by Nic Sim
One of the ways to earn money online is to run your own online store. An online store is also known as an e-commerce website because it can handle online commerce.
An online store lets your customers browse your products, order the products they want and pay for their purchases all in the comfort of their own home. All they do next is to wait for their products to arrive via post or courier.
If you are thinking of setting up an e-commerce website, remember that you can sell both tangible and intangible products online. Consumer items are tangible products while e-books, music and software are intangibles. For intangibles, you do not need to mail them out as the customer can download the product immediately after paying you.
Here’s how you can set up your own online store:
Register a Domain and Get a Good Web Host
Setting up an e-commerce website or online store is similar to setting up a regular website. First you need to register your domain name as well as get a reliable web hosting provider. To learn how to choose a domain name as well as in a web host, you can read my earlier articles All You Need to Know About Domains and How to Choose a Good Web Host .
As with regular websites, the domain name and web hosting comes with yearly renewable fees.
Set up Your Online Store
Next, you need to set up your online store. What sets a regular website apart from an online store is the shopping cart software and the payment gateway. You can either design the online store yourself or you can also pay a professional to do it for you.
Although free shopping carts are available (do a search on Google and you’ll see how many turn up), you still need to be able to configure it to the look-and-feel of your website. You need to have a basic working knowledge of how shopping carts work, what features it offers and how to integrate this into your overall website together with the payment gateway. For most website owners, this is too much of a hassle when all they want is to start up their online shop or e-commerce website and start selling straightaway!
An easier way is to buy a ready-made or commercial shopping cart software. Commercial shopping cart software is built to ensure you can do your online business transactions right away.
Choose Your Payment Gateway
The payment gateway is a separate service and should not be confused with the shopping cart software. You have to sign up or register with payment gateway provider to process the payments which come through your website when a customer buys from you.
When a customer clicks the “Buy” button on your online store, the shopping cart software connects to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then processes the information on the order form and more importantly, verifies that the credit card details and approves payment.
As a service provider, the payment gateway will charge you, the online store owner, a fee each time a transaction occurs. The fees vary so it is best to always compare fees from different payment gateways before you register with any payment gateways. Among the online payment gateways Malaysians can use are 2CheckOut, Ikobo and StormPay.
While Malaysians can use PayPal to receive payments from customers, Malaysians, at the moment, cannot withdraw the money. Some Malaysians circumvent the problem by using the money to shop online. This does not apply to users of all countries though. It only applies to certain countries. Please check PayPal for further details.
Pay attention to the fees that the payment gateways charge. Some charge a one-time sign-up fee in addition to transaction fees. Others allow you to sign up for free but again, transaction fees apply. Compare the fees carefully because some transaction fees can be quite high (and eat into your profits!). On top of that, some will charge a fee whenever they mail you your cheque.
If you have a small number of items to sell and you know how to configure the codes in your website, you can use the free and simple merchant tools provided by certain online payment solution providers such as PayPal or 2CheckOut.
If you don’t think you have the technical knowledge needed, source for a web designer or web solutions provider who knows how to set up an ecommerce website. While you are setting up the site, think about the future: will you be maintaining and updating the ecommerce website by yourself or will you outsource the job to someone else?
Think Shipping or Product Delivery Methods
Another important aspect of e-commerce is to think about your shipping methods. How will you send the product to the customer and how much will it cost the customer? For online transactions, it is a given that the customer pays for shipping. Therefore, you need to check out the various postal or courier rates (both local and overseas) so that you can calculate these rates into the overall purchasing price when the customer buys from you.
Copyright 2005. RedboxStudio.com
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About the author: Nic Sim is the owner of this blog and the founder of www.RedboxStudio.com – a web design firm dedicated to helping solo professionals and small businesses go online affordably and successfully with its easy to use, no-fuss Redbox eCommerce Website so that anyone can own, manage and operate their own online store! For more details (and to view live client sites), email info@redboxstudio.com
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