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In today’s highly competitive e-commerce and digital marketing world it is not easy for a company to stand out. Many startups facing great odds of even making it and end up falling or being absorbed by bigger companies along the way. However, some incredible success stories have also arisen that are worth learning from and aspiring to in order to learn how to follow in their footsteps. One thing to take away form these individuals is many of them started out from humble beginnings, but a drive to succeed despite the odds. They relied on unique products, innovative methods of marketing, and finding the right people to surround themselves with in order to keep going.

1. Driving E-commerce Logistics the Smart Way

If you want to build a successful e-commerce brand, particularly your own platform for transactions, you need to find the right logistics behind it. One such company focusing on the logistics part of the business, namely drop shipping, is uDroppy. The company focuses on sourcing, fulfillment and shipping and can alleviate this burden for companies that want to focus on their main tasks of marketing, development of their platforms or product design.

Udroppy was by Luca Borreani and Nicolo Manica. Both are Italian-born entrepreneurs and world traveled. What makes their story interesting is that they actually paid for their master’s degrees (both hold multiple each) with money they generated form marketing campaigns. They continue to be an inspiration for many young entrepreneurs and marketing professionals worldwide. Sometimes all it takes is a good idea or simple concept and with the right people behind it, the idea can turn into something special.

“The concept was really simple at the beginning: creating a B2B platform that connects E-Commerce stores, both using dropshipping and warehouse business models, to suppliers,” according to their profile on Ideamensch.

2. Teaching Marketing Strategies Through Online Coursework

Another success story worth taking a look at and be aspired from is that of Eric Dyck from iStack Training. This is an educational community with courses available, events, podcasts and other advice that can help aspiring online marketers and e-commerce hopefuls gain some useful knowledge in the field.

Eric has a captivating and interesting history as he originally started as an independent affiliate and promoted toolbar downloads on Google Adwords. He specializes in “performance marketing” and focuses on helping entrepreneurs and marketers leverage their technical skillsets associated with digital and online marketing campaigns.

3. Leveraging Online Privacy to Start a Successful Venture

Online privacy is a very hot topic today due to the many controversies that stemmed over the last couple of years from Wikileaks revelations of NSA eavesdropping to Facebook data snooping and many others. People want to be in control over their own data and privacy online. One entrepreneur who has leveraged this need into something worth drawing inspiration from is Alexandru Iulian Florea from online.io.

Online.io is a peer to peer virtual privacy network that leverages p2p residential networking with cryptocurrency. If you check out the site, it is quite captivating with moving images or gifs showing elaborate graphics in minuscule form. However, the focus is clearly on various methods of securing privacy and private communication online.

What makes this entrepreneur and privacy advocate unique is his story of success, which you can read in-depth on Entrepreneur. He started out form humble upbringings with a stark choice in hand: go to college (he was dropped out at this point), leave his mother’s house, get a job in a hotel, or figure out some crazy way to make money online within weeks. He choose the latter and it was affiliate marketing that brought him some fame and fortune and thus paved the way for his latest venture.

4. Utilizing Facebook as an Effective Marketing Platform

Using social media for marketing is nothing new and many marketing professionals have made careers out of it. The social media platform truly morphed over the years to become a great way to reach out for new audiences and customers as well as even sell directly to customers. Facebook after all also offers e-commerce and many ways to generate profits.

One entrepreneur and marketer who we can draw inspiration from in her success of leveraging the Facebook platform is Christina Szekeres ofIMQueen Consulting. She does not hold back on her success with the moniker “FBQueen” and offers various workshops and other consulting services to help new entrepreneurs succeed. She was born in Hungary and currently resides in Southern California. Some of her advice to take away is to attend meetups and network instead of trying to figure everything out yourself; start out with an email submit affiliate if you have a limited budget and have strategic calls with your team weekly.

5. Hiring Those in Need & Often Underemployed Populations to Allow a Brand to Shine

Imagine finding out that a company is leveraging 30 mothers to run a jewelry company. That is exactly what Founder of ShineOne Jewelry, Eric Toczko, has done. ShineOn, being leveraged through Shopify uses a mobile app to function as an affiliate e-commerce platform. It also launches its own jewelry products regularly.

Toczko’s history as an entrepreneur truly speaks of itself when the phrase, “coming form humble beginnings” is ushered. He started out in a basement in Brooklyn while sleeping on a bare mattress at night. The way he entered into jewelry production and e-commerce was that he saw a gap in the market for digital marketers to be able to sell jewelry with zero upfront costs and minimal risk. He also credits his success to his morning routine of exercising, cold showers, tea and meditation.

All of these entrepreneurs offer something unique to the table to take away from and learn in order for you to drive a new business venture successfully forward. Startups and new ventures these days have to be able to compete on a stage with other players that may have had a head start, more VC funding and already have the right marketing in place to drive growth. However, do not be discouraged as these entrepreneurs and marketing pros showed that sometimes it just takes a good idea or strong will to mark your presence and create a successful brand.

[“source=forbes”]