Are you looking for small business ideas but get overwhelmed by the amount of ideas? Your clueless state of mind needs more assistance. You need more information on each of the small business ideas you come across. Only that can help you take a right decision.
Therefore we’re going to help you understand the topmost small business ideas in a clearer manner. Today, we are going to talk about setting up an online store. An online store is one where you sell a product but through a website. With the rise of Amazon, Ebay etc customer base is shifting towards online purchases rather than offline purchase and this is a HUGE opportunity for people like you and us.
Just by setting up an online store (which takes way less monetary resources than a brick and mortar business), you can become a millionaire or at least make the ends meet.
What do you need to set up an online store?
First of all, let’s discuss what you need to set up an online store.
• Website: you would require a domain name and a good hosting service. This is the most crucial aspect for the success of your online business. A good domain name would help people remember your brand and also help you with Google Search engine rankings. Good hosting provider would help you provide 24 hour up time and therefore make sure that your store remains open for 24 hours a day.
• Ecommerce Software: you don’t need to know about programming languages to set up the store. In fact, you don’t even need professional help. You can set it up all by yourself. It is very easy to set up ecommerce software. After initial setup, all you would need is to update your store with new products.
• Product: the most important thing you would require is the product. You need to figure out what you’re actually going to sell. Consider what kind of market you want to serve, what kind of products are highly in demand and what kind of products you would find value in. Remember that selling is the toughest part but it becomes much easier if you love the product you sell.
What can you sell?
There is a huge variety of products you can sell on your online store. We would recommend that you start with fewer kinds of products and then keep adding more as your business grows. These are the two main kinds of products you can consider:
• Products created by your own self: handmade products are highly in demand and they also allow the creator to earn good profits on it. If you can create something, turn it into a business.
• Products from niche retailers: You can also get products from other manufacturers or wholesales and sell them on your site.
Both ways differ in selling process, profit margins and easiness of running the business.
How to complete the sale?
After setup and marketing your product, you start getting sales. But what to do after the customer places an order? How would you manage to deliver the order to the customer? There are two ways in which you can do this.
• Sale directly to customers: this way would work if your customers are from the same city as you live in. You can drop the products directly at their address.
• Use a drop shipping service: you can also use shipping services like FedEx etc to get your product delivered to the customer.
Such an issue doesn’t exist in case of digital products for example softwares, ebooks etc.
Online store hosted on some other site
Last but not the least, if you want to escape the hassles of doing everything that is mentioned above but still want to try your hands in one of the most popular small business ideas, you can set up an online store on sites like etsy.com, ebay.com etc.
We tried to answer all the FAQs regarding setting up an online store. This is one of our favourite small business ideas and we hope you found it interesting. In case, you do set up an online store, make sure you ping us and we would love to feature it on our website.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask us. Our team would be happy to help.
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