So how do you break into this market? What steps should you take to build an eBusiness and start selling online? And most importantly, how do you do so in a manner that sets you up for success.

1. Plan your dream
Before you start thinking about all the tactical stuff you’re going to need to accomplish over the next little while (getting a website, finding products, getting your name out there etc.). Slow down and think strategy for a moment or two. What do you want to sell – you literally have millions of options, and you can’t sell all of them, so narrow your field and look for your own little niche.  A good starting point: think about your interests and brainstorm if there’s a target market that can spin out of that.

2. Create a Business Plan
Next, sit down a write a serious business plan for yourself.  Set a few realistic goals and take a good hard look at what you’re trying to accomplish.  Is it feasible and is it a viable money-making opportunity? Consider your target market – is it too much for a small start up to tackle?  If so, focus your efforts on a smaller and more manageable niche and then work on growing it out once you’ve reached profitability.  Is it too small to reach and sustain adequate levels of profitability over time?  If the answer is yes, look to expand your product offering so it meets the needs of a larger market.  Or look to sell something else. Then create a road map of all the tasks you need to accomplish and the due dates and milestones you’re going to attach to each one.

3. Find Suppliers
Most online sellers, don’t create their own products from scratch, they locate a wholesale dropshipper and resell those products for a profit. A significant advantage to selling on line? You can locate a wholesale supplier who rather than shipping inventory to you, will ship straight to your end customer once an order is placed. This is called a dropshipper or dropship supplier.

The right dropship supplier is a huge asset to your business, so do your research and make sure you build a business relationship with a reputable company.

4. Look for an online storefront provider
As an entrepreneur, you have many skills, you’re resourceful, you’re creative, you’ve got a good business sense, and a whole lot of other strengths and abilities that will help you succeed. Website design however, might not make this list, and frankly, it doesn’t need to. There are a number of reputable online storebuilder solutions out there. Depending on your particular needs, you can use do anything from using their simple tools to set up your own website to hiring one of their professional designers to build a custom site for you.  A good professionally designed premium template can cost as little as $1000.

Often these services also offer integrated shopping carts and order management systems so you’re not just getting a website, you’re getting a full business solution, which is a huge time and money saver (especially if you don’t have a lot of spare start-up capital).  A select number of online storefronts will have even built relationships with a host of dropshippers so you can use them to source products too.

5. Market your New Store
Once you’ve got your inventory built out and have your eCommerce website up and running, you’ll need to spread the word, and get your name out there. This can include submitting your site to search engines, sending out press releases, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, and a number of other options.

Whatever strategies you tackle ensure you can track the performance of each one. This allows you to assess which strategies resonate with your target market and which are a drain on your precious capital.

6. Provide Amazing Customer Service
I acknowledge that this step isn’t technically a part of getting your eBusiness set up, however, its still mission critical if you want your fledgling business to survive, so it’s worth mentioning.  Providing great customer support will set you apart from the competition and encourage repeat business, which in turn will make you money and keep you in business. Enough Said.

7. Keep it Fresh
Last but not least, you’ve gone to all this trouble to create a plan, find dropshippers, build an online storefront, market your new ecommerce store, provide fantastic customer service, so what’s next? Don’t let all your hard work fall down the wayside by walking away from your business and letting it manage itself. Keep updating your product lines, your website, stay in contact with your customer base so they keep coming back and you keep making sales.

References:
Melissa Campanelli , Entrepreneur, How to Set Up an E-Commerce Site

Erick Schonfeld, Tech Crunch, Forrester Forecast: Online Retail Sales Will Grow To $250 Billion By 2014

My Own Business, Internet Business & Search Engine Marketing

Armando Roggio, Practical ECommerce, Ecommerce Know-How: Seven Steps to Starting Your eBusiness in a Recession

Designing Web Sites For Search Visibility

What’s in your file cabinet right now? Tax records? Payroll information? And what’s on your computer system? Financial data from your suppliers? Credit card numbers from your customers? To a busy marketer, those documents are an everyday part of doing business. But in the hands of an identity thief, they’re tools for draining bank accounts, opening bogus lines of credit, and going on the shopping spree of a lifetime — at the expense of your company, your employees, and the customers who trust you.

Sophisticated hack attacks make the headlines, but many security breaches could be prevented by commonsense measures that cost companies next to nothing. That’s why the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published Protecting Personal Information: A Guide for Business, a plain-language handbook with practical tips on securing sensitive data. The specifics depend on the size of your company and the kind of information you have, but the basic principles remain the same. Whether you work for a multinational powerhouse with branches around the world or a start-up based in a home office, a sound information security plan is built on these five key practice

s:

• Take stock. Know what personal information you have in your files and on your computer. Understand how personal information moves into, through, and out of your business and who has access — or could have access to it.
• Scale down. Keep only what you need for your business. That old business practice of holding on to every scrap of paper is “so 20th century.” These days, if you don’t have a legitimate business reason to have sensitive information in your files or on your computer, don’t keepit.

• Lock it. Protect the information you keep. Be cognizant of physical security, electronic security, employee training, and the practices of your contractors and affiliates.
• Pitch it. Properly dispose of what you no longer need. Make sure papers containing personal information are shredded, burned, or pulverized so they can’t be reconstructed by an identity thief.
• Plan ahead. Draft a plan to respond to security incidents. Designate a senior member of your team to create an action plan before a breach happens.

Get your copy of Protecting Personal Information: A Guide for Business at www.ftc.gov/infosecurity. While you’re there, download copies for your IT manager, your human resources department, your sales staff, and anyone else who comes in contact with customer or employee information.

Lesley Fair is an attorney in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection who specializes in business compliance.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/articles/art01.shtm

SEO – is the latest in techniques used by web masters for making the overall layout, structure, and keyword patterning of your website relevant to search engines and web directories where the site has been submitted. This technique, readily available by professionals in any quality SEO company or firm, allows search engines and directories, both human indexed, and spider indexed, to properly categorize and rank your site to be found when a user makes a search.

SEO teaches the different search engines and web directories which keywords are most relevant to your website, so that they will obtain high ranking when someone makes a search for that exact keyword. Search engine ranking is very important because the majority of internet users will only look at the first sites listed whenever they do a search. Therefore, even if your page is listed 12th with Google for a given keyword, it may never be seen by web users, because they simply don’t scroll that far down the list.

For this reason, it’s very important that you incorporate proper SEO strategies into your website. This may involve hiring an SEO firm or an SEO company for their different services.

Among the most common SEO services are articles. These are articles written with interesting or informative content, but which have been structured specifically around a specific keyword. Therefore, if your company sells widgets, you might want to include an article on your website that uses the word “widgets company” throughout its paragraphs.

This ad has two different styles depending on whether you want it positioned at the left margin or the right margin.

To come up with your keywords, try to think about the different ways that you’d search for your own website. Think about your services, your products, the information that you provide, and the type of customer you’ll want to attract. You can either make your own list, or use a computer program that is designed for coming up with the different words that will work the best for you. If you hire an SEO company, they will likely have that sort of program available. It allows you to simply give an idea, such as “widgets”, and it will come up with all of the relevant search words that people use, and will tell you how many other sites already come up in search engines when that word or group of words is used.

There is a trick to writing a proper SEO based article. Although it may seem as though you can simply write a regular article and plug in your keyword, there are actually some other things that you need to consider. For example, if you use the keyword too frequently, many search engines will not recognize it as SEO, but will instead see it as SPAM. Similarly, if you use the word too infrequently, the search engine will not recognize the keyword as being relevant at all.

This is where experts seem to disagree. While some believe that the keyword should be used once within the title of the article, and up to ten times throughout the rest of the text, others believe that it should only be used three more times, and a subheading is required.

In fact, there are many different techniques that work very well for proper SEO, but it is a matter of knowing what you’re doing, and being consistent about it. For this reason, it’s not a bad idea to hire either a freelance SEO writer, an SEO company, or a firm. This will ensure that you have the best odds at achieving those coveted top search engine ranks.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure that SEO is a part of your website…unless, that is, you don’t want to encourage any visitors at all!

About the Author:

Mark is the director and face behind 15Degrees-North, One of UK’s most successfull Affordable Web Design companies. Where you will find articles and resources to help with Search Engine Optimisation, Marketing and Web design.

Starting a home based Internet business is easier now then it has ever been before. With good guidance anyone can do it but the key is being taught the ropes by someone who can show you the ins and outs and doesn’t hold anything back. With today’s access to affiliate marketing and low-cost internet, more people then ever can create and maintain websites used to begin a home based internet business.

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About the Author
Nancy Stetson. She uses the programs on her website to show the beginner on the internet how one can begin with no experience and little money. Visit her at: http://www.HomeBased-Opportunities.com or nstet60@peoplepc.com.