Turning a blog into a ecom

[kool002]

Hi,
What I started was a blog focus on a niche widget and now I have some traffic(10k uniques a month).
Visitors are coming to my blog searching "buy green widget", "discount on red widget", so I know they are ready to buy.
This widget is really small and I can buy at wholesale prices and stockup in my garage.
My question is how many orders can I expect, in other words what's a typical conversion.
Should I wait and grow more traffic e.g 50k visitors to make it worthwhile?

I would really appreciate if someone can share their experience who actually started a blog and converted it into ecommerce.

thanks

[lorax]

It sounds like there are only a few different widgets? If so, I'd start off with a PayPal setup or other low investment transaction ability to test the waters and get you some experience with selling. When the volume goes up (and presumably cash flow is increased to warrant the expense) then you can go to a more robust solution.

[MrHard]

Why not have some on hand if people start to buy? Would getting the minimum wholesale stock put you out financially? If you have been working on a blog you should enjoy the subject matter enough to want to do some sales even if it's not huge.

[VideoPsychic]

my blog has the option of buying a service I can eliver online via a video file. I recently set up a shopping cart system using a system called Digital Product Delivery which is working quite well.There is a wordpress plugin if you are using wordpress and it integrates easily with new posts so that I can remind people everytime I post new content.
Regards
Dennis

[arubin]

Selling online is easy, it's being done well by many people.

Integrating an info blog and ecom site from a site design and UX perspective is challenging. I'm curious how you pull it off. Can you post when you do so?

[digitalv]

If you can buy some wholesale now, even if it's only 10 or 20, put them up for sale as a limited inventory and see how quick you sell through them. That will give you an idea of how many you'll want to order to meet the demand.

Generally only 1-2% of web visitors will convert to a sale, but it sounds like you're getting some pretty targeted traffic so your conversion rate could be higher. Test it out.

As far as integrating the actual ecommerce functions into a blog goes, don't worry about it. Keep your blog exactly as it is. Buy a domain, set up the shopping cart, and create a new website for selling the products and just put a big fat "buy" button on your blog that automatically adds the product to the cart and transitions the user to the other site, keeping a somewhat consistent look and feel.

This way your blog is still 100% blog and will reap all the benefits as such, and your ecom site can also potentially pick up traffic separately on its own.

[chenzaibao]

Very good