This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Does it matter where you live if you are selling something online? This might seem like a simple question, but I actually hear variations of this question from time to time, fairly regularly, along with a related question, does it matter how old I am? Like if you're selling something online, does it matter if you're really young? Does it matter if you are geographically removed from where your target audience lives? Or it probably could be some other variable as well.
Those are just the two most common ones that come up. The question though is, do you have to tell your customers where you're based or something about your background if you think that might cause them to be hesitant or skeptical or cynical? So the short answer to both these questions, does it matter where you live? Does it matter how old you are? The short answer is not so much.
Okay, but let's look more specifically at this listener's question. We've got a listener in Europe who wants to sell to Americans. What does he need to know? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
That's the question, the topic of the day. It's coming up right after this quick message from our sponsor. Thank you, sponsor and thank you listeners. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Mark and I've been listening to the show all the way from Poland. I'm planning to start an e-commerce business.
My focus is on the US market because it's a much larger population, e-commerce is far ahead of everywhere else and I can use fulfillment by Amazon to get my products out. But of course, I don't only want to sell items one time anonymously through Amazon. I want to build a dedicated following to the brand itself so that customers might hear of me from another channel but then start coming directly to the website. The only thing I'm worried about is, do I need to be clear about where I'm based? Does it matter that I'm here and they're over there as long as they're happy with the product?
Thanks for your help, Chris. [Music]
Hey Mark, thank you for listening all the way from Poland. We have a lot of listeners in lots of different European countries. We have a lot of people in the Pacific region. We have people in the Middle East and Africa and elsewhere.
And so this is a wonderful thing about making a podcast is that you can listen wherever you are and hopefully much of what I'm talking about every single day is going to be relevant. And here, guess what? This is totally relevant because I don't think anybody needs to know where Mark is based. I don't think it's deceptive in any way as long as Mark doesn't make some kind of promise that he is in a certain geographic location. I don't think it matters.
I think what matters is product quality and customer service. And if you think about it, actually think about a bad experience that you have had as a consumer. There are plenty of businesses that make bad products and have poor service right at home, right? Like wherever home is, by the way, not just in the US, but anywhere. There's good products, there's bad products, there's good customer service, bad customer service.
So it's only logical that there are businesses making great products who can provide stellar customer service from Poland or anywhere else. So I don't think there's anything at all wrong with it. As for logistics, the main things to consider are like how you actually provide that support. Do you need to be available certain hours? And on that point, it's not unusual for people around the world to work on US time zones, or of course it could be reversed.
These days with remote work being more accepted, it will be even more common to have people located in different places. And of course you might not have to work the same time zones. Like it just depends on what kind of support and availability you have to provide. So if it's an e-commerce business, you might very well be able to just keep your normal hours and you're answering emails or whatever when other people are sleeping, but then they wake up and they get your reply, you know? Other considerations include fulfillment, like how are you actually gonna ship those products?
Like how will you handle returns? What if there's an inventory problem? So these are not small issues, like there are things you have to figure out, but there are also answers to them. Like there are solutions, right? They're just issues, they're just problems, but problems have solutions.
So for Mark and anybody else out there, I would say take heart. It doesn't really matter where you are, or also how old you are, which I didn't talk about too much in this episode, but as mentioned, I often hear from teenage side hustlers or entrepreneurs, sometimes even preteens, you know, who are like, do people care if I'm 13 years old? Like, not really. What they care about is the product, the customer service. So focus on that.
It's a beautiful thing about the internet. Listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll continue to feature them throughout the year from people all over the world, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Thank you so much for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
