I wanted to scribble down a few things for people who, like me, saw this tweet and don't know the first thing about commerce, rather than those who are experts in the field. I don't come from a family involved in commerce. So, if I venture into commerce, I'll be the first in my family to do so. This means I have to learn everything on my own, starting my writing with a somewhat cool proposition like, "The person who learns something first, learns it at the highest cost."
Firstly, I want to talk about my own experience based on the advice given by Serkan Abi. I'm not writing this to imply anything about him.
After seeing a similar series of tweets, I was suddenly enlightened with the idea of selling on Amazon or Etsy. Of course, I started researching, and as I did, I began seeing ads on social media saying things like, "I made a million in turnover, do you want to do it too?" or "Are you still a white-collar worker, oh you poor thing?"
Thankfully, I love researching, and I'm an industrial engineer. I didn't immediately get carried away with dreams of making a million in turnover. I continued my research and realized that the reality wasn't as I had thought. But I had no intention of giving up. I decided to prepare a case study for myself.
I chose a product to sell on Amazon in the UK. I looked at sales figures, identified which keywords they used, and analyzed these keywords. I researched which keywords I could use to make sales and climb in the rankings. I examined all similar products (yes, all of them), determined why people gave 5 stars, and why some gave 1-2 stars, and took notes.
For a product that could solve the problems of those who gave 1-2 stars and included features praised by those who gave 5 stars, I went to Eminönü. I talked to wholesalers and got prices. I found suitable products and wholesalers for this work, got their prices. Then I started to identify my cost items. I needed to do a cost calculation to see if it made sense to sell the product. In other words, I needed to calculate the ROI.
Product cost, shipping costs, Amazon fees, FBA fees, the cost of giveaways, intermediary costs for giveaways, warehouse costs, fixed expenses, the most important of which are advertising expenses, and the costs for proper photos and videos of the products (I'm really bad at taking photos), estimated costs for each item including the estimated return rate in the relevant category to determine the cost per return. Who knows how many expense items I missed (like I said, I don't know the first thing about commerce).
The selling price of the product was more or less certain, the revenue item was single, but there were soooo many cost items. Anyway, I did the calculations, but I couldn't sell the products profitably. I started thinking about what I needed to do to make a profitable sale, which costs I could cut. I identified a few items quickly, but this didn't reduce my cost per product.
Eventually, I realized that the money I had wasn't enough to buy products to sell them profitably at the start. If I couldn't buy many products, I couldn't minimize logistics costs and per-unit product cost. I couldn't go directly to the manufacturer with the money I had because they would probably say, "Get lost!" :)
At this point, I either needed to be someone who knew commerce and had money or needed to be a manufacturer. During this time, I thought I should either sell niche, non-mass-produceable things or give up on this story (spoiler: I gave up, for now. Other opportunities came my way).
This is where Etsy and Amazon Handmade come into play. The products sold here are usually not mass-produced, personalized products. (Yes, we can produce digital products once and sell them multiple times, and there are some Etsy stores with very good propositions and products they sell, but those aren't things I can do, so off-topic). However, here, I could easily include one of the biggest cost items, like logistics, into the product. People really seem willing to pay money for a personalized product that they wouldn't normally spend.
At this point, I deepened my research and finally identified a category, reviewed sales data, keywords, etc., did an approximate cost calculation, and found that I could sell profitably. However, I DIDN'T MAKE A SINGLE SALE. There were two reasons: first, my visuals were terrible; second, my copywriting was awful. I decided to write product descriptions differently to avoid imitating other products, but they turned out really bad. Then I improved my product visuals as much as I could, revised my product descriptions, and changed my keywords. I advertised. I found other niche examples I could sell (suitable for the store I opened) and advertised them, but still, my visuals and copywriting weren't good enough.
After a while, I had to remove some products due to copyright notices (even if it's hand-knitted, you should avoid Disney products). In the end, due to consecutive mistakes and ignorance (apparently, a different strategy is needed for personalized products like those on Etsy, which I didn't know), I didn't sell a single product. When another opportunity in a different field came up, I decided to stop this business.
Looking back, I'm glad I researched and tried to sell something in a niche area on a platform like Etsy with low startup costs. This way, the money I spent on this experience was very low. Unfortunately, people can spend tons of money and face big losses.
Of course, I benefited from the experiences of many different people during this process. It's a great blessing to have people share their experiences without expecting anything in return, for those who know its value. I thank all of them on my behalf.
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