starting my own online business, need some pointers?

Question

i am going to start my own online business(like everyone else out there! lol). i would like to sell my homemade natural soaps and bath products, as well as cloth baby wipes, menstrual pads, and anything else i fancy.
should i buy my own website and sell items that way, or sell them on ebay or hyena cart? i like the idea of having my own website to myself, but it costs about $30 a month...at first i might lose money, but if i keep up with promoting and build a good customer base, i'm sure it will pay off.
should i maybe start with a hyena cart type account at first and see how well i do before venturing entirely on my own? the purpose of my business would be of course, profit, but also because i love doing my hobby and want to share it with others.
please give me your input! thank you. :-)

Answer 1

Hi. It is a fair idea. If I were you, I would first try to spend a week or more browsing through topics on strating your own business and the like at this US Gov web site http://www.sba.gov

It should give your idea a better form and will trigger some thought process as to whether you are ready to venture into that. I will refrain from comments on hyena carts, e-bays and the like as these are just conduits or, if you wish, technicalities to conducting operations. The major challenge with the online business is getting noticed. Hope you will find some decent answers at the web site I have recommended. Good luck

Answer 2

The key to on-line success (just as in a brick and mortar store) is traffic, traffic, traffic. On-line business has it a little easier because location, location, location doesn't really matter. It's all about getting bodies to your website.

Then, just like in spam and junk mail, it becomes a game of percentages. The more people that visit your on-line store, the better your chances that someone will make a purchase from you. in this game, you have to advertise your butt off everywhere you can, and that includes offline as well.

Marketing, advertising, public relations; they all come into laser beam focus. Of course, you have to have a salable product too - and the more popular the item, the more you can sell.

Make sure you cover all the bases too from advertising to purchasing all the way through fulfillment and - most importantly - Follow Up after the sale.

Just remember to start small, don't be afraid to make mistakes (we are ALL human), and strive to be the world's best customer service agent.

And above all else, love what you do - the money will follow from there.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

ebay's a good place to start to learn the ins and outs of online selling, and the pitfalls that can come with it. A website is better but can take longer to get established. So I'd start on ebay and while that's going, get a website running (depending on what you want so sell) What's a good product? You need to research what's hot, what you can get your hands on, what suppliers/ wholesalers you can get contracts with, how much space you have to store inventory... etc (Other businesses/ sellers won't give up that good info easily.) If it's only to be part time, then I'd start quite small - even selling 2nd hand stuff & look into trading assistants. Some people do well with that, others don't. Be picky about what you sell. It's a good place to start. I started off selling 2nd hand stuff on ebay years ago for a bit of extra pocket money, and now have 2 websites & a bunch of staff.

Answer 4

I have an online business and the best thing you can do is advertise! E-bay would be a great way to sell...also a website. It's cheaper if you design your own or have a friend do it for you. Also promote your business thru a personal blog...you may get more advice for the business chat rooms

Answer 5

Here's how to get started in the online eCommerce business.
Step 1: Get experience - Even if this is for just 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 quarter or 1 year, does not matter. Get experience in being inside an online bath / hygiene products store and look at things and absorb it like a sponge.
Step 2: Get experience: Take a look at atleast one or two other non-soaps/hygiene related online retail store to understand the basic differences between running an online retail store for this and the online retail store for your products.
Step 3: Research & Make notes: Find out what softwares to use for Inventory, Accounting and general purposes such as HR/Payroll etc. We resell various software and can recommend relevant POS and other related software. Online sales requires maintaining more than just a shopping cart, synchronizing with your inventory is actually the key to success otherwise, you can mess up your customers real quick....bad news unfortunately travels at internet speed...good news still goes sometimes the slower word-of-mouth offline route!!!
Step 4: Design a suitable Online partner presence strategy. We do website designs for small business including new businesses. We also help build affiliate marketing programs that are a must have for new online businesses to get reach to be in serious business.
Step 5: The team: Being a small business, you don't need to assemble a management team in-house, but an external team of hired guns/professionals - The CPA, the Legal guy, the IT / networking professional, the Phone / Internet ISP...and most important, your vendors /suppliers / an a cost controlled purchasing plan.
Step 6: eMarketing / eAdvertising / eBusiness Development: Ensure you figure out the budget required for reaching out to your target audience. Before that, figure out your market demographics (age, sex, etc etc).
Step 7: competition: Is this a large company or a small one or what? Are they anywhere in a 10 mile radius from you? What's your online strategy...do you want to compete with amazon.com or bn.com? If not, how do you plan to localize your presence or the other way, do you want to locally small presence with a retail + warehouse style operation serving the world online? eBay is a good storefront to also be a part of but not just on eBay, you also need to be on Amazon.com.
Step 8: Financing: Get a good estimate of your possible budget, do a revenue model and your forecasting / financial modeling with all assumptions on how you believe your marketing dollars will pan out etc. and take it to angel investors or bank loans depending on how your credit score looks like. On the otherhand, with a bit of techno savvy internet stuff, you could get away with a low cost up front web cart / web design with custom application/features set up for as low as $501 (we do some cool must have features...we can go in details if you are interested offline) and $10.01 per year for hosting, domain name, blog, email and more all inclusive.
Step 9: Caution: don't get into ANY business just because you like books or reading or stuff like That...get into ANY business because you expect this to make money for you...if you think this will not make money for whatever reason...and you are not ready to get into this and stay in this till your assumptions or competitive differentiation analysis pays off.
Step 10: Ensure that your legal structure allows you an exit strategy with your equity and cash out options in tact.

Enjoy. Just do it. You won't lose anything other than a few hairs that you pull out trying to figure out a few things along the way. Its easy and then once started, its not that easy to keep up with either the growth or god forbid the lack of it.

Source(s):

www.wynpay.com for ecommerce and POS needs.
www.bizdevsystems.com for eBusiness needs
www.ebolo.com for telecom / ISP needs

Answer 6

I own this company - mainly wholesale.

http://www.ruggedthug.com

$30 a month is cheap if you have a site that you can edit yourself.

I build custom e-commerce sites for people and the costs are based on how many changes are made to the site each month.
You will need a graphic editing program if you are doing it yourself. There are really too many things to consider then can be discussed on this page.

buy your domain here: http://www.domainsarefree.com
Get hosted here: http://www.globat.com - tell them starcarlton.com sent you and you may get a discount.

You have to put a ton of work into your own company and have to consider marketing costs to get your website seen like this:

http://www.starcarlton.com

Answer 7

Use whatever avenues you can to get the word out. Use as many free opportunites to drive traffic and absolutely get your own site. $30 seems high, I am sure you can find an ISP cheaper.

TFTP

Answer 8

http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?537476
get free credit here, and use the same credit to get more traffic, easy and free way to get great traffic,