Fire Your Boss, Build Your Own Ecommerce Website and Store
There's not much difference between the real and virtual worlds when it comes to commerce. You build a store and set up your business entity, market yourself to get your doorbell and phone ringing, you get a cash register and bank account. Simple enough. Actually, it takes hard work in either scenario.
1. The Website
Don't worry if you don't know how to design web pages. If you're chomping at the bit and have the time, there are plenty of tools and schools to do so. For the rest of us, there's the option to out-source your needs. ELance, ODesk and Guru are great freelance sites where you can find talent and pick the best price/quality. Craigslist and other sites will provide local talent, but the global economy on the other three sites mentioned really opens up the price options for you. There are also online resources that will allow you to build your own site, WordPress being one of these sites (though you will need to do plenty of reading and perhaps buy an e-book on the basics to get started).
If your image and brand is really critical, and it really should be, you may consider a web design team online or again through the freelance sites listed. There are a number of sources to choose from and their numbers continue to grow. Consider your time investment as well as you financial: how soon do you want to be selling? What can you do in a short amount of time to get a professional site up and running? Factor in these considerations before tackling the project as a noob. If you do decide to DIY, there are great tools such as XSitePro and Site Studio, as well as Dream Weaver by Adobe that make the process much simpler.
2. Set Up Your Store
Just as in real life, your customers will browse around and then make a few selections, put them in their shopping cart and checkout. That's the function of shopping cart software, your customers are bringing their goods to you to pay for their order. The shopping cart software also is what allows you to enter your items into your database, all your customers are doing is clicking the "Add to Shopping Cart" button you've created (with the software).
There is at least one "open source" (a.k.a. FREE) shopping cart called "osCommerce," with the drawback of looking like everyone else who has the same shareware. If you want a more customized look, you'll have to either code it yourself (or outsource that--but be aware it isn't simple), or simply purchase some software for around $ 1,000 (USD) or so, give or take. Some hosting plans offer merchant licenses such as Miva Merchant, which normally runs about a grand, for FREE. That's something to consider, as you'll be able to change the style to suit your site.
3. Set Up Your Merchant Account/Payment Gateway
A merchant account is found via merchant accounts vendors. Simply stated, any company who uses any credit card service is using a merchant account to tell Mr. Credit Card Bank to give you the purchase amount of the goods being delivered. Their bank talks to your bank, it's a done deal. As someone who used to be the proud owner of an advertising franchise, let me tell you a dirty little secret about merchant accounts vendors: their percentages are negotiable. Keep that in mind. I played a little roughshod with my merchant account vendor and talked him down from 4% to 2.5% simply by telling him he was over-priced and I had found a deal with his same company through another sales rep on the west coast, which was absolutely true. This percentage marks how much the merchant account gets per every dollar that passes through the payment gateway, by the way. All the credit card merchant vendors get a cut, but you don't have to let them get as big a cut as they'd hope.
Expect to pay for setup, monthly fees, transaction fees...you get the drift. It's like dealing with a bank, and in a real sense you are. Don't worry, though, because you'll still be coming out ahead vs. going with PayPal or other 3rd party merchant accounts vendors. The more your volume, the lower your fees, so SELL! Of course, if your store's volume isn't over a thousand a month, then you should really consider PayPal or PayQuake.
4. Secured Payment
If you've ever shopped online, you've noticed the payment page has a lock icon in the lower part of the screen. That's because the vendor had a "Secure Sockets Layer" or SSL certificate. This allows web sites to receive CC payment info in a safe enviornment, protecting your customers. Again, many hosting sites offer this as a feature for using their service. Be sure to double-check with your hosting service before buying a SSL, unless you've went with PayPal. They provide their own.
5. Get Traffic
You want your site to be New York City at rush hour: plenty of traffic. If you are ready to go, just waiting to fill orders and cash in on all your hard work, you need to get started on what's called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Marketing your site, in other words.
There are many different types of advertising for sites. The cheap and easy way is to get an Ezine, GoArticles and ArticlesBase account, though Ezine is the best. These are article sites where you can submit articles for free, include backlinks to your site, and start getting traffic as your articles go live and publishers pick them up. Write on topics you love, on popular topics that will get picked up broadly, and you're in business.
Another thing to consider is to create Craigslist Ads for the major cities around the map. Go for hotspots, and categorize your ads intelligently. Once you have an ad template in place, it's easy to keep posting them, just with a few clicks.
YouTube and other video sites that allow you to upload your own videos with links to your site is a fantastic way to generate traffic.
Be sure you submit your site to the major search engines, with a focus on Google as the others will follow. There are web design companies and marketers that you can out source this to, like anything. It's worth it. Hosting servers also offer similar deals, for around $ 50 or so on vSuperHost.com you can have your site marketed to over 200 directories, according to their literature.
Keep in constant contact with your customers by writing them a newsletter or sending them coupons to entice them to return. Email lists are an absolute necessity if you want to keep them coming back. A nice "thank you for your business" or "Happy Birthday!" will go a long ways to customer retention.
Another thing you should do is to keep adding pages of content to your site, as Google ranks "deeper" sites higher. If you haven't yet, install Google Analytics or similar software to track how your site is getting found, then optimize for those keywords by creating content for them. You can also target those keywords in a Google AdSense campaign. Food for thought, just keep plugging away to promote your ecommerce website and story and you'll get to the top with dilligence and intelligent marketing!
Dan Marx provides creative business services for startups on how to start a business on the Internet and make money. And Shopkeeper USA for affordable ecommerce website. Did you find this article helpful? You can find out a lot more by going to http://www.DM-Creative.com where you find ideas, products and services geared toward making money online with an ecommerce Web Store."
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