10 E-commerce Business Ideas You Can Start with Little Investment

Beginners or people on a busy schedule will find e-commerce business ideas a great entry point. They will allow you to start a side business without taking time away from your main activity.

Many business ideas require money and time, not to mention risk. However, there are multiple ways to get started that let you focus more on the ideas and less on upfront and logistics costs.

It’ll still be necessary to create a brand, provide high-quality customer support, and invest some effort in marketing.

Here are ten e-commerce business ideas you can start with little to no investment.

Affiliate Marketing

This is among the most common ways to make money online. It’s where you earn a commission to promote a product. People usually either promote information products like e-books, video series, and membership sites or partner with Amazon. Both options have pluses and minuses.

The former can get you as much as 50% in commission. Entry barriers are low, and finding products to promote is not difficult by any means.

On the other hand, quite a few people have found success with Amazon. It can be lucrative with millions of products to choose from.

Buying and Reselling Domains

If “flipping” means something to you, you’d know what this business is about. Some people buy and “flip” cars or houses, meaning they purchase them, fix them up, then sell them for a profit. You can flip any product, even domains.

You can buy someone’s site and then resell it for a nice profit. It can be your own domain too. In every event, it’s sure to be a good source of income.

A Pet Business

The pet industry is worth almost $100 billion, so getting started in it is not hard. Demand is guaranteed. You could offer training, walking, or grooming expertise or sell toys, food, or accessories.

Online Courses or Products

If you’re experienced in a certain area, why not create a digital course or product? You can publish a course on Amazon, grow an email list, and start from there. If you’d rather not do it through Amazon, you’ll need to promote it yourself through your email lists and site. This will incur the additional investment of creating a visually appealing sales page that will motivate people to buy from you.

Dropshipping

With drop shipping, you have an online store and get a commission for every product you sell. You sell exclusively other people’s products, and you don’t do any of the shipping or producing. Is dropshipping worth it? The short answer is yes, as it offers some compelling advantages compared to other business models. You don’t need to contribute much, and there is a low entry barrier. What’s more, you don’t risk buying products that end up selling poorly or not at all.

One of the biggest pluses of dropshipping is the sheer multitude of products you can sell. These include health and personal care items, kitchen and grocery, wardrobe and accessories, home and bedroom, office supplies, and more.

It’s even possible to sell unconventional products this way. For example, dropshipping can help you sell sex toys online. If you might consider this and you’re unwilling to or can’t invest much, dropshipping is probably the only way to go.

A sex toy reseller has to pay for inventory, fees for an online shop, and rent for storage space. This will cost a few thousand dollars. Startup costs are lower for manufacturers, but supplies and equipment and supplies will still set them back hundreds or thousands. Upfront minimums are due on branded packaging as well.

With drop shipping, you won’t have any control over product manufacturing and shipping, but all it will take to start the business is a basic website and the bare minimum of online tools.

A Fashion Boutique Online

You could create a fashion boutique online if you love fashion and want to share your sense of style. You don’t need a degree in fashion design or even employment experience as a designer.

Simply apply the dropshipping model to curate items for your store.

Self-Publish

You can make money with Amazon by publishing your own book. The global platform has a number of practical, straightforward guides to help you write your book and generate income. If you sell a few hundred copies in the first week, Amazon will start promoting your book.

Before launching it on the marketplace, distribute a survey to people on your email list and your friends and relatives. This will increase the probability of successful sales and validate your idea.

Charity Business

Social entrepreneurship is a great way to support causes you care about and position your business in the market. Your company has a mission and makes a profit in the process of achieving it.

You can offer an original product or use someone else’s idea and partner with a non-profit organization.

Start an E-commerce Store

E-commerce stores are among the best ways to earn online income. Many of your competitors will be old-school types with limited online marketing capabilities, if any. They have old-fashioned, buggy, glitchy sites, giving you an amazing opportunity to not only improve upon the existing foundation but also benefit from their weaknesses.

To ensure success for your store, search for a profitable market. Do keyword research, brainstorm, try to get as specific as possible.

Once you’ve come up with a potentially lucrative product, ask yourself to what extent it’s popular. Perhaps the market is beyond its peak and starting to decline. Look for niches that are on the upswing. These are the ones that will give you the highest potential for growth and profit.

Sell Homemade or Handcrafted Goods

Being a producer puts you in the unique position to launch an online store. The product’s development and procurement are in your hands, literally speaking, regardless of whether you’re making pottery, candles, soap, or sauce.

You can start with a small batch of products or on a per-order basis until the sales you generate become forecastable. This is because shipping and inventory management must be taken into account.

Hope Bell, the owner and baker at Chummys Bakery UK, commented, “Selling homemade or handcrafted goods online is a fantastic idea for those with a passion for crafting. It allows you to showcase your unique creations to a wider audience without the need for a physical storefront. Plus, the ability to start small and scale up as demand grows makes it a low-risk venture. As someone who started my bakery business from scratch, I can attest to the joy of sharing homemade products with customers online