How can I start an online business?

[Rachel]

I want to start a website business selling cookies and sweets. How would I do that?

[Julie Hodges]

Just a suggestion based on my own failures. Don't spend a lot of money building a website to begin with. Purchase a great domain name such as cookiesandsweetsdelight.com or what ever you had in mind.

Rather than pay for web hosting you could use a free wordpress blog. Quite easy to learn how to do and tutorials to help.

It is free to do this and then link your domain name to the blog. A little tricky but only costs $10.00 or so a year to do that.

Once you had that up and running - I would begin to get your message out locally. Business cards with your website address and classified adds, Word or mouth, notice boards, newsletters etc.

I presume you would only be starting off in your local area or though I could be wrong. But beginning locally makes good sense.

Trust me - don't outlay too much money at first. I write about wellness concepts and safe home & personal care products and I spent quite a lot of time building my website and learning the skills to make it visible to an audience online but took continual effort and large amounts of time. (a lot in SEO etc) I still write and love exposing the facts I research but now spend more time introducing people to safer eco friendly products. A more reliable form of income for me and I love it.

So stay keen, be determined, learn what is necessary and invest little financially. And above all be patient!

I wish you well. Happy baking!

[Rutchell]

There is one single thing that stands between
every marketer and online success.

That one thing... well, that's TRAFFIC.

Traffic is the lifeblood of ANY online business
and is the driving force behind online sales and
money getting... no question about it!

Unfortunately for most Internet marketers, getting
traffic is THE roadblock they cannot overcome.

Traffic and sales have never been easier.

Let's face it -- you are looking for a system that
is quick, easy, and that works for YOU today...
not 3 months from now... not even 3 weeks from
now... TODAY.

You need a system that doesn't depend on Google,
PPC, Article Writing, Linking, SEO, bookmarking...

You need a system that brings the traffic right
to your front door... so that you can monetize
it immediately.

[webanswerguy456]

I've been creating and marketing large ecommerce sites for people for 10+ years (I am part of Web Retail Group - http://www.webretailgroup.com/ ), I hope I can give you some good 'starter' advice and answer your specific questions:


1. Yes, make your own site at your own domain name. This has many benefits: build up your site with your Internet Marketing efforts, not someone else's site that you have a page on.

a) Register your domain at http://www.godaddy.com - they're cheap and the best in the biz. (w/ good customer service most of the time)

b) Get an ecommerce consultant with real experience to help you build your site--let them help you choose technologies, etc; and let them advise you on design/usability issues on the site. If you want to do it your self first to get a feel for it--the GoDaddy website tonight service is cheap so you can try it without losing too much money...but ultimately you're have a more professional standards-based if you hire a professional ecommerce consultant.


2. Internet Marketing methods with the best ROI:

a) Mailing List - ask visitors to join your mailing list; put those who buy from you on your mailing list; use facebook to build your mailing list; tell people you'll offer them discounts for joining your mailing list.

b) Search Engines - Post your new site to dmoz.org, google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com:
http://www.dmoz.org/ - find a good category they click the 'add your url' link at the top of the page to add it
Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/…
Yahoo - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/sub…
Bing - http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSite…

c) Social Networking - use Facebook and others like linkedin and twitter, digg, etc. to build lists of friends for your business website and link to your site. Keep at it, and keep updating.

d) SEO - Search Engine Optimization
i) Keyword Research - Use this tool to determine great keywords for your products that are actually being searched for online,
ii) On-site Optimization - then put those 'good keywords' in your website content, and in your TITLE tags on your pages, and in some of your in-site links to your pages.
iii) Link Building - the most time-consuming part - get other sites to link to yours--many ideas on this...too many to list here!
Then wait...over the next 60+ days you should see an increase in your website traffic for them.

e) List your products on shopping comparison engines (CSEs), here's a good list of them:
http://www.productfeeds.org/ - some are free, others require payment to advertise. At least do the free ones!

3. Take your time and don't spend too much money on PPC / CPC marketing online. (maybe spend NO money on this if the above works out for you!)


i hope this helps you get started...

[Bryn]

Hey Adrianna,

A great place to start your online business is through Microsoft Office Live Small Business. The service pretty much walks you through the website creation from domain registration, web hosting to website design. It is template based so you do not need to know how to code.

Learn more about Microsoft Office Live Small Business and what customers are using it for:
http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-us

Good luck!

Cheers,
Bryn
MSFT Office Live Outreach