How e-commerce really makes money

The three most important elements in e-commerce: product, traffic, and monetization. If you want to make money, these three are key, and all strategies and methods revolve around them.

So, what is the essence of business? I believe it can be summed up in four words: buy low, sell high! This means you purchase products at a lower price and sell them at a higher price, earning the difference.

Although many people romanticize this process, making it sound like a sophisticated business model, to put it bluntly, it’s essentially about acting as a “middleman” or a “reseller.” The principle is the same, whether your source is from a factory, Thomasnet, or Walmart Marketplace. The process is always the same: buy low, sell high.

In this buying and selling process, if you pair it with good copywriting, planning, branding, and a rethinking of language, content, and visuals while understanding consumer psychology, the product may have a huge potential for a price markup.

(Key point! Key point! Key point!)

Once you have the mindset to make money and understand how to earn premium margins from products, you can start discussing specific strategies for this business.

Why can you sell at high prices?

People rely on their clothes, and Buddha relies on his golden robes. Products need to be packaged carefully to better highlight their value.

Many people in the market say that “product is king,” implying that once the product is right, everything else will fall into place and orders will flow in continuously.

But this kind of thinking is too naïve! The product is certainly important, but if you only focus on the product and ignore promotion, packaging, copywriting, and understanding customer psychology, you’ll likely miss out on a significant portion of the market.

Many successful people actually failed because they didn’t focus enough on self-promotion!

Don’t reject promotion—who doesn’t want to make money? There’s no harm in promoting your product strongly!

So, the core of this model is to choose a competitive product, then package it to make it look more valuable and profitable.

Some might say this model can’t sustain a long-term business because it’s hard to build a brand. But have you considered that if a product really becomes popular, can we use it to focus on a niche and build our own brand and moat?

From now on, let’s chant together: Product, Traffic, Monetization…

Find a good product, package it, then find a way to drive traffic, and finally, monetize!

Remember, “product” here doesn’t just refer to physical goods. The videos you create, the content you write, and even yourself can be considered as products.

When users arrive, it’s about making the deal! So, how do you make the deal? Build!

In business, don’t just look at the surface; you need to see the essence beyond the appearance. Once you become familiar with the process and develop the mindset for making money, the small profits at the beginning won’t mean much. But once you master the process and logic, you won’t have to worry about missing opportunities.