A prospective e-entrepreneur has lots of options for building his or her own e-commerce business. It's important first to create a business plan, which should include the following key ingredients:
These factors are critically important in determining the success of your enterprise. If you do not know how to perform these activities, it's still possible to create successful e-commerce ventures, but you'll need help. Any and all of these activities can be outsourced. There are also coaching programs and instructional courses that will teach you everything you need to know. One of the best of these is Tim Godfrey and Steve Clayton's Blueprint Project, Black Edition, which is designed to be an e-commerce business-in-a-box. No other resources are required, as this program includes directions and all necessary tools for finding profitable markets, building websites with shopping cart software, finding drop-ship suppliers, getting traffic to your sites and even selling your websites if you desire.
Selecting your market
E-commerce entrepreneurs may select a market they are familiar with or have an affinity for, but from a business perspective it's more important to find a market or niche with enough demand, but not too much competition, so that their expected return on investment makes sense. This is determined through market research.
Products and Shipping
The Internet allows you access to suppliers and vendors all over the world who you can contract with to purchase the item(s) you plan on selling. Shop around and get a good deal on bulk orders of the item(s) so you can make a profit. Many vendors will arrange discounts with people who order in large quantities. Make sure that the vendor is responsive, offers rush shipping orders, and is established. If you can find a supplier who will drop ship, this is a very attractive business model, as minimizes your overhead, and allows you to focus on marketing.
Building and Hosting your Website / E-Store
With the popularity of e-commerce web sites came numerous new web site hosting companies. You will want to find a reliable, customer support-oriented web hosting service to house your web site. There are some free web-hosting services, however paid web hosts, such as Hostgator, generally offer more web space, the ability to handle a great deal of traffic, and the ability to handle a merchant account for credit cards.
Obtaining a domain name that suits your e-commerce business is relatively simple. It's important to pick a good name both key34 for customer recognition and also for search engine optimization, so do your research and include important keywords in your domain. Most of the time, you can register the domain name you choose when you sign up for a web hosting company.
If you are an HTML coding genius and are familiar with creating web sites, you are lucky, and you will probably enjoy creating your web site. If not, there are several e-commerce templates that you can download online and use for your pages. You can also create a website with WordPress, a popular blogging and content management platform, which does not require knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. WordPress allows the use of plugins, including e-store platforms which allow you to display products and prices and do transactions with credit cards or PayPal.
You could also pay someone to create your e-commerce web site. Make sure you check out the web designer's portfolio before enlisting their help to see that they are capable of producing a quality web site for your business. There are several good freelance web sites on the Internet that allow you to post your project and get bids from qualified applicants. Another great resource is the web hosting company you choose - more often than not, they have a design team ready to build web sites for their customers.
Ecommerce or electronic commerce is transactions or other terms of sale that are performed electronically. This involves purchasing, selling, and exchange of goods or services for the exchange of money using computer networks such as the Internet. Opposing to the popular belief, ecommerce does not only exist on the web. In fact, ecommerce already existed and do well in business-to-business transaction since the 70s via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) through VANs (Value-Added Networks). Ecommerce can be further broken into four main categories B2B, B2C, C2B, and C2C.
• B2B (Business-to-Business)
B2B definitely deals with companies who are doing business with each other. An example of this is manufacturers who are selling their product to distributors, and the wholesalers are selling it to retailers. Thus, the pricing can be based on the number of orders and is frequently up for grabs.
• B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
Business-to-consumer typically involves selling products and services to the general public or consumers through the use of catalogs utilizing shopping cart software. B2B can easily earn a lot of money; on the other hand, B2C is what really in mind in an average customer when it comes to the ecommerce as whole. With the help of ecommerce, you can easily purchase many things at time without having human interaction. An example of these if you are having hard time finding a book, when you need to purchase a customized, high-end computer system, or finding a first class, all-inclusive trip to a tropical paradise island. Thus, ecommerce can help you purchase the products all at the same time.
• C2B (Consumer-to-Business)
An example of C2B is when a consumer posts his projects or assignments in the Internet and web site. The consumer sets a budget online where within hours many companies reviews the requirements needed by the consumer and then bid on the project. It empowers the customers around the globe by providing the meeting ground and platform for that certain transaction.
• C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)
A very good example for C2C is the eBay. It is where consumers sell their products to other consumers through bidding. Thus, the one who bids the highest can buy the product. Another example is the sites offering free classified ads, auctions, and forums where consumers can buy and sell products to other consumers. They use PayPal as a tool for online payment system where they can send and receive money with ease through online.
There is another form of ecommerce which is the B2E or Business-to-Employee ecommerce. Here, companies are using internal networks to offer their employees products and services online. It may not be necessarily online on the Web.
The other forms of ecommerce are the G2G (Government-to-Government), G2E (Government-to-Employee), G2B (Government-to-Business), B2G (Business-to Government), G2C (Government-to-Citizen), C2G (Citizen-to-Government). These transactions involves mainly with the government, from procurement to filing taxes to business registration to renewing license. There are still plenty of other categories that exist but then they tend to be superfluous.