Make Money

Custom products

While the options above come bundled with the convenience of not holding on to expensive inventory, they also come with some limitations—mainly that you don’t have full control over the product you’re selling.

And when you think of most direct-to-consumer brands, this is what comes to mind: original products that make meaningful improvements or add interesting details to well-known items. Personally, I’ve purchased many messenger bags, but I’d never seen anything like the one made by Vermilyea Pelle until it reached my doorstep.

Making products by hand is popular among jewelry brands, fashion brands, and home décor brands. It gives you full control over the product development and quality of your items.

The only drawbacks are:

It can be time consuming

It’s difficult to scale

The costs associated with making products by hand are the cost of materials, storing your finished products, and labor.

Startup time: A few hours to set up your ecommerce platform, followed by however long it takes to create your custom products.

Effort to start: Medium, but it takes a lot of effort to maintain.

Time to first payment: The pay period using Shopify Payments is five days, plus the number of days remaining until your payout day.

What to know:

Sellers must collect the state tax where their item is delivered to.

Make sure to factor in your packaging costs when pricing your items.

You can set up a Shopify store and use it for free for 14 days.

Requirements:

Most ecommerce platforms require that you’re at least 18 years of age. If you’re under the age of 18, your parents can start one on your behalf.

Requirements vary by state, but you need to have licenses or permits to sell anything online.

Sell on Amazon

Amazon has become a marketplace that welcomes ecommerce entrepreneurs. It takes a few minutes to sign up for an account and a few more minutes to get a product listing live.

The platform has a massive audience, it’s a global marketplace, and it’s a go-to destination for product discovery and research. Listing optimization can help your products get found and unlock new opportunities. And Amazon’s in-app promotions can increase your brand’s visibility for highly targeted audiences.

Yet some ecommerce entrepreneurs question the long-term sustainability of selling on Amazon. While the marketplace is great for helping shoppers surface desired products, it’s challenging for sellers to get their business noticed. Amazon attracts many resellers of the same products you may offer.

Homesick went from not being on Amazon two years ago to becoming the number one scented candle company and the number two candle brand in the world. Amazon proved to be a good springboard for selling its products online.

Despite its success, Homesick used Shopify to build an online store as its home base. This gave the budding ecommerce business a place to showcase its brand, connect with its customers, and maintain control over its sales and promotions.

Startup time: A few hours, depending on how many products you’re listing.

Effort to start: Medium.

Time to first payment: 14 days after your first sale is delivered.

What to know:

You can only have one seller central account for each region you sell in, unless you have a legitimate business need to open a second account and all your accounts are in good standing.

Product detail pages do not belong to a single seller; they are for the specific product itself.

You must only ship products that you’ve included in the product detail page. Any additional items sent to the buyer is prohibited and may lead to the deactivation of your seller account.

You must confirm that you have shipped the product with Amazon in order to receive payment.

Requirements:

An Amazon account.Must provide a product feed to Amazon or use its FBA program and send your products to an Amazon warehouse.

Must be at least 18 years old to create an Amazon seller account.