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Beginners Guide to Selling Online

Starting and ecommerce website
The less than promising outlook for the economy coupled with the gloomy jobs outlook makes starting a small business one of the best ways to weather the gloomy economic outlook that seem to be one of the few things most top economist agree on. Echoing a similar line, the Universities minister David Willetts advice students leaving university to to cast off “old-fashioned” ideas about what constitutes a graduate job and instead consider starting a business.

Knowing you want to start a small business or being urged to start a small business by a government minister and the reality on the ground when you think of the whys and the wherefores of starting a small business is quite different. First you need to identify a gap in the market that you business can fill, you have to convince the banks (which at present are not lending that much to small businesses) to finance you business idea which in an uphill struggle at the prevailing economic climate. Given the impossible huddles you must jump through to establish a traditional small business, starting an online business is a much better and far easier alternative.

The Basics of Selling Online

One of the easiest and the cheapest ways to start a small business is by giving the traditional start up model a wide berth, you cut out the long winded business proposals and endless meeting with bank officials and the routine rejection application for start-up loan tends to get by starting an online business.
Ecommerce based business tends to be easy and much cheap to setup. This article is not an exhaustive guide to starting an ecommerce website but it lists the basics of starting an ecommerce website including everything you need to start making money online.

Starting an online business can be divided into three parts:

  1. Choosing an ecommerce shopping cart
  2. Choosing a payment processing company
  3. Search engine marketing for your business

Choosing a shopping cart
There are hundreds of shopping cart ranging from the cheap and cheerful to deluxe shopping cart that will set you back several thousands, you can also have a bespoke shopping cart created for you, bespoke shopping carts do not come cheap. It will be assumed that capital is tight hence you want to get the best shopping cart possible for as little cash outlay as possible.
The first shopping cart that comes to mind are the free one but given that free shopping carts tends not to have technical support you can call on when you need help, and aspiring small business owner who is not a techie should steer well clear of free shopping cart.
One of the best shopping cart you can start you online shop with is Boss Cart.

Choosing a payment gateway