Ecommerce

Make Money Online With An Ecommerce Website

Ecommerce websites are websites that sell any type of product or service over the web.  There are multiple ways to get started depending on what you prefer to sell.

How to start an ecommerce business

There is a vast amount of information to be known when starting an ecommerce business.  You can sell physical products, digital products, your own products, other peoples products, etc.  You can even start without having to buy any inventory.

There are a few things you need to get started with your ecommerce website.  The first and foremost is setting up your online presence, aka build your website.

There are two options when starting your ecommerce website that will make your world a whole lot easier.

1. Build your ecommerce website using HostGator - HostGator will provide access to purchase your domain name, host your website, and build your website with the worlds largest website builder WordPress.
2. Build your ecommerce website using Shopify - Shopify will do everything that HostGator will allow you to do, however their website building platform is specific to ecommerce websites only.  They make it very easy to set up your payment gateways, your product pages, your blog, and even allow you to integrate directly with your Amazon seller account.

For setting up your ecommerce website we recommend you start with Shopify.  HostGator and WordPress are more generic towards any type of website, where Shopify is ecommerce specific making it much more user friendly to common ecommerce business models and strategies.

Determine your ecommerce business model

The first model you can use is simply purchasing your inventory in bulk with a wholesale company at wholesale price.  You then list this product on your ecommerce website and ship them as orders come in.

The second model is through what is called "Drop Shipping".  This is simply listing a product on your website, and as orders come in, you simply pass on that order to your wholesale company, who then boxes up and ships the product for you for a small fee of the sale.  No inventory is needed with this method, you are just the middle man in the transaction.

As a new online ecommerce store, many find that starting their store via drop shipping is easier due to the lower startup costs.  As your business grows, you can increase your profit margins by purchasing your inventory in bulk and processing the orders yourself.

Shopify is perhaps the most popular ecommerce website builder that gives you access to hundreds of thousands of products at wholesale prices via a partnered plugin called Oberlo.  Oberlo automatically lists your selected products to your ecommerce store with a drag and drop model.

Where to get product for your ecommerce website

Once you have your website in place, you need to find product to sell on your website.  This is done by finding a wholesale company that sells retail product to businesses at wholesale prices. Salehoo is an alternative option to using the Shopify plugin "Oberlo" if they don't have the product you are looking for.

Despite your industry, you can find any ecommerce wholesale company that sells the products you want by using SaleHoo's wholesaler directory.  Every wholesale company found on SaleHoo is reviewed and verified to ensure you are working with top quality companies.

You can filter the companies search results and get all the information you need to begin setting up a relationship with your chosen wholesale partner.  SaleHoo also allows you to filter the search results to show only wholesale companies that offer drop shipping services, should you choose to build your business via the drop shipping model.