I'm trying to sell pickleball paddles online. An e-commerce expert advised me on how to make the most of Amazon and Shopify — and why paid ads are essential.

• I'm midway through my 'e-comm experiment' and have 500 pickleball paddles in production.
• I spoke to an expert about how to most effectively sell my product.
• He suggested a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model and said ads are essential.

Years of writing about individuals who make money selling products online sparked my curiosity: Is this something I can do? What would startup costs look like? Is it time-consuming? Difficult?

To answer those questions, I teamed up with a friend to develop a product (pickleball paddles) to sell online.

Product selection and development — phase one, if you may — has been time-consuming, challenging, and expensive. But we made a paddle we're proud of, the Peak Pro, and 500 of them are headed from a factory in Asia to my studio apartment in Los Angeles.

Phase two — actually selling the product — is officially underway, and my first observation is that it's going to present more challenges than phase one. Luckily, I've interviewed smart people who have done it before, and I have no problem asking for advice.

I reached out to Tyler Walter, cofounder of the product-sourcing company 330 Trading, which I'm also working with to manufacture my paddles. He's based in Taiwan and works closely with US e-commerce businesses, advising them on everything from initial product development to creating diverse supply chains.

I asked him selling-specific questions: How can I get consumers to buy from Peak Pickleball when they have endless options? He told me he'd tailor his answers specifically to my company, as every brand is a bit different.

Two pieces of advice stood out.

1. Build a Shopify and Amazon store

Walter advised me to start with a hybrid Shopify-Amazon model. In general, I'll get better margins with Shopify, as there are fewer costs associated with selling on that platform, but I need Amazon for traffic, especially when I'm first establishing the brand.

"Amazon is guaranteed traffic. There's a guaranteed flow of people who are going to see your product every single day," he said. And, using tools like Helium 10, I can estimate what that traffic is going to look like. "You can see exactly how many people are searching for pickleball paddles on Amazon every day, or pickleball-related items or even racket-related sports, so you can drill down into those details before you ever go live."

With Shopify, on the other hand, I'd have to generate my own traffic through things like social media campaigns, ads, and word of mouth.

Walter told me it's smart to start with the hybrid model since I haven't yet nailed down my typical customer.

Amazon will work well for the customer who is newer to pickleball and not yet intertwined in the community. They may come across my product while searching for a medium- to high-grade paddle online. "Amazon is amazing for that, the best in the world," he explained, especially if I can optimize my listing page, rack up good reviews, and rank well on the marketplace. "If there's enough traffic on Amazon every day for pickleball paddles, which we've already determined there is, then you're going to get people that you would never otherwise get who are just searching for pickleball in general."

Shopify, on the other hand, may serve a different customer: Someone who is more engaged in the pickleball community or cares more about the brand of paddle they're playing with. The customer who buys into our image, feel, and the technical aspects of our product will likely go directly to our website.

A Shopify sale is going to mean more profit, "but you have to be able to do the work to tell that brand story," Walter said.

That raises the question: What customer am I after?

If I can't definitively answer that yet, Walter told me a hybrid approach allowing me to test both types of customers is a smart strategy.

"You can test out the first 500 paddles and see where you get more traction and where you have better profit margins, and then invest more resources into that channel moving forward," he said. "But there's a good chance that you guys run this for the next five years and you might always be a hybrid model. It might always be both."

2. The key to standing out on Amazon: SEO, reviews, and ads

Walter sold me on setting up an Amazon store in addition to the Shopify one, but I had a follow-up question: Sure, millions of people log into Amazon every day, and hundreds of thousands may be searching for pickleball paddles, but how are they going to find mine? How do I avoid getting lost in the Amazon beast?

A variety of factors contribute to a product's rank on Amazon, but Walter pointed to two: search engine optimization, also known as SEO, and reviews.

SEO is essentially what you do to rank higher and generate more traffic — and a lot goes into it. For me, creating a listing page with relevant keywords and quality images is going to be important, especially the keywords.

Walter told me to use Helium 10 to know what keywords I should be using, whether it's paddle sports, pickleball, pickleball paddle, or carbon fiber paddle — and, if I have the resources, pay an SEO expert to optimize my listing page.

Reviews are also key to ranking well on Amazon, and he said I should always encourage customers to leave reviews. One idea is to include a blurb in the thank you email customers receive after placing an order reminding them to share their feedback.

Additionally, he told me that paid ads are essentially necessary.

"Ads are going to give you the best fighting chance of selling through all of your inventory profitably," he said. "If you're doing it right, a dollar into advertising should come back as $2 to $3 of revenue."

He acknowledged that it may feel nervewracking at first to pay for ads without knowing exactly what's going to come from them but assured me I could test ads on a budget of a couple of hundred dollars. Amazon ads are affordable compared to Google or Meta or TikTok ads since Amazon already has so much traffic, he explained, "so you can test it out with a very small budget."

He told me to keep in mind that because reviews are so important, even if we initially just break even from ads, it's worth it if they drive sales that lead to product reviews.

I shouldn't tackle ads on my own, though. He said it's worth it to hire a professional. There are two main fee structures: a flat fee or a percentage of sales. As a new business, the second option probably makes more sense so that I'm not spending too much cash up front. However, if I start selling a lot of paddles, the percentage of sales model might become more expensive, at which point I might want to consider switching to the flat-rate model.

I have no problem with outsourcing and have already done quite a bit of it. It's saving me time, and headaches — and, ultimately, helping me create a better product.

More from "The E-commerce Experiment":

• I started an e-commerce business with $5,000 up front after writing about financially independent Amazon sellers. Here's how I doubled my budget.
• My friend and I pooled $10,000 to start an e-commerce company. After months of brainstorming products, we chose pickleball paddles.
• Months into launching a pickleball e-commerce company with $10,000, I'm already over budget. Here are all of my startup costs, including a surprise $2,095 expense.
• I launched an e-commerce company with a $10,000 budget after interviewing top Amazon sellers. Here's everything I outsourced to save time, including a $250 task that was the best money I spent.