Opening an ecommerce store has become one of the greatest opportunities for people like you and me to easily start a profitable small business and for relatively little in the way of money. Really, the main cost, you will soon discover, is not in terms of how much cash you must come up with, but rather, are you ready for the effort?
Yes, I can tell you, it takes time, hard work, and patience. Also, and especially if you are a beginner to this sort of thing, you will have to be willing to learn, learn, learn. If not, you might as well find something else to do!
A Tough Decision: How and Where to Build Your Online Store
1) Create an eCommerce Website All by Yourself
One option is to create a website, then plug in some shopping cart software, for example, from PayPal. However, this may not be as easy as it sounds. You will have to put the pieces required together yourself but you can try it.
If your going to do it right you’ll also need other features to support the basics, and a lot of know-how. You can find a Shopping Cart and Buy Now buttons to let you sell downloads and any tangible goods on your website. You just pay for the monthly subscription.
2) Use Turn-key eCommerce Solutions to Create Your ecommerce store
There is a group of turn-key ecommerce solutions, that are relatively price effective, that provide everything you need, all the tools and support, from beginning to end (minus the product and business know-how) to set up your ecommerce store and start selling your product(s) to the world, in contrast to you putting all the pieces together yourself.
They also have excellent support programs to help you each step of the way. Of course, it will still take you much hard work and persistence, but, with their help and tools, you will have a much better chance of success.
Here are the main, most popular platforms on the Web for building an ecommerce store. However, I’m not going to go into detail describing or rating each one. For right now I’ll just let you visit each site and decide for yourself. Besides visiting each company, I also highly recommend that you try searching for reviews and recommendations for each one on the Web.
Shopify is probably the easiest to use, with great support help when you need it, something that’s a real plus over WordPress below.
BigCommerce: May have a more complete set of applications. Also has a great support team, which you will definitely need and enjoy.
Volusion: More complicated than Shopify to use but has a great set of additional tools and much needed support.
WordPress.org: Probably the most popular website and blog builder and is free to download.
What you may not know is that WordPress powers millions of sites from CNN to humble websites, and even great online stores. Just download the appropriate ecommerce store plugin after beginning your WordPress website. Has a huge set of additional application plugins as well, most are free.
Choosing the Right Product to Sell at Your eCommerce Store
Choosing the right product(s) for your ecommerce store is not always that easy. But here are a few suggestions:
What would you enjoy selling? For example, if you love cooking in your kitchen, you probably would do very well selling housewares, especially kitchenware, such as Le Creuset French ovens. Housewares have been shown to be in high demand on eBay and elsewhere on the Web. Click here to find out how to find hot selling items on eBay and elsewhere.
If you are still not sure, then find out, answer this question: what’s popular and sells well? To answer this, follow the link above. Why? Because the eBay marketplace, more than any other, is much like online shopping anywhere, especially in the USA, and you can easily find out what’s popular on eBay! So? Sell what’s popular and in demand.
If you have the know-how and the right equipment, you can manufacture your own type of merchandise, for example, clothing, paintings & other artwork, alternative fuel automobiles, jewelry & watches, the list goes on and on forever!
Finding Good Wholesale Companies
It’s not as easy as it used to be to find wholesale companies with prices low enough to produce a healthy markup for online selling. This has made it difficult for sellers expecting a good profit for their efforts. In addition, those online shopping are increasingly expecting good, low prices and an easy buying experience.
Especially if you are a beginner and low on cash, you will want to be very careful spending your money unnecessarily. Be patient, search on the Internet for good wholesale companies that offer the best merchandise and don’t charge you excessively to profit from their website. But search around, be patient and you will find some true wholesalers. Test each product you find for it’s value by running a search for it on eBay.
Other Places to Find Items to Sell At Your Store
You have to look around keeping your eyes and ears open for good sources to furnish your e-commerce store. Some sources are not necessarily wholesale companies but some retail stores or “factory outlets” selling name brand merchandise at very good prices. Around the holidays and especially towards the end of the year, “Black Friday” and other similar times like “Cyber Monday” are great for buying for your ecommerce store.
There are wholesale companies on the web and off that sell name brand at prices you can work with to easily make a good profit. But be careful, especially if your a beginner and are not yet street-wise to buying and selling on the Internet because some “wholesale” companies are wholesale only in word, but not in fact, there prices being too high, actually there prices are discount, at best, probably just about retail. Always research a wholesale source thoroughly before buying from them.
You can even find name brand products at some department stores at prices low enough to mark up and sell on eBay for a profit. One example of that is Khol’s, which often has sales up to 70% off regular prices.
