How to Start an Online Retail Business with No Money

The world of online retail is booming, and now is a great time to start a small business. Across the globe, online retail spending is steadily increasing, with rates up 1.4% overall from 2016 to 2018.

If you’re looking to start a business selling goods to consumers, now is an excellent time to get things going. But even if you’ve set up a website to sell your wares, it can be difficult to start a company if you have little cash flow.

Follow these steps to start a successful online retail business — even if you’re broke.

Get a small business loan

Finding seed money is crucial to you getting your business off the ground. Even if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, like most Americans are, that doesn’t mean that you can’t qualify for a small business loan. Many banks are running promotional bonuses so that individuals take out money to start a business.

If you can use this extra income as an added investment toward your business, signing up for a loan online can be a great plan of attack. Make sure to do everything you can to improve your credit score before applying for a loan, though, because a better score will ultimately give you a better deal with less interest. A number of places offer small business loans, which could be a good fit for you.

Purchase merchandise at a discount

Of course you can’t start a retail business without inventory to sell. When you’re deciding to start an online retail business, pick a specific niche to focus on. This can help you distinguish yourself from the rest of the crowd and help you build a brand. Online retail is a competitive space, and trying to do too much too soon is a recipe for disaster.

Purchasing Amazon return pallets online is one way to quickly stock up on products, especially clothing. Many times, clothing is returned because it doesn’t fit quite right or the buyer needs a different size; not because of any cosmetic defects. The same can be said for items such as furniture that may not fit in a room or match other pieces as expected.

If you can buy the products you sell at a steep discount from an online outlet for returns from major retailers, you can increase your profit margins dramatically.

Create an inventory

Amazon return pallets generally come in large, multipiece shipments. As a result, it can be overwhelming to begin to comb through the items and decide what you want to keep to sell and what items might be best left to donate to charity.

One smart way to keep track of your inventory is to take photos of everything that you plan to sell. You’ll likely need photos of each item when you list them for sale on your website or another e-commerce market, so getting a head start on taking pictures of your inventory is a good idea anyway.

With the right cloud photo storage option, you can easily organize and share millions of photos. This convenience and flexibility makes it easy to scale your business as you purchase more products to sell.

While it’s easy to start an online storefront on a website such as Amazon or eBay, finding products to sell can be challenging when you’re first starting out.

Launching a new business becomes even more tricky when you’re low on money and need to maximize a small business loan to the best of your ability. Having a resource to buy good merchandise from, such as Amazon returns, can be one way to build up a stock without spending your entire budget on overhead.

From there, you can begin to build a name for your business in the niche of your choice and start turning a profit — easily repaying your business loan in the process.