Building a store for item sold by the lbs? need advice...

[s2kinteg916]

Looking to build my first ecom site

I have alot of traffic for a particular niche that im quite passionate about. I can get the item for around 1.52 i didnt calculate repackaging and gas

I can resell this for probally 4.5 to 5.00 a lbs ...

I would essentially only profit at 2.50 a lbs?

Is this a good enough margin? The startup cost are really low since i can get the item on a need to basis.

Im looking for somethign on the side to get my feet wet in the ecomerce site of things.

[Chris]

What is your volume, what is the average purchase price?

Normally for an ecommerce transaction you're paying like 30 cents plus 2.5% in processing. Plus whatever time to fill the order.

30 cents of 2.50 is a big chunk, if you only sell 1 pound at a time. Then you spend your time processing the order for only like 2.20 in profit? Yech.

If however people are buying 10 pounds at a time, much better situation, still not great profit.

On a product I stock I personally like at least $30+ in profit per sale. If I don't stock it and use a drop shipper I'll accept less.

The lower your profit per sale, the more sales you need to make good money, its why I like selling more expensive things than cheap things.

[s2kinteg916]

I see for beginners orders will be

2 lbs
5 lbs for more experienced

I think i can come up with a upsell package as well to double the order for the 2 lbers. I think this is the only way i could increase the order size like a starter kit....

One of the benefits is i dont have to stock the product and can pick it up on a weekly basis if needed.

Not looking to make a living off of this ... its my first venture into ecom .. would like a couple hundred a month extra ... Unsure if the return would be worthwhile mostly if im getting lots of support questions or customer service issues.