Best E-commerce Business Ideas

I present to you the end-all list of business ideas that you can start online, that are e-commerce based.

This list of business ideas is different. This is not some copy-paste happening here. This list is carefully created. I have been blessed since 1998 to be in the online space here in Pakistan. I was earning 30,000+ per month as a student during that time. I then went on to do different projects over the last 2 decades, and discovered different ways of earning money in Pakistan. Alhumdulillah. So this list of ecommerce business ideas I hope you find useful, as it was crafted with a lot of thought and care.

And here’s a fact: we really don’t care if it is called e-commerce or oo-commerce, what we need to focus on is starting an online business! We want to earn money on the Internet. InshAllah we need to do that with honesty and dedication. And we need to know the best ideas for online business regarding that.

Consider why right now is a good time to start an ecommerce business:

Just in the next 4 years, the whole ecommerce business is expected to grow by 50%.

Statista – 2021 report on e-commerce

Unlocking the E-Commerce Potential: Top Online Business Ideas to Thrive in Pakistan

We will explore top online business ideas that can help you thrive in Pakistan in 2023 and beyond. We will be looking at market trends, especially related to online business and ecommerce, and we will also pay attention to experience!

When I sold my first website in 1999, I was selling a service. Back then, I had to first explain what a website is. And in my experience of doing business and teaching about business, I have come to realize that things can look good on paper but in reality they are very difficult.

Starting an online business can be a lot simpler if we understand that and learn from “doers” instead of just “content creators”. Nothing can beat years of experience.

In this guide, I want to share with you the best online business ideas that a Pakistani can start. For that, we will look at the “lowest hanging fruit” not because it is easy, but also because it is profitable. You can sell a million rupees worth of products, and make 30,000 rupees at the end of the month if you’re not careful.

This guide is not for you if you are looking for “easy”. It is for people who are looking for what works and what doesn’t.

A lot of things look good on paper but in reality the business is not recommended.

So here we go:

5 Best E-Commerce Business Ideas for Physical Products

These online business ideas involve selling a physical product that you will be getting yourself either from the local market, import it or make it yourself. This also involves shipping shipping the product to your customer.

1. Start an e-commerce store selling jewelry accessories

How can you start a small business selling jewelry from your home? There are two ways you can go about this:

• Make your own jewelry and then sell it
• Source jewelry from your local market to sell

The first option of making jewelry yourself, that is what will make you a ProHobbyist, where you already love to craft jewelry and accessories, and now you are opening a small online store to sell those creations.

The second option means that you will be going to different local markets in your city, to buy from there. Or you may be ordering from Alibaba or AliExpress to sell at a profit margin here locally in Pakistan. This requires some effort on your part as well. Also, this is where your personal taste will determine if the products you select will sell or not.

Once you have products, it is highly recommended that you package your jewelry and accessories in a very professional manner. Remember, packaging of your product is a primary way of conveying trust to your customer, don’t overlook it.

Remember, in your jewelry business, you will need two things to succeed:

1. The jewelry / accessories themselves should be good quality
2. The marketing of your business must be professional

When I say marketing, I don’t mean just the “advertising” or the “product packaging” for your hand-crafted necklaces or locally-sourced ear-rings, no. Marketing means that you, as a small business owner, as a professional, as a ProHobbyist, are taking care of the entire customer journey!

This is what separates the amateurs from real players: always remember that your customer has a problem that your product is solving. In the case of an online jewelry store – no matter if it’s in Pakistan or anywhere else – the customer has a problem that he or she wants to look a certain way, and your product will now help them do that.

The internet allows you to digitally set up these funnels, where the person gradually goes from “I have a problem” to “hey, these guys solved my problem with their jewelry product”.

To learn more about customer journeys and how to set up your own professional business online, check out my free training on implementing the 7 steps of a profitable online business.

2. Start an e-commerce store selling children / kid clothes

This is a big market here. You can source children clothing from the local market, or you can stitch your own. Two main things you need to focus on are:

1. Taking really nice photographs of the clothes to display on your store. This is typically the only exposure your client will have with your product, so make the pictures really good. Consider hiring a professional photographer as it will be worth it.
2. Running Facebook ad campaigns that are geared for mothers in all major cities of Pakistan (if you want to sell across Pakistan instead of just your city). Again, this is critical. So you must know how Facebook ads are run and what you need to look out for. You need a crash course on Facebook ads for business owners… because it is fine to have someone do the graphics for your brand, but it is important for you to make the online marketing strategy for your business.

If one can build a profitable brand in the children clothing market, then it can serve a lot of other markets as well.

Sure, we are talking about starting an online business where the client and the business don’t interact physically. That’s why we make the mistake of not putting our best foot forward when to comes to having our online presence look solid!

It’s about relationships. And all businesses are people businesses. These are big statements – but they are true. You can and you must use the available tools online to build a relationship with your potential clients, whosoever visits your online store. That way, once someone buys their child’s t shirt or Eid dress from you store and you really give them a great service, next time their cousin will also know about you and your brand.

3. Start an e-commerce store selling home-based food (or cakes)

You will be surprised how big profits are hidden in this market.

I have been doing home-delivery of food items for a very long time (remember how we started selling milk here in Lahore, this was before Anhaar or Prema were even in the market!)… and there is one big change in the market that has happened.

That change is the availability of food delivery services like Cheetay and FoodPanda.

So if you can make something that is really delicious, you can pack it and sell it online!

The reason this is still a great opportunity is that people are NOT taking advantage of this as much as they could be.

Listen, if your product is good, and then you learn how to build a powerful and profitable brand on top of that, that’s like a recipe of being unstoppable!

4. Start an e-commerce store selling pet-related items

One of the biggest import items in Pakistan, believe it or not, is pet food! A lot of people buy these pet food items from high end stores at very expensive rates, because they don’t any better.

Thanks to the internet this has changed and more people can compare the prices. This is your advantage where you can start a pet store and strike a deal with one of the local manufacturer or wholesaler, and provide a good rate.

And again, if you simply apply the methods of building a brand onto your pet store, your customer will be loyal to you and you alone.

5. Start an e-commerce store for handicrafts / home decorations

Handicrafts is a big market here in Pakistan, especially if you’re focused on selling to the international market. But unfortunately, handicrafts suffer from wrong categorization I believe.

People think that if it’s “handicraft”, it must be only a artisinal luxury item that would have no practical pupose as such. Simply calling it “home decorations online” instead of “handicraft online” can solve that problem.

Even the furniture you are sitting on, it was crafted by hand by a carpenter, but he sold it as a piece of furniture, not “handicraft”… so categorization matters.

In any case, you can sell different items under the same store name. Or, as I usually recommend, you can start with one to three products max, and find one winning product and go deep on that.

You can either make wooden items yourself, or get hold of any decent carpenter and make items like:

• wooden fruit bowls
• small patio furniture
• picture frames

…these items alone can be sold online using Facebook ads and a good landing page on your ecommerce store.

Some very reasonably priced “home decoration” handicraft ideas can be seen here:

Most people who buy handicrafts are doing it as a luxury item. This is not that big a market in Pakistan as it is in the western world. And that’s perfect for you! You can have your own site and sell directly to people in the US or the UK (that’s the beauty of the Net as it has no geography as such!)

3 Types of E-Commerce Stores Selling Digital Products

This is not as common, especially in Pakistan. But selling digital products include online courses, e-books and live sessions, this is big business right now.

The E-Learning Business across the world:

This can include Zoom sessions done by a teacher for example, or an online course on how to set goals for example etc. This is a BIG market in Pakistan, and is currently underserved. We will look into this.

Business of Selling Online Courses

Starting an online course as a business, I always recommend that to people. It is the most fulfilling experience – as a writer, creative as well as a business.

I have not only started my own online courses and paid guides here in Pakistan, I also help others convert their knowledge and experiences into online courses. The most common question I get tis this, “but why would someone pay me for my course, when that information is available for free on YouTube?”

The answer is simple. It has something to do with people still send their kids to school, or corporates still paying ridiculous amounts to trainers to educate their staff – why aren’t they simply saying, “you don’t know how to do XYZ? Here, here’s a YouTube video, all of you go and watch and learn”.

The answer to this question, and many others, I have answered in great detail in our workshop:

The workshop recording is free for you, simply click here to get access to the 3 part video series. The first video is all about objections that you will face when starting an online business, especially based around selling online courses.

Start an Online Tuition Center

A tuition center we all know, right? A teacher teaches, students sit in front. Classroom setting. Happens live. At a specific time and place.

So you can do all of the above, online. Using a basic Zoom Pro account, you can easily host classes and if you want, you can even connect a snazzier camera for your live tuitions. I recommend that to teachers who want to start online, because this immediately sets you apart from your competition.

This is different than an online course because this is LIVE. You can easily record those live session and later sell them (depending on your audience and your offers etc) to a different audience at a different price point for example.

If you haven’t noticed already, I love this type of a “business”. Because in most cases, it doesn’t feel like a business, because you love to share, to teach, to see others grow because of your input, coaching and guidance, by Allah’s Grace.

You can definitely read up more on how you can start your teaching business, especially here in Pakistan. I know people earning upwards of 100,000 rupees a month and working 2 to 3 hours per day. And that’s just a practical example, something that really changes people’s lives… not “earn ffifty crore in three days with this special online earning formula method hack attack”.

And as you build your brand as a teacher, you make sure you are nurturing your community (keep building your email list), and you are providing valuable content to them.

And then whenever you make a sales pitch, your audience will warmly receive that from you! And you make a profit, your community gets knowledgeable due to your efforts, and it’s a win/win! #Bismilla.

Start or Grow your Coaching Business

Again, this is close to my heart, so much so that coaching is what I do these days. I am what you’d call a performance coach, but there are tons of different coaches out there that are getting paid well, and they are solving problems for their clients.

A coaching business is different from an online course and from a “tuition center” because you are typically coaching a single person around a single main topic.

And you can start getting clients online, by having a social media presence and being consistent with it. And then having a structured coaching program that you can offer your audience once ever three weeks etc.

The typical set up that I use is a Zoom live session, once a week. And this is just a great way of making money online in Pakistan, while doing what you truly love and find meaningful (hopefully).

Question: Do you want to know more about starting an online course or your own coaching business? Drop in your question here and we can inshAllah help you grow faster.

3 Types of E-Commerce Business Ideas Based on Affiliate Marketing or Dropshipping

This is where you are selling someone else’s products. Affiliate marketing is very different than dropshipping, but I have grouped them here because both involve selling someone else’s products.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a unique business. You get someone else to create the product, and even ship the product to the customer. You only manage the client side.

This is what I call “the last mile”. This is where you have direct contact with the customer. This is, by all accounts, the most profitable place to be in the whole business chain.

Dropshipping allows you to quickly set yourself up and get in front of potential customers. This is good.

But there is a very dark side to starting a dropshipping busineess, no matter if it’s in Pakistan or anywhere else.

Starting a dropshipping business in Pakistan is mentioned by a lot of YouTubers. In Google searches alone, type in “dropshipping in Pakistan” and you get more than 4 Million results!

Dropshipping is presented as something “easy”. They forget to mention that starting a dropshipping is easy, that’s why more people end up starting it. This means more people end up competing in the same space. And that’s why most people don’t make it. You already select a “easy in, easy out” market, so you pay the price for that.

I also recommend that you take my advice with a grain of salt as well. I am not saying that dropshipping is bad and you shouldn’t start it. I am saying that it is a tough business model.

If you are starting out, I actually don’t recommend it. If you are starting out in your self-employed, business journey, I recommend starting with a digital product that you make you self. Something like a course or an e-book. But that is not for everyone and you may not like the idea. If that’s the case, my second recommendation for business beginners is to start with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing in Pakistan

I wrote a book on affiliate marketing. I did this profitably for quite some time, back when I was starting out. The landscape in Pakistan has changed since then, and very dramatically so.

You can can sign up as an affiliate for AliExpress. You see a product you like on AliExpress, you get that product’s affiliate link. You will get a link to post on your social media. And if anyone clicks on that link to buy that product, you will get a commission.

As of 2023, you get a commission anywhere between 4 to 7 percent. Which is typical for physical products.

Being an affiliate for digital products is much more lucrative. You get commissions up to 75%! Because there is no cost of goods sold, nor there is any logistical costs involved, the digital products company can pay out large commissions to their affiliates.

That’s what I did: I sold online courses as an affiliate before I ended up making my own courses. Alhumdulillah.

If you are serious about starting your e-commerce business, I highly recommend you read the E-Commerce for Beginners guide that I have created. Most people who are starting out, do not know that starting an online business means you need to pay attention to three different aspects of the business. I cover that in detail in that article.

Frequently Asked Question about e-Commerce Store in Pakistan

Question: What is the best online business to start in Pakistan?

Answer:

It is the business that combines your passion and skills, with your resources, and then taken into account the market demand for that combination. The best online business to start in Pakistan is the one that will allow you to earn a decent income while enjoying your work in the long run, inshAllah. You can look at the above ideas to get started.

Question: Which business to start at home in Pakistan?

Answer:

The best business to start home in Pakistan is NOT just an online business. Some of the most profitable (and enjoyable) businesses to start from home are based around your hobbies. I call this becoming the ProHobbyist, where you take your hobby, and turn pro on it! I helped someone I know take her hobby of cooking, and she ended up with not one, but two “online” businesses. She was selling cakes online in Pakistan and also teaching a course on creating professional fondant to other bakers! The cake creation of course was very “offline” and the marketing was done – in a proper way – using social media and community building.
So generate ideas by looking at your hobbies and passions. I teach that in my workshop called Find Your Business and it is a proven step by step method to polish your idea for your home based business in Pakistan.

Question: How to start a business in Pakistan with 50,000 rupees?

Answer:

Nowadays, it is VERY easy to tell people that 50,000 rupees is not that big an amount to start a business in Pakistan. But if you are selling any service (freelancing, coaching, teaching, online course), then I am going to share a simple formula with you, if you have a budget of 50,000 for your business. I recommend you use that 50,000 rupees to get leads for your services business. How? By spending that money, 1000 rupee per day, on ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Question: Which business is profitable in Pakistan?

Answer:

The most profitable online business in Pakistan is, right now, also the most enjoyable. There are six business models to choose from when it comes to starting a business (did you know this?), and out of those six business models, the most profitable is the one that will have ZERO cost of goods. Think about it, if you sell something for a 1000, and it costed you 700 to get, and 200 to package and deliver, you make a profit of 100 rupees.
Now, what if the cost of 700 was turned to zero? That is what this business model offer. This is the online teaching and online courses business model. In my opinion, technically, the most profitable business in Pakistan is an “information product” business. Let me know if you need any help with that, I have written a lot of free resources to guide you.

Question: What business can I start with 1 lakh in Pakistan?

Answer:

Starting a business with 1 lakh rupee in Pakistan can be tough – but that is what “entrepreneurs” are supposed to do, right? They are supposed to work with what they have, rather than do nothing. With 1 lakh, I would recommend a similar set up as if you had 50,000 rupees. With 1 lakh, you will simply have more time to figure out the right funnel, the right offer, the right ads. Starting a business, either with 1 lakh, 10 lakhs or 50 lakhs… it will demand time and discipline from you. Do not fall for “this is easy” trap. Sure, it is enjoyable and that can be said that it is “easy”, but anything worth doing is hard. And you, my friend, are “Designed” to do hard things. Bismilla.