Start an Online Store

The first step is having the products that you want to sell online, the products define the market that you're trying to reach, and you'll build your store around this market.

It's great if you already know exactly what you want to sell. The more unique the products the best chances to succeed in the Internet. You can sell products that you create yourself or you can buy and resell products from other companies.

But you don't need to know what to sell yet or if you don't have the money to invest in products to resell. There are many companies that work as DROPSHIPPERS, a dropshipper is a company that will allow you to sell their products on your website but they'll take care of processing the orders and shipping the products to your customers, basically these companies are your warehouse. That's right, you don't even need to have products to start selling online.

Recommended Sites for Wholesale Products to Sell in your Online Store:

It's time to create your website and offer the products.

There are different elements needed to start a website,
- Domain name: this is the www.mydomain.com address that'll be use for your store.
- Hosting: This is the hard drive space in an online server where your website will be stored.
- Shopping Cart: This is the software required to allow customers to place orders online.
- Web Design: This is the graphic elements that will make your store look appealing to visitors.

The best and most economic place to purchase a domain name (about $10 per year) and hosting (about $5 per month) is www.godaddy.com, you can also use this site to check the available domain names.

For the Web Design, you can always hire a Freelance web designer, it's easy to find designers online that can do a professional web design for a couple hundred dollars at Elance and RentACoder.

Now, you can purchase each one of these individually from different companies, or you could with a company that offers all these as a package. These ecommerce companies include the domain name, hosting, shopping cart and pre-designed templates to help you set up the store as quick as possible. We have reviewed different ecommerce companies and the top solutions are:
 
- 3dcart, Starts at $35.99/month (one time $99 set up fee)
- NetworkSolutions, Starts at $49.95 /month (one time $45 set up fee)
- Volusion, Starts at $29.95 /month (one time $99 set up fee)

The 3 companies offer a FREE TRIAL, we recommend doing this before signing up with any of these.

In order to collect payments from customers in your online store you'll need to use a Payment Solution, as a company it's easy to get a Merchant Account to process credit cards, but for starters, the best solutions are:
- Paypal, www.paypal.com
- Google Checkout, checkout.google.com

It takes minutes to sign up for these companies and they allow you to process credit cards from your customers. Please check with your ecommerce provider if they're compatible with Paypal and Google Checkout.

Having your store ready is only the first step, now you need to attract visitors so you can start making sales. You can do this by listing your new website in Online Directories, Forums, Message Boards, etc. But the most effective solution is doing Adwords pay-per-click, this is a very good system for learning to use Adwords in a cost effective way.

Now the good part, how to set up an Online Store absolutely FREE. I had to explained how the standard Online Stores work so you could understand the difference and the money you're saving by setting up a FREE ONLINE STORE.

There are different options for FREE ONLINE STORES

- ZLIO, www.zlio.com
With ZLIO you can easily create and design your store to offer products from the network of companies that are part of ZLIO, you can pick and choose the products that you would like to offer on your store. These products are sold by other companies, once the store is ready it requires minimum maintenance, you'll receive commissions for every sale made, these are pay via Paypal so you'll need to have a paypal account.

- CafePress, www.cafepress.com
Using CafePress, you can create with your design ideas t-shirts, bumperstickers, buttons, coffee mugs, etc. All you provide is the design, CafePress takes care of the entire process, you get a commission for ever sale made.

- ArtsNow, www.artsnow.com

- Zazzle, www.zazzle.com

- Ecrater, www.ecrater.com

- Etsy, www.etsy.com

- MyStore, www.mystore.com

- VStore.ca, www.vstore.ca

- RealStores, www.realstores.com

- FlyingCart, www.flyingcart.com