I have nothing but want to have an online store

I don't hear about "local online markets" very often. Competition is fierce for online stores, some win by buying in high volumes to lower their prices.

There are various online store hosts that take care of the technical details, making it easier to get started, I have seen small ones in passing, who;s name I don't recall, and there are the big ones like eBay and Amazon, eBay recently changed their terms, allowing you to display moderate number of products (50?) with no charge until sale is made, some people setup ebay stores with mostly fixed "buy now" prices.

Amazon takes a fair service percentage out of every sale and may require you to have some resources to get in.

Have you seen Zazzle where you submit art designs to be put on their standard mugs and shirts, some setup a virtual zazzle store with an inventory of designs that have no inventory cost because the print the custom pieces as needed for each order, you decide you much much your percentage marks up the price.

Weebly allow you to set up an ecommerce site for free, I think.

I'm assuming you will be marketing the site locally, offline so that seo isn't an issue.

Take a look and see if it does what you want.

I too try to start such store for my local market but believe me people will not trust you and give you permission to show off their products. its really a wastage of time and money. But if you can employ some marketing expert who can deal the merchants then chances are there.

This is going to be a tricky one to pull off because unless you provide the customer with a huge discount or amazing freebies and the business with a great, new supply of customers there's not much incentive for either to take part.

You might want to try something an offline discount card for local businesses. Read this fantastic post in the offline forum who's doing just that and making a tidy living:
http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...onth-hero.html

Or you could approach local business to help them sell more online. Another great WF thread from an ingenious guy:
http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...st-3years.html

Hopefully that'll get you thinking.

Online Stores are capital intensive. So you will need some type of money to start.

Hi Iminaction, if you want quick results, I'll suggest you to put the products on ebay or amazon of your region. you just have to get your products ready to deliver, the rest will do these stores. more positive reviews you have, more sales you will enjoy.

wish you best of luck.

I use Zen cart for my online store & so do a few other people I know. We all love it. It's free - open source. You would need to pay for a domain & hosting & an SSL certificate, at the very least. You may want to explore other options first to raise the capital for your dream site. Good luck!

You could try out some free ecommerce CRM like osCommerce, Open Source Online Shop E-Commerce Solutions
or if you are really tied financially.. try out "Google page"

i am sure you can spare some cash for hosting and a good domain name.
as for the traffic, get hostgator hosting.. they will provide you with $100 google adwords voucher for free.

Hello! There aren't much options for a free online store. Many online store owners invests huge or at least an amount of money for their online store. If you really want people to trust you with their product, try investing even if just a little amount. I know no quality services for free.

yes, me too... I would like to have own business
and one of them wanted to have an online business

Hello iminaction,

You don't need any money to begin. Launch your free webstore here Free Webstore Sign-Up - Setup an Online Shop

Cheers and Good luck,

if you want to run online store at your local then you can use free store creation platform ecrater.com which will offer you everything which you need to run a store on web based. Wish you good luck!

Iminaction, even if you build a store for free with the products given by local store owners, how are you going to advertise your online store to your local community.

Some way I see are:

Distributing leaflets
Announcing on the local radio
Placing notices on trees, lamp posts and on walls

And everything above requires money, which is called as Initial investment.

So, you need to have a little capital to invest in your business.

My advice would be to set a weebly site first. Once you make some profit, invest in buying a professional online store with the full works

I'm confused about whether the OP wants advice on setting up a free shop, or advice on how to advertise that shop for free?

There is a wide variety of websites here that will allow you to get a shop online. Some have a monthly charge, some are free, some will require extras such as you buying your own domain and security certificates. Whilst the free options are the most tempting, remember that these often have big limitations, and standard templates. "Free" sites often look spammy, and it might be difficult to convince people to use the site.

As for advertising - everything has an expense. You could offer exchanges - donate a prize to a local radio show in return for coverage, or try to do a deal with a leaflet printer and hand-deliver the leaflets to lower costs, but most things will have at least a nominal fee. You'll also need to consider how you'll get people on board in the first place - you may well need to spend money on targeting shop owners first, and advertising to them, before targeting buyers.

Look at the local resources you have. Leaflets at the doctors and pharmacies, notices in supermarkets, joining in local events, sponsorship, getting your advert included in local magazines and newsletters are all ideas. You'll need to look into them and see what the costs are local to you, if you can negotiate these down and how likely they are to bring you business.

It might also be worth finding a business link or similar service to talk through your business plan. This can be a really tough industry to get into if you don't have experience, and your posts don't sound like you do. Apologies if I am wrong. A mentor or business advisor will be able to help you trim costs, and talk through how viable your plan is before you invest too much time or money into it.

If you haven't already done it, it might be a good idea to start doing local market research now, to see if there is a demand for this type of service. Survey both buyers who might use the site and shop owners, as you'll need both to be successful.

Buy a domain from Go Daddy for $10 or less. Set up web hosting with Hostgator for maybe $15 or under.

Download Prestashop or OsCommerce - both are free online store software. If you use Prestashop, go to 2link | Webdesign Freelance and download a nice store template and install it. Both are very easy to use and have detailed instruction manuals on how to install and use.

The upload your products and promote the store.

What do you want to sell?
If it is fashion related, maybe you could set up a store on etsy and promote it with youtube. You could also send your product for free to youtube gurus and have them promote it to their subscribers(it is very competitive though). Just an idea.

You must believe in yourself and knock until something happens. Just because it didn't work for most people doesn't mean it wont work for you. But you need to be ready to invest before you can have a business.