So you’ve been wondering how to make money online. You’ve heard about people starting businesses and running them from social media and websites. Some claim to be pulling in some decent bank. Could you?

Can someone really make six or even seven figures a year running a business almost exclusively online? The answer is yes… but the real question, whether YOU can be someone who does this, remains to be seen. If you’re up for the challenge, give it a go.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and even if you pull a few thousand from your first attempt, it will be a learning experience that changes you. Plus, you’ll have more money than you did before!

You’ll have lots of different factor at working to determine whether your online business will be a success. First, what do you consider a success? The measure of this is more than just the amount of sales you pull in. Many other factors will balance out the equation.

These include…

• How much capital will you invest up front?
• How much time will you invest?
• Will you juggle this endeavor along with a full-time or part-time other job?
• Will you partner up as a joint venture, or be a solopreneur?
• Will you sell services, digital products, physical products, or a combo of all?
• Do you already know your way around web based, tech-based business? Or are you starting from scratch?
• Do you already post content to a niche that you now plan to sell products for?
• Will you create all of the related content from scratch, buy some, hire experts to create it for you, or something else?
• If you fail at first, will you keep going?
• Do you intend to sell just one product? Or will you develop a full product line with services to match?
• How quickly do you learn from mistakes?
• How willing are you to try something new or deviate from the original plan?
• If your business grows slowly, are you willing to pace yourself to that slow growth?
• If your business grows very quickly, will you be prepared to sustain the momentum?

These and many more questions will be answered in due time. But even if you barely hit 10K your first year in business for yourself, you still have the opportunity to expand over future years.

You can do this by perfecting what works well, nixing what doesn’t, and implementing the systems, teams and processes that mean success for your enterprise.

If you’re still up for creating a business or offering freelance services online, then let’s move ahead to the next step. Let’s match your talent, skill and willingness to learn, to the opportunities before you.

There’s never been a better time to custom-engineer an online business or freelance career, at your own pace and from the comfort of home… or wherever you happen to be.

Ready to explore your options? Let’s go.

Create and Run an E-commerce Store: Make Your Money Moves

Creating and running an E-commerce store is a great way to make money online. The hardest part is getting started. You have the vision in your mind. You can hear the cha-ching of online orders coming in. But yet there’s so much advice out there. Where to begin?

The best way to tackle a money-making scheme of creating your own e-commerce store is to have 1. a vision, and 2. a list of first steps to work from.

Each of these will definitely have its own process that you’ll delve into with some amount of detail. In the beginning, you’ll be doing a good amount of research, and trying new things.

With the essentials in front of you, you can make sure you’re doing everything in order without missing something important.

Creating and running an e-commerce store involves the following:

• Choosing the right products to market and sell
• Setting up your store’s payment processing and shipping process
• Ensuring your store is optimized for search engine visibility
• Preparing everything you’ll need for social media promotion

Fortunately, with a little bit of knowledge and effort, you can create and manage an e-commerce store that will generate a steady stream of income and provide customers with a convenient shopping experience.

Choose Your Products

The first step in creating and running an e-commerce store is to decide what products you want to sell.

What are some examples?

Apparel. Pet products. Gardening supplies. Crafting kits. Hats. Sporting goods. What are you into? You can go in any direction with this, but if you’re new to the game you should probably start simple. What do you know, love and can you handle?

Things to think about as you develop your product line:

What’s my niche?

Think of your product in terms of a niche that you love to talk about, and could share endless knowledge of. So if fitness and wellness are your jam, you might consider listing exercise equipment, workout clothing, exercise videos and such.

Who am I marketing to?

Having a clear vision of your perfect customer will help you narrow down your product line. If we’re talking about apparel for instance; this is rather broad. Maybe you prefer to market to women. And maybe you want to start simple, with some shirts.

Okay: so what kinds of women will be your perfect customer? What types of shirts would they want to purchase?

It might help to create a full profile of your perfect customer. Ask yourself these questions before settling on a few basic products (in this case, shirts)

• What’s her budget?
• What type or style of apparel would she typically have a need for?
• What’s her personality like?
• What are her values?
• What is her preferred color scheme?
• What sense of humor does she have, if any?
• What does she love the most?
• What’s her “personal slogan”? (or a few of them)
• What times of year/occasions will she most likely buy for?
• What is her price range for the type of merch you’re offering?
• What kinds of deals would she bite for?

Once you’ve narrowed down what you plan to sell and have a few prototypes in mind, you can move forward with your plan to stock the first supply.

You can either choose to sell products you already have in inventory, or you can source products from other suppliers.

If sourcing products from other suppliers, it’s important to ensure that you select reliable suppliers who can provide high-quality products at competitive prices.

Ways to do this:

• Do a little research homework and see who other people use.
• Spy on a few different supply companies to see what types of reviews they get.
• Ask around the e-commerce network online to see which companies other people recommend, and why.

You should also consider the shipping and delivery times, as well as any other costs associated with each product.

In the next article we will talk about setting up your ecommerce store.