Have you ever thought about having your own ecommerce business? When you’ve purchased anything online, have it come into your mind to become a seller, not just a buyer?

If you wish to be one of those who can be their own boss or those who can increase revenue aside from their regular monthly income, you can simply step into this path of business with some advice.

If you don’t know anything about ecommerce, here are some tips about how to start your online business from a scratch.

1. Generate Product Ideas

There are tremendous products you can see in the market, you are confused with what to sell and why people have to buy from you. The simplest way to sort out your ideas is to look through your hobbies, what you’re interested in and how it can be your top-notch sales.

If music is your life, simply put CDs for your store, if you’re addicted to reading books and you have too many of them in your shelves, just go and sell them second hand.

Further, if you have handcraft skills, you can gain more sales with lower budgets. That is because you make it with your hands, you don’t need to spend dollars to buy products from wholesale stores. Even better, your products will be unique, if customers love them, they will have to come purchasing only from your store. The examples of this kind of products are jewelries, knitting dolls, knitting clothes, and greeting cards.

In case you don’t have skills or your hobbies are not answered to market’s demand, keeping an eye on hot products may help you get through the issue. You can sell electronics, clothes, accessories, or any popular products, but you have to ensure that your products have some qualities which differentiate you from competitors. You have to build your own uniqueness to attract customers to your store.

2. Evaluate Competitors

The one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in hundred battles. So, after finalizing your product idea decision, the second thing to do is to evaluate your competitors. You can start with checking their websites. There, you will find who they are, who their target is, and what potentials they have to make visitors shopping in their store.

To compare your competitors with what you have, ask yourself the following questions:

- Is their product price higher or lower than yours?

- Do they have exceptional features?

- Does their web design look more professional?

- Is their navigating function better?

- Do they have compelling campaigns or promotions?

You can apply the comparison with your own strategies to win over them by offering something more than they can do.

3. Start Building A Website

You business can’t get started if you don’t have a location to sell. For online businesses, everyone knows that they need to have a website to show their products to the world. First, you need to go for a hosting provider and register a domain name to declare your identity.

For tips of naming a domain name, you should define your domain name relating with your products. For example, if your products are mobile phones, you should name it as “bestmobilephones.com.” If you already have your brandname, you can also use the name for your site to make it easy for customers to remember.

Now, you already have your place, the next thing is to fulfill your website with some decoration. You need to hire a web designer who can help you with the look & feel and a web developer who can break those designs into your ideal store.

This process can cost you a fortune. Still, there is another option which could help you save both money and time, it’s by using ecommerce software. Nowadays, there are a large amount of ecommerce software products in the market, you can check software from their websites to examine features, support, and services they provide and pick one that could meet your requirements.

4. Go Promoting A Store

When everything is ready to sell, you have to let people know your web presence.

There are 3 possible ways to drive traffics and gather shoppers to your website.

• Set up your business blog and update articles constantly

- This may require you a lot of efforts. You have to create great content which can give some value to your readers. It’s not about SEO writing with keyword repetition, it’s about informative and useful ideas you can share with your audiences. If they find any benefits from reading your content, they will keep coming back to you or even link your articles off the page to share with other people somewhere in the world bringing new visitors to your ecommerce store.

• Post on social media channels regularly

- Most people check in their Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ first thing in the morning. It’s their private zone to express how they feel and socialize with other people. Likewise, you can use this channel to increase your store reputation by posting news relevant to your business regularly. Whether you will release a new product or special promotion for today, you can update your announcement to let your customers keep following with you all the time.

• Participate in community forum

- Community forum is a center area for people who have something in common. They can share their opinions, comments, or knowledge with each other.

Participating in community forum relevant to your business allows you to be a part of a community. You can get credits for posting, you can spread your ideas to million people as well as implicitly promoting your store by adding your website URL in your profile signature. The more you share, the more people will see your link.

In conclusion, if you’re interested in getting started your online business, do consider these 4 tips including generate product ideas, evaluate competitors, start building a website, and go promoting a store.