So you want to own an internet shop?

Owning an Internet shop could release you from that boring job, allow you to work from home, free up your time and a lot more but before you make the dream a reality take note:-

Starting an internet shop is not a ticket to easy money! Its hard work, requires a lot of time and if you are new to the internet then you are going to have a very steep learning curve if you don't want to be ripped of by the internet cowboys.

Although the internet is an excellent way to promote your business and trade it is also very big, in fact it is absolutely enormous and unless you can get your internet shop within the first few pages of the major search engines then your internet shop has as much chance of being found as a needle in a hay stack.

So that means you are going to have to think about marketing in a big way if you want your shop to be successful. You are also going to have to spend money on professionals unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time doing research into keywords, search engine ranking, web design, integrating payment systems, marketing and a lot more.

Don't despair! Yes it may all seem a bit daunting but there is a way that you can get your internet shop up and running without it costing you your house.

Top Internet Shop Tips

1) Do some market research before you start. Decide on what you want to sell and then check to see just how many people are looking for your products. The great thing about the internet are the statistics that you can get about just about anything. Using our new service we can provide an in-depth report for you displaying the total number of searches for particular keywords, how many websites contain the keywords, how many website are competing for keywords, your chances of getting your internet shop a top ranking within key search engines, how much you would have to pay for Google adds and optional keywords that relate to your products but may not have as much competition. Don't go through all the trouble and expense of setting up a shop only to find that you have no market! Click here for cost effective market research that gives you the edge.

2) There are 3 main types of Internet shops so you will have to decide what type of internet shop you want :-

A) Affiliate Shops – These are shops that are set up to promote another companies products . You are supplied with banners, data feeds (Lists of products), marketing material and even the shop pages to display the products and it is then up to you to set up your web pages, host them and promote it. Whenever a customer visits your site and clicks on a product, they are redirected to the suppliers website where they can then buy. Once they have bought you get a percentage of the sale. This can range from 2% through to 80%

The plus points are that you do not deal with the customers, payment or shipping and yet get the chance to make commission on passing them through to the supplier. The bad news is that you do not have control of your customers & once they have bought from the supplier they are likely to go straight back to them thus avoiding your shop. You have to rely on the trust of the company supplying you and that they will be honest about how many sales they have made from you. You often have to wait up to one month to get your money and most Affiliate companies set a minimum amount that must be hit before you can withdraw your money.

B) Drop Shipping Internet Shops – This is where you find a supplier who will allow you to sell their products online. You set up a shop, deal with the customers, take the payments and then your supplier ships to your customer direct thus avoiding having to store and spend out on holding actual stock. The benefits are that you do not have to spend out on storing & buying stock. The downside is that you have no control on shipping and therefore rely on your supplier for prompt shipping. You will have to deal with complaints relating to damages and other problems that may arise. You will have to set up a shop capable of taking online payments.

C) Full blown shop where you have the goods, do the shipping, process the money and deal with all aspects of setting up a business, I.e marketing, IT expenses etc. The plus side is that you have full control from start to finish. The downside is that you will have to enter all your product information, build a professional website or have one built, deal with fraudulent transactions, sort out the marketing and a lot more.

3) Once you have done your market research and have found your niche then the next most important thing is to register a domain name for your internet shop. This is the name of your shop and will be what people type into their address bar to go to your shop on the internet. Your Internet shop name is very important to getting a good ranking within the search engines and therefore should reflect what you are selling. i.e. If you are selling fish food then your shop name should be www.fishfood.com or include the key words fish food. There is nothing wrong with naming your shop www.johnssubaquaticshop.com however you will have to work much harder to get a good ranking in the search engines.

Whilst registering your name you will also notice that you have a rather large choice of endings for your internet shop. i.e. .co.uk, .com, .net, .tv etc. Which one should you choose?

Well if you are selling specific to a country then you are best choosing and ending reflecting that I.e if you are selling to a UK market then you would name your shop www.fishfood.co.uk which would show people that you are based in the UK. If you want a moreglobal approach then you could use www.fishfood.com. It is best to stick to .co.uk for UK and .com for global and I would recommend keeping away from some of the more obscure endings no matter how cheap they are.

Click here to find your Internet shop name.

4) You have found the perfect name and registered it so no one else can use it and now you are itching to get your internet shop of the ground. So do you try to set up your own internet shop, buy an of the shelf package or pay to have a bespoke site built for you? This will depend on just how much knowledge you have on website design because building a professional website that can take online payments, store secure data, display your goods and be reliable is going to take programming knowledge as well as html. The most common programming language used is PHP which is very easy to pick up if you are familiar to programming and there are thousands of pages online giving you help on how to program in PHP.

However if you are new to the web then this route could take you many months if not years and a lot of patience so that just leaves two more options and that is:-

A) Of the shelf package where most of the hard work has been done for you and all you do is fill the shop with your products and control the basic appearance via a control panel. These shops can range from as little as £100 to many thousands of pounds depending on how complex you want it to be. These are ideal for people with a small budget or those that are looking to try online retailing for the first time.

B) Bespoke shop built by professionals – This is not cheap and prices can start from £300 pounds for a cheap site and raise to hundreds of thousands of pounds for a site designed by the top agencies. The advantages are that you get a site designed exactly as you intended it. The downside is the cost and the fact that every time you require updates you will have to spend more money having this done.

I recommend PCS-Computing.com for cost effective internet shops. They design bespoke shops from £700 and can also offer maintenance packages to help you keep your site up to date. They use a small friendly team that are experienced in giving you a cost effective internet shop.

5) Marketing – The internet is truly enormous and if you are going to be found then you are going to have to do a lot of marketing which will include conventional marketing as well as taking advantage of the new social networking sites that can help you get a good product recognised in a very short time, however it can also get a bad product / service recognised as well!

Once you are up and running you will suddenly find that you are inundated with emails from 'SEO' (Search engine optimization) marketing companies promising you that they can get you to the number one position if you spend your hard earned money with them. Think about this carefully, these emails will be going out to every business and they can't make every fish shop number one! Whilst reputable companies can do wonders for your search rankings the truth is that it take a lot of hard work to get number one position for popular search terms and competition is fierce, so as quick as you make it to number one, someone else is already working on ways to knock you of that position, so if your strategy is to make number one then be prepared to spend a lot of time and money keeping there. Therefore be prepared to use conventional marketing such as advertising in magazines, leaflets, bill boards as well as using the internet.

Notes: Setting up an internet shop is not a ticket to easyville and should be treated as seriously as setting up a conventional shop. You are going to need money, a lot of time, dedication and a good sense of dealing with customers and all of there wonderful eccentricities. If you are serious about setting up a business online then do yourself a favour and take some advice from the professionals before you end up parting with thousands of pounds on a dud project.