Hi guys, This is an Idea that I have been pondering on for quite some time now and would love some advice conserning it. I live on a small island in the caribbean that has alot of people with family living in the US,UK and Europe. I was thinking that a father or mother living abroad who wants to suprise their child or any relative with a cake could order online from me via a website and I would do the delivery. My questions are
1. Is this a good Idea at all or am I just kidding myself?
2. If this is a good idea how do I go about Pricing and Design?( I have seen a few websites where people offer 8" cakes at a certain price, but what if someone wanted something more custom made?)
3. How do you market such an Idea as this?

Thanks in advance for your input.

The first step would be to put together a business plan, which involves looking at the size of your potential market, their demographics (local info for non-natives should reflect similarly on their family abroad), your cost structure (including licensing fees and a commercial kitchen if required), product assortments, pricing, competitive analysis, etc.

I started a bakery in a location with a lot of temporary workers from other countries, and on several occasions we received orders from abroad for local delivery, the person ordering would pay via paypal. These orders arrived organically, but if you wanted to specifically target this market you would need to look into online advertising with an international platform (like Google AdWords) and/or targeting specific local ad networks in the relevant countries. Ideally you would try to target down to the neighborhood level if you can identify areas in the US and Europe with a higher concentration of immigration rates to your area.

Thanks for responding Jason. I really like the idea of internet marketing via google ad words.

One thing to mention about Adwords... it is very expensive. I swear by it, but it is a big part of my expense budget.