Should you quit your job to run an online store?

Not until the store covers your costs for three consecutive months. The pressure to make a store pay this month is what makes people discount, over-advertise and take the deals that end businesses.

The reasoning

A store built alongside a salary can afford to wait for the right supplier and refuse the wrong customer. That patience is worth more than the extra hours quitting would buy.

What most people get wrong

Repeat customers are the whole game. Winning a customer costs money; selling to them again costs almost nothing.

Most of the money in ecommerce is made in unglamorous categories bought regularly, not in the ones that photograph well.

Selling online is not passive income. It is a business with stock, customers and a support inbox, and anybody describing it as passive is selling a course.

How an app changes it

This is where an app earns its place — it exists to make the second and third purchase easier, which is where the profit is.