Sunday, February 1, 2009

Small Business Startup - 3 steps to get online

(photo credit: darkpatator)
3 simple steps to get your small business going online
  1. Get your webhosting with cPanel.
  2. Set up a blog - Wordpress
  3. Set up your ecommerce - ZenCart
It's taken me years to get to this point of simplicity. But yesterday, I finally started getting my own ecommerce set up going. Now I'm starting to have fun again.

I've been blogging for years, but nothing much came of it. Reason? No tracking, no metrics. No controllable place to send people to buy my products. Plenty of good content - but even that could be improved on.

Look, these three things are the way you can leverage what you have and get much more going. Everything else builds on this.

Yes, this is a bunch of work learning how these things work. Of course, you could pay someone to do this for you - but mostly this means you are going to have to keep going back to those guys when you want to change something. Means more bucks out of your pocket.

There isn't any reason someone couldn't start up their own business and make themselves a success online - except that little voice in your head telling you that you can't. (The same voice that tells you that a couple of chocolate donuts won't put that many pounds on...)

I recommend WordPress as a blogging platform simply because of the support and community it has. Someone, somewhere has run into the same problem you have and has written about it. Same for ZenCart. Sure, you have a lot of other options to install under cPanel, but take it from me and just do these two things. Right now.

After you've dived in and figured out how to change things around to your liking, you'll want to start adding in stuff to offer - and then telling the world how great they are.

That is also the simple approach. Put up your item on your store, then write a review about it on your blog. Cross-link your item and your review together. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, it's that simple.

And if you start off with info products, you don't have any problem with shipping and delivery. Makes your life quite simple.

So what are you waiting for? For about $4.95 a month (much, much cheaper than your cel phone), you can have your business up and running. Even cheaper - if you really want to go that route.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Your future is ahead of you - make it into what you always wanted it to be...

Good Hunting!

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