This article is aimed at the self-starter that does not have thousands of dollars to hire Consultants or Specialist to build their Online Store.. Following is practical advice that is available to most people with an Internet connection. Starting your online business is like any other venture, it requires a certain amount of dedication and planning to get it going and maintain your ebusiness longevity. If you’re a self starter there are alot of people on the web that spend hundreds of hours posting free information on "how to" about many subjects, seek out this information and research all aspects of your potential ebusiness.
1. Products/Services.
The type of product/service you offer comes down to personal choice, experience and your ability to have continuity of supply, when I first starting sell on ebay I found I could buy secondhand crystal light fittings and sell at 3 times for what I paid for them. But I was lucky to find 3 a month to buy and then sell, so even my $450 profit per month was not enough to let me leave my day job.
There are alot of importers and manufactures who are willing to have you sell their products online, so do your research but BEWARE!! There are also ALOT of people who claim to sell lists of importers and manufactures who have product to sell. This is true, the yellow pages has thousands of business that sell products and services and that’s free to read. Don’t get ripped off with something that’s already free to read. If it’s "to good to be true" it probably IS!
Try a find a niche market, you may read this alot but its true. You can find a niche market within common markets, take secondhand books as an example. Secondhand Books would have to be one of the easy businesses to start online. There is an abundant of sources to buy from, garage sales, boot sales, charity sales, local markets and used bookstore (they could have valuable books for sale for only a few dollars) they are easy to ship and they don’t need alot of room for storage.
There are countless book sites on the Internet, have a look at the competition, sometimes you may be able to replicate a competitors product or service and do it better. A niche in the book market could be that you only deal in Old Bibles or Out of Print books, I have brought some books for around 2$ and sold the for hundreds of dollars on ebay. In Australia the "out of print books" market is very healthy and good profits can be made.
Look at what is the next emerging market. Podcast are not new but what is being offered is, I personally pay for a Podcast subscription and it cost me 5$ per month. This is a weekly show I download and listen to when I’m driving, cleaning, laying back or what ever. The show is basically about a certain topic that has an enormous amount of information on the internet and is put together as a weekly news/update Podcast which is fast approaching the 100th episode, it is a one person show, that uses promo music that is mixed with the shows content and is put together very well. I would guess that this show would have about 3000 subscribers that $15.000 USD per month, there would be running cost but it still would be a nice income to work at home and the show is "homemade" not in a Studio.
Now you wouldn't expect to slap together a Podcast and the have them dollars rolling in, it takes time to build a customer base by offering free Podcast then if you are on a winner set a Premium membership so you customers can pay for extra show content. The internet is about information and to learn you need information (while writing this I have just thought of a potential money making business!!!. sorry can't share this one ). Learn to network with people, you may not have a voice for podcasting but have the computer skills to put one together. If you don’t have a certain part/experience of an idea, find someone who does and work together.
Learn about a certain part of history and put together a Podcast, people are paying $$$$ for theses services right now. Before TV, people listened to Radio Plays that are now being downloaded as MP3’s, you can download the original 1938 Orson Welles "War of the worlds" for free plus many others from the "Campbell’s Playhouse" Era. If you have a few friends, write a Podcast series, create the characters and see if it works. You could even write a Podcast series, create the characters and make up all the voices yourself. There is a bit more involved in the above to get started but its all about ideas.
2. Website/Online Store
Setting up a Website/Online Store can be relatively easy, you can get Ecommerce stores ready to go, all you have to do is buy your domain name, set up your merchant account and your are selling online.
*Option 1. Easy. Online Store.
Cost starts around $40.00 USD per month for a basic store with about 50 product lines and around $200.00 USD per month for unlimited product lines. Some operators will charge you a set up cost of about $100.00 to set up your store, this type of online store is best if you have limited internet exposure or little programming experience.
*Option 2. Learn a bit. Online Store
If you have some programming experience with web design (html, PHP), you may want to setup your own shop and host it yourself. You can buy Software that is an Online shop ready to go, the benefits to this is you have a once off purchase for the shop software, you can host it any where you want and let your product catalogue grow. You may have complete design freedom with some software so you can customise your store. The cost of this Software varies from $50 to hundreds of dollars and most of the time you get support for your shop software. Shop around and do your research. You can Buy a Domain name, (around $30 USD) find a host for your site (around $10 USD per month), setup a merchant account (some are free to sign up to and you only pay a % of the sale price in fees when you make a sale.), integrate it to your store (free if done by you), add your product and start selling (free if done by you).
*Option 3. Open Source. Free Online Store.
Open Source is basically "Free" software like "osCommerce" that you can use and modify as per the user license. You can download free Ecommerce (online Shop) software and set it up on your site. Regardless of what you read you need to have a good understanding of the Program Language the software have been written in to maintain a happy and healthy Online store. I have personally used and install this software for one of my stores so I have first hand experience. You are probably saving yourself about $200 USD trying to use free software but in the long run it may not be worth the headache. You still have all the other associated cost with hosting and domain names, so unless you are ready to learn alot I would look into option 1 or 2.
3. Other Considerations
Merchant Account.
A Merchant account is your ability to process credit card/bank payments made by visitor to your Online Store, in the real world you would go into a store select a product and pay at the counter by cash, check or credit card. If you pay by credit card, the shop assistant would have you swipe your card and the details would be processed by the financial institution (e.g.: Bank), the request would come back approved or declined...end of transaction. This is possible because you the shop owner has set a Merchant Account with their financial institution and has received account numbers that identified the Shop owner in transaction processing so they receive the money for the purchased goods.
The same process happens with an Online Store. You have a few options when it comes to Merchant Accounts, Banks can be very formal and require alot of information including business plans and alike. You could sign up with the likes of "Paypal" and only pay a % of each sale. This is a great service if you are starting out and you only have an Online Store, research what they require to sign up. If you already have a real world store you may be able to use your current merchant account for you Online Store, sometime you need the services of a “Gateway Provider”. This is a service that provides the “processing link” between your Online Store and the Bank so you get paid for your sales.
Hosting.
This is where you put your Online Store. In Option 1 everything is done for you including the hosting all you have to do is add your products (domain name and merchant account). The other two options require you the buy server space for you Online Store. A server is a computer, which interacts with other servers (computers). The Internet is a Network of Servers (computers) which link up so we can access websites and Online Shops. A server, depending on its size may hold hundreds of different websites or online Shops this is called Hosting. Each shop in identified by its domain name, so when you type the website/Online store name into the computer the domain name is found and the website is display on your computer. Depending on your requirement you rent a part of the Server space for your website/Online store, in other words it is being "Hosted".
Domain Names.
A Domain Name is the URL (Universal Resource Locator) for your website/Online store., it is so other servers can "locate" your "Resource" (website/Online store) and tells it apart form other websites. There are different types of Domain Names, it can depends on the country extension of the Domain Name.... e.g. ".com.au" for Australia.. ".co.uk" for united Kingdom... or ".ca" for Canada. ISP providers may use ".net" being "Network Providers" and Organization can use ".org".
".com" is widely recognized as the domain for America but can be used mostly by anyone. There as certain rules for domain name use, this depends of the country or type of domain name used. So check the requirement for each Domain Name type before your purchase.
Research.
The above information is written to give you a starting point for building your Online Store, research is the best way to find the options that are available to suit your needs. I have added a
Resource Page on my website
www.ubooks.com.au, this will have a list of selected service providers for you have a look at and start your research.
Make a plan, set a goal. Don’t make this a “9 day wonder” and give up in a week or two. Even if you start learning now for what is required to have your own Online Store, but you may not have the resources to actually start for 6 or 12 months. There is so much to learn about your own Online Store, get started.
