A Real Business Owner, Not a Theoretical Consultant
I own and operate my own ecommerce business - a UK-based online fishing tackle business selling predator fishing lures and accessories, through my own website and eBay. Building it from the ground up means I've had to solve every problem that eCommerce throws at you: ad accounts that burn budget without results, checkout flows that lose customers, margins that look fine until you factor in every cost, and tech issues that quietly block revenue.
I built a custom PHP profit tracking application to import orders from both my website and eBay, calculate true net profit after COGS, fees, postage, and overheads, and produce daily and monthly reporting. It wasn't because I wanted to build software - it was because nothing else gave me the clarity I needed to make good decisions.
Over time, I noticed that the gaps I found in my own business were the same gaps I saw in almost every small eCommerce business I looked at. Wasted ad spend. Checkout issues that hadn't been noticed. Pricing that didn't account for the true cost of each sale. eBay listings in the wrong categories. I realised that the work I was doing for myself was genuinely valuable to others - and that most small business owners don't have access to someone who understands the whole operation end to end.
That's why I started offering audits. Not because I wanted to be a consultant, but because the problems are solvable - and the solutions are worth far more than what I charge to find them.