Online Business Ideas – Ecommerce store

3. Online ecommerce store

If you have one product or 1000s of products to sell consider offering them online. Many local merchants are expanding there brick and mortar business by creating an online store that carries the same products as their offline store. This increases their audience and sales because they aren’t limited by the geographical location of their physical store.

How to find a product or products to sell

Select a product that is in high demand but not sold in large box stores ie Walmart, BestBuy, Sports Authority. These large stores can afford to offer very low prices because they buy in bulk.

Example:
Sinkbiz.com
I created an online store for this customer who sells all types of sinks ranging from stainless steel to porcelain, and eco-taps. Customers purchase the sinks online which then get shipped via UPS.

How to set-up an online store

First you need to register a domain name then build your online store by creating a web site. To process orders online you’ll need a shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway, SSL certificate and web hosting. An alternative to purchasing your own merchant account is to use PayPal. It enables you to process orders online without signing up for a merchant account.

Read my article: How to Build an Ecommerce Web Site Using the PayPal Shopping Cart

How to market your online store

It’s not enough to just place your store online. Make sure you submit your web site address to specialized directories and local directories. Find related web sites that are already well established on the Net and ask them to place your link on their web site. To do this you may need to offer something in return ie a well written article, money or a even free sample of your product.

Try different marketing strategies until you find one that continually generates traffic to your online store.

To receive information on ways to generate traffic visit
101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site