Is it a good idea to work with a remote business partner in the e-commerce space?

I feel your pain — I've been there several times in a couple of my companies. Each situation ended up being unique, and had to be handled differently. I think there are a few things to consider before you make your decision: -- 1. What is in your cofounder's way? Is you cofounder being held up by a lack of clarity? Lack of motivation? Lack of autonomy? One of my past cofounders was very good at getting the job done, but didn't naturally have the skill to lay out tasks in a manageable way. To get around this, I worked with the whole team (4 people) to write up process documentation that removed the need to "figure out what to do next" that was tripping up this cofounder. -- 2. What job was your cofounder brought on to complete? And is it being completed? One of my companies brought on a cofounder simply to give us a marketing platform — he had a huge online audience — but he did nothing else. At first, this caused tension; once we had specifically laid out who was on the team and for what purpose, it was easier to identify where responsibilities lay. -- 3. Is your cofounder capable of doing the job? One of the more painful ordeals I've gone through in business is bringing on a good friend, then realizing that — despite his talent and intelligence — he just wasn't able to perform the job I'd hired him for. His skills were better suited for a different job: he needs hands-on management; he works better with repetitive tasks that don't require big-picture thinking; he lacks assertiveness and confidence, which were critical for the management-level role he'd been hired to do. After I tried to clear everything in his way, it became clear the company couldn't survive if he remained on the team. I had to lay him off. -- 4. Do you just simply not like the way this cofounder works? In one of my startups, there was a cofounder who I didn't know all that well, but he had amazing industry contacts and domain knowledge. However, once we started working together it became clear that we had VERY different working styles. He drove me completely nuts with (what seemed to me to be) a very ADHD-style of planning, with projects starting and being dropped and then coming out of nowhere with a call at 21:00 to discuss something critical that would be forgotten tomorrow. I'm sure I drove him nuts, too. So eventually we ended up selling that company — it was that or shutter it — because we knew there wasn't a chance we'd be successful if we continued as we were. -- Working with other people is tricky in general. Our instinct is to assume that we're the best workers on the planet and everyone else is incompetent, an idiot, a slacker, or all of the above. Usually it's a combination of an organizational-level lack of clarity, poor communication, no processes, and (sometimes) plain ol' we-don't-see-eye-to-eye-on-things-ness. Hopefully that helps. Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to hear specifics on my situations, or if you'd like any help devising a strategy for resolving your cofounder trouble. Good luck!

This sounds as a deja vu to me. I have been in a similar situation back in 2000, we could only solve the issue thanks to a good mediator. However every situation is different and hence your route to a solution might be different. It also depends where you are in the world that defines how an email and/or verbal agreement might be a sufficient ground for legal actions. I am not a lawyer and can not judge that.

On paper you have the advantage but after several startups control resides in he who knows how to execute the vision of the company.

There is quite a bit of information available online about eCommerce conversions rates. According to a ton of sources, average visitor-to-sale conversion rates vary from 1-3%. This does not mean the Furniture conversions will be the same. The bigger problem is that visitor-to-sale conversions are not a good data point to use to measure or tune your eCommerce business. All business have some unique friction factors that will affect your final conversion rate. It's very important to understand each of these factors and how to overcome them. The best way to measure and optimize is to take a conversion funnel approach. Once you have defined your funnel you can optimize each conversion rate to better the total effect. For example: Top of the funnel: - All web site visitors, 100,000 / month First conversion: View a product page, 50% of all visitors Second Conversion: Add to Cart, 10% of people who view products Final Conversion: Complete Checkout, 80% of people who put items in a cart In this example we see that only 10% of people who actually view products put them in to a cart, but 80% of those people purchase. If you can figure out why visitors are not adding items to their cart and fix the issue to increase the conversion rate, revenue should increase significantly because of the high checkout rate. You can use free tools like Google Analytics to give you a wealth of information about your site visitor and their behavior or there are some great paid tools as well.

It sounds like you have plenty of skills to get started now. There's no need to keep re-training in different areas when you have experience to get started today. My suggestion would be to pick a niche and try and become the go-to guy in that particular niche. Let's say, for example, you are interested in men's fashion. You have experience in creating Wordpress ecommerce sites. You could call up maybe 10-15 of the local businesses in that niche in your local city/state and offer to make their website and get them in on a set-up fee and then a monthly maintenance retainer. This approach would be lower stress (because it's something you're interested in) and also because you could create a methodical framework that you could apply to other businesses in that niche. That's just one idea. Second idea - create a course on WooCommerce development and put it on Udemy (or Coursera etc). Note down 10 of the biggest obstacles you've had to overcome when building sites for friends and family and then note down 10 of the most important considerations people should consider before people get started. Now you've got 20 video lessons for your course. Charge for the course on Udemy or use it as a marketing tool to get more b2b development work. Idea 3: Go make money on freelancer.com, peopleperhour etc. Perhaps you've tried this already? Skills like yours are in demand on those platforms. Idea 4: Take the things I noted in the second idea above, and turn it into a handbook. Sell that book via Amazon. Idea 5: Go on Tweetdeck. Create a column that searches for people who are using keywords like "Wordpress woocommerce issue" "Wordpress woocommerce help" "WordPress woocommerce problem". Give them your clairty.fm link and tell them you'd be happy to have 5 minute discussion to see if you could help them resolve their problem. Idea 6: Find 10 major theme development companies. Sign up to their help or support forums. Do a similar thing to what's noted above on Twitter and offer to have a quick call via clarity.fm to see if you could help. Idea 7: Go down the route of finding existing Wordpress/Woocommerce blogs. Write posts for them about specific WooCommerce issues, problem solving or project management tips. Do this with the aim of improving your inbound consulting gigs. Idea 8: Do the exact opposite of whatever those friends are telling you. Idea 9: With your skills you could easily start a dropshipping company. I won't go into all the details here but just start looking at sites like Clickbank or Product Hunt to get a feel for something you're interested in. Build your site and start dropshipping products. https://www.woothemes.com/2015/06/dropshipping-beginners-guide/ Wordpress consulting alone, yeah it's probably quite competitive, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of opportunities for revenue. I think you will be even more motivated, successful and less stressed if you pick a niche industry, product or service to focus on. Enjoy it!