I started my first online about 8 years ago. 70 percent of what I've sold online has been profitable. The rest has nearly got me into serious debt.

I've sold t-shirts, shoes, jewelry, clothing, candles, smartphones and even furniture. Over the last 8 years, I used platforms such as bigcartel, shopify, woocommerce, shopenvy, tictail, squarespace and variations of the stores available on social media sites. In terms of traffic I've used SEO, Adsense, Facebook ads, print ads, pop-up stores, affiliates and even some pop-up events to attract prospects. (My top traffic sources are direct response ads, affiliates/distribution and content marketing to a warm list. Any of these could work for you. What matters most is if you're good at them.) I'm sharing this for those who have some kind of ecommerce startup or online store, are driving traffic to the site but for some reason are not doing as well as they should.

The most successful physical products are sold with relevant offers, remarkable stories, good branding and reliable distribution.

https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/7ekxw1/8_years_of_ecommerce_lessons_you_can_copy_to_get/