Start An eCommerce Site

To start an eCommerce site the main thing that you will need is a website. In this article, I will show you what you will need to have your very own eCommerce website that you can run and maintain from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. How cool is that?

What Is An eCommerce Store?

An eCommerce store is like a brick and mortar business like Target, Walmart or even the little local Thrift Store etc., except that it is solely online and there are no buildings required. It is a website where you can sell your products or sell someone else’s products like Amazon, Walmart or eBay etc.

You will set up your website and list all your products and have people come by and buy the products that u have listed. If you are selling your products you will need to provide your own shipping and if you are selling someone else’s products then you just to send your customers to their website and they will take care of the shipping for you.

You can attract people to your business by writing a blog as well that will get interested readers to your website where they can then purchase your products for sale. A pretty neat set up don’t you think?

So if you think that this is something you would like to do or have an interest in then please go ahead and read on.

What Will You Need?

The first thing you need to do is to figure out what you want to sell. You can do this by analyzing and applying the following points.

• First, know your target audience/customer.
• Now you can know what you’re selling and the market you’re selling to.
• You will need to source your products (find suppliers). One great supplier is Alibaba. They have a huge selection of products.
• Know your customer’s problems and provide a solution to them.
• Check out your key competitors. What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• Take a look at how they have their websites set up.
• Are your prices going to be competitive against theirs?
• Figure out their weaknesses and provide improvements on your site.
• You want to emphasize what makes your site better than theirs.
• Become an Affiliate with the companies products you will be selling.

These are some key points to study and figure out so that you will have a good idea of the exact product you want to sell and how your website will look.

Choosing Your Domain

The next thing you will need is a domain. A domain is what the website will sit on. Think of the domain as the address for your store and the website is the building of your store. Choosing a domain name is important because you want the name to be relevant to your store and the products you are selling.

Do not choose a known Brand name for your domain as this will lead to possible legal issues that could hold you up for quite some time. You really want to stay away from legal issues as much as possible. They hold you up and are a real pain in the rear and can be very expensive.

Otherwise, just get creative and decide on what your domain will be called. You want something that is easy to remember and is easy to type in the URL. In other words, do not put things like “-” between words or other special characters as people will forget these and then they will not be able to type in your URL to find your store.

Building Your Website

The next thing that you will need is a website to display your products for your customers to purchase. Building your website is a lot of fun. You get to be creative in designing the layout of your site and how it will look. There are some key points to remember when building your website.

• Pick a name for your website that has good keyword numbers. This will help with ranking your site (get into that later).
• If you can have the same name for your website as your domain, the better for ranking in Google.
• I recommend using WordPress as your website design software.
• You will need to choose a website theme.
• You I recommend you add the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress. This will help u set up your shop and give you layouts for things like your Cart, adding Products, Checkout and how to handle payments and much more.
• You need to find hosting for your website with site security (SSL), anti-spam, anti-virus, and other protective services.

These are just some basic things to get you started on your new adventure. It is an exciting opportunity to go through the process of setting up your very own business.

You can build your own website here for free. Just enter the name you would like for your website and click the Build it Now button. Go ahead it is free and does not require a credit card either.

Setting Up Your Store And Other Finishing Requirements

Now is the time that you will start to add the products to your site as well as your Privacy Policy Page and your required Disclaimers and other needed legal stuff. This is where you will begin to layout your website designs as you add all your product categories and product pages and menus and things.

You will need to learn things like SEO and Metadata amongst other things to enhance your website and get it ranked in Google. You want to be ranked on page 1 of Google whenever anyone does a search for your products. This way they are more likely to click on your site and purchase the product from you.

At the very least you will need to set up some tracking and analytic data for your website to track your sales and conversions amongst other things. You can use Google Console and Google Analytics for this as both of them are free and work very well.

Once that is all done then you will begin to promote your site and drive traffic to your site by running ad campaigns, using social media, PPC campaigns, email, and many more other advertising and promoting methods available on the internet.

And that is pretty much it to get set up and running. That is what you will need to start an eCommerce store. Then you wait for people that will like what you have to offer and come to your site and purchase your products and you take in the profits. You run more ad campaigns and drive more people to your site.

Then you rinse and repeat. You start a second eCommerce store and do it all again and generate even more income.

Final Thoughts

Of course, you will need training for all of this and a platform to launch from. There are many out there on the internet but the two I know of is Shopify and Wealthy Affiliate. I have heard good things about Shopify and I am a member of Wealthy Affiliate. So my natural recommendation would be Wealthy Affiliate as I am very familiar with them. If you want to see a review of them click the link above.

They will provide everything for you from buying your domain to running your website and driving traffic to it. From all the hosting and servers, security and some of the best, step-by-step, up to date, training available on the internet today. You will also get 50 websites and all for a very low price.

Thank you for reading my article and if you have any questions or comments (or even just rant, lol), then please leave them below and I will be happy to respond to you. Have a wonderful day.