Conclusion – Starting Your Ecommerce Business
As you have seen by now, there’s is much involved to run a successful ecommerce business but a lot of it you will learn as you go. What I have provided you today will get you started properly.
Hopefully you’re feeling inspired enough now to jump in and start giving it a go.
This is a fantastic way to earn money online and as we’ve seen through this tutorial, there are countless small tricks and techniques you can use to accelerate your sales and increase your earnings.
The potential is truly limitless and it’s only going to grow as ecommerce becomes more and more widely accepted.
To recap what we have covered today, just follow these simple steps:
#1 WHAT NICHE/FOCUS?
Decide what kind of business you will be running. Is this something you’re adding to your existing highstreet store? Or are you designing a store to run as a side business while you continue with your current employment/affiliate marketing business?
#2 WHAT PRODUCTS/AUDIENCE?
Choose a type of product, choose a type of niche and choose an audience. Think about how you’ll create and procure your products but also think about the amount of competition you’ll face and the keyphrases you’ll come up against.
#3 CREATE A WEBSITE OR USE YOUR AFFILIATE WEBSITE
Create your website and add an ecommerce platform. Use WordPress and WooCommerce for the majority of scenarios as a Wealthy Affiliate member..
#4 SET UP/ADD WOOCOMMERCE PLUGIN
Start considering and choosing themes and plugins that will work and think about how you’re going to layout your site.
#5 ADD PRODUCTS/PRICING/CONTENT/SEO ETC.
As you add products, consider and address SEO, add some good descriptions using keywords and keyword phrases, and create some supporting content through your blog..., and start marketing the store using your social media platforms.
#5 PLAN FOR MARKETING
Begin marketing your site through social media and with a blog. Reinvest the profits you realize at the start in more stock and more marketing and keep a close eye on what’s working!
Later you can consider paid advertising as you test and see what is working what is not working..
OK...
Rinse and repeat these steps and before you know it, you’ll be able to start expanding your operations.
Next step: buying your own warehouse!
WRAP UP
So, I really hope that this tutorial has given you some good guidance for planning for and setting up your own e-commerce shop. This marketing niche dovetails nicely with affiliate marketing, and can be easily incorporated into your current program...
Having said that, please make sure that you focus on one thing at a time, and the first step is to take the training here on Wealthy Affiliate and understand and implement this training for your affiliate marketing business...
Once you are at a point where you can comfortably add in an e-commerce aspect to your marketing, do so. Please do ask any questions regarding this subject in the comments below, and I or another Wealthy Affiliate member will get back to you...
Also, please consider hitting the 'like' button if you liked this training tutorial! This is the first one I have published in the 19 months I have been a Wealthy Affiliate member, although some of my blog posts were quite long and could have been published as a tutorial...Thanks, folks...
Cheers!
Dave : )
I Have a couple of questions for you. Related to Subdomain which I think I prefer over a new domain:
Once I have created a subdomain for eCommerce, will I advertise that subdomain or will I advertise the main domain?
Can I call the subd. shop.mydomainname.com or myproducts.mydomainname.com
Is there a special way to link them together? Or are they just naturally linked?
Thanks again
Best
Reply
If you go to a link cloaking tool like bitly dot com (replace the "dot" with a period) you can then create a shortened link or a link that relates to where you are sending the person clicking on the link...
Have a look at the image and I have created a simple sample and screenshot to show you what I mean...
This screenshot I have here is what will come up after you click on create a link from the bitly home page and when type in the link you want to change...
In the screenshot, you see three arrows...
(1) The first at the top shoe the original link as created by bitly after you add the link you are trying to change/shorten...
(2) The second arrow points to what I want the link to look like...i.e. instead of the shortened url as shown in arrow one...
(3) The third points to the "create" button, which when I click on it will then create my cloaked link which will look like you see where arrow 2 points to...
My result would look like this:
...bitly/memories
Note that the free version of the bitly tool will NOT allow you to create a modified cloaked link, it will assign a random file name, as what you see at the first arrow of the screenshot...
There are however many options out there you can use for this, many of them free. I use a tracker pixel tool and it will do the same thing for me (this is a paid tool)...
If you do a simple google search you will see some - check them out and see which would work best for you...
In our case, since we are tracking what is happening with our sales campaigns and ads, pages, and websites, the tracking tool works well and the cloaking of links feature is just a plus as part of this tool...
The reasons for using this kind of tool are many...
The links look nicer in many cases, they fit better to the subject or content, they hide affiliate information when you are promoting something, and they create a better impression to the prospects...
To tell you the truth, I do not think you would have to cloak the link for your subdomain unless you wanted to make it look better somehow. You could create a cloaked link and test it with a link that is NOT cloaked to see which gets a better response from prospects, and then go with what works better...
Cheers! Dave
please explain, this "If you did choose to move to this theme, the store that is created will ‘replace’ the website you already have."
Does this mean that you loose your original theme you chose to start with to create your store?
If this is the case, it doesnt matter what initial theme to install WP would be, Right?
In this case what initial theme would be better?
Also, you write:
"You might want to use a subdomain or a separate secondary domain for your shop and create a separate website, then link the two together rather than install the entire theme on your current blog website".
Where can I learn how to do that?
Thanks
Best
Thanks for the questions and let me get you some answers...
When you start a website using a domain and WordPress, the first installation will add automatically a couple of themes that come standard...
After you have uploaded the WooCommerce theme you can activate and then delete the unneeded themes. I would leave at least one so you can switch if you need to...
As you say, it really does not matter. I would likely add a second WooCommerce supported theme so the store would be up and running if you do have problems...
Keep it there as a back-up, it might save you losing down time if something happened with the main theme you use...Also, I would create entire site backups often, daily or more if possible...
On to the next question...How to set up a subdomain here using SiteRubix...There is some training if you check out this tutorial it will help you get it done - this works, by the way, I have set one up here in the past... How to set up a Sub-Domain. Live Walkthrough If you have any problems, just put a support ticket in (I had to as well because I was getting a specific theme set up and it required access from a third party)...The folks will help and quickly!
Cheers!
Dave : )
Thanks for taking the time to create this training, you did an amazing job.
I do have a question, maybe you can help. I already have a Paypal account that was previously setup for personal use. Can I use the same account or do I have to create a Business Paypal Account?
Does it cost anything to setup Paypal Business Account?
I am also not sure if I have to setup a Braintree account also?
Sorry for all the questions.
Thanks for all your help it's much appreciated. :)
Ann & Alex
When you set up your payment routing system you should be able to check it out to make sure it is working properly. PayPal has a sandbox tool where you can test everything to make sure it is working properly...
If you are using another payment system, I would make a test order just to make sure it all is working OK...Maybe have a friend make the order, reimburse them, and you will know...
We used the second method when testing the Thailand operation out, but for Germany, we used the sandbox testing...Both worked well and we had the peace of mind that all was OK...
When you do this testing, you will also see that the email series is working properly (i,e, thank you and order confirmation, shipping confirmation, update messages, support, etc)...
It is all about the customer experience, and this is an important piece of that...We have also added a checkout process plugin, so the clients can see their progress as they go through checkout (we have to activate this after switching themes)...
Best of luck!
Cheers!
Dave : )
Would it make sense using WooCommerce for selling Amazon stuff (as a start, for one site)? This means I would not need its all features, only some of them. Is there possibility to show updated price?
Product descriptions in such sites are usually short, so can one really rank with it? Earlier you replied to me by saying this was the usual SEO.
Are those pages or posts? If pages, there is a limit of pages in ordinary WP site menu (it is 80, know it for sure, I reached the limit once and could not continue, had to convert pages to posts). How is it with WC site?
Thank you in advance. Jovo
Sorry so long to get back to you on your questions, I missed the notification I guess on my email....
I have not tried selling Amazon products using WooCommerce, but I do not see why not...
Here is an article that will give you some insight on options...
https://shopitpress.com/blog/woocommerce-setup/top-3-ways-to-integrate-your-woocommerce-store-with-ebay-and-amazon/
There are add-on plugins that will help you import the data I do know that...I just have not used them (I do not like the commission rates, I know they do build over time and can be significant, but...).
Regarding SEO, yes e-commerce stores typically have short descriptions and the keywords are in the title, the meta description, maybe the tags, and maybe the image information...
Maybe try to link a review article to the WooCommerce product page (not sure if this makes sense over sending directly to Amazon product page), maybe do some testing to see which works better?
On page limits so far no issue at all...We have 140 product pages and these have between a simple product with one item all the way up to 6/7 variations (size or color differences)...
We are in the process of adding an additional 160 items and some of these also have variations (i.e. T-Shirts) so at the end of the day, we will have almost 500 line items...
The other factor with this scenario is that we are adding German translation pages for each item too...That is a work in progress and each dau we are doing 4-5 pages...
With the auto translation tools such as Google Translate that the Chrome browser has, I am not sure this is worth the effort as of now - we will see (we are doing manually ourselves inhouse, after 4 external "experts" screwed the pooch badly for us)...
The WooCommerce product pages are also separate from the normal pages on the theme we use (all we have used to now too), and you manage these separately...There may also be a limit, but so far we have not run up against that (I believe I read somewhere that 500 was the magic number but not positive that is correct)...
I hope this is not too late to make any difference Jovo, and apologize again for taking so long to get back to you!
Cheers!
Dave : )
