Published on September 26th, 2019 | by Guest

How I Made £5000 in 2 Months Selling Phone Cases

Starting your business is certainly a HUGE decision and mine was not an exception. Entering into the drop shipping business for selling phone cases was an exciting as well as challenging thing. Especially when I had no previous experience of starting even a small scale business.

I tried to make plans but

Not only my business but my experience too was newly born in the field. But like a long-awaited moment I started working on a raw ground. I only had the hazy ideas of how I should start and what should be the direction. On every weekend, I spent sleepless nights to make strategies. However, sometimes things don’t work according to your plans and for a first time business person most of the times conditions are unexpected.

I decided to go with the flow and learn subsequently

As I was completely new to the business world, I was aware that I cannot know everything in advance. There is no use to make my own plans. It is better to learn things and keep implementing them. At least I should have a start, I continued with my research.

After doing all the mind-boggling struggle and consuming a huge lot of information I came on a conclusion. The core thing I realised that nothing can teach me better than the experience. I decided to give it a start and then face whatever comes.

The search for the product

You don’t always search the niche first. Sometimes it is better to first find the product and then figure out the situations that it serves. It is like finding a solution first and then pair it to the related problems. However, the obvious condition is that the product should be in demand.

I went deep, deep and deep. Many ideas crossed my mind, from furniture to textiles to grocery. I went to related stored and explored the online products but somewhere felt incomplete.

One night while searching things on the internet, I saw a pop-up advertisement on phone cases. I thought – NOT BAD!!!! I clicked on the ad not to buy anything but just to gain knowledge on this idea. I extended my research to the abundance, which was in front of me to be explored.

At first, I got confused as there was so much to start with but a focussed approach was needed. If it is phone cases then what exact type of phone case it should be? I went to Pinterest, did Google to explore something unique in this field.

Finally, I got one – The marble phone case. The idea came when I saw some images on Pinterest. I liked it and it was in demand and found that people are crazy about it.

Now, I had a product – THE MARBLE PHONE CASES

Now came the question of money

I wanted the funds in a big amount to take forward my plans after completing all my preconditions. I was desperately looking for business loans and explored many lenders like – START UP LOANS, crowdcube, THINK BUSINESS LOANS, amigo loans, BIZL business lending etc. All were good but not perfect. If one was giving a good deal on rate quotes, its repayment plans were stringent. Other was fast in application procedure but APR was too high. I got frustrated and found myself helpless but I didn’t stop searching. Finally, I got to a direct lender – British-lenders.uk. A UK based online lending company that offers lucrative deals on loans. Well, I am using the word lucrative because actually borrowed funds from this lender.

A name and a logo was needed

After I borrowed the money, I was confident to take further my plans. People need a name to remember, refer and click on. I mind-boggled many names and despite I was enjoying it, I was always aware of the time factor. I wanted to come to a decision as soon as possible. I made a list of the shortlisted names that I may like to carry for my business. Marble Merry Cases, Marble Nature, Shiny Marble Cases, Stony Phone Cases, many more came to my mind.

The name that I finally picked was Stony Case. I was confident on my decision as it was too close to my product and expressed well about what I actually offer.

Now I wanted a logo. That small figure should describe my idea and product well. For that, I visited some websites to inspire by creativity on design. I picked some ideas and then went on Pixir to try my hands. I just tried and tried and tired and created a design that expressed my idea beautifully.

Time to open shopify store

Now that I had my own identity, it was the right moment to start my account with shopify. I went for 14 day free trial to open my first store.

While working on this part I focused on the following points –

I wanted a fundamental store in which I can use maximum of the available features.
While doing the same I created the online store.
Now I wanted a good store design, I finally chose one with multiple customisation options.

Product pages – The Next Vital Step

This includes two important aspects –

Product images
Product description

My manufacturer provided me some great photos that were perfect to start with. For the description, I decided to depend on myself, as I know my products better. Besides, a businessperson should always know how to describe his services or products.

With a product in choice, it was needed to be on a drop shipping/retail website – Oberlo was my choice

I was curious to know if the marble phone cases are available on Oberlo or not. From starting, this website was in choice and I found the product on the website yipeee..

People should know about my presence – Marketing and promotion part

Now when I was to ready to be explored by the customers, first of all they should know about my store. Marketing and promotional activities were the much needed things. Just like other businesspersons, I decided to go with the normal trend. I preferred to go for Facebook promotion.

I created a product page and used all the Facebook Marketing Tools.

Facebook ads
Agora Pulse
Short Stack
Likealyzer
Facebook page barometer
AgoraPulse Contest
Affiliate marketing through Facebook

Got my first sale – WOWWWW! On top of the world

I worked and I started getting leads. I was so very happy that finally I am getting return on my investment. My first order came through my Facebook product page and I was feeling proud on my decision. The perfect precision of this platform to target the exact crowd did more than half of my work on marketing and promotion aspect.

Created an Email list with the data obtained

I got the details of the visitors and buyers from my page, which helped me make my e-mail i.ds. It worked greatly as I can now use them (in the future too) to send my product details through bulk emailing. I also designed a professional e-mail message focussing my customers. Images, colours, graphics, a good mix of all these brought an amazing result. Now I just keep adding things like – seasonal offers! Discount deals! festive rebates! etc. to keep the approach latest. I sent the mails to many and still gathering the data to spread the word to countless prospective customers.

Detected my first mistake and it was HUGE – I had to work for the improvement

I was so very happy to see that my ads and promotion tactics are working. To stay in good touch of my growth, I brought Google Analytics to judge the performance. It showed me that how frequently people were coming and were looking for my products. Great!!

But then, I started realising that despite the regular visit by the customers, no purchase was made. I was stunned, what exactly went wrong? Why it was happening? It was all so heartbreaking. People were coming and adding my product in their cart and even mentioned their personal details and then all just vanished off.

With no clue, I just went to my shopify store and while checking things randomly I found something unexpected. While creating the store I didn’t complete my shipping settings. Such a blunder, I was shattered as I lost 25 customers in last one week.

I had to get them back. I suddenly created a new promotional plan apologising for a technical glitch. I offered a 20% discount on all the deals. It didn’t work much. However, in the three days after fixing the problem I got my first two orders.

Delivering my orders with Oberlo

Oberlo is an organised platform that simplifies the procedures. It tackles outstanding orders amazingly. Once you click on ‘order product’ Oberlo goes on your browser and drops customer’s shipping information. And from my mistakes you can learn to stay cautious and make sure that you do not miss to set up all your Oberlo settings.

You learn from my experience – ‘to know’ things before you start business

I have a feel of achievement but as I had no previous experience I did some mistakes and took some wrong decisions. Take a look and make sure that you do not repeat them in your case.

I should have recruited some influencers to get their pictures posted with marble cases.
I should have informed the customers on the product page that with ePacket, order comes within 2 – 3 weeks. This is a big news for any customer as normal delivery time (without ePacket) is 2 months.
I didn’t get versatile in targeting customers. I should have expanded my limits. However, I am doing it now.

Conclusion

After all the bumpy experiences and a mix of right and wrong I earned £5000 in 2 months. Not bad right? I invested £8000 from the money I borrowed and compared to that I think I am good. Especially, with no prior experience, it is not too bad too. I am determined to improve in the coming years and my target is to earn new heights of profit. You either wish me luck or come to my Shopify store and buy some products. Both are similarly lucrative for me.

Tags: lending, loans, money, phone case, product marketing, sales, selling