5 Most Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Starting An Online Business

This article will list the 5 most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make, irrespective of what business they’re, but in particular when it comes to dropshipping. It’s worth noting that shopify product research is perhaps the most important step to succeed in this business model and this notion will be further discussed in this article.

They cut Corners in the wrong places with their businesses

So I recently received an email from a client who asked for feedback for their new business venture – an online store that sources products through a Drop Shipping business model. Upon looking at his store it became immediately apparent that the client was cutting corners and it had a visible impact on his store.

He did not create unique product descriptions that sell the benefits of the products and not just the features:

Well, as you can see, this is one area that was chosen to cut corners in to save time, but this was a big mistake. Choosing to give up fancy dinners and taking out a cook in exchange for simple, healthy food that takes 5 minutes prep. – good time save; not taking the time to make a good product product description – very bad! As an entrepreneur your goal is to make money and in order to do that you need to do two things really well:

1. Marketing
2. Sales

For an online store, your product page is literally your perch the customer. It’s your job to explain to your customers why you should buy it, how it will help you and convince you that you need it. So, yes, you do need to look for opportunities to cut corners, because we all have limited time, but you should always prioritize your sales and your marketing.

Where you can indeed cut corner, however, is the expensive apps and subscriptions. Whilst Oberlo remains the market leader, there are plenty of oberlo alternatives that are worth exploring.

They try to compete on price.

Let me just say this now: No matter your business, no matter your industry price competition is bad –  everyone loses. So what ss price competition? It’s a price war when you try to compete with others in your industry on price, and guess what –  you don’t have to do that.

Just because someone is selling a t-shirt on eBay for ten dollars doesn’t mean that you have to sell it for ten dollars too. Case in point, when I was running my video game store, one of my biggest sellers were Pokemon games for the Nintendo DS and the Game Boy Advance. One way I would get customers in is I would relist some of my games on Gumtree, a UK version of Craigslist. But back in my day people were selling these games for $20. Now all Pokemon games, even slightly less popular games like the ones I mentioned are still all mega popular popular. So, there were always a lot of listings, but I didn’t care. I’d list my copies of a Pokemon Emerald for $40. Gumtree customers would see five listings side by side for the exact same game for listing for $20 each and one listing was mine for $40

And guess whose game sold the fastest? Mine sold the fastest because I differentiated myself by having an amazing product listing. I had an awesome photo, I had a fantastic product description, I had an external website where customers were buying from me. They weren’t just buying a game, they were buying trust.

For this reason you should stop looking at your competitors who are selling items and services for lower prices and think that you need to price match them. Think about other ways to differentiate yourself instead.

They underestimate their customers intelligence.

I remember receiving an email from one of my clients. Who had started a new business venture. He had set up an online store selling watches that he was importing from China. On the surface it looks like a fancy watch store.

With that picture of the businessman on the front page in a suit wearing a nice watch. There was just one problem with that the prices looked pretty cheap for nice watches ($15-$25). My client wasn’t selling nice watches, he was reselling cheap fake luxury watches from AliExpress. And yet, here he was, trying to give his store this luxury, professional aesthetic. But you know what, it didn’t work –  because customers aren’t stupid.

Just because you mimic a fancy watch store and give your watch a pretentious French name like “Bande”, doesn’t mean customers will fall for it. Perhaps the client wasn’t trying to pretend that he was selling fancy watches for cheap prices, but it certainly came off that way. Remember, your customers are smart – don’t underestimate their intelligence.

Another thing worth mentioning is that you need to stay ahead with the times and hire developers to make chrome and firefox extensions – the importance of having a shopify chrome extension for your business cannot be overstated.

They try to do everything themselves

To start things off, one thing that you can never outsource is learning new skills, such as how to drive traffic to your shopify store, for example. You need to focus on what you’re good at and outsource those things that aren’t worth your time or that you’re bad at. Most people are not willing to do that. Most people are obsessed with preserving their money rather than their time, which leads me on to something that’s extremely important.

They are afraid to invest and lose money.

I recently went over to my parents house for dinner and I had a really great conversation with my father that I shared on my Instagram post that explained why I’m willing to spend so much on business class flights. It really frustrates me hearing comments of business owners lamenting spending $200 and not making that money back immediately and giving up.

I wish people would realize that seeing instant returns on their money isn’t realistic. But my dad surprised, he said that he doesn’t think I’m being very fair – people work hard for their money. They spend many hours each day working jobs that they don’t want to do to earn it. That money is precious to them –  of course are afraid to lose it. He actually made a great point.

It brought me back to the time when I used to work in a nine-to-five more like a nine to six job too, on the side after and sometimes during work, I would work on growing my new video game hacking storm business. During this time I spent literally thousands of dollars on purchasing products to sell and advertising and traffic campaigns that turned out to be useless. Now, of course, it was a great investment: I learnt my niche inside out and I became great at driving traffic and sales.

But getting there was definitely a sacrifice. My job only paid me an average salary, it wasn’t like I had lots of money to blow. During that time. I never counted the dollars I lost. In fact, losing money to make mistakes and learn lessons never bothered me at all. And then it hit me: Most people are obsessed with money. I’m obsessed with time. Losing money wasn’t scary to me because I knew that once I was successful I could make that money back, but that time that I speed stuck at my job, that was something that I could never get back. And so I became obsessed with doing whatever it took to escape the 9 to 5 grind.

And that sense of urgency meant that instead of viewing money as a scarce resource to protect I viewed it as simply a tool to helping me gain back my time and freedom. Remember, you can always make back your money, but you can never make back your time.