What's The Good, Bad, Ugly About Setting Up A Online Store

I wish to know what am I up against if I start an online store that people selling me books on how to start an ecommerce store are not telling me about.

I find it really interesting to set up an online store, but what disturbs me, is what I am not thinking about before jumping in, will it be hard to get traffic once I setup up online store and what are the costs i will be looking at to get traffic, how much time will it take from me to operate an online store or can i make it work on autopilot, please give me the good, bad and ugly advice before i jump in and drown :>)

 

4 Signs You Shouldn't Start an Online Store:

1. You Need to Make Money Fast
2. You Need a Guarantee
3. You're Not Willing/Able to Take a Step Back
4. You're Not Web Savvy

I didn't come up with those points, but as I was pondering your question(s) I came across this article, that I believe may help you understand all the wrong reasons for starting an online store: http://www.ecommercefuel.com/4-signs-should-not-start-online-store/

 

If you are thinking to open an online store then I can say that it was really a great idea. But whenever we start any online business and traditional business, we have to run a great marketing campaign for popularizing your website. There are having some tricks like SEO through which you can bring traffic to your website with very low cost.
It is very important to bring visitors and traffic to your website, this will help you to make people aware about your website.

 

I will drop a note as someone who actually started my own online store and have grown it to strong revenues and employees.

The most difficult part of running an online store is, and always will be, how do you efficiently market your store to potential customers over the long-term. If you don't have experience with web marketing, you better learn it fast. It will be the biggest pain point for you - I guarantee it.

Another difficulty is how long everything will take. From picking a store name, picking an available URL, sourcing quality wholesalers, importing products, editing product photography, developing the website, etc., etc. There are enormous amounts of work that will weigh you down. You have to prioritize work.

You have to make sure everything aligns for you and you get a bit lucky. For example, we got an instant domain authority boost a few months after launching because our website, thanks to it's awesome design (so I guess it's not completely luck), got backlinks from our eCommerce platform's website (think Magento, Shopify, Volusion).

Finally, it will take VERY long time for you as a first-timer to have a strong content marketing and link building strategy. We're still trying to fully figure this out to establish a clockwork system, if it's even possible. Google ranks you very slowly if you did what we've done, which is completely white hat. For example, one of our high traffic pages was published end of last year. It now finally ranks top 3 results. We're looking to build a talented team of SEO specialists, link builders, and content creators now to dramatically focus on improving our rankings.

It's really easy to be lazy and create another online store on page 5. If you want to compete with the big players and strive to take a piece of the pie, be ready to work your butt off.

 

Starting an online store greatly depends on what you're selling.

Is it unique and interesting? You could be making thousands overnight. (I have proof if you don't believe me)

However, if your selling someone else's products for a commission (affiliate sales) or a similar version of your product is being sold by bigger and better companies, it's going to take a LONG time to start seeing decent profits.

 

Traffic really isn't your biggest problem here since you can just get that from services like ultimatewebtraffic if you can't be bothered to do it the long way. What you'll have trouble with is whether or not visitors will want to buy your stuff and that depends on your product, services, promos, perks and such. There's also Mathew's point to consider.

 

Cons:

• Long, sleepless nights
• Spend money to maybe make money
• No safety net
• You're the development team
• You're the marketing team
• You're the support team

Pros:

• You'll know what CTA and CTR mean
• You can put whatever you want on your business card

Ecommerce businesses are still businesses. You have to invest in them, you have to work hard on them, and they'll never run themselves. It's very challenging, but ultimately very fulfilling. Just go for it and see what happens.

 

Honestly speaking, all those courses just show you the shiny side of everything.
You obviously need traffic and for me, this is the hardest part. No matter what you do, at the end of the day, you will need lots and lots of traffic to make sales. The "ugly" part is, web traffic is never "free".

 

Doesn’t matter what people says, I think ecommerce is really good. It has many advantages to organizations, consumers and whole society. I think it improves the brand image of the company and also helps organization to provide better customer services. But the greatest benefit is that organization can expand their market to national and international markets with minimum capital investment thanks to ecommerce.

 

You were given a load of fantasic information there, I especially liked

I 100% agree.

Depending where you are in starting your store, you might find these two articles helpful. They focus on the step-by-step of starting a store with a clear brand and vision.

http://www.brazenprofitlab.com/how-to-start-a-successful-online-boutique-12/ (part one)
http://www.brazenprofitlab.com/how-to-start-an-online-boutique-part-two/ (part two)

 

1. Look for a good web designer/developer and create a website different than the others who just use simple templates. Make him create 3-4 different versions and submit them for testing to the least web experienced people you know (grandma, grandpa, people who don't have much online experience). If your website is intuitive and they are able to purchase something, you are on the right path. Make sure you choose the proper colors, as they have a great impact upon the user. Check the internet for the different color meanings. Also make sure you use professional photos for your products, use a good camera, a light tent, the works.
2. When you add products, invest some time in their description. It takes some inspiration to give an image boost to a pair of regular jeans, but it is not impossible (associate the product with its use, the trends, build a story around it). Follow the guidelines of search engine optimization (there are tons of blogs explaining you how to properly create a description and how often to use a keyword), to get easily found on Google,Yahoo, Bing and other search engines you drive your customers from.
3. Use different statistic tools (google analytics, clicky a.s.o) to spy on your customers behavior. See which pages they prefer, which are more organic, find ways to understand your clients needs.
4. Add complementary products on the same page with the one you are selling (if you sell gloves for winter, the client might also want a hat).
5. To drive traffic, you should target the right people. This means campaigns in adwords/bing and other ad networks which can provide the mobile/desktop traffic you require. You will see that it is quite expensive on some keywords, especially if you are going for a .com domain and you target internationally. If you focus only on one country the prices should be lower. It is very important to target less broad terms, and be as specific as possible in regards to your products (e.g. 3d rain deer christmas sweater). Also you can take in consideration different methods of advertising, such as cost per click, cost per view (pop traffic), cost per action/lead. See which of the mentioned suits your needs better.

Just a few hints, hope this helps the readers, I know I had to struggle with them For other information don't hesitate to pm me.

 

I am not an expert. I would also ask what is there offline. Around here we have so many cheap op shops. The postage and the packaging.
And then there are existing book sellers who do second hand books. What can you do better? As postage and packaging is crucial I would always go to the bigger sellers and buy more than one book at once, but that depends on your country and weather or not there are special postage rates for books.
With books it is like this for me: I want a lot of choice. I know that amazon not a great employer but the system for the customer is great. And there is booktopia and others. Really I don't know weather it is feasible at all. How could you comepte? Maybe if you cover only one small niche like books on golf or books on water coulour....

 

I can order things from amazon for you for 10-15% discount like if somthig worth 100$ u only pay me 85$ and i order it for you.
u can resell it and make profits

 

Razor sharp profits. Not my cup of tea. Can you pay all the postage for 10-15%? And the website and your work and everything else?
Maybe you can, I couldn't.

 

Ok I feel like you want to punsh me in the face lol.
i'm just giving you a offer u can resell it or use it for ur own anyway good luck m8

 

I did comment on the first entry, I don't sell books! I sell plants and I grow them myself, that means I do only have to buy pottig mix (local) seeds or plants to take cuttings from. I am one of the few here who actually PRODUCE seomthing

 

The budget is going to be HUGE.
also, if you sell delicate products, they usually break during shipping process and customer blames you and refunds

 

What do you refer to? The books? Plants are shipped all the time I buy all my plants online. Nothing huge budget, only care (translates to time). Often they come in recycled boxes. You don't ship big plants around though.

 

selling pottery, anything with glass usually ends up broken if you're shipping a lot of orders