How To Start an Online Store

Ever want to start your online store but have no idea how to get started or how much everything costs?
Ever just want some suggestion of how to start an online store but have no products to offer?
I have done some looking on How to Start an Online Store. Most I find are websites that charge you to sell stuff from their site, and their sites are barely customizable. Barely.
If you want to know how to start an online store, hopefully I can help motivate you into figuring out how to start an online store for yourself. See the reason why I say “Figure out”, is because we both know that once you get your store up and running, you will want to make changes and adjust your pages here and there to make things work better for you, look better and sell more stuff related to your store. Almost all of those online store providers out there, will charge extra for everything you want to do.
So here is how to start an online store and make it yours, all yours.
This page will get you started and the total cost to you would be less than $150 a year. but first let’s get you started at making money online without the cost of anything, so you can generate money to buy the things you need to make the bigger money.

First lets get you an account at Zazzle.Com. Zazzle allows you to create shirts (or the model shirt image) that people will see as they brows Zazzle’s directory. If someone like’s the shirt you created, they can then purchase the shirt, you will be rewarded a percentage of the cost of the shirt. I say shirts but Zazzle has lots of more products, like bumper stickers, coffee mugs and a few more things. You just have to go there and see for yourself. If you click any of the links I gave above just sign up and see the interface, there is no cost at all to you and they do not request any personal information, you need to take care of the taxes yourself. There is plenty of good money to be made with Zazzle. you just have to come up with something cool that someone will want, like a saying, or a design or the such. (if you have questions further, post below, I will gladly respond in less than a day if I can help, I probably can.)
I advise that you let your account build up money before you take the next step. So go ahead and bookmark this page so you can come back later when you make a bit of cash. That way your money made from nothing, buys what you need next.

To take things up a notch, you would be good if you found a website that has lots of storage and many options, I mean MANY options and unlimited bandwidth ok, if you are not too techy, let’s just say , a website host that allows you to be completely unlimited. For cheap and is a really good quality website host. If you are techy, unlimited email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, 75 mysql accounts and unlimited php scripts as long as they work ok with your 75 mysl db limit (addon scripts and so fourth if needed) plus tons of up to date php scripts ready to install by just a click, but you are not limited to auto install, they are good for the new and those of us who like tech support. Here is a recommended web hosts: Host your Web site with PowWeb!
Now once you get your site  Web site with PowWeb! It comes with a domain of your choice, less than $5 a month, so, less than $60 a year. You can not lose. (if you have questions further, post below, I will gladly respond in less than a day if I can help, I probably can.)

Once you get your site up and built, log back into your Zazzle account and get the “HTML” codes from all of your products and find a place on your website that you want them. Like here Funny Shirts. Or build an entire website for your products like Tech Gear.
Next sign up for and advertisement affiliate company. Like the Google ads I have on the right, or Link Share ads

 

LinkShare Allows you to get ads from specific dealers, and select specific products. If the ads are from a large company with a large selection of items, then you can make personal choices or related choices of products that work well with your website content or theme.
Google seems to pay a bit more, but you can run both types of ads, just keep your ads clean and not a bombardment or you will chase potential customers and readers away.

Or find an independent advertiser who is going to be a limited advertiser but will be more specific to you, like BUY SHEET MUSIC ONLINE which of course is what I run on my music website.

Now your site is up and running and so far, nothing has cost you a single red cent. Your products this far are paying for your website and your advertisements are giving you extra money, How do you get even more money? Easy, create more stuff on your Zazzle account, you can put as many of your product ideas as you can come up with, on your site. It’s your fricken site. Zazzle does not mind, as long as they get their cut. You don’t get your cut until they do. So all is good there.

In the meantime (while you wait for the money to roll in) you can also try doing surveys online. You sign up, give them your email address they send you invites and you pick the surveys you feel like doing. Who knows maybe you will get ideas for your site. With all survey sites listed below, you should get maybe10 surveys a day, count on three of them being either too low pay for the time span required or just not interesting. I usually spend 2 hours a day doing the surveys and make roughly $50 for that time. Some days I make way more. You can also sign up for their affiliate programs and link people to them if you feel it fits your content.

Survey Savvy Pays very well, but not a bunch of surveys.

Inbox Dollars They send you Surveys and they send you emails to look at. Money builds up good. Just look at the emails, the surveys pay to little. You will get the hang of it after a while.

Opinion Outpost Has many fair to good surveys, occasional super high pay out surveys.

A.C.O.P Surveys Pays very good has many surveys.

Buxto Not much pay but is easy. Takes a while to build up $$

If you select to use any, I really do recommend you use them all, or you just wont have enough surveys for it to be worth it. I selected these after years of searching and years of getting tons of spam from other sites. These are the ones that really pay and they are willing to invite me to lots of surveys. They are all free. Disclose whatever you feel like.

This is how I make money online at no cost to me. I still have a day job and my day job income is about twice the amount of my online income. Not bragging just letting you know that there is a lot of money in this, enough that I have been doing the totals and it’s paying for my car, fuel and insurance and buys my lunch every day. My original investment, three hours designing 7 shirts and two bumper stickers. Took three months before the first item sold, and then it took off. Meanwhile steadily doing my surveys every single day before I go to bed. When I get a new idea, I create a new product on Zazzle and post it on one of my sites when I figure what site the product goes best with. I am now running 8 websites. Well they run themselves but I had to set them up and I update them when needed. and yeah I would crumble if I lost my job. It’s not making me rich yet, but it sure does seem to be getting better all the time. I just need a product that is 100% mine to sell and make 100% profit from.
Now here is the piece of the puzzle you needed most. There is a software you can use to build your own website using wordpress and Amazon affiliates, to run basically your own store on your own website using Amazon They are called WPAssociate. You are now up and running with your own store online, and your actual start of your company cost you no money and very little effort. If you look at the wpassociate website you will see how it all works and how very inexpensive it is. If you used the steps I mentioned before this, you would have bought all of this from profits made, with no and I do mean NO investment at all but your time. Just use the money you make with the free stuff, to purchase the stuff that has a cost. In little time you will be running your online store making money without investing money at all.

WPAssociate transforms your WordPress site into an attractive Amazon affiliate store in an easy way; no programming experience necessary. Choose looks, products and placement and you’re ready to go.

( I had a link to a company called Wp-Associate, I think you can find it in addons now)

How to get traffic to your website for free. you will need this later.

Yes most if not all of the links I posted, pay me. That is what this whole post is about. How I make money online. This is my disclosure letting you know that I make money from all of those sites and links I posted. I do profit from every link in this post. Which is what I am showing you how to do. Sometimes I go weeks without messing with this stuff at all. Sometimes I get crazy ideas and am buried in work. I think it’s great.

Hope this helped you figure out how to make money online.

Have fun and Good Luck
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