Does anyone have an online business?

I have Etsy and have had shopify before aswell x

My number one question would be; would you recommend sourcing products from china or locally (US) ?

@Molly do you have any advice, I’m just starting up?

I sold books on Amazon for a while. New and used. I would source from chain stores as well as thrift stores/garage sales etc. There is a bit of a learning curve, but overall it can be an okay side hustle. I just found that all of the sourcing was ultimately too time consuming for the payoff. And if you use FBA and books don’t sell within 6 months I believe, then you start to pay storage fees and it becomes even less worthwhile. I had some “bad buys” that were costing storage fees so I just pulled them from Amazon and stopped selling. It is also important to know that you can’t just sell anything. You’ll be gated in many categories as a new seller and you either have to get ungated by selling large volumes of other categories and maintaining good shop reviews, or you have to get a letter from the manufacturer of the gated product that has specifics like you can be a distributor.

What would you be selling? I know Etsy are really cracking down on making sure all the business are selling handmade things

I’d recommend starting small with retail arbitrage in the categories that are available to you, to get a feel for it. Do this before making any sort of investment in wholesale (Chinese) products. Ultimately, there is potential but it IS NOT a get rich quick platform. There is a lot of room to make mistakes and there is a big learning curve in how to grow.

I’ll also add that I followed a girl on IG who lived out of her car and travelled around the USA and sold arbitraged items and books on Amazon to provide her some income. Sourcing for a few hours a day on average, plus the time to do the Amazon listings and send the product in… after all of that she was only profiting about $1500 per month. Which is maybe sustainable when you’re living out of your car and your expenses are lower, but she eventually moved home and went back into the workforce.