How to Start an Online Store?

Study the niche and and competition, to see if you're capable of taking a chunk out of your competitors' market share.

Make a good business plan, find reliable providers and find a good shoping cart (if you do want to make sure everything is controlled by you). See my other post regarding this subject here

As somebody already said, study the demand and your competition, both in terms of commercial competition and SEO (who holds the top positions in the Google searches for your main keywords and will it be difficult to outrank them?). Also start thinking of your other traffic sources and strategies you may use, besides SEO.
This is really the first thing you need to do before thinking of anything else. If you can't get a good flow of buyers to come to your website then you're wasting your time.

Get some training. For a good free source of helpful tips to how to start an online business I recommend Eric's Tips.

You have GOT to do some market research.

You want to know if people WANT to find your niche (keyword targeting) but that keyword NEEDS to also have MANAGEABLE demand.

Not only that, but you also need to make sure that the niche has commercial intention - meaning - are people looking to LEARN or BUY when they type in the keyword?

Now when you're researching these things, you don't want to just say: "Yeah, looks like those things fit--" You want to actually follow the specific data points that are numerical.

Also - you want to always make sure you can sell a GREAT product a GREAT way.

You don't want to have the mentality: "If you build it they will come"

You want to have the mentality: "Build it SO THEY WILL come"

Good luck!

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Make sure you have a product that you control and that will sell online (not all do) - really take the time to do all your homework ahead of time.

- Who is your customer?
- What is your price point?
- Proved the product concept?
- Cost to acquire a customer?

Make product research, keyword research and once u create an estore, get it SEO optimized

Market Research
SWOT
Competitor Analysis
Target Audience

Product research, create a e-commerce website then start marketing to right people and companies.Try different advertising and check ROI for those Investments. Rinse and repeat.

Pre-plan your budget, and outline both expected and unexpected expenses then compare the cost of services with competitors. Who will you be using for web hosting, design, product inventory, banking and merchant processing, advertising, etc.

Start with some sort of figure, as well as a timetable to get things up and running. Time is money, so time lost is money lost!

We would like to invite you to blogpico

You need to consider a lot of things actually. I started an online store in 2008 in a niche nobody thought it would ever be possible to make a full-time living from - I know it is funny but I do make a full-time living from digital scrapbooking (you can see my site here: Digital Scrapbooking Tutorials for the Perfect Digital Scrapbook) - outside the make money online niche actually. Still, today I help others to do what I did - leaving your day job.
The most important thing to consider in my eyes is that you think about all the features you want your new site to have. Because - adding and fixing later is time consuming and expensive. As you can see it doesn't so much depend on the niche, it more depends on your love for the niche (and those days I really was totally in love with digital scrapbooking and photography).
In any case, try it - there is no better feeling than being independent from your boss :-)
If you need any advice, just PM me
Good luck!

Have you done zero research? Doing ground research is number one.

today i know - but those days - well, i just wanted it and did it ;-) but still, it is successful although every other niche would make most probably much more money. it´s just an example that everything works as long as you love what you do and are willing to put a huge amount of work into it

Do people still use scrapbook today?

YES - a lot but we have a site with digital products for digital scrapbooking and that is more popular then ever

Are you not talking about Orkut? I thought it is extinct now.

not really sure what you mean, sorry - but i guess we are out of topic and don't answer the question of pdev anymore

I meant Google Orkut

Make sure you have the funds if needed to get it started, find out where to get the most affordable products at wholesale, check your competitions prices, and up sell your products in a way that can still beat your competition so you can get more customers.

Seriously, there is no way to answer a question this generic. You have to research what products people are searching for, what they are typing in to find them and then whether or not competing for those keyword phrases is possible. There are tools that make that easier but they cost money or are included in some courses. You have to contact suppliers, build a website, learn how to market it and optimize it to get seen prominently by search engines.

Really, you need a comprehensive course that shows you how to do it - not a blurb on a forum board. There are some really expensive online courses out there that suck and some really cheap ones that suck, too.

I knew nothing at all about this stuff. I was laid off without any hope for a job in a bad economy 3 1/2 years ago and was lucky enough to hook up with Dave Hermansen, one of the owners of storecoach.com. After going through all of the steps in his course, a few months later, I had a website that was making enough money to replace my former salary and a year later I was making double that. I am the success story he uses on the home page of the website, as a matter of fact.

I have four websites now and am making very good money (I'm working on a fifth and have ideas for a sixth website, too). I would never even think about getting a "real job" anymore; there's too much money and opportunity on the internet to ever sit at a desk working for somebody else.

Start here - tons of other useful eCommerce info on my site.
Five Steps to E-Commerce Success