The Best Parts & Benefits of Online Ecommerce

The Ecommerce industry is continuously growing. Right now there are millions of websites online, the majority of them are business related which sells either a service or a product of some kind. Whether you are just now getting in or you are preparing to make the choice, hopefully the benefits discussed below about the ecommerce industry will help you decide whether it will be right for you or not.

You are your own boss

This is worth a lot. I had a corporate job where I work eight to five every day. It paid my bills, it kept my family in a comfortable home, but I absolutely despised the idea that I would never move on past where I was currently at. I had pretty well reached my max position I was capable of without attending more college. Although the cost of living raises were imminent, I knew that I would never be able to build onto my house or have a really nice car. I was stuck. Going into the ecommerce industry brought some excitement back to my life. No longer was I limited in my salary. Instead, the opportunities were endless, and the profits I made would be going into my pocket and no one elses. This is what being my own boss was for me, it was not just about setting my own hours. I was prepared to work as long as I knew that the payoff would be coming to me and no one else.

Low Setup Cost

As mentioned, I had my own home, a family, and had a regular daily job. I did not hit the lottery jackpot and was never capable of investing a ton of money. This was one of the biggest benefits in setting up an ecommerce store. Without too much cash, I could get something moving. This is not to say that you should assume that you can get started with no money. To be quite honest, you must have a marketing budget and you should have enough to get a website developed, assuming you can not do it yourself. However, your marketing budget does not need to exceed more than about $40.00 per month initially to get your business moving.

Very Little Overhead Expense

The problem with brick and mortar companies is that they really do need to make a lot of money to justify overhead. When you are paying electric and water bills, possible rent, and everything else that comes along with owning a business on main street, having a bad month at the beginning can cause you to close your doors or send you into bankruptcy. The benefit of ecommerce stores is that you can expect to have a bad month or two, maybe even a year, this will not mean that you are out of business before it even began. But, the vast majority of people are capable of eating some of the expenses throughout the growing pains of getting an online business established.

Your Potential Customer Base is Endless

Another problem with brick and mortar businesses is that they are reliant on the traffic that drives by while their doors are open. Luckily for you, in ecommerce, your doors are never closed. As well, your traffic is not just going to come from your small town in Oklahoma, but everyone who has access to the internet across the world. Your loyal customers can be from all 50 states, and maybe from other countries depending on what your intentions are with your ecommerce store.

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How to Sell Online

Step 1: Find what you want to sell

The first thing you want to do is find out what you will be selling. Until you do this, you probably can not do anything else. As well, this may seem like a small step to some, but this is probably the biggest decision you can make when getting into ecommerce business. There are a wide variety of products that will not sell online for various reasons. Perhaps the market is too crowded, perhaps it would be too expensive to ship to online customers so they can get far better pricing at local retailers, or maybe it is not a product that people are going to look for. This is just a few things that could keep a product for selling. You need to be realistic with yourself and determine whether your product that you have in mind is a product that you would consider buying.

Step 2: Become a legal entity
This could really be something you do before step one or simultaneously, but I placed it here because most people will drop the idea of selling online before they ever complete their product research. So to save you money, I would encourage you to take your time with the research and really evaluate whether you want to sell online or not before making the leap to invest in becoming a legal entity. Generally, this can be done by simply retrieving a DBA from your state. If you are unsure of exactly where to go or how to do it, you might use a service such as legalzoom.com to obtain a sales tax ID. This sales tax ID is what allows you to work with real wholesalers for wholesale pricing. If they are not asking for a sales tax ID, then they probably are not truly a wholesaler. This is a good way to sort the bad ones from the good ones.

Step 3: Begin the development of your website

There are numerous ways to go about this, but below I have some smaller individual steps that might help you if you are unsure the route to go.

1. Obtain a domain name (example: something.com)

2. Evaluate other websites you like so you know what direction you want to go

3. Either find shopping cart software that you like, or find a developer to develop what you have in mind.

4. Ensure that your website is easy to manage before you have your website go live.
The presence and clarity of your website is going to be very important. You are a small business, but the great thing about being online is that you certainly do not have to portray yourself as such. Some of the most successful online websites today started out as one or maybe two people and grew, many still are that way. You would not know it because their website looks professional and it is easy to use. I would encourage you to read more about what makes a good website, or rely on a professional to give you advice. A good way to find out what you are looking for is to look at other websites and determine what you do and do not like about them. Make sure the developer(s) are aware of these to ensure you get exactly what you want.

Step 4: Market your website
This is going to be a key on whether you succeed or not. The life of internet websites is not a “build it and they will come” model. When your website is released, no one knows who you are. Even the search engines will be skeptical about sending traffic your way at first. You probably will not be at the top of Google if someone searches for the product you are selling. Marketing is the only way to change this and there are several avenues you can take. You can advertise on other websites that are related to yours. For example, if you are selling telephones for people who are hard of hearing, you might advertise your telephones on a website that deals with a loss of hearing in someway or another.

If you are marketing your website properly, you should be well on your way to several sales online and a successful business. Good luck!

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