This year I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia after dealing with this pain and disease for 12 years. I’ve been suffering hard with depression and anxiety for the past 3 years and I find it debilitating enough to keep me from a job and haven’t had luck getting remote work. However, my husband and I are not doing well financially and I’d like to help. So, I am considering opening an online shop with things to help with pain.
The shop would be an arsenal of things I’ve learned to use to help fibromyalgia pain like epsom salts for baths, heating pads, Turmeric supplements, specialty teas (like for painful periods) and a flagship product of an herbal lotion that helps provide immediate relief to painful mucles. (Plus more products- this is just for example.)
I’m wondering if I put the effort into the shop, would a store like this work? I know most stuff is just bought off of Amazon, so I don’t want to open a shop and get left in the dust. I’ve had businesses fail already and am ready to succeed. Thanks for your help.
Getting sales is the hardest part. If these are low cost products there probably won’t be enough to pay for ads and make a profit. I’d just testing the idea on eBay and facebook marketplace first.
Also check what the competition is like. Who else is running ads for these products?
You could set up a fibromyalgia support group on facebook but even that might be tough getting people to join. If you could grow that, you might makse some sales.
Overall, I think it will be very tough to make any meaningful money.
Are you good at writing? Maybe join Medium for $5 a month and write about fibromyalgia, what works for you, etc. You can get paid if you get enough views and reads. It tends to be slow to start but I think you’re more likely to make money there than via ecommerce. It’s worth a go. You could funnel readers to a facebook group and eventually sell to them.
You can also get help here --> https://www.reddit.com/r/Fibromyalgia/.
Thank you for the info.
Yes. It’d be easy to market: just tell your story on PatientsLikeMe. Publish your socials too. You’d need your be shameless, which has its own grievances, but you’d definitely make a business
No, it wouldn’t be easy to market. It will be tough. Ecommerce is not easy these days.
Yes, marketing costs are super high right now on average because the market is flooded with cheap content. However, the OP is probably already in a bunch of support groups on different platforms full of patients trying to find similar answers. This is the case for most specialty patients. Don’t know if your experience would counter this argument, but this is from my experience working with a large biotech client in specialty pharma and helping a friend with POTS develop a product.
The main problem is that the produxts sound like they havelow profit margins. That means you need quite large sales to make any meaningful money. This has a low probability of working.
I don’t know the financial circumstances of the OP. Will this make $1B? No. 2% of adult population, 4M Americans, 330k users on PatientsLikeMe (guessing 10% with fibromyalgia), buying private-label consumables at a 40% gross margin. Sounds like an easy way to $1M EBITDA. $4M in a few years may not be a lot to you, but it’s a lot to a lot of people.
Not going to happen.
Well the nice thing it’s up to the OP to decide what to do with our advice: take your advice and do nothing, which may be more valuable than trying again, but it’s definitely $0. However, there are lots of people making millions on Shopify because they have a captive audience that relates to the founder’s story. If you know 1,000 similar patients to you, you can make a living.
The OP won’t make millions from this. That is very clear. The average person can not earn that much from products like this. You’re deluded. Yes, some make millions but 99% fail.
People will research on your site and buy on Amazon. You need to be sure you’re offering solutions not readily available cheaper or more convenient elsewhere
Makes sense. I’m considering that. Thank you so much.