How do you like to spend your free time? Are you a sporty person? Do you enjoy participating in various sporting activities? If so, have you ever considered starting a business selling sports products and accessories? We have prepared a list of steps to start a small business in the sports niche for aspiring entrepreneurs like you.
In today’s world, it doesn’t take a lot to start your own business, especially in the world of ecommerce. There are a lot of ways you can start a venture but one of the most effective ones is starting a dropshipping business. It doesn’t require a lot of investments and has far fewer risks than a typical business.
Anyone has the potential to start, all it takes is a little dedication and determination to achieve your goals. The end result will bring you a step closer to achieving the dream of attaining financial freedom and independence. After all, it’s only fair that everyone has an opportunity to live their best life.
Here at Sellvia, we aim to provide everyone with an equal opportunity to start an online store that will bring them a stable income for years to come.
At first, it can work as a great side-hustle that you can devote several hours a day. Later on, once your business starts growing and your income along with it, you can forget about your regular 9-to-5 job and fully concentrate on your business.
So, let’s see what steps you need to take to start a small business in the sports niche.
Steps to start a small business: benefits of dropshipping sports items
Compared with other business models, dropshipping has a lot of benefits. So, if you want to start a small business dropshipping, here are some of them:
-
No investments
The great thing about the dropshipping business model is that it doesn’t require a large start-up cost because, in this business, you don’t require to keep products in stock.
In addition, you don’t risk anything since you don’t have to pay for products in advance. The only time you’re going to need to pay for the products is when a customer purchases them in your online store.
-
No experience
Don’t know anything about the ecommerce industry or how to create an online store? Not a problem. Sellvia offers a free online store created specifically for you. You will get 14 days of free trial to test out everything Sellvia offers to you, a top-class online store, access to a catalog of trending products you can add to your store, with professionally made marketing campaigns to boost your sales.
-
Be your own boss
This business allows you to be your own boss and take the responsibility for all your decisions. You’re the only one who will choose in which direction to take your business.
-
No staff needed
You don’t need to hire extra employees or any other staff members to manage your ecommerce store, fulfill orders, provide customer support service, etc.
You’ll be in charge of your online store, while your supplier takes care storing and delivering the products.
-
Opportunities for growth
You can expand your product range or even increase the number of your online stores. There are little to no limits!
-
Multiple promotion ways
You will have plenty of ways for promoting your business, either through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many more.
As you can see, the dropshipping business model has lots of advantages. Even if you have a regular job, all you need is a few hours a day to take care of the business processes in your online store. It’s your chance to head down the path towards financial freedom.
So, now that you’re up to speed, let’s see what steps you need to take to start a small business in the sports niche and how profitable it can be?
Is starting a sports business profitable?
If you are interested in starting a business specialising in sports and feel ready to turn your passion into profit – then starting an online business is what you need to do!
Let’s start off with understanding how profitable running such a business can be.
According to Statista, the US sports market has been expanding and is going to continue to grow. The North American sports market has an estimated value at about 80.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. In the next year, it is expected to reach 83.1 billion dollars.
Looks promising, doesn’t it?
Even though the market is full of high-quality brand products, all of them are far more expensive than the products you can offer. All you have to do is find a supplier that offers high-quality products at affordable prices, then you are more than likely going to win over the competition.
Moreover, many sports products are considered to be consumables, which means people will purchase them again and again causing repeat purchases. However, you need to make sure that your products and the services you offer are of the highest quality and that your customers are satisfied with them.
So, it’s looking like starting a business selling sports products and accessories has a lot of potential. And guess what, Sellvia can provide you with a smooth solution to start your ecommerce business. You will get a custom online store built by a team of experienced professionals which will guide you towards developing a source of additional income for the years to come.
So, let’s move on to the actual steps you have to take to start an ecommerce sports business.
Steps you need to take to start a small business
-
Step 1. Perform a market analysis
If you truly wish to succeed in this field, you need to understand the market and analyse it. This will help you to pick out the best direction in which you are going to develop your business.
Look up potential competitors, the channels for promotion, what are the most popular products, and who is your potential target audience.
The next step is to specify your business niche, what products exactly are you going to sell. Well, we already know that you want to specify your product offering around sports products. But what products exactly? Is it products that enhance the training process? Products connected to a specific sports category? Or items needed for simple exercises? Or even simple accessories?
In any case, choose products that you are more familiar with. That way you are more likely to succeed in your ecommerce endeavour since you’ll know all the peculiarities of the products, including what and who they are for.
Once you’ve found your niche, you need a trustworthy supplier that offers high-quality products. Luckily, you don’t need to go far searching for one. You are already in the right place, just take a closer look around!
So, to sum this step up, you need to pay as much attention to the details as possible during this step. Who are your competitors? How can you stand out from them? Who is your ideal customer? How can you reach them? So on and so forth.
-
Step 2. Create an online store
So, by now, you should have a certain understanding of what market you are going to sell to and what exactly you are going to sell. Next, you’re going to need a platform to showcase your product offering. So basically, a website for your online store.
To properly function a website requires a domain and hosting so your website can be found on the Internet.
A domain name is the URL of your website, and hosting is a service that allows you to post the URL onto the Internet.
Some popular sources for domain names are:
Hosting services:
Once you’ve secured your domain and hosting, it’s time for the actual website. Creating an online store is not a challenging task, especially if you’re dealing with a service that will provide you with the store of your dreams. So, as you can see, you don’t actually need to learn any specific skills to create a website. With Sellvia, you will get a professionally made, user-friendly website according to your specifications and preferences.
Your website will allow you to run your business fuss-free, i.e. process orders, change website banners, manage settings, etc. Allowing you to manage your business without extra troubles.
-
Step 3. Work on the content of your website
You can’t have an “empty” online store. You need to work out and adapt the page content of your website such as product descriptions, product imagery, sales banners, etc.
Fortunately, with Sellvia, you already get an online store with professionally written product descriptions, high-quality images, content for your marketing campaigns, and much more!
Don’t forget to fill out your website’s “About Us” page. Write about your brand history and share how you have come to the idea of starting your own sports business.
In addition, set your shipping policy so that your customers have an understanding of the delivery process and how long they have to wait for their products to arrive.
Go a step further, by creating a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section so that your customers have answers to any common questions that they may have.
-
Step 4. Make sure your store is SEO friendly
If you cover all the essential aspects of SEO (search engine optimization), you can boost your business to new heights.
How does SEO work exactly? To keep it simple, by managing SEO, your online store becomes visible in the search engines. The better it is optimized, the higher it will rank in search engines. Thus, by researching the most popular search queries and integrating them across your website, you increase users’ chances to find your store.
However, keep in mind that SEO is a long-term process. It will not instantly make your website pop out on the first page of the search results. However, SEO mostly has a cumulative effect: the more you work on it, the greater result you get in several months. The more you pay attention to SEO at every point of building your online store, the more you benefit in a long-term period.
Despite it taking some time to have an effect on your business, SEO is FREE, all it requires is a little bit of time.
-
Step 5. Prepare a social media marketing strategy
When your store is finally ready, you’ll need to develop a social media marketing strategy to attract the consumers.
Of course, some random people might stumble across your online store and purchase this or that product, but if you want consistent sales, you’re going to need to promote your business through various channels. However, before you go out there and start digging into what marketing channels you’re going to use, or start spending money on paid ads, you need to research your potential customers (if you haven’t before, it’s definitely necessary now!).
Finding your potential customers will heavily influence aspects of your marketing campaigns, such as:
- The social media networks, forums, and various internet platforms where you will advertise your products
- The voice and message of your advertisements that will persuade your customers to purchase
- The changes to your product range, when you choose to update new trending products or delete outdated offers
In general, if you want to better understand how and to who sell your products, how to communicate, and how to run your business, you need to establish who is your target market.
Next, once you have figured that out, you need to consider where your customers spend most of their online time and choose what promotional tools you are going to use. This is social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
Once you know that, you need to establish a social media presence on that platform and start your promotional campaigns.
That, of course, means that you’re going to need to create a content strategy for those specific platforms and run paid advertising campaigns to reach your target audience.
It’s only up to you to decide your social media strategy and how you will promote your online store. Nevertheless, there’s a wide variety of instruments available to you to attract customers and grow your business.
Steps to start a small business: choosing the products
Once you have completed the setup of your online store, it’s time to start arranging your product range.
Your product range is, perhaps, one of the most important aspects of your business. It will play a huge role in predetermining your business’ success. However, it all comes down to how well you’ve analysed the market. And once again, it is up to you to decide on how broad your product range will be.
Remember that it is best to stick to a niche category in which you have some sort of knowledge or interest. Luckily, Sellvia offers proven best-selling products that have high-quality and low initial prices in many different categories.
So, let’s see what kind of top-selling products you can find in the Sellvia catalog and import into your online store.
-
Water bottles
Price: US $3.99
Recommended retail price: US $18.99
Your potential profit: US $15.00
Regardless of your sports activity, whether it’s an intense training session or a light workout, it’s important to keep yourself hydrated. So, offer sporting enthusiasts a unique water bottle they can take with them wherever they go.
This sports accessory is a must for any athlete.
-
Yoga accessories
Price: US $6.99
Recommended retail price: US $29.99
Your potential profit: US $23.00
Every great athlete knows that it’s crucial to properly recover after a workout. So to take better care of your body your customers can use this amazing massage roller. It can do wonders for the body and help feel refreshed and prepared for anything.
-
Gym gloves
Price: US $3.49
Recommended retail price: US $19.99
Your potential profit: US $13.50
During a workout, our hands go through a lot. However, with a pair of gym workout gloves, the whole workout can be much more efficient and comfortable.
Considering how many workouts a person can have in one week, this is a must-have item for every sports enthusiast.
Those are just a few of the trending products you can find in the Sellvia catalog. Overall, there are hundreds of products to choose from, regardless of the niche you want to start an online business.
But, what exactly is Sellvia?
Starting a small business in the sports niche with Sellvia
All of this definitely looks like a lot to take in at the moment, however, what you need to understand is that by cooperating with Sellvia, you can skip a lot of the challenges that you may face while creating a business by yourself and jump straight into managing your store and selling your products!
How exactly does it work?
All you have to do is click the “START NOW” button or “START FOR FREE”.
Next, you’ll be redirected to the page where you’ll get more information on the store. There, you can click “GET MY STORE FOR FREE” to go to the checkout page where you will complete the order to the store of your dreams which includes a Sellvia subscription with a 14-day trial period.
Sellvia subscription gives you full access to the Sellvia ecosystem. With the subscription, you get access to the products which you can import in a few clicks, high-converting product pages, quick shipping within the US, stellar marketing materials, and many more benefits that will make managing and growing your business as seamless and effortless as possible.
As a result, in just a few clicks, you can get a ready ecommerce business. It’s the perfect opportunity to create an additional source of income and make money doing what you love. Over time, it can grow into something special and allow you to leave your 9-to-5 job and enjoy the life that you deserve.
Steps to start a small business in the sports niche: conclusion
Summing it up, we can easily say that starting a business in the sports niche is a promising business move. The target audience is huge and the interest in sports products and accessories is off the charts.
It all comes down to how strongly do you want to create something special that will push you to live your dream life and enjoy what you’re doing every day. You can follow our steps to start a small business, and join Sellvia.
You will be provided with an opportunity to start for free and have access to all the benefits Sellvia offers.
With Sellvia, you have an opportunity to launch the business you’ve always wanted smoothly and with minimal investments. So, start a sports business today and enjoy the incoming benefits!