Selling Online - Step-By-Step Guide

The first step it to figure out what you're going to sell. If you don't have a product or service, you can't get too far. If you don't have something specific in mind, you can go in one of three directions. 

• Purchase something for resale. There are virtually thousands of companies that will sell you things wholesale that you can sell through your site.
• Offer a service in an area you're very proficient. If you know a lot about horoscopes, for example, you could provide personalized horoscopes.
• Write an E-book or paid newsletter. E-books are very big today. You essentially become a self publisher. 

There's actually a fourth way as well. You can create a site that makes money by referring people to other sites. You become an "affiliate" of the site your refer people to and they pay you a commission on every sale. 

After you've figured out what you're going to sell, the next step is to develop a web site that tells your story. There's actually two steps here. One is to find a tool to use to build your web pages, the second is to find a hosting service that actually presents your pages to internet visitors. 

Finding Someone to Host Your Web Site

There are other hosting services that charge as little a $5 or $6 a month. And others that charge $100 or more. If you're just getting started, go for one of the low cost ones. As you gain experience, have more visitors, and more sales you can move up the chain, if you think it's appropriate.

When it comes to tools, there are literally hundreds of them out there. Your hosting service may have a tool available for creating web pages. Frequently, these are inexpensive. My guess is, they work pretty well because they have a lot of people using them. But, I've never used any of them so I can't guarantee it.

Creating Web Pages

Two of the biggest selling tools are Microsoft's FrontPage, and MacroMedia's Dreamweaver. I've never used Dreamweaver, but I've read a lot of very positive comments about the program. Many professional developers use it and are very happy with it. Dreamweaver was $400 at one of the online retailers. This runs on the Mac as well as the PC.

I've been using FrontPage for several years and have been very satisfied with it. Like everything in this world, it has its quirks, but it works well and it automates a lot of web site tasks. 999 out of 1000 hosting services support the FrontPage extensions. Ask the question before you sign up just to make sure. FrontPage was $160 at one of the online retailers. It only runs on PC's.

You've got your tool and you've got your host. Now it's time to tell your story. Create your web pages to tell your visitors why they should buy your product or service. You may be able to tell your story in one page, or it may take dozens. One of the great things about the Internet is that you aren't stuck with the same story because you spent money printing it. On the Internet you can change your story every day, if you want to. You can start with one page and as you have the time and ideas for more, you can add those ideas as you go along. 

You're ready to go. You've told your story and people are ready to buy what it is you're selling. How are they going to pay for it? There are several options.

GIVING CREDIT ITS DUE 

One, you can sign up for a credit card merchant account (you can also accept online checks with this options). Click here for more info on credit card processing. If you accept the credit card information on line, you need to have a secure page take the information, just like online banking. This means that no one can steal your customer's credit card information. This is where ecompal.com comes in. We collect your customer's information in a secure environment so you don't have to. You don't have to worry about creating a shopping cart and keeping your customer's information secure. 

You can sign up for doing business through PayPal. ecompal.com supports a link to PayPal and you can link directly to PayPal from your site. My personal experience with PayPal has not been stellar. I stopped using them when two sales in a row became non sales after they were sent to PayPal to capture payment information. That's not a good thing. 

Once you've been paid, you need to supply your customer with what it is you sell. If it's an E-book, or software, you can have them download it automatically from the Internet. You supply them with a download address and a password to access the information. That's probably the simplest way. One issue with direct downloads is that the credit card fraud rate is much higher in this environment.

DELIVERING THE GOODS

If you're selling "things" then you have to ship them. Be sure to offer an inexpensive option and a fast option. Some customers want it NOW. Let them have it, just charge enough for it. 

One of the advantages of shipping your product is that you can include brochures and sales literature for other things you sell when you ship the product. If you make it easy to purchase the additional items you can get additional sales with little extra effort.

FOLLOWING YOUR PROGRESS

Another aspect of completing the sale is to keep track of your income and expenses for business. If you want to know if your making money, and you're going to pay your taxes, you need to track your income and expenses. You can use a paper journal to do it, a spreadsheet, or a accounting program. My preference is  programs like Intuit's QuickBooks because it tracks everything relatively automatically. There are others on the market that do a fine job as well. All of them beat paper or spreadsheet accounting. 

A crucial element in any sales or marketing effort is tracking your results. For example, let's say you have a thousand visitors and only one sale. If you're selling a $10,000 item, that's probably not bad. If you're selling a $10 item that's probably not good, unless of course your getting 1,000,000 visitors a month.

Most hosting services give you access to the raw log files. It's an overwhelming amount of information, but can be invaluable if you've got the patience dig through it. Many hosting services provide log analysis programs, or reports, that give you an idea what your visitors are doing. Use them to figure out what is working well on your site and what's not working well. Use the information to tune your site for maximum response.

A much better option is Google Analytics.  This is a free service from Google that will allow you to track what your visitors are doing on your web site.