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Start your own E-Commerce Store: Follow my Progress

JasonR

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I'll be using this thread to update my progress on starting a new e-commerce store and business. Here's some background on me:

I'm 27, college educated (Economics, Cal Poly SLO 2009), have less than $1500 in the bank, and currently have a full time job. I'm single, without kids, little debt (under $3k), I don't own a home (I rent), and keep my life as simple and expense free as possible (while still having some expenditure for fun). I have over 5 years of experience in the e-commerce field. Previous websites I've worked on are Poly Performance and Starwest Botanicals (my current employer). My boss from Poly Performance is a mentor of mine; he started his e-commerce business from nothing a little over ten years ago, and he's doing quite well now.

This thread isn't a straight up how to guide; this is how I'm doing it, the roadblocks I've run in to, and how I've handled it. I'm going to throw somethings at you that some of you probably won't understand. That's ok...it happens. Ask me questions, or Google it.

My short term goal is to earn enough money from this business to quit my job and work on it full time
.

My long term goal is to build the business to $5 million in sales in 5 years. I will do this by growing the initial e-commerce site, and/or expanding into new niches.

I am prepared to do whatever it takes, to not have much of a social life, and to lose out on some fun to get ahead in life and be able to free myself of having to work for someone and to free myself from having to work my whole life.

I don't know what's going to happen. I could fail. I could have tremendous success. I'm hoping for tremendous success. But here's what I do know. I will do my very best to succeed in this venture. If I don't see it becoming as successful as I want it to be, I'm going to find a way out and pursue another venture. I have had one previous business venture which failed, and was a huge learning experience. Here's to failing forward.

Let's get started.
 
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JasonR

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My second mistake.

I'm going to jump into my second mistake: choosing a niche that, in my opinion, is over saturated (now) and complicated (legally). I wanted to turn my hobby into an e-commerce business, and really believed it could work. In fact I still think there might be room for it, but I now realize I don't have the capital or desire to pursue this particular niche. Rewind to a year ago, and I spent thousands of hours writing a business plan, marketing plan, seeking funding, and COMPLETELY designing the site in Photoshop. Have you ever designed a complete e-commerce in Photoshop? It can take hundreds if not thousands of hours. I found out that the market for this particular niche is pretty damn saturated. I also found out that I would need a lot of capital, and I would have to wade through a lot of legal bullshit to start the business. So, I almost wasted a year on that project BEFORE doing my research and due diligence. This was a huge mistake and caused me to lose countless of hours on this project. I was also concerned about getting everything right before I could into business and make my first sale. Another huge mistake. I also spend $1150 to acquire a domain name, $500 on a logo, and countless hours of my time designing the site and talking to developers.

Long story short: research your niche FIRST, see what it will take to jump in (can you drop ship, are there legal restrictions on your niche, do you require a store front, will you need a lot of capital) BEFORE spending any extra time designing logos, buying domain names, designing websites, etc.
 

JasonR

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Step 1: Finding and choosing your niche.

This is something I struggled with. I held on to an idea when I really should have explored others. You do not have to do what you love to make millions. You do need to have a passion for business, and be absolutely driven.

I linked to a great e-book in another thread, but here it is again:
http://www.ecommercefuel.com/profitable-ecommerce-ebook/ You'll have to sign up for the newsletter, but it's good.

This is a good read, for sure. A great place to start.

Step 2: Research that niche. Search Google. Use Google's keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool (get very familiar with this tool. See who's ranking and why. Can you beat them? How many competitors are out there? When I "discovered" my niche, I was shocked at the lack of good competition. My niche is a decently wide niche (thousands of products). And no, I'm not disclosing my niche, website, or brand name just yet. ;)

Step 3: Found a niche? Register a domain name. I prefer Godaddy (I recently used NameCheap and have used Enom, I now have domains spread across 3 registrars, not fun). I hate how Godaddy tries to upsell you on it's CRAP, but just buy the domain name from them and that's it. Also, many tutorials on how to change DNS settings, mail exchanger settings, etc. are written for Godaddy.
-DO NOT use private registration. I believe Google uses this to check for spammy domains.
-DO NOT buy a domain name stuffed with keywords and hyphens.
-DO buy a domain name that's brandable. IE Zappos, Vigilant (thanks Vigilante), etc. I choose a brandable domain with my main keyword inside of it.
-DO buy a .com domain name if at all possible.

Also, do not be afraid to make an offer on a domain name someone else is squatting on. I've purchased one domain successful this way. However, if it's a GREAT domain name, prepare to pay.

I wouldn't purchase hosting from Godaddy. And you definitely shouldn't purchase any sort of hosting package until you figure out what shopping cart you're going to go with.

Download and read the The Beginner's Guide to SEO. Read it, know it, keep it handy. Start following the SEOMoz Blog.
 

PatrickP

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VERY interesting thread.

I will be following along for sure.

What industry was your first website in?
 
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JasonR

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First website was in the Firearms industry. GunWarehouse.com. Here's a screen shot of the design I labored forever on.
 

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JasonR

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Shopping Cart Options

I'm going to be using Magento for my shopping cart. I researched Big Commerce and Volusion, was going to use Big Commerce. Big Commerce had a couple of SEO issues I wasn't happy about, and the one big glaring issue that I could see with Big Commerce was a lack of successful stores (not that there aren't any, but not that I found). Some of the Big Commerce Stores look great, but I'm more concerned about the whole package.

Here's my opinion on some of the carts:

X-Cart: Robust, powerful platform, but it's going to be a thing of the past soon. Qualiteam is not innovating or keeping up with web trends, and they are VERY difficult to deal with. In fact, they caused a breach of security on one of my employer's websites (more on that later). Also has a level of complexity, and needs several plug ins for SEO, product feeds, etc.

Big Commerce: I'd probably pick Big Commerce over Volusion. Pretty damn good for a hosted solution, easy to get a store up and running.

Volusion: I wasn't a fan of the pricing options or the layout options of the website. From what I remember, the on-page SEO didn't impress me.

Magento: Easily the most powerful cart on this list. The community version is free and open source. However, all of this comes at a cost of complexity. Not easy to set up, not easy to use, and a steep learning curve. Magento extensions can cause conflicts with each other, and no official support on the community version. I feel this is the best choice for me, as I have experience with complex carts and the patience to figure it out. I've also used Magento a little bit already, and the company I'm working for is using Magento.

Long story short, I'll be using Magento.
 

JasonR

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Ok, picked my host (Nexcess Hosting). Going with the cheap $25/month option to get the store up and running, tweaked, etc. I will have to scale up as traffic and sales increase. Magento really needs a dedicated host to run well.
 
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JasonR

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Posted a job on Elance for logo design. I should be able to get a decent logo made up for $50.00. I didn't have much luck when I posted the same job a week ago (designer couldn't put anything together I liked), but he did refund my money. However, it was about a weeks worth of wasted time as far as a logo goes. I'd really like to bid the job out on 99Designs, but at $300 I think my money is better spent elsewhere at this point.
 

wade1mil

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Download and read the The Beginner's Guide to SEO. Read it, know it, keep it handy. Start following the SEOMoz Blog.

Thanks for the link.

GunWarehouse.com. Here's a screen shot of the design I labored forever on.

That website looks amazing. Any chance you could sell it to make some money back or even a profit?

Magento: Easily the most powerful cart on this list. The community version is free and open source. However, all of this comes at a cost of complexity. Not easy to set up, not easy to use, and a steep learning curve. Magento extensions can cause conflicts with each other, and no official support on the community version. I feel this is the best choice for me, as I have experience with complex carts and the patience to figure it out. I've also used Magento a little bit already, and the company I'm working for is using Magento.

Interesting. I knew web design more so ten years ago before all of these robust web applications, but how do you host Magento (or any other ecommerce platform on a different server? Do you pay monthly for both? I may need your advice on a solution similar to this for future plans. Is Magento the company owned by eBay?
 

JasonR

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Set up Google apps free for my business. You get up to 10 users free, tons of space, etc. I've been using Google Apps for a long time, and it's great. Syncs with all my Mail applications as well. Great, free resource for email, contacts, calendar, etc. Relatively easy to set up.

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3
 
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Brander

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99Designs, but at $300 I think my money is better spent elsewhere at this point

A little trick I used to do when I was starting out in Saas and didn't have much disposable income was to type the logo in Fireworks myself (you can use Gimp) in just letters and have a designer "finish" the logo for me. The finishing of it was never more than $25, while the prices to do it from the start (typing :) ) was almost always $50-100.
 

JasonR

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James:
I thought Big Commerce was a cut above Shopify...mainly for SEO reasons. However, Big Commerce needs some tweaks right out of the box. I actually have a couple of links bookmarked on how to fix some of Big Commerce's SEO (on page stuff mainly). I can post them if you like.

Brander:
Thanks for the tip. I have the Adobe Suite (I primarily use Photoshop/Illustrator).

Wade1mil:
I thought about selling the domain (GunWarehouse.com) as I believe it's probably worth at least $2000-3000. I'd love to sell the design if I could...it fits into Magento perfectly, and I spent so many hours on it. I would also consider selling it as a package deal...just don't know where to sell it. And it's still kind of hard to let go of the idea after so much blood, sweat, and tears. Also, nearly all the gun websites out there suck, and their SEO is horrible. The problem with competing with them is that many of the sites have been around for years and have a lot of authority. For example, Buds Gun Shop outranks many popular brands of firearms. Not to mention the start up costs, regulatory bullshit, changing laws, etc.

Magento Community edition is free (that's just the software) which you need to host somewhere. I am only paying for hosting (currently $25/month, but popular sites can cost up to $250-400 a month and beyond as Magento is pretty resource intensive). Does that make sense?

Yes, eBay bought out Magento, which I wasn't happy to hear about. I dislike eBay and many of their policies. However, given the massive amount of people on Magento (including enterprise clients), I do not believe eBay is going to change Magento any time soon.
 
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JasonR

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SEO tip for those just starting your sites. If you're building out your site, you should probably block Google/Bing/Yahoo bots from crawling your site. This can be done using your robots.txt file in your root directory of your site.

Here's a quick tutorial (it's for Big Commerce, but this will work for any site): BigCommerce SEO Basics: Block everything before doing anything!

This article goes into why you would want to do this, especially if you're currently using a Big Commerce subdomain (hint: duplicate content across multiple domains - you might be competing with yourself).

I just did this for my Magento site while I'm working on the basics before launch. Next up - editing your htacess file to avoid common duplicate content and canonicalization issues. I'm working on this now.
 

wade1mil

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BigCommerce just got $15mm in funding. They are rolling out a new version of their software by the end of the month. All new from what they say. Interested to see how that works out.
 
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BigCommerce SEO Basics: Block everything before doing anything!

Thanks, there is a lot of good info on there. My only problem is, I'm wanting to do an adult niche and BigCommerce doesn't allow adult content, along with Volusion, many other shopping carts and almost all mainstream payment processors/merchant accounts. Its considered "high risk" along with gambling and a few others. Shopify allows it and they seem user friendly, which is great for a noob like me, but I don't like the way they charge for apps. 3.99 per month to have a "contact us" page, WTF?!

I've been doing a lot of research and stripe seems like its going to have a big impact, but I still haven't determined if they do high risk or not. Paypal does but it seems that drives away a lot of customers when that is their only option. Most high risk merchants I've looked at just don't give me good vibes, along with charging too much.

I'm going to keep digging. Its about to be decision time. My LLC info should arrive in a couple days.

One more question, do you have any experience incorporating an XML live data feed from a distributor that automatically updates your inventory and prices? A distributor I'm wanting to work with supplies it, but from what I've read, it isn't the easiest thing to implement. I may have to outsource that. There are "dropshipping services" that will do it, but if its only a onetime job to implement it, paying a monthly fee would be idiotic. I could be wrong, I don't know how it works and haven't had the best luck finding out. It would be awesome if I could pull that off though cause then I could spend the majority of my time working on SEO and driving traffic to it, which I still have a ton to learn about.

Thanks for the great thread, I will be following closely.
 

wade1mil

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I believe Magento allows adult content.
 

JamesS88

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They don't seem very user friendly. I'm willing to learn whatever's necessary but if it leads to a huge delay in getting up and running along with maintenance and upkeep, it would seem less economical.
 
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JasonR

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I believe Magento allows adult content.

You may just need to buckle down and learn Magento. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. If you're going to sell Adult Content you're most likely going to need to use a cart you host on your own (Magento, X-Cart etc.). None of them are "easy" to use, and all have a steep learning curve.
 

JasonR

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Here's a quick tip that could VASTLY improve or alter your search engine rankings. Canonicalization of your base URL.

In my example (and with most e-commerce stores) most websites/stores will have several root URLs. In my example I have these:
http://mystore.com
http://www.mystore.com
http://mystore.com/admin.php
http://www.mystore.com/admin.php

There's 4 URLs right there for the SAME page. Not only are those 4 URLs for the same content, if you don't fix the issue you're going to multiple EVERY PAGE (category pages, product pages, content pages, etc.) by a multiple of 4. So if you have 1,000 pages on your site, you'll now have 4,000 pages. Hopefully, you can see this is absolutely critical problem to fix. Also, it's often a problem overlooked by many websites.

Here's how you fix it (and what I just did to my site). You'll need to 301 redirect all of those URLs to a single root URL. I choose "www.mystore.com" as my root URL, and redirect all other variants to this URL. So "mystore.com/index.php" automatically gets redirected to "www.mystore.com" etc.

You can do this by editing the .htaccess file on your server. I screwed mine up while editing it (first time editing the htaccess file), so I had to have my host help me.
 

JasonR

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A couple of weeks ago I had contacted suppliers in my industry, and found two drop-shipping distributors. Since I have little capital, I'll have to utilize drop shippers to get up and running. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get pricing or product lists without sending them my business license, resale cert, etc. That's on my to-do list for the next week.

However, I did go down to our local shop (selling the same goods I'll be selling) and grabbed every catalog they had on their shelves. I need to be an expert in the products I'll be selling. Also, I now realize I have a ton of content I'll need to write.

As I mentioned, there are some significant barriers to entry in this market. When I launch my site and share it here, I'll get more in depth into that.

I'm also researching a blog extension (it's free) for Magento. I'm hoping that will fit into the theme I choose. I'm also be attempting to install the theme today.

Keep in mind I have blocked Google/Bing/Yahoo (Bing and Yahoo have partnered and use the same search and ad network FYI) from indexing my site before it goes live.
 
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JasonR

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Setting up my Site Structure (SEO)

Most of you probably know that the structure of your site and SEO friendly URLs factor into search engine rankings. Here's how I'll be setting up my site and why.

My root url, as discussed, will be "www.mystore.com"

All CMS/content pages will be "www.mystore.com/content-page.html"
All product pages will be "www.mystore.com/product-page.html"
All category pages will be "www.mystore.com/category/"
All brand pages will be "www.mystore.com/brand/"

Pretty simple! The reason I have set the product pages up WITHOUT the category URL is simple, yet important. So what happens when you move a product page that resides in "www.mystore.com/category/product.html"? You now have to 301 redirect the old page, and, honestly, the extra keyword or two in the product URL isn't going to significantly impact your rankings. Also, what happens when you have a product in multiple categories when you have the category in your product URL page? Which category do you use? That's why I recommend not using product page URLs like "www.mystore.com/category/product.html."

The only thing I'm considering is possibly using ".html" instead of "/" for my category and brand pages (to keep things consistent). However, Google doesn't care if you're using a "/" ".html" ".asp" ".php" at the end of your URLs.

Also, I will make sure to block specific pages (the cart page, check out pages, login pages, etc.) from the search engine indexes by blocking them in the robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is very important, so learn to edit and modify this file as needed (it's very easy). I can post a couple links to articles on the subject.

I hope all of this makes sense. If not, you haven't read and don't understand the Beginners guide to SEO that I posted.
 

JasonR

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Also registered social media pages in my company name:
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Google Plus
Youtube
Vimeo

Don't think I'm missing any key social media sites?

Edit: Also set up Google Analytics tracking in Magento (easy so far) - I may have to do some extra work to track conversions.

Edit again: I still need to set up the goal funnel/conversion tracking!
 

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Also registered social media pages in my company name:
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Google Plus
Youtube
Vimeo

Don't think I'm missing any key social media sites?

Edit: Also set up Google Analytics tracking in Magento (easy so far) - I may have to do some extra work to track conversions.

here's a handy tool for that KnowEm Username Search: Social Media, Domains and Trademarks
I wouldn't use the paid version, but the free checking tool is great (well, maybe, if you can afford it, it saves you a lot of time on the minor sites).
 
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Very interesting. Downloading/ looking over all the resources you've posted up. Speed +
 

JamesS88

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If you're going to sell Adult Content you're most likely going to need to use a cart you host on your own

Why is that exactly? I've seen some other adult stores on shopify that look really nice.
 

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Also registered social media pages in my company name:
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Google Plus
Youtube
Vimeo

Don't think I'm missing any key social media sites?

Linkedin? I think it would be a good idea to create a business page for any ebiz sites. At the very least add it to your own profile.
 
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"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to JasonR again." Off to spread some speed, lol.
 
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GuestUser8117

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Very good thread fella. I have a question for you. Are you using a specific software to build you ecommerce store? Or are you doing the programming crap by yourself. This is an area i'm very interested i'll be following along for sure.
 

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