Build your online store for less than 100 dollars
These days, setting up an online store is cheaper, easier, and has more potential than ever before. If you try to setup a physical business, it will cost you thousands of dollars in overhead, permits, and marketing fees before you can even start selling. Setting up an online business is the exact opposite. It is easy to set up, there is no staff to pay, no space to rent, and as long as you market your product well, your online store will be exposed to millions of people worldwide. If by chance, your idea doesn’t work out, then you can always learn from the experience and use it to implement your next idea.
Did you know that you could build online store for less than a hundred dollars? It’s true and I will show you how to do it; but remember it is completely DIY, so get ready to get your hands dirty! You really don’t need to be a technical wiz to setup an online store. I’ll explain step by step, how you can create your own online store.
Follow these five easy steps and for under $100, you will have your online store up and running in no time!
- Choose a Domain name for your website
- Choose a Web hosting for your website
- Install WordPress
- Choose a Theme/Design for your online store
- Add products and Payment System
1. Choose a Domain Name (cost $10-$13)
First you will need to choose a domain name for your website. Domain names are internet address for websites. A couple of things need to be considered before buying the domain name for your website. It is crucial to choose the right domain name because this name is going to stick with you for the entire life of your website.
You should already know by now what you are planning to sell online; you will be using those ideas to create a domain name for your online store. You might want to use your company name for your website domain name. This is perfectly acceptable as long as the name is not currently taken. For my website, I choose wp-handyhints.com so when people type the key words “wp handy hints” in Google search, my site comes on the top of the search result. Give this a go!
Let’s say your company name is “Freedom” and your domain name is “freedom.com”. You plan to sell furniture on the internet. Now, if customers know who you are, all they have to do is type freedom.com. If you want to attract the people who are looking for furniture on the internet, then you will need to add targeted keywords to your domain name. So, rather than having your domain name set as “freedom.com” you should have “freedom-furniture.com”. If you want to narrow down the search and target a niche for antique furniture, you should get a domain name like “freedom-antique-furniture.com” or “freedomantiquefurniture.com”. When people will search for antique furniture online using the keywords “Antique Furniture”, your site will more likely come first on the search result (as you have both the key words in your domain name) depending on how other people are targeting the same niche. Having targeted keywords in your domain name automatically gives you the upper hand in the search engine results.
There is no guarantee that the domain name you want for your website will be available. It all depends on how committed you are to that particular name. If you have an existing brand name for which you’re known, you probably won’t want to ditch that name just because the domain name was not available. After all, it took you a lot of time and money to establish that name. If so, you might want to try buying over the domain name from the current owner. Be aware that they are likely to want a higher fee than you’ll normally get when buying new domains (assuming they want to sell it in the first place).
Hyphenated Names?
I was looking for the domain name “blogmakers.com” for one of my websites but unfortunately the name was taken. I approached the owner and he asked for $30k! I liked the name, so I named my website blog-makers.com with a hyphen which was available… that only cost me $11! I saved 30,000 dollars and my domain name is search engine friendly than the other name. The advantage of having hyphens in your domain name is that search engines can easily distinguish the keywords and thus return your site more prominently in the search results.
For example, if your business name is Trades Exchange and your domain name is “tradesexchange.com”, then the search engine will show your website to the people who typed the key words “sex change”. To avoid confusion, you can use hyphens in your domain name which will look more organized as well as return the keywords for which your customers are looking (e.g. “trades-exchange.com”).
.COM, .ORG, .NET, etc?
One common question I encounter is from people who can’t get the domain with the “.com” domain of their choice; yet they find the “.net”, “.org” or other country-specific top level domain extensions (TLDs) available (like .de, .nu, .sg, etc). Should they try for these?
If you are thinking of targeting the local market, it’s better to go with your country-specific domain. For example, I am selling furniture only in Australia; I should have the domain name freedom-furniture.com.au. Did you ever notice when you search for something on a search engine that it brings the local businesses first on the search result and then rest of the world? However, if you want to target the global market, stick to .com, .net, and the rest.
Which Domain extension to choose for your website
2. Choose a Web Host ($3.50-$10 per month)
Once the domain name is sorted out, it’s time to get a host for your website. The web hosting market is very competitive at the moment, which is good news for us! Every hosting company is trying to keep their product affordable and offer lots of packages so they can get more business.
I won’t tell you to go and look for the web hosting companies that offer reliability, high speed, unlimited data transfer, and so on… They all do! Instead, go ahead and look for a cheaper plan. If you don’t like their service, you can easily move to a different company or even upgrade your plan in the future.
Check the hosting companies below which offer great value for money!
Setting up the website
Now the real fun begins!
I recommend you use WordPress to create your website. WordPress is a content management system. 32 million people worldwide using WordPress for their websites as of this post. The reason I choose WordPress is because it is user friendly and you don’t need any kind of a technical background. It is free to download and takes less than 5 minutes to install. Your website will be up and running in no time. Other benefits of WordPress is that it is SEO friendly; and you’ll have a large community support network, plugins for extended functionality, and thousands of free themes or designs available.
You can install WordPress yourself or if you feel things are getting too technical, you can have someone else to install it for you. I have seen many free WordPress setup offers online. The reason for this is if you choose your web hosting company though them, they make a commission and therefore they are happy to install WordPress for you.
Check the site below. They are reliable and install WordPress for you less than $10.
WordPress Installation Service
3. Installing WordPress (free)
There are a couple of ways to install WordPress on to your host server. When you sign up with a hosting company they give you space to store all the data, themes, and information for your website. Every time you upload media: which could be music, images, and videos, you will need to transfer them from your computer to your host server in order to show them on your website. What is WordPress? WordPress is a content management system for websites; once you have installed WordPress it has the features to add media files automatically from your computer and link them to your website by storing them onto your host server. Using WordPress you would be able to upload a post by click of a button and design the layout of your website.
The easiest way to install WordPress is through CPanel. After signing up with a web hosting company they will email you the login information for your CPanel. What is CPanel? CPanel is the control panel for most of the technical functionality of your web hosting account. With it you can manage your emails, databases, sub domains, install scripts and applications, check your stats, etc.
Check the Video How to Install WordPress
4. Choose a theme/ design (free)
Now you will need to choose the design/ theme of your website. Once you install WordPress, it automatically gives you a default layout or theme with which to start. You can also have someone else create the theme for you, buy premium themes, or you can choose a free theme. There are currently thousands of free themes for WordPress at the moment available on the internet.
Check out the sites below for free WordPress Themes
Once you find the right WordPress theme for your website, all you need to do is install the theme.
How to install WordPress Theme
5. Add products and payment system ($39.95)
You are almost done and your website is ready to sell products!
You can sell digital products, non-digital products, or both from your online store. You will need to upload the products and setup a payment processing system for the products that you will be selling.
The online payment method that you provide to your customers should be easy, simple, and secure, all at the same time. If the payment method is easy, the customers will keep coming back to your site. In order to sell products your payment method should accept both electronic and manual payments.
In order to receive online payments from your customers, you can setup a merchant account with an online credit card and a bank payment facility. This option is very expensive and lots of paper work is involved. Also your customers might not find it trustworthy.
The best solution would be to go with PayPal or Google Checkout for online payment processing. Both of them are low-cost services which allow your customers to make online payments directly from their bank accounts and credit cards securely.
If you have digital and/ or non-digital products in your online store or ecommerce site, the WP eStore shopping cart plugin can handle your online payment processing as it is integrated with several payment providers including PayPalPayPal Account organized and you are ready to accept payments from your customers! and it only takes couple of minutes to setup. All you will need is your
The WP eStore shopping cart plugin not only handles the online payment process but it will also let you upload a product onto your blog post or page.
If you are selling digital products from your online store WP eStore shopping cart plugin also takes care of the electronic delivery of your digital product.
WP eStore shopping cart plugin documentation and more demonstration:
| Invoice for one Online Store | |
| Domain name register | $13.00 |
| Web Hosting | $7.50 |
| WordPress Installation(optional) | $9.99 |
| WordPress Themes | $0.00 |
| Shopping Cart | $39.95 |
| Total | $70.44 |
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Cheers for the post. I enjoyed the read.
Hey I appreciate your efforts in this post. Cheers!
nice blog! thanks for the help.