how to start an online shop in 4 easy steps

How to Start an Online Shop in 4 Easy Steps

The concept of how to start an online shop may seem daunting at first. Maybe you are a shop front owner who has thought about growing

your business with e-commerce. Or maybe you want to be able to work from home and create a comfortable passive flow of income. Either way, the process of how to start an online shop has become a lot simpler than it previously was.

Check out these 4 easy steps on how to start an online shop to see that generating money

through online stores might not be as hard as you think!

#1 Picking your product.

This is the biggest first step for how to start an online shop. Online, you'll find many articles

suggesting that your passion is not a smart way to choosing products to sell.

Now this may be true to a certain degree. If your hobby is collecting old board games, this may be

a hard product to successfully sell online.

But if you dislike children and choose to start a children’s product line, you may lack the

motivation and knowledge to sell your products successfully.

So choose your niche carefully and have fun with it!

Now you have to make sure these products are within your budget and your reach. If you are trying to sell luxurious jewelry with no budget and no connections, this may not be a tangible

start for you.

A cool way to cut costs is to outsource your products. Sights such as alibaba.com help match

you to manufacturers in other countries. They make the products that you are looking for at low costs, in bulk. Websites like these are very

important in how to start an online shop with a selection of products. Some of them will even work with you to customize a product to your

standard!

The last thing you will need to take into account when picking your products are demand and

competition.

One of the easiest ways to measure online demand and competition for a product is by using Google's keyword tool. This tool will

provide data on how many people are searching for specific terms and keywords. It will also give

you the competition on those keywords as “high”, “medium”, or “low”.

#2 Picking a platform/ sales channel

Now, you have many choices here. All choices accompanying pros and cons when choosing

how to start an online shop. You can choose to sell your products on a Marketplace, which is an already established selling platform like Amazon, eBay, etsy, etc. You can choose to develop your own website as a platform for e-commerce. Or

you can do both.

Check out this infographic of the pros and cons of using Amazon, eBay, and Etsy as selling platforms.

There are definitely many pros to selling on your own developed website as well:

• Full control over branding. You can easily incorporate your brand message, which is great for brand trust and in term brand loyalty.

• Access to customer’s information. Making remarketing to these customers easier.

• Full control over promotional offers.

Some cons consist of:

• Lack of visibility. Imagine you own a pizza shop. If it is located on Main Street surrounded by thriving businesses, customers are constantly passing by. This means more visibility and potential customers for you (like a Marketplace). If you put your pizza shop on a isolated street, you will have to use more resources to make customers aware that it is there (like selling on your own website).

• Time intensive. From customizing every part of your own website, to calculating taxes, fulfilling shipments and processing payments, these are a large time-suck.

With all of the pros and cons of using a Marketplace versus your own website for selling products, this choice may seem overwhelming.

A smart way to start if you are "newbie" is by using a Marketplace to get a feel for the process. Once you feel confident with that, you can start

building up your own website as a selling platform.

You can make this easy by using a hosted platform, where your website is managed by a

different service provider. Common examples of these are Shopify, Woo Commerce (ex.

Ouchie Cap), and Magento (ex. Explicit Supplements)

Ouchie Cap uses Woo Commerce

#3 Price

Finding a way to price your product correctly can be tough. Prices that are too high or too low can

be detrimental to your business. Some important things to factor into your prices are:

Your customer. By knowing these demographics, you can get an idea of what they buy and how cost sensitive they are. If you are targeting middle class parents, the way you go

about pricing your product will be different than a demographic of upper class business owners.

Your costs. You will need to carefully compile all of your costs. Be careful with this, because it

does not just consist of the price of the product itself. It needs to include overhead costs which can include things like rent, shipping, stocking

fees etc. It is smart to make a spreadsheet of all these monthly costs and make sure that your

gross revenue will exceed these costs.

Your competition. It is imperative when figuring out how to start your online shop to check out

your competition. After all, your potential customers probably will too. If you are really

unsure about your pricing, you can get an idea through your competition and make changes as

get a better feel for it.

Shipping. How much does it mean to your customer to get free shipping for the product?

This may be a make or break decision when deciding to include that expense into your

product cost.

#4 Traffic

How are you going to get people to come to your website or find your product? Having a plan

on how to get traffic to your product is imperative. Without traffic you have no revenue.

There are a few ways to do this.

SEO. Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of increasing your website's visibility for keywords. This includes things like proper use of

title tags and alt tags for images, ranking for keywords, and creating good meta descriptions.

There are endless good practices for SEO, something you might want to consider hiring a

professional to take care of.

Blogging. Providing interesting and relevant blog posts on your website can help drive traffic. This

can also set you apart from your competitors.

PPC. Pay per click or PPC is a type of paid advertising to drive traffic to your website or

product. For this type of advertising you pay a fixed price for every click your ad gets. The idea here is to pose careful, relevant placements of these ads. You want the best ROI possible, so you are looking for conversions, not just site

visitors.

Social Media Advertising. With millions of people on social media, this is a great platform

to advertise on. Just again, be careful to advertise wisely for conversion.

Now all of this can still seem a bit overwhelming still to someone who is interested in starting

with e-commerce. Don’t worry, it is overwhelming to most people! That is why

reaching out for help with your online store can be a smart move. Trusting people who are

experts in these fields almost guarantee a higher ROI.

For some more information or help if you are ready to get started check us out at

www.sourceapproach.com . We can set up a consultation with you and direct you to the help that you need from SEO professionals to patent

attorneys or investors.