How to Launch a Niche Baby Products E-commerce Website

How to Launch a Niche Baby Products E-commerce Website

Have you ever wondered exactly how to launch a niche baby products E-commerce website? If you’re thinking about being an mompreneur, here is some good news for you. Today, it is easier than ever to get started. A decade ago, the overhead costs would have been more significant, and the hurdles much higher. But with the current e-commerce technology at your disposal, launching a business isn’t nearly as difficult as you’d think.

Starting your own e-commerce business also affords you a few of your own benefits. First and foremost, you’ll set your own hours, which makes it easy to set a unique schedule that caters to your parenting. Secondly, you’re the boss and can recommend and sell products that you enjoy and can vouch for. And lastly, you get the satisfaction of having your very own successful online business. Not many people can say that.

With that in mind, here are three crucial tips for launching your own successful niche e-commerce business:

Choose a Niche
To compete with other businesses on the market, it’s important that you choose a niche. The fact is, the baby and child product market is saturated, and there has to be a good reason for consumers to choose your company over a name brand businesses.

For example, maybe your niche would be curating STEM toys like E-Blox, and selling them via partnerships, through affiliate programs or drop shipping. Or maybe you’d want to sell safety devices for kids, like this wearable phone with GPS. Whatever the case, a niche sets your business apart. To help you think of some niche ideas, it helps to go to sites like Amazon and check out what categories they for a specific section. For example, in Amazon, you can see the following categories under baby products:

Activity & Entertainment
Apparel & Accessories
Baby & Toddler Toys
Baby Care
Baby Stationary
Car Seats & Accessories
Diapering
Feeding
Gifts
Nursery
Potty Training
Pregnancy & Maternity
Safety
Stroller & Accessories
Travel Gear

Once you have your niche locked down, you can move on to the next step: creating your website and choosing a platform and host.

Utilize the Right Platform
The platform you choose to sell your products on can make or break your business—and your budget. For beginners who are launching their first business, WooCommerce hosting is a solid option. Users are able to choose from thousands of premium, niche themes, which eliminate much of the guesswork for the entrepreneur and allows them to get up and running quickly.

Additionally, with WordPress, you’re able to utilize plugins to extend the core functionality of your website. With this, you’re able to do virtually anything and fully customize your site to make it your very own. Take a look at this list of the best WooCommerce plugins.

Choose Your Product Source
One of the biggest decisions you’ll make is where to get your products from. Choosing your product source will lay the foundation of your business for years to come. There are a few primary choices you can have, and it’s important to analyze and explore each one:

Sell your own products.
This is probably the hardest of the three primary choices, but it yields the largest profit margin. In this case, you have your own product, and either intend to make them at home, or find a reliable manufacturer. Either way, you have to handle your own product branding from scratch. Of course, when it comes to dealing with products for children, you may have to get approved with a Children’s Product Certificate.

Utilize drop shipping.
Drop shipping is a unique market model that allows you to sell products on wholesale sites on your own websites. This is where great marketing and curation needs to come in. For example, you might choose a handful of great products on a site like AliExpress, alter the description and price, and take new photographs (yes—you should order samples). The upside to this choice is that you don’t have to spend money to hold inventory. Instead, you ship the product directly from the manufacturer to the consumer when it’s ordered. On the downside, you have no control over quality and profit margins are often lower.

Use affiliate programs
This is where you link to branded products that already exist, however, you aren’t limited to just those products on wholesale sites. You could promote products on more premium sites, like Uncommon Goods, and even Amazon. In fact, many brands that you know and love have affiliate programs, and even those that don’t might be interested if you reach out.

With an affiliate setup, you get a commission of the product price when the product is sold. Products are sold on a separate consumer site, so purchases don’t actually happen on your site, although it initially appears that way, as you’ll have a traditional product page that simply takes your user to a third-party site if they intend to make a purchase. This setup likely yields the least profit around, but you wouldn’t have to deal with any product at all.