Introduction to the beginner’s guide to opening an online store
Over the past few years doing this whole online thing, I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who are considering starting or already starting an e-commerce niche site.
It’s easy to think of it as an easy way to make money, build assets, and really monetize the power and global reach of the internet.
Reality?
It’s not as easy as everyone thinks. Sure, anyone can throw up a website that sells something, but how do you actually get people to show up on the site? How do you handle logistics and fulfillment, especially if your suppliers are on the other side of the world? How do you know if you have a good market? What are the things you need to pay attention to when opening an online store?
These are all questions that myself and many others have faced over the past few years.
Over the past two years, I’ve worked on more than a dozen different niche and affiliate sites with varying degrees of success.
Want to build your own affiliate website? We have a lot of posts about it, check out some of them.
I’ve worked on websites that have killed it in their niche and brought in six figures a month. I’ve worked on affiliate sites and made $2500 a month with little to no maintenance. I’ve also worked on quite a few websites that have absolutely nowhere to go and just drain time and money.
Starting an Online Store FAQs – An eCommerce store can be a great business if you run it the right way and take the time to learn how to do it right. However, if you’re looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, you should look elsewhere.
Today, we’re going to look at 5 ecommerce tips to really think about and be careful when you start using your website.
Take your current idea – > niche
I’m sure you have a lot of fantastic ideas that you think will kill it the moment you throw it away. I have news for you that it is likely that there are hundreds of people who are thinking about the same thing and are already doing it.
One of the last e-commerce stores I worked on was selling tablet cases. Looks like a great market, right? We can sell products like iPad, Kindle, Galaxies, etc. While this is a huge market that is constantly growing and evolving, our approach is too broad.
A beginner’s guide to starting an online store: The market is very competitive and saturated. If we want to succeed in this market, we should segment it more. Instead of focusing on multiple cases for multiple products, we should focus only on selling the best cases like the Kindle Fire.
While we were working the site, Fire was about 2 months away from launch. If we had spent all our time marketing products that didn’t have much competition at the time, instead of going after the very difficult iPad market – we would have seen more success.
If you want to succeed in e-Commerce, narrow down your current thoughts.
Pre-investment testing
Things to pay attention to when starting an online store: Have you ever started a new website or project, invested a lot of time and money, only to find that no one cares? I’m pretty sure most of us have experienced some variation of this situation before.
This is an easy problem to solve. Before you go crazy with your new website, test it out and see if:
- Interested in your product or niche
- Your offer conversions
So how do you do it? Start with a blog.
My friend Simon Stock has a company that sells surfboard racks. He didn’t know much about the surfboard rack industry, but he was willing to learn. He set up a WordPress blog in one afternoon and spent the following week writing about racks and some of the products on the market. He then has some Amazon affiliate links that point to people in every article and sidebar.
Within a few weeks, he started seeing some organic traffic from search engines, and it wasn’t long before he started getting some affiliate sales through Amazon.
Starting an Online Store FAQ – Learn more about building your own eCommerce store with Amazon FBA.
He sped up testing by investing a small amount of money in Google ads.
Not only did he learn that there was a market for his products, but he learned a lot about his industry in the process, making him an expert in surfboard racks.
From there, he built his own website and established relationships with major manufacturers. He uses his test site as the main conduit for new sites and has become one of the largest surfboard rack dealers on the internet.
We detail this strategy in the E-Commerce Location Rebel Academy blueprint.
Are you sure there is a market for your new product or website? No? Test.
Made in Asia will be a headache
There’s a good chance that as your website grows, and you’re tired of sharing your sales revenue with the companies that make your products, you’ll most likely want to make your own.
After all, now you’re an expert and know better than anyone else what your customers want, right?
A beginner’s guide to starting an online store: Sourcing in places like China and Vietnam is really appealing. It’s cheap, and there are a variety of companies that can help you get the job done as easily as possible.
Not to mention, you can buy anything there, as I learned recently at the Canton Fair. However, there are a number of problems with doing business in Asia:
- At some point, the language barrier can become a problem
- Quality control is a nightmare
- Asians do business differently than Westerners
If you really want to manufacture in Asia, you should really consider working with someone you trust who speak the local language, are local, and can work with the factory on a regular basis to make sure you get what you ordered.
In the past, a friend of mine sourced Zorb balls from China. You know those giant plastic balls that you roll down the mountain. After receiving multiple requests for refunds or replacement of defective balls, he had a nightmare of quality control.
If you don’t have someone to deal with it, it’s up to you.
If you really want to go this route, you should seriously plan a trip to the country where you want to do business. Go to the factory, ready to spend some money on samples, and also ready to invest in meeting their minimum order quantity.
Don’t expect your visit to China to be a complete cake tour either:
There are many advantages to sourcing in Asia, but headaches will be a common thing. Tweet it.
Things to look out for when starting an online store: Don’t underestimate the power of SEO (both positive and negative).
One of the most common questions that arise when helping people start a blog is “How much time should I spend on SEO?” “。
When it comes to blogging, the usual answer isn’t many. There are more important things to deal with, and if your blog is good, rankings will come.
That said, e-commerce is a completely different ball game.
Frequently asked questions about starting an online store: While things like social sharing are certainly beneficial, there’s a good chance that your SEO strategy will make up the majority of your traffic (and revenue).
My most successful niche sites typically get 85-90% of their traffic from search engines.
That said, there are right and wrong ways to do SEO. Do it right, and you’ll be rewarded with thousands of adoring visitors and customers. Did you do it wrong? You’ll annoy Google, be deeply forgotten, and never hear again.
You think I’m joking? Ask thousands of webmasters who have dropped to Google’s homepage in the latest Penguin update. It’s not that they’re all doing anything wrong, that’s a completely different post, but you get the idea.
If you’re serious about e-commerce, deploy a high-quality SEO program. What does this look like? Ideally:
- Create linkable content. Do you have a blog on your website? Write explicit content about your industry or niche. Write something with broad appeal that will interest people who don’t know anything about stainless steel widgets not only but enough to share the content.
- Passenger mail. Are there other authoritative resources to discuss your market? Make friends with these people and try to write for them. Not only will this provide you with relevant link juice, but it will also send some direct traffic and make you an expert in your field.
- Be active in the forums. No matter what industry you’re in, being active in relevant forums is not only the best way to network, but it also keeps you up to date with the latest developments in your field. Not to mention that you can also get more links from posts and profiles.
All of this looks pretty basic? That’s because it is. Not only that, but it’s effective.
The days of low-level link spam are much better, and while Google is far from perfecting its defenses and still has a way to manipulate the system, following the above advice will prove you in the future and provide you with better long-term results.
Think carefully about your platform
A beginner’s guide to starting an online store: There are a wide variety of options for setting up an ecommerce store – and that’s part of the appeal. You no longer need to have a large number of developers and a huge bank account to develop a basic eCommerce website. No, now you just need a little time and patience to understand how your chosen system works.
However, deciding how to go about it can be one of the biggest problems you face. Majeto? Shopping? Operating system? Delusion? Hell Now, you can even make WordPress work as a fully functional eCommerce solution.
Things to look out for when starting an online store: That is, once you’ve chosen your platform, be willing to stick with it, as migration can create a 10x headache.
Believe me, I know this from experience. When I was in Bali last year, I spent hours in a café migrating our tablet case website from OSCommerce to Shopify. That’s when you just pay someone a hundred dollars to do it for you and call it good.
To sum up, if you’re just starting out, I highly recommend using Shopify for your ecommerce store. It’s very simple to use, with a basic account costing only $30 per month.
Many others are more expensive, more technical, and probably overkill anyway for what you want.
That is, do your research. If you’re looking to grow to the point of marketing thousands of products, and you do have some technical experience or technology partners, then some of the other options may be more appealing.
Frequently Asked Questions about Starting an Online Store: If you’re just doing a basic affiliate website? Do yourself a favor and stick with WordPress. Even if you want to do well-designed data feed marketing, etc., there are plugins out there these days, and your life will generally be easier if you stick with WordPress.
