Everyone wants to work from home.  Everyone wants to make lots of money without doing any work.  Everyone wishes they were someone else, who’s life is easier.  Well guess what, the lifestyle dream you were hoping for when you started your website requires work.  I wanted to outline a couple of the first steps to selling something online.

DOMAIN NAME: What is a domain name?  It’s what everyone else knows as your online business.  Catchy, easy to remember and contains words that customers would actually use to find your products are the key points to any good domain name.  I always buy from Moniker or GoDaddy because of price, features and trust.  I also always do a google search for “Moniker Discount Code” or “GoDaddy Discount Code” before purchasing any new domain to save myself a few bucks.  You should do the same!

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH: Grab a piece of paper and then go to Google.com and search for the product you plan on selling.  Write down who shows up and what they are offering.  Does everyone offer free shipping?  If so, your idea of making money on the shipping fee just got trumped by the competition.  Are they offering the product for less than you are paying to get it at “wholesale”?  If you answered yes you’ll want to find a new product.  What terms are they using to sell the product?  A great tool to figure this out is SpyFu.  Enjoy!

WEBSITE: Now one of my favorite things about the internet is the fact that you can easily find almost everything for free (it feels like everything sometimes).  Building a website is no different.  One big thing to remember for getting started selling on the internet is you always get what you pay for.  Now how can I say you can get it for free but you get what you pay for?  Simple, there are always strings attached to free.  It’s usually worth it to cut those strings IF you like what was free.

Here’s my example.  Weebly.com is a great site builder program.  It is easy to use, fun looking and you can create a site without even thinking.  The free version shows you everything and let’s you create a site BUT the footer (bottom of every page in your site) tells everyone you made a site for free.  If you pay, one of the features is you can customize the footer.   See what I mean?

Building a website, especially your first site, can be fun and can be frustrating.  Doing it is the first step and improving it is the rest of your internet life.  Some key things to remember about a successful website are:

Keep It Simple! Don’t make it so cutting edge that no one knows how to use it.
Set a Goal for EVERY Page! You want to sell right?  Make sure every page has a clear purpose.
Take Good Pictures! It’s worth it to take a nice picture and answer all the question you had about the product.  It makes the sale that much better.

So there you have it.  The first steps to getting started selling on the Internet aren’t super crazy but you’d be surprised how much you learn and few people have actually taken even the first step.  Go ahead and take a step.  The most you are out is $9.95/yr for a domain.