid advertising). Consider which platform to use, WooCommerce or Shopify, which payment gateway is best suited to service your needs. All these things need to be in order before you announce the launch of your new e-commerce venture.
2. Put the customer first
Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos is known to have built the world’s largest ecommerce store purely based on the principle of priotizing his business’s customers.
Because customers can’t physically touch, smell, or see things before purchasing them, ecommerce businesses have a major drawback in comparison to brick and mortar stores. With no immediate answer, you can make up for this shortfall in other areas of the company. Among the best ways to increase sales is to offer reasonable prices, free shipping, and simple shopping carts.
3. Involve yourself in the social media marketing
Any ecommerce entrepreneur that outsources social media or delegates it to his/her employees is guaranteed to fail. Social Media is the core of your business’s existence, failure to understand this is a recipe for failure. You can get an unrestricted view of your consumers’ life through social media, which is the heartbeat of your business. If you have a social media manager, it’s important that you’re active in the process as well.
4. Stay up to date on search engine optimization
Ecommerce is seeing significant expansion, which will lead to an ever-expanding marketplace. In order to stand out from the crowd, it will be imperative to keep up with search engine optimization (SEO). SEO experts can help you stay ahead of the curve in the long run.
5. Research your competitors
Finding a product, evaluating its potential and finding a supplier are all things you’ve done. It’s also important to properly investigate your competitors so that you know exactly what you’re up against and how you can distinguish your ecommerce from theirs.
6. Write your ecommerce business plan
Now that you’ve done your market research, it’s time to put your business plan into action. Having a business plan is like having a road map that directs you to where you want to go. If you want to know what your company’s goals are and how you can best attain them, you need a solid business plan to guide your efforts.
What are the 4 types of ecommerce businesses?
1. Business to consumer (B2C)
When a company sells its goods and services directly to the people who use them, it is said to be doing business-to-consumer (B2C). Business-to-consumer (B2C) refers to businesses that offer their products or services directly to their customers. During the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, the term “business-to-consumer” (B2C) became extremely popular to describe online shops who marketed goods and services to customers over the Internet. To put it simply, B2C is a business model that focuses on selling products and services directly to consumers, rather than selling products and services to other businesses.
2. Business to business (B2B)
This type of transaction occurs when two or more businesses, such as a manufacturer and wholesaler or a wholesaler and retailer, engage in a business-to-business (B2B) transaction. This type of commerce refers to business undertaken between two or more businesses, rather than between a business and an individual customer.’ Business-to-business (B2B) transactions are distinct from B2C.
3. Consumer to business (C2B)
In a consumer-to-business (C2B) market, a customer provides a product or service that an organization can use to perform a task or gain an advantage in the marketplace. The C2B methodology entirely reverses the usual business-to-consumer (B2C) model, in which a company creates services and goods for consumer use. The C2B method arose as a result of the proliferation of popular consumer-generated media and content across many consumer segments, such as websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, and social networks.
A customer under the C2B model offers a business a fee-based opportunity to sell a product or service on the consumer’s website or blog. A website owner is compensated for reviewing a product or service via blog articles, videos, or podcasts in this form of arrangement. Paid advertisement space is usually available on the consumer website as well.
4. Consumer to consumer (C2C)
Consumer to consumer (C2C) is a business model in which third-party organizations enable transactions between private customers for items or services without a corporation participating on either end of the sale. The majority of C2C transactions are now handled through online businesses. Good examples of C2C platforms are Gumtree, Facebook Market Place and OLX.
7 online services in demand
1. SEO Specialist
A Search Engine Optimization or SEO Specialist evaluates, analyzes, and optimizes a website for search engines, resulting in the website ranking higher in search results on major search engines such as Google and Bing.
An SEO professional optimizes individual pages on a website to assure appropriate search results and to provide a great user experience, hence increasing website traffic, lead volume, and brand exposure. In other words, an SEO Specialist is no different than any other digital or traditional marketing professional in that they are ultimately tasked with increasing sales for the firm for which they work.
Through keyword research and the use of SEO tools such as Google Analytics, an SEO Specialist may boost a website’s exposure on Google, which has significant benefits for any business. Additionally, some may collaborate closely with other members of a marketing team to establish new projects or improve social media management in order to increase user engagement and traffic.
2. Remote technical support
Remote Technical support (commonly abbreviated as remote tech support) is a generic term that refers to a variety of user-friendly services that businesses remotely provide to their consumers regarding technical issues with items such as software, mobile devices, or other equipment. These are support services aimed at resolving frequent user issues, as opposed to product training, which provides guidance on how to use a product efficiently.
Technical support has evolved from a reactive job to a proactive one. It encompasses a broad range of services, including but not limited to, Data centre support, Cloud support, Web Hosting support, Helpdesk support and Product support.
3. Business Coach
A business coach is a mentor who provides assistance, education, and motivation to business owners. They make advice regarding a company’s vision, growth, and objectives. Effective business coaches not only motivate, but also implement and prioritize growth methods.
4. Online Teaching
Online teachers and online instructors, often known as remote teachers, distance teachers, or virtual teachers, are those who have received specialized training to educate students online.
5. Buying and Selling Domains
Purchasing and selling domains can be a lucrative side hustle. Domain auctions and sales happen on relatively short time frames, making it especially useful for freelancers or persons with erratic schedules. Don’t expect to be able to quit your day job and live off domain speculation full-time.
6. Desktop Publishing
Desktop publishers produce page layouts for print or electronic dissemination using publishing software. They may edit content by ensuring that it is free of errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Desktop publishers frequently collaborate with other members of the design, media, or marketing industries, such as writers, editors, and graphic designers.
7. Social Media Consultant
A social media consultant is a professional who specializes in the strategy and development of social media campaigns. Businesses and clients frequently hire them to create and grow a business’s social media presence through marketing strategies and strategic procedures.
