How to start an internet store

Internet marketing and the ability to drive traffic to your website are essential to the success of your online business and most likely will be a big part of your overall expenses. 

It is important to understand the various components of internet marketing and plan for it from the start:

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 
This component focuses on optimizing your website so it appears on first page on Google search and drives free traffic to your website. It requires both on page and off page optimizations. On page optimization deals with optimizing each specific webpage title, description, webpage content and url for specific keywords searched in Google. Off page optimization deals with creating backlinks from other sites to your site.

2) Blogging 
Creating a tightly focused blog for your niche keywords is one of the fastest ways to appear on first page on Google.  It is also useful in creating backlinks.

3) Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad Campaigns 
This is an immediate and effective way to generate traffic to your website. You create an ad with Google Awords or shopping comparison directories and pay for every click on your ad.

4) Marketing Promotions
You create daily, weekly and monthly promotions on your website and via email campaigns.

5) Social Networking
Promoting your website on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

A succesful online business most likely will require the implementation of all of these components.

Click here to visit my store www.musebazaar.com.

Congratulations! Your new store is open for business. Now is the time to tell everyone about it.

The best way to let people know about your new store is by using email campaigns. You can use your email software (like Outlook) but it is better to use email management software because it will allow you to see who opened your email, and how many people clicked on your link.

Two popular choices are MailChimp and Constant Contact. MailChimp is free for the first 500 subscribers.

Here is a feature comparison between MailChimp and Constant Contact (it is prepared by MailChimp so take it with a grain of salt) http://www.mailchimp.com/features/compare/.

You can use this link to sign-up with MialChimp for free http://www.mailchimp.com/signup.

After you have chosen the email management software, you will need to prepare your email campaigns. There are a few steps involved:

1. Prepare your email lists.
Initially you will not have customer lists. So you can create several lists with your family, friends and colleagues. Be sure to include only people that you trust that will not complain or report you as spam. This is very important because you can be banned.

2. Upload your email list to the email management software
You will need an email list in a .csv file or an excel file. Include email address, first name and last name.

3. Create a campaign using the email management software.
You will have a choice of creating a text based email or use a template. Using a template is a better choice as it allows tracking of opens and clicks. Choose a template from the many choices provided and enter the text for your email. When setting the campaign settings you want to have Google Analytics on and enable tracking of opens and clicks.

4. Send your campaign to your target list

After sending your campaign, you can track the results of your email by reviewing open/click reports in the email management software and Google Analytics reports. I have found that for Friends and Colleagues lists about 50% of the recipients clicked and visited the website. Industry average for eCommerce stores is 14.3% for Opens and 3.2% for Clicks.

Overtime, your goal is to build targeted lists using the Newsletter Subscribe feature on your website.

Click here to visit my store www.musebazaar.com.

What does it take to start an internet store? Apparently, it is easier than I thought. You can do it in less than 15 steps.

Here is the summary of the main steps to get your store up and running:

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

How do you know what products to sell?  Do you just decide to sell what you like or do you decide based on what people are looking for? Even if you have a unique product from the start, it is best to do some market research before you invest your money in the product. 

The concept behind niche market research is that Google keeps all the keywords that are being searched in its database. This allows you to know how many searches for a particular keyword/niche  are done on a daily or monthly basis. Then, you will need to know how much competition is out there for that niche and how strong is the competition from Google’s search engine optimization point of view. The strength of the competition is one of the most important consideration in choosing to sell a product in a certain market niche.

Here is an example to illustrate the concept of niches and micro niches - You start with a broader market like “Silver Jewelry”, then you drill down to a niche  “Turquoise Silver Jewelry” and then you can drill more down to “Turquoise Silver Watches”. You will be surprised to see what you can find.

Luckily there are tools available that make niche market research relatively easy and provide you with both keyword traffic information and competition information:

1) Google Keyword Research tool - free tool that provides number of searches for the keyword monthly and a high level sense of competition. For highly competitive niches you will need more information on the strength of the competition.
2)  Traffic Travis – free tool you can download at  http://www.traffictravis.com/2/
3) Market Samurai – you can download a free trial copy at  http://www.marketsamurai.com/
4) Micro Nich Finder – http://micronichesfinder.com/

Market Samurai and Micro Nich Finder are both very good tools that cost around $99 and each has its own pros and cons. I am currently using Market Samurai because of the extended free trial and free training to find niches within the market that I have chosen.

Knowing what people are searching for and knowing the strength of the competition gives you the necessary insight on what products will be commercially successful. This is a highly recommended step before you decide on what products to sell or to find specific micro niches that will sell better within your current market. It becomes increasing important to specialize around a micro niche in today’s competitive marketplace on the web.

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

Google Analytics is a great free tool with many benefits that allows you to learn more about the visitors to your site and measure the effectiveness of your internet marketing like email and AdWords Campaigns.

Here are examples of what information is provided:
- Number of visitors to your site, such as number of total visits, number of unique visitors, geographical location by county and city of your visitors,  etc.
- Traffic Sources to your website – direct access, Google search, referrals from others sites, email campaigns, etc. 
- What pages on your website are visited the most

The best time to start with Google Analytics is before you open your store for Operations.

Click here to sign up with Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/.

If you are using an eCommerce product like Big Commerce you need to configure your Analytics Settings to integrate with Google Analytics.

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

Inclusion in Google search results is free. Google crawls the web all the time to identify new sites or updates to existing sites. However, if your site is very new, you might want to register it with Google.  To determine whether your site is currently included in Google’s index, do a site: search for your site’s URL. For example, http:// site:startnetbiz.com. 

You can register your site manually at  http://www.google.com/addurl/. 

You can also register with Google Webmaster Tools account. It is a collection of free tools to help Google to understand your website.  To sign up click here www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ . You will need to tell Google what your website is. Add an entry with the regular name of your website and also an entry with the name of your website without the www. in front of the name.  Google will ask you to verify your ownership of the site. This will require adding a meta tag that Google provides you to your home page HTML template. If you are using an eCommerce product for your website you can search the support database with ”How do I verify my site with Google” to get futher instructions.

To further improve Google’s ability to search for pages on your site, you can submit a sitemap using Webmaster Tools. In your Webmaster Tools dashboard, click the “Submit a Sitemap” button. If you are using an eCommerce product like Big Commerce they create a mapsite for you that you can submit to Google.

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

You will need to make several decisions about shipping your product.

First, you will need to determine your shipping address. For home based businesses, you can choose to use your home address or rent a mail box. You probably don’t want customers showing up at your home. So in most cases it is probably better to rent a mail box. 

You can rent a US Post Office box, a UPS mail box or a mail box offered by a third party. They come in a variety of sizes and prices.  It is good to shop around as prices vary from one location to another even for a post office box.

I found that renting the US Post Office box is the least expensive option. In many locations in New Jersey, it costs $46 for the smallest size mail box for a period of 6 months. The UPS Store nearby had asked for $19.95 per month. When choosing the location of your mail box, it is better to have it closer to where you live.

In addition to the cost of the mail box, the other consideration is the actual cost of shipping. USPS offered lower and more simplified price structure with its flat rate delivery for priority mail across the US.

One other thing to remember is that UPS will not deliver to a PO box.

Overall shipping using USPS and renting a PO box offers a good alternative for home based businesses.

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

At some point before going live with your store, you will need to determine how would you process payments.

I have looked at three main options:

1. Using Credit Card Payment Option through your eCommerce Platform
Big Commerce charges a $19.95 monthly fee and 2.1% of each transaction.

2. Using Pay Pal
It is widely acceptable and you don’t need to have an account with them to pay with a credit card. It is also the most expensive option.
Monthly fees depend on sales amount and number of transactions.
For sales up to $3,000 the charge is 2.9% from sales amount and 30 cents per each transaction
For sales betwee $3,000-$10,000 the charge is 2.5% from sales amount and 30 cents per each transaction
For sales above $10,000- $200,000 the charge is 2.2% from sales amount and 30 cents per each transaction

3. Using Google Checkout
This option is gaining momentum but not as popular as Pay Pal. It offers the lowest per transaction fees – only 2% from the sales amount plus 20 cents.

Here is a quick illustration of the cost for $1,000 and $5,000  in Monthly Sales :

Clearly Pay Pal option becomes more expensive as you sell more and have more transactions.

Initially, I have decided to go with the Option offered by Big Commerce. It becomes more attractive as the Sales Amount increases above $2,000 per month. Later, it was brought to my attention that some people really like the security that comes with PayPal. In this case, it might be a good idea to offer both options.

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

In NJ, all businesses are required to file quarterly even if there were no sales and no tax is due. Filing is on or before the 20th day of the month following the close of the quarter. This will be 4/20, 7/20, 10/20, 1/20.

To file a return online, go to http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/. You can find filing instructions in http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/other_forms/sales/ezfilein.pdf

You don’t need to file before your registered business start date. For example – if during registration you have indicated that you will start selling after 4/30/10 then your first filing date is before 7/20/10. If you need to change your registered business start date, you can call 609-292-9292 option #2.

It is important to file as penalties are very high.

Additional information about NJ Sales Tax is availabe in http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/pubs/sales/su4.pdf

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.

Doba has a business model that sounds great. They provide you with product pictures and descriptions. You post the product on your website. Once the customer buys the product, you place the order with Doba, who then ships the product to the customer. Sounds easy, right! I have signed for their free trial and spend a lot of time going through their product catalogue. They only had 3 major suppliers for the jewelry category and their wholesale prices where close to the retail price or sometimes higher. I have also checked the prices for selected camera equipment and found once more that the prices were higher than what you can buy these products on the Internet.

If you are considering using Doba, I suggest you sign up for their 7 day free trial offer and check the catalogue and prices for the products you are interested to sell. If you decide that Doba is for you, I suggest you don’t sign up right away. A salesperson will most likely call you after you signed up for the free trial and will try to give you discounts. From their advertised $50-$60 per month he came down to a special of about $20 per month. Good Luck!

Click here to visit my store – www.musebazaar.com.