Setting Up
This is an easy one for Wealthy Affiliate members. Most are using a WordPress based theme for their blogs and niche websites, so they can very quickly use some plugins I will discuss to have their shop up and running literally in minutes...
You have already completed all the setup procedures for your website, and using some special free plugins you can add the features of a shop to that website. It will do all the hard labor for you and track orders, customers, product, etc.
Of course there are other options that you can consider if you want to have a separate store apart from your affiliate marketing website, and I will cover briefly some options out there, but I want to focus for Wealthy Affiliate members on the easiest and fastest way to get their store up and running after I mention them here...
Hosted/Self Hosted Solutions
As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you can set up your website right here and save additional costs that other store owners will have. This would be a self-hosted website/shop that is not using a framework from a service other than your host SiteRubix and WordPress.
If you decided to go with a hosted service, on the other hand, your shop will be stored on an external website other than your own. The domain may be yours or it may be a sub-domain the host provides you.
In reality this is kind of like adding a profile to a social media site. You will have less work to get it all stood up, but it also means you’ll have a little less flexibility and more expenses likely that will go up as you grow your store.
There is one more consideration about using a hosted service - you do not own the store. Anything could happen and you could lose your entire store in a minute. Using the solution I am going to recommend, you control the store and its data and products, and can back it up and restore it any time.
Here are some of the top hosted platforms:
Shopify
Shopify is by far one of the most popular ecommerce solutions around and is one that nearly everyone has heard of. Like WordPress, it comes with a huge amount of support, plugins and themes meaning that you can tailor it to your exact needs and meaning that there are plenty of ways you can boost your sales.
Some of these plugins let you do powerful things like tracking your visitors and integrating email marketing, or like selling digital products and delivering them automatically. They are handy and help you appear professional to the online shopper.
It does lack some of the customization of self-hosted solutions however. For example, there’s no option to create your own custom checkout page. These limitations may not be apparent at the start, and when they do pop up, you will have to decide if changing platforms is worth the effort...
In terms of products, Shopify can support up to 5,000 different items, which is more than enough for most purposes. The basic Shopify membership is free but you likely will need to pay as you upgrade to more advanced features that you will want. Also as your business grows, your costs will too. Still, it’s not prohibitive.
Bigcommerce
Bigcommerce is hosted much like Shopify and is also suitable for up to 5,000 products. It’s another solid choice but falls a little short of Shopify thanks to a higher price point. Moreover, Bigcommerce is less well-known than Shopify.
This means that it doesn’t have quite the same number of plugins or features. If you want to create a store that is in any way unusual, you should probably check first to make sure that Bigcommerce can support whatever it is that you’re planning on doing.
Bigcommerce has one big advantage though and that’s that it provides excellent support for international payments out of the box. This might be a big deal if you plan on selling to the US and the UK for example and don’t know whether to display your prices in dollars or GBP.
I have stores that sell globally and operate out of Europe and Asia, so it is very important that this feature is included for the shoppers. They may come from Germany (where our company is based) or Thailand (where the sister company is located) to anywhere else between...
There are also some self-hosted solutions other than Wordpress I will mention you could consider...
Magento
Magento is one of the best hosted solutions around in terms of its customization and features and is an excellent choice if you want to build something very unique with lots of power under the hood.
This is the option that the big businesses with lots of money and tons of stock will want to use. If you have aspirations of taking on Amazon (you’re mad), then Magento is the best non-custom-built option.
Magento supports up to 50,000 items and is installed independently from your WordPress site on your server (likely not possible from SiteRubix BTW)...
The downside of this platform is that it’s very fiddly and confusing if you’re a new user. In other words, unless you have a good development team behind you or you’re a developer yourself, you should probably stick with something easier at least to begin with.
And this is where I add a couple of points to ponder:
(1) When setting up your business always think about the ‘path of least resistance’. Don’t make extra work for yourself just because you want the pride of taking the less easy route – it’s not good business.
(2) Focus on keeping your overheads (time and money) low and getting quickly to the point where you can reliably start making money. Don’t let ego get in the way of good business sense!
Now...
That brings me to my recommended solution for Wealthy Affiliate members...
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the self-hosted option that I would recommend for you. What makes this such a great choice is that it is actually a WordPress theme if you chose to create a totally different website. You just install the free WooCommerce base theme as you would do any other WordPress theme and from there, you’ll have your store!
If you did choose to move to this theme, the store that is created will ‘replace’ the website you already have. 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 then install the entire theme on your current blog website. Note that even if you do replace your site theme you can still have a blog on the store too.
Like WordPress and like Shopify, WooCommerce has tons of support and an endless number of themes and plugins. This will make running your store significantly easier and makes it another great choice from a business perspective. There are many features you can add to your store using plugins to make your store look professional and unique.
One limitation of WooCommerce has though is that it can only stock 500 items max as of this tutorial and from my understanding. This won’t be a problem for most of you starting out but if you have plans to expand over time it’s something you certainly might want to consider.
In my case, with our stores we are focusing by region so do not envision going over the 500 product threshold in the forseeable future. It is something that I and my partner discussed as we were planning our e-commerce business...
Other Options To Look At...
Volusion
Volusion is a WordPress plugin but I’s also somewhat unique in a number of ways. That’s because it isn’t just an ecommerce but is also an email autoresponder and more. Volusion lets you track our visitors and your leads and see who is looking at your products and who is reading your emails.
Volusion is something that many internet marketer types might feel quite at home with but note that it’s not particularly powerful or feature packed when compared with other ecommerce solutions and is really only suitable for small numbers of products.
MY NUMBER ONE CHOICE FOR WEALTHY AFFILIATE MEMBERS - THE WOO-COMMERCE PLUGIN
On many themes you can simply add the free woo-commerce plugin and using it create store pages on your current website quickly. It is best to check prior to installing and activating the plugin to make sure that you will not break your site.
That plugin will take you through a set up process and within 5 monutes you can have the pages automatically created and added to your website, and then add in your products and payment service (i..e. PayPal)...
For most Wealthy Affiliate members this is the ultimate option I would recommend. It is fast, easy, simple to use and understand, and it plain works (and again, it's free)...
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 : )
