starting a small online business

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This pandemic has made almost everyone around me very productive and I feel like I'm the only one sitting around wasting my time. I want to start an online business through Instagram. If any of you have been running successful online businesses, I would appreciate some tips on the same. Any advice on what to do and what not to do will be highly appreciated. Thanks. I hope you're having a great day.

What would you be doing? Making things?

What is your product?

You haven’t really given anyone anything to go on. I don’t think it will be easy to give you any meaningful advice from such a vague starting point. What kind of business do you want to run? What are your skills and experience? What’s your overall aim?

I basically want to start reselling skincare and makeup products that is not available in my country. I just want to make some extra cash for myself. That's it for now. I want it to grow and need tips for growing it. I did a lot of research and my biggest problem rn is paying customs for the products I will be ordering. customs for cosmetics seems to be 40.8% and that's a lot in my opinion.

Etsy is good for selling stuff

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I think it is great that you want to become seld employed, but I would urge you ( I am self employed full time in retail too) to give a little thought.
Is instagram a retail platform.? Maybe I am missing a trick!
want to start reselling skincare and makeup products that is not available in my country. The country you live in?Or hoping to export from?
A couple of things to consider. Apart from any license agreements the manufacturer may have.
Do these products have safety/ product liability in the place you intend to sell?
How do you intend to sell?
Amazon/ebay/website?
Local distributers?

You say your biggest hurdle is customs.

May not be the case.

Firstly you need to do market research surely? To see if there is actually a demand for your idea and if customers will pay what you need them to in order to cover all your costs:

Customs charges
Item cost
Additional costs for admin
Postage...

And some profit or it's not worth your doing it

Do others in your country definitely want cosmetics from another country? There's all sorts of potential issues with that, eg language barrier to understanding ingredients and instructions

Ingredient side is particularly important wrt to allergies and legalities. There are certain ingredients that are banned in some countries - is your knowledge good enough to assess that?

What about other regulations in your country regarding selling on, taxes etc?

There's a LOT to consider

Instagram isn’t so great for ready made products anyone can just buy and import. But there’s no reason not to also use it in addition to other methods: eBay and Amazon and your own website.

Will people actually buy them at jacked up prices? If you import, pay 40% duty, then your own costs, will you be able to sell that product for say 60% more than the wholesale price you paid (plus shipping and taxes in your country).

For Instagram, it’s about selling a lifestyle. Dh sells through Instagram. But he makes high end products that are bespoke and no one else is really making them or marketing them that way. It’s a lot of taking photos and then saving them up to slowly post and pretend you actually used that product that day or look we took this on holiday (even though it was last summer). Will you have enough interesting photos to post to make sales? People don’t want to see photos of products really, they want to see interesting or glamorous people using them or tasty food cooking on them or whatever.