Things You'll Need:
- Creativity
- Determination
- Patience
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Step 1
Choose a tightly focused theme or niche for your online store around something that you are passionate or knowledgeable about. By focusing on a specific theme for your store, you'll garner a competitive advantage over other stores that are larger and forced to be broader in nature. This specific focus will give your store more credibility, and will position you to provide detailed information about certain kinds of products. Customers will appreciate the level of coverage you provide on a given subject, which will be helpful for making purchasing decisions. Essentially, this focus gives your store a right to exist.
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Step 2
Choose an underlying infrastructure for your online store. Many people are surprised to learn that there are now a number of ecommerce services that allow you to start an online store for free, or for limited cost. One good free way to get started is to open a Vendio store:
http://www.vendio.com/ecommerce/free-ecommerce-site
Vendio's new ecommerce solution is game-changing because it allows you to start a real online store with a full commercial feature-set, for free. Given all the features, setting up an online store with Vendio will take a few hours of work, but its worth it. There are a number of solutions available that are similar to Vendio's for a price range of $40 to $300 per month.
Another way to get started quickly is to open a Zlio store.
http://setup.zlio.com
With Zlio, you'll be able to sell products from buy.com and other brand name merchants and earn a commission on every sale. The upside of Zlio is that its fast, and its free. The challenge with Zlio is its limited feature set.
Another reasonable option for starting a free online store is CafePress.
http://www.cafepress.com
With CafePress, you can start an online shop for free selling merchandise that you design [like customized t-shirts, posters, bumperstickers etc] and then generate earnings paid out monthly.
Additionally, if you're willing to pay a monthly fee, some folks like Yahoo Merchant Services.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/
With Yahoo, you'll pay a monthly fee in exchange for the framework of an online store. The upside of Yahoo is that you can sell, carry, and fulfill your own inventory of products (rather than outsourcing it through Zlio or CafePress). The downside of Yahoo is that, well, you get to fulfill your own inventory of products.
Lastly, I'm going to give a quick mention to FlyingCart, which offers a service similar to Yahoo's but with less expensive monthly fees.
http://www.flyingcart.com
With FlyingCart, you get the basic architecture/framework of an online store and generally have to pay a monthly fee less than that of Yahoo. There are also some interesting social networking features. It lets you sell, carry, and fulfill your own inventory.
All things considered, we recommend that folks start by setting up a Vendio store and then take things from there. Vendio is free, which makes it a good way to learn about starting an online store. http://www.vendio.com/ecommerce/free-ecommerce-site -
Step 3
Build-out your product inventory. Be careful to put the best products at the top of the page. Product placement counts and studies have shown that products placed at the top of the page tend to sell the best. Keep your inventory of products fresh. Try to write reviews that will help your customers make better puchasing decisions. Stay true to the theme of your store. Stay focused.
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Step 4
Promote your store. Remember, this is not Field of Dreams. "If you build it they will come" will not apply to our new store! As entrepreneurs, its up to us to generate interest in our own online store. You should strongly consider writing some helpful articles about the products in your store and publishing them [give squidoo a try for this]. For instance, on my hot sauce store, The Hot Sauce Collector, I wrote a series of articles about The Hottest Hot Sauce In The World. These articles help my customers find the hottest hot sauces and consistently drive traffic to my site.
Reference:
http://www.squidoo.com/thehottesthotsauce/ -
Step 5
Manage and track your web store. Now that you've put all this energy into creating an online store, don't you want to see how many visitors you have and how they found your site? Sign up for free Google analytics.
http://google.com/analytics/
Comments
jamesarto said
on 11/16/2009 You have written a very nice article. Also check out my blog on how to start your own online store at
http://start-an****-store.blogspot.com
roomatduboce said
on 10/30/2009 Great article. Don't forget MyMinto.com. They seem to be really good at keeping the process of building a store simple for newbies. I think they offer a free account as well.
dthere said
on 4/27/2009 Very detailed. Definitely requires lots of 'blood, sweat, and tears'...5
staysik said
on 3/27/2009 Good article, and good resources, thank you!!
hclewk said
on 1/14/2009 I own a company, Welch Technology, that focuses on creating e-commerce websites for small businesses that are uncomfortable creating their own online store. We offer very competitive prices. Check us out at: http://welchtechnology.com