Now, the type of e-commerce system you will choose will depend on your knowledge and experience in building websites.

For the beginner: If you have not built an ecommerce store online before, you are best off choosing an easy to setup, all-in-one type of shopping cart service for a reasonable monthly fee for the following reasons.

* Step by step setup which requires no prior experience

* Includes everything from domain name acquisition, hosting, shopping cart service and even payment processing, and everything will work seamlessly without a glitch.

* Customizable look and feel of site even if you just use the easy-to-use site building tools. If you want really advanced designs, there are always designers that can create a “skin” to work with your shopping cart site.

* Manageable monthly fee and sometimes a small percentage of sales.

For the more advanced webmasters: You may want to build a shopping cart using either a free, open source software and customize it yourself, or you can purchase a ready-to-run software that are usually more stable than the free versions. Here are somethings you might expect if you want to go with this method.

* No monthly fees on the shopping cart since it’s a one time fee to purchase the software (or free if you use one of the open source softwares). You’ll need to get your own domain name, hosting, payment processor, SSL, and so on.

* Flexibility when it comes to customization. Since these are softwares, chances are, there are modules you can purchase to achieve certain unique functions not found in the standard versions. Or if your request is too weird/rare, you can always find a programmer who specializes in customizing a particular shopping cart software and they can pretty much do anything you want do it.

The choice is really up to you - If you have read this far, I suspect you are a beginner who is thinking about starting your own ecommerce store. If so, the subscription based, all-in-one ecommerce services are the way to go. As a start up company, you have enough things to worry about than to mess with trial and error, and for a reasonable monthly fee, everything is provided for you and seamlessly tied together for you. Some of the best subscription-based all-in-one ecommerce solutions I know of are YahooStores by Yahoo (you must have a Yahoo email account to access) and Prostores which is eBay’s answer to the all-in-one ecommerce solution. With either one you can be up and running with your first e-commerce store in a matter of hours! I personally started with YahooStores a few years ago when I first got started.

For you hardcore webmasters out there who don’t mind a little work and testing to get the most customizable shopping/ecommerce site, I recommend using X-cart as I am very familiar with it and it is also very SEO friendly if you purchase the SEO module available separately. There are a ton of easy-to-install aftermarket modules available even if you don’t want to modify the software yourself.

So there you have it. The two basic choices for starting your ecommerce business. Whichever you choose, the important thing is to take action, and do something while you are inspired! Remember, losers daydream and never take real actions. Winners have real dreams which they act upon, and they continue to refine their methods until they succeed. Be a winner!

If you have decided to not stock anything, then you probably want to drop-ship products where you have an established warehouse/factory ship the products on your behalf. You would basically pick the products in their catalog(online/offline) you want to sell, and create those items in your site’s database. In a nutshell, when your customer makes the purchase on your site, you receive payment directly from them, and once you’ve verified payment, you then place an order with your drop-shipper (online or offline), and have them ship the order to your customer. You would basically pay the warehouse/factory your cost plus the shipping charges. The difference between your net sales amount minus what you have to pay them and what you charge your customer is your profit.

Now there are many drop-shippers you can work with. Just google “drop-shipper” and you’ll find plenty of websites and directories listing drop-shippers in all kinds of industries. Some sites will even charge you for their “secret list”. It’s up to you to decide if the information they provide is something you cannot find yourself. I would suggest to start contacting drop-shippers in your chosen industry you can find for free, get a price list, and see if you like the profit margin or not.

Stocking Your Own Products
Drop-shipping is convenient, but you’ll never have a really good margin doing so. Remember, the warehouse/wholesaler that drop-ships on your behalf has to take a cut too for stocking, packaging, and shipping the product for you.

To have a higher margin, it’s a good idea to but directly from the factory and stock products yourself. Now, before you think you get excited and think you can buy name brand items at the same price as big retailers and compete with them, think again. Basically, you would want to stay away from traditional products you can get anywhere. If you want to have a healthy margin, and still give good value to your customers, then your best bet is to import products from overseas, namely China.

Visit Alibaba.com and browse around. You’ll be amazed at the sheer number of factories that are ready to do business with you. Just make sure you research enough and work with the factories that have good ratings. You should even try to look for small items so you can even stock them in your garage to get things started.

Well, there you have it, some ideas to get you started in your product research. The bottom line is, there are more suppliers out there than you can even imagine…you just have to look. So start looking, and narrow down some ideas you’re comfortable with, so you can start building your website, and start selling!

So how does one decide what to sell? The conventional internet wisdom says to choose something you are passionate about. Well, that makes sense to some extent, and it would be nice if we really have something we are passionate about and would like to promote. In a perfect world, our area of interest would have good market demand, and have little competition.

The reality is, you will rarely have all three factors going for you (if you do, it’s a no brainer!). So perhaps we should put it like this…pick a niche you are at least somewhat interested in, and do research to make sure that there is decent demand, while staying away from the products that are only profitable if you are a big player such as computers, memory, etc.

In the next post we will talk about where to get your products. Stay tuned.

For those of us that have done it, we know it’s possible, and a reality. For those who have heard about it, some think of it as a nice pipe dream, while others believe it can actually be done but don’t know where to start, as all this web stuff seems all too complicated for them, and the learning curve might be too steep.

Well, there’s some truth to both sides. While it’s not as easy as the uninformed make it, ecommerce business has a basic process that can be understood, and applied. And really, with some determination, just about anyone with an average intelligence can learn it and make it work.

Here are some basic things I’ve learned in my 7 years of ecommerce I believe would be beneficial to someone who’s just starting out, or even just considering this business.

First you need to understand the big picture, and the basic process. The details will come later, and we will discuss them too. For now, this is the simplified version of what it takes to be an ecommerce business owner…

1) Research and market and decide on a product line or industry - Make sure you’re not just selling what YOU like, but what the market has demand for, and not extremely competitive. There’s no hard rule about what “too competitive” maybe, and your ability to compete basically depends on your ability and efforts. The flip-side of a competitive market is that the demand is proven, and you know people want the stuff. And in the same way a non-competitive market may simply have little or no demand! So pick something in the middle would be safe.

2) Be at least somewhat passionate about your chosen industry or product line - Since you will be writing about this line of products and trying to promote it, having a genuine interest for it can make the difference between going all the way with it and quitting prematurely. So make sure you at least have some interest in the market/industry.

3) Select a shopping cart software or service to use. If you are somewhat tech savvy, you can install a proven shopping cart software on your own server, and build your site from there. If not, you should go with a subscription-based shopping cart service such as a Yahoo Store or other similar services. We will discuss and review the different choices in depth in another section later.

4) Figure out where you will get your products to sell. Decide if you want to stock it in a warehouse and carry inventory, or simply find a drop-shipper (a warehouse that will ship products on your behalf). There are pros and cons but generally by stocking it yourself you’ll have a higher profit margin. The downside is the extra expense of the warehouse and the inventory costs upfront. You would want to make sure when the orders come in, you’ll be able to deliver the product(s) quickly.

5) Setup payment gateways - You need to accept credit cards to do business online. Basically, the right way to do it is to apply for your own credit card merchant account with a reputable bank. However, that may not be so easy to get, and some of the reseller services out there charge too much fees. Paypal is a good way to get started, as it will allow you to accept payment from customers who sign up with them and customers can link it to their bank account and/or credit card. Of course, you would need to configure your shopping cart software/service to accept paypal, and most do these days.

6) If you build it, they will NOT come automatically! Even when your site is done and you are able to put test orders through smoothly. Internet traffic will not come in without some dedicated work! Internet marketing is a science and an art. You need to love it and study it and apply what you learn, in order to get potential customers to end up at your site, and eventually convert them into buyers. All the other stuff is “easy” compared to this. Fortunately there are plenty of free methods to promote your website to qualified prospects, and we will get into that in the marketing section!

7) Setup a toll-free line and use a real address, even if it’s just a private mail box address. Toll free numbers and menu-based systems are a lot cheaper than you think. You can literally get one setup for about $10 a month, and it even comes with some free minutes! Private mail boxes are much better than USPS PO boxes. Why? Which address would you trust…

PO Box 12345, Los Angeles, CA 90001

or

123 Main St. #200, Los Angeles, CA 90001

Of course the 2nd one, because even though it’s a private mail box, it looks and feels like an office! In the online world, perception goes a long, long way, since peope really can’t see you in person! So be sure to make the right image for you business.

That’s it for now. I’m sure there are other aspects that are missing, and that’s okay. We will elaborate everything in the other sections and I look forward to getting deeper into the more advanced stuff.

Some initially brainstormed topics are:

- Ecommerce 101 / How to start an ecommerce business from scratch

- Marketing Tips - Offline an online

- Shopping cart options - Buy your own or use a subscription-based service

- Accounting and bookkeeping tips

- Home business tips

- Sourcing products to sell

- And more…

Please post comments and share your tips with each other!