How To Build Your Own Online Store The Easy Way Without Spending A Fortune

in this video you'll learn how to start your own online store on your own website without any technical skills whatsoever now if you're currently selling on eBay Etsy or Amazon and you want to learn how to start an online store you're probably overwhelmed by the vast number of options at your disposal should I pay for an all-in-one shopping cart solution which card is the best should I run my online store on WordPress with an e-commerce plugin which plugin is the best should I use a free open source cart and host my own website which Free Solution is the best there are literally hundreds of different options to choose from in terms of website Builders shopping carts Services Etc and it's a big decision because it carries long-term implications for your business once you make a choice it is a pain to switch so this video will give you an overview of the different shopping cart options out there and provide you with recommendations depending on your specific needs and skill set and none of these require any technical experience whatsoever by the way this is lesson six of a 10-part series if if you missed the first five lessons in this series you can grab them all by signing up for my free 6-day e-commerce mini course below so first off I want to dispel the misconception that you need to spend thousands of dollars to put up a good-look e-commerce website for example there are many fully featured open- Source shopping cart software packages out there that are 100% free in fact if you are comfortable with a computer you can launch a fully featured shopping cart for less than three bucks a month and incidentally this is the exact route that my wife and I took to start our sfig e-commerce store over at bumblebe lens.com feel free to check out my website which is actually built on free software now because I was on a major budget early on I ran my online store on a free open- source platform and spent only5 bucks a month for the first two years and I'll show you later how to do this in this video now today my store generates over seven figures per year and I'm still on the exact same free platform that I started on anyway my point is is that none of the solutions that I will be recommending to you will cost very much money and there are seven eight and nine figure businesses running on these exact same platforms today so here are your three main options first off you have your free open- source shopping cart and with this option the source code for your shopping cart is provided to you at no cost but you must host it yourself on a computer server that you manage now this is by far the cheapest solution available but it does require some work on your part to maintain regardless you do not need to know how to code but it does help to have some technical knowledge your second option is a fully hosted shopping cart now this is the easiest and most straightforward solution available by paying a thirdparty company they will handle everything for you including managing your shopping cart hosting your website and maintaining your servers you literally do not need to worry about anything in regards to keeping your website up and running and finally your third option is a hybrid fully hosted shopping cart so if you're already running a website and you just want to add e-commerce functionality to it then a hybrid solution like equid or big Commerce might be the right solution for you so let's go over those options in depth now option number one use an open source shopping cart open source software is software that is maintained by a small group or community and the beauty is that anyone can use it for free Linux is probably the most famous example and there are many open source shopping carts available that you can download at zero cost now the main advantage of an open s shopping cart is that you aren't tied down to a specific company or a specific provider you can take your store wherever you want and you pay absolutely nothing now going with an open source platform is a lot like owning an unlocked cell phone you're free to use any carrier that you want but you own the phone and it is free the other huge benefit is that you are in 100% control of the source code I.E you own the phone and all the tech as a result if you need to add special functionality that is very specific to your store you can either implement it yourself or hire a developer in other words going open source means that you are the boss no one will be able to change the terms and conditions and no one will be able to kick you off or raise prices on you now over the years I played around with many open source shopping carts including woocommerce open Cart prea shop and Magento but my favorite one by far is woo Commerce not only is it easy to use stable and built on top of one of the number one blogging Platforms in the world but it also has a a great developer Community as well and did I mention that it's 100% free most people don't know this but woo Commerce is actually one of the most popular shopping carts in the world and it actually boasts the largest thirdparty developer ecosystem out of any e-commerce platform and the best part about woocommerce is that it runs on top of the world's most popular content management system WordPress which actually Powers 25% of the internet now if you already have a WordPress blog and you just want to add e-commerce functionality to it then going with woo Commerce is a quick and easy solution that is free in this day and age content marketing with a Blog is kind of par for the course as a result it makes sense to integrate your blog and your e-commerce store together on the same platform and the only downside to running a shopping cart on top of Wordpress is that WordPress was not designed for e-commerce out of the box as a result woocommerce and other e-commerce plugins will tend to run a little slower unless they are optimized but on the flip side there are thousands of free plugins out there that will speed up and add extra functionality to your online store now recently my 9 and 11y old kids started an e-commerce store selling entrepreneurship t-shirts online with woo Commerce and if a 9 and 11 year-old can launch an online business then so can you my kids use their own money to start this business and spent less than $3 from start to finish right now woocommerce is one of the easiest shopping carts to install and get running right away and why is that well it's because most if not all web hosts offer a oneclick installer you pretty much just have to click on one button and voila you are ready to go in fact I put together a quick 5-minute video tutorial that shows you exactly how to get started with woocommerce from complete scratch for less than three bucks in the show notes beneath this video now the main downside of using an open source platform is that you are the boss and being in control of your own platform is actually a double-edged sword so for example you have to manage your own server you have to make sure your site doesn't go down and you must keep your shopping cart up to date and if anything goes wrong you are responsible for find the solution in other words you have to be resourceful you have to be a great Problem Solver because eventually something will go wrong now over the years I've come to realize that using an open-source e-commerce solution and self-hosting may not be the right solution for everybody some people just don't feel comfortable installing or tweaking their own website let alone modifying an open source shopping cart one time I tried to help a co-worker of mine launch her own online store and unfortunately she didn't possess the basic knowledge to even make simple edits to her shop and had to ask for help for every little change so ultimately I had her go with a fully hosted solution because of the built-in support now while open source shopping carts are free flexible and Powerful you have to decide whether your time is better utilized on marketing and sales as opposed to website management which brings us to option number two use a full fully hosted shopping cart if you have the budget and you don't want to deal with the hassle of managing your own website then it often makes sense to pay a company to run your shopping cart for you a fully hosted shopping cart platform like Shopify or big Commerce basically does everything they manage your shopping cart they provide technical support and they make it extremely easy to get started and in other words you're paying money for convenience now while I usually advise that everyone who is interested in opening an online store give open source a try and host their own website some people just require a little bit extra handholding in order to get started with their online business so as a result it makes sense for certain entrepreneurs to go with a fully hosted shopping cart for peace of mind some of you don't want to go through the trouble of setting everything up and want everything to just work out of the box some of you would rather focus on marketing and sales rather than Tinker with your website and in my experience 85% of you should probably just pay the extra money and go with a fully hosted platform unless you are comfortable with technology there are many advantages of going with a fully hosted e-commerce platform that may not be too obvious right off the bat and so here are some advantages that immediately come to mind one you never have to worry about getting hacked during the early stages of my online store I actually got hacked a couple of times and it took me a while to put safeguards into place so if you never want to have to worry about site security then go with a fully hosted shopping cart you also never have to worry about server downtime when you use a service like Shopify or big Commerce whereas with free open source software sometimes you can make it edit and screw things up sometimes your server goes down and you have to find out what happened early on with my store my site used to crash from time to time and it was very stressful backups with services like big Commerce and Shopify are also automated I remember losing all my data once from my shop and it wasn't fun so if you don't want to worry about backing up your data then again go with a fully hosted platform and the final advantage of going with a fully hosted platform is that you always have someone there to help there's a phone number live chat and email whereas going the open source route can be a lonely Endeavor basically you must be a self-learner and know how to use the forms effectively to solve your own problems but with a fully hosted cart like Shopify or big Commerce you can usually get someone on the phone within just a couple of minutes I spent a lot of time these past couple years test driving fully hosted shopping carts and I found that both Shopify and big Commerce offer an awesome hosted shopping cart solution for a very low monthly fee now the number one concern most of you probably have is whether you'll be able to design a greatl looking website without hiring a designer and I'm happy to say that both big Commerce and Shopify make it super easy to create a professional looking site big Commerce for example offers an intuitive drag and drop interface where you can Shuffle things around with your store at the click of a button and both Shopify and big Commerce also offer a pretty good library of standard templates for for you to start out with all in all you can throw up a decent looking store in a matter of minutes without knowing any HTML their backend features and tracking are also topnotch and there's built-in support for many thirdparty apps and Integrations to your favorite marketing tools and social media sites like Facebook Pinterest Instagram and Tik Tok now if you're interested I put together a full tutorial on how to create a greatl looking site for Shopify in 5 minutes that you can access here or in a link beneath the show notes and if you're deciding between Shopify and big Commerce each have their own pros and cons here's a very detailed video that I filmed that you can check out below now if you find the features of a fully hosted cart attractive keep in mind that there's also downsides all the benefits of a fully hosted platform come at an increased cost and you sacrifice some amount of control over your website for example both Shopify and big Commerce have raised their prices over the years and are constantly changing their policies if you want to sell anything remotely controversial like CBD or hemp related products some fully hosted platforms will shut you down and recently A friend of mine actually got kicked off of Shopify for selling CBD products now the cost of a fully hosted platform can quickly add up as well and you can't judge the overall cost based on the base price alone for example many of shopify's plugins carry a monthly fee that must be factored into the equation and just to give you a rough idea my wife and I pay about $50 a month to host our seven figure e-commerce store along with six other websites on the exact same host but if we went with Shopify at Big Commerce we would easily be paying $500 or more for the exact same features so if you're willing to put in the work and learn the ropes with a free open- source e-commerce platform then hosting your website yourself is almost always going to be the most flexible and economical choice but if you want to skip the early headaches and just start selling then a fully hosted platform like Shopify or big Ecommerce is probably for you but there's still one more option that we haven't discussed option number three is to use a hybrid shopping cart if you want to add shopping cart functionality to an existing website you already own without breaking or changing anything then a hybrid solution like equid or big Commerce might be your best bet a hybrid shopping cart works exactly how it sounds a company like equid or big Commerce host the e-commerce portion of your website on their servers and you simply add Buy buttons or a small piece of code to your existing website this solution offers three main advantages one you can keep your website as is without having to change or migrate platforms two the e-commerce portion of your website will not bog down or slow down your site and three you get a fully featured shopping cart that can take transactions online now if you are currently running a WordPress blog and you don't want to deal with an e-commerce plugin that could slow down your site then big Commerce has an amazing offering that seamlessly integrates a fully hosted shopping card to your existing blog and you get the best of both worlds you can continue to use WordPress as your main blogging platform and big Commerce will run your shopping cart on the exact same domain which is ideal for search engine optimization now at this point I've given you a lot of choices so which one should you choose ultimately only you can answer that question I've already narrowed down the field from hundreds to just a handful of e-commerce platforms for you most if not all these shopping carts can provide you with a free test Drive of the front end and back end of the storefront as well so just do your own due diligence and run through the features of each cart to determine what you need now I would probably start with one of the free open- source shopping cart options that I've recommended because they're free you have full control over the source code of your cart and you can add new features at any time woocommerce the open source cart that I recommend has a very strong developer community that is constantly adding new plugins and additional functionality for free watch this video here for a full step-by-step tutorial on how to get started with woocommerce for just three bucks now if you watch this video and you feel like the installation process is just way over your head then I would then look at some of the paid options that I mentioned like Shopify or big Commerce and again just keep in mind that once you choose a platform it's extremely hard to migrate to another platform plus the fees with respect to the fully hosted Solutions may seem small at first but will substantially increase once your store kicks into high gear just a quick note here I am often asked about Wix Squarespace Weebly and other super cheap fully hosted shopping cart Solutions now while these platforms are okay for a very basic store they lack extensibility and integration to important and crucial thirdparty services so as a result you will quickly outgrow these cheap Services as your store grows now to sum things up if you don't want to deal with any website management and just want to focus on selling your products then go with either big Commerce or shop here's a quick comparison table just to sum things up now if you're willing to learn how to manage your own site and be in full control then consider using woo Commerce which is free now you guys are probably wondering what platform that I use for my seven figure online store and currently I am on oscommerce which is an open- Source shopping cart that I chose back in 2007 when there were very few options back in the day the only fully hosted option was Yahoo Merchant Solutions and even though I would not advise any want to use oscommerce today my trusty open source shopping cart Powers a seven figureure e-commerce business and is equally as powerful as a fully hosted platform like Shopify or big Commerce but if I were to do it all over again I would probably go with woo Commerce and if I wasn't around to manage my cart and my wife was the only person running our store I'd probably go with Shopify or big Commerce but overall you have to decide where you want to spend your time and whether the cost savings and control are worth it now if you like what you watch in this video there's actually a lot more where that came from and remember this is a free 10p part series on how to get started in e-commerce if you subscribe to my channel below and if you are interested in learning how to sell physical products online then click on the link below and take my free 6-day mini course where I'll walk you through everything that you need to get started in e-commerce and if you want more formal instruction on how to sell online join my class over at profitable onlin store.com but we're not done yet there's still four free lessons left to go so stay tuned

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

Views: 8,989

Keywords: how to start an online business, how to start an online store, selling online, online business, how to build an online store, make money online, ecommerce website, online store, ecommerce website wordpress, how to start a website, how to start a website to sell products, how to make an online store, how to start an online shop, how to start an online business with no money, how to make money online, shopify tutorial for beginners, how to start an online business for beginners

Id: nGfIy_6GA-w

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024