Running an eCommerce Store When You’re a Digital Nomad

The world is constantly expanding with amazing and unique opportunities to travel and make a living while doing it! If you’ve ever wondered how you can explore exotic places within your home country and pay for it or how to change jobs so that you can trek the globe and experience a variety of cultures, but wonder how you’d survive, there are plenty of ways to do it.

One of the best ways is to create a local and an international eCommerce store; one where you are selling products relevant to where you travel. The beauty of this scenario is that you are a seller, not a shipper. You get to sell a product, but the actual handling of the product is done by a third party. This allows you to roam freely.

Here are some ways to create eCommerce income while maintaining a nomadic lifestyle.

Do Your Research

Before setting up your store, observe what is selling well in the area you want to visit. Look for others who are successfully moving a product or service that you offer. There is valuable information to be gleaned from watching others who are already attracting the same customers you are looking for. Maybe they are aggressively marketing their brand, maybe they are offering discounts, or perhaps they are presenting local and relevant products. Watch the trends and track what the competition is doing well. When you see the pattern, then you can tweak it or improve it for your own needs.

Pro Tip: What you may not see are other important things like making sure that taxes and shipping rates are set up on your ordering page, setting up a reliable payment method such as Paypal or Square for both the desktop or mobile user, and auto emails to communicate with your customers.

Personalize Your eCommerce Store

Tailoring your site to local or international markets is a simple way to build relationships and boost sales:

• Create a sense of urgency to purchase or engage by offering a limited time offer using a discount or a freebie when they provide an email address or make a purchase. Again, use the items you find on your travels when possible.
• Offer suggestions for your services or products at specific times of day or by the location of the customer.
• Suggest items or services based on what industry or market they are currently in.

Always Promote Your eStore

Your eStore isn’t much good if others cannot find it. There are a few basic things you can do to help yourself:

• Make your site easy to find – give it a simple URL and business name.
• Leverage applicable social media outlets – again, keep it simple. You don’t have to use them all, but whatever venue you choose, use it well.
• Create an event or seasonal calendar to promote special sales or promotions for your target audience – wherever they may be.
• Figure out some unique promo products to have on hand to send to new potential customers.
• Keep your customers in the loop about what is happening with your products or services. Use email, social media, and a blog for best results.

Create & Monetize A Blog

One of the best ways to promote your eCommerce store is to incorporate blogging. Start by creating and monetizing a blog that incorporates writing about your trips as well as your product photography and videography about the services in your store.

Chances are, you are journaling about your experiences anyway, why not talk about your store at the same time? Blog readers are very interested in the personal side of the writer’s life. If you can write in such a way that you are revealing parts of your adventure in a story format, followers will engage, making it easier to attract affiliate advertisers to your blog and begin generating income. The more you explore and blog, the more engaged your audience becomes, the more likely they are to purchase from your store, and your income potential and blog value increases.

Here are a few tips to boost your success with generating revenue through blogging about your store:

• Implement affiliate advertisements and links. Research companies of all kinds that are willing to advertise on your blog. Strategically speaking, advertisers that a related to travel or your product will be the best.
• Direct affiliate sales take place when you know your niche and want to work with local companies in a particular area. Meet with company owners and present the benefits of working together and you quickly become an expert on site as well as on the web.
• Sponsored posts are blogs that are created for a particular company with a specific focus. Write an article on your site incorporating a link back to the sponsor’s site, thus driving up their SEO and yours. You may have a little less control over topics, but you’ll be paid rather handsomely for setting it up, adding to it, and maintaining its integrity. A working knowledge of basic SEO like title tags, keyword research, etc is important as well.
• Become a brand ambassador for a company. For example, you may find a company that sells gear for surfing that will let you try it out, put it to the test, and promote sales of that gear. This also applies to other products or services for a particular brand – restaurants, attractions and the like.
• Do your research and find podcasts that want to be promoted or that you want to boost and cross-market each other. You can write about what they are talking about and they can talk about what you’re writing about. Win-win.

By tailoring your store, products and services and consistently promoting your store and blogging about your adventures while you travel, you can fund your travels and encourage sales on your eCommerce store. The road is calling. Answer it.

Business, travel