How To Start an Ecommerce Business From Scratch

ecommerceceo.com/start-ecommerce-business

Darren DeMatas February 6,

2019

Helping others start an ecommerce business is something I’ve always loved doing.

Years before I got my internet marketing MBA, I marketed large corporate retail brands.
Marketing an established ecommerce brand vs starting a new one is a different game. I’ve
helped online entrepreneurs since 2008 and I discovered all the pitfalls new businesses
face.

Tired of watching small business owners struggle to get started, I put together this guide
to ensure you a smooth ride for your ecommerce business. It’s taken me years to learn
everything included in this page. Use the information here to set up your ecommerce store,
protect yourself legally, get your finances in order, market and sell your product, and start
building your store.

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Instructor

Get a crystal clear understanding of ecommerce business models, an ebook with 400+
ecommerce niche ideas and business plan startup checklist. Darren has an MBA in Internet
Marketing and 10+ years marketing 7-figure brands online.

Enroll For Free

There’s nothing more rewarding starting a business from nothing and watching it grow. You
build it up and no one can take it from you.

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Online retail is a booming business. But I’ve seen too many ecommerce businesses struggle
to get traction. Running an online store can get complicated fast, which is why I’m a big fan
of launching single branded product line + affiliate site combo.

This ecommerce model is very different from the typical online stores that rely on product
sales.

Starts with a niche & persona, NOT product

Highest profit margin
One product to worry about shipping
Use sales off of affiliate marketing to reinvest
Figure out what else is selling and launch new lines
Natural growth projection

Building an ecommerce business takes more than choosing a brand name, writing product
listings, and starting to sell products online. Even the best business ideas can flop if you
aren’t driving enough traffic to your site.

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How to Start An Ecommerce Business

Research The Basics Of Ecommerce Business

Beginning your research is the first critical step. Don’t operate off of a hunch. Growing any
online business is an investment. Treat it as such.

There isn’t a single business structure that works for everyone. Service-based business,
software, digital product sales, and physical products are just the tip of the iceberg.

Before you can decide on what to sell online, you need to understand the different business
models available.

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It’s not rocket science, but it does impact your
business structure.

My focus is on physical products, but that

doesn’t imply a need for you to invest heavily
or fill your garage with products. How will you
source products and inventory management?

If you want to turn a profit without touching

your product or investing heavily at the start,
dropshipping is a smart choice.

If you like the idea of having your own

warehouse full of goodies, you’re investing
more up front and working with a
wholesaling or warehousing model. Have a
business idea for the perfect product idea or a favorite product you wish you could sell
under your brand? Look into white labeling and manufacturing.

And then there are subscriptions, where you carefully curate a set of products or a single
product to be delivered at regular intervals to your customers.

The ecommerce business model that attracts me the most is a single product
category that you supplement with affiliate marketing. You can control the content
marketing and branding on a focused product and focus the rest of your energy on driving
sales by monetizing traffic.

Ecommerce Business Models Must Read

Types Of Ecommerce: Ready to start your successful ecommerce business? Learn more
about the process of selling products online and other types of online business models
here.

Additional resources:

How To Start a Clothing Line (Tips From 13 Fashion Pros)

How to Break Free from Your Ecommerce Marketplace
Why niche markets are eCommerce winners
The Beginner’s Guide To Selling Print On Demand Products
How To Calculate Your Break Even Point For Selling Products Online

Start Ecommerce Niche Research

It pains me when people email me their ecommerce site and it’s filled with hundreds of
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products, dozens of categories, and no real focus.

Unless you have a massive budget, you can’t be the next Best Buy or Amazon. You have to
niche down to run a profitable ecommerce store.

Choosing your niche is the most important

step in opening your online business. Start
this process by identifying successful
companies already working in this space.

Make sure that the area is competitive – an

absence of competition usually indicates that
there’s no market, either.

Don’t pick an overly crowded niche, however,

and skip anything dominated by major
brands. If you’re having trouble with this, drill
down further on what you want to do – the
more specific you are, the less competition
you are likely to face.

Niche-ing down also gives you the benefit of having a lot of “shoulder” niches, related to
what you do, but not identical. You can work together with business owners in those niches
to cross-promote, become (or acquire) an affiliate, and grow your customer base.

Pick a product category with a minimum of 1000 keywords and focus on a niche that does
well in social media, where publishers in the area are affiliates on Amazon. If you can nab a
few affiliate marketing opportunities, you won’t have to worry about shipping as much
product, but you can still make a profit.

Must Read for Niche Selection:

21 Product Research Tips To Uncover Legit Ecommerce Market Opportunities

Additional resources

15 Niche Ecommerce Business Ideas You Can Bank On

How to Find Your Ecommerce Niche

Personas and Product Selection

Now that you’ve identified a niche and business model, you might be tempted to start
hunting for products to sell.
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Don’t. Before you think about product ideas, think about personas. You can’t expect people
to buy your product if you don’t know who you’re selling to.

Who are you? What does the store represent?

Who are your ideal customers? You need to
project a consistent brand image (a journey
that starts with your brand name). An organic
seed company that started selling
conventional fertilizer wouldn’t last very
long. [clickToTweet tweet=”Your store
persona has to match the expectation of your
customers & the products you sell.”
quote=”The persona of your store has to
match the expectation of your customers and
the products you choose to carry.”]

Once you’ve identified the image you want to

project and the customer you are catering to,
it’s time to come up with product ideas. I suggest starting with one – you’ll invest less at the
start, and if you want to offer more you can test the waters with affiliate marketing.

In the example of an organic seed company, you could find popular organic products on
Amazon and create content to send traffic to those affiliate products. If something catches
fire, you can consider making your own brand of that product. If you’re not 100% sure what
to sell, you can use affiliate marketing to validate your idea.

Before you invest in the product, though, evaluate it carefully. Even if you choose a
dropshipping model, you want to test it carefully and get a feel for the product yourself so
you can identify any potential problems and prepare customer service scripts to answer
common questions.

Product Selection Must Read

What To Sell Online: How To Sell More Products With Personas: Think you’re ready to
tackle persona and products? Read this first.
Additional resources:

How to Start a Content-First eCommerce Site

What to Sell Online: Digital or physical products?
What To Sell On Amazon: 11 Simple Ways To Find Products That Sell
How to Create Your Customer Avatar
10 Strategies to Find the Best Product to Sell Online
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 The Complete Guide To Finding The Best Private Label Manufacturers
29 Private Label Product Ideas to Kickstart a $100K+ Brand
How to Start An Amazon FBA Private Label Brand (From Any Country)

Establish Your Brand & Ecommerce Business

If you want to start a successful business, you need a brand that connects with your
persona. Identifying your persona makes building an ecommerce brand easier. You might
avoid girlie colors and images if you are selling products to corporate businesswomen
interested in living a sustainable life.

But before you set up your store and get into

the nitty gritty of building a brand – there are
some basic steps you’ll need to take.

Step 1: Register Your Business.

Choose a business name and register your company. There are legal protections and tax
benefits for incorporating, so don’t skip it.

Step 2: Pick Your Store’s Name

The name of your site and the legal name of your business don’t need to be identical, but
keeping them consistent has its benefits. Make sure whatever you choose fits your niche –
you don’t want to pick a brand name at the last minute.

Step 3: Get Your Business Licenses

If you’re not familiar with this process, the Small Business Association has plenty of
resources to help you get started, including a mentor-protege network and courses on small
business basics. Look actively for mentors – their advice can be priceless, even for little

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things like acquiring business licenses. One of the smartest decisions I ever made was
finding someone who could show me the ropes.

Step 4: Get Your Employer Identification Number

You’ll need an Employer Identification Number (EIN) to open a business bank account and
file your business taxes next April, even if you don’t plan on having any employees. Your EIN
is a bit like your business’ social security number: it’s a unique number that identifies your
business and helps you file important paperwork.

Step 5: Apply for Business Licenses and Permits

Operating an online store does not exclude you from needing certain business licenses and
permits. Check with your city, county, and state to see what sorts of sales tax licenses or
home business licenses you need, and get those approved before you start operating.

Step 6: Find the Right Vendors

You’ll have a lot of competition selling products online, so it’s in your best interest to find the
best quality and best prices for the products you sell or materials you use to create your
products. Shop around until you find a vendor you want to do business with long-term – this
includes your ecommerce software (your “shopping cart”). Think scalable from the start.

Step 7: Logo Creation

Don’t fret over it too much, but do make sure that it is not in use by another company in
your niche. Logo design doesn’t have to be terribly original, however (and really shouldn’t).

Step 8: Get Visual

Consider the colors of your brand, the imagery you’ll use, and the typeface or fonts you’ll
employ carefully. If you’ve got the budget, you might want to hire a marketing firm to create
a design brief for your company. If not, you can create your own. Just keep it consistent and
read marketing tips designed to help boost your brand.

Ecommerce Business Must Read

How to Write a Business Plan For Ecommerce: Need help writing your business plan? This
beginners guide has you covered.
Additional resources:

Do I Need a Business License to Sell Online

Ecommerce Branding: 11 examples and 27 expert tips to help you build your brand
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 online
Branding for Niche Marketers: Step-by Step Guide To Building a Powerful Online
Brand Image
The Simplest Way to Choose Your Brand Colors
Creating a Brand for Your Ecommerce Store
Finding small business loans

Create Your Online Store

Once you’ve legally registered your business and started thinking about design, you need to
register your domain name and any redirect URLs that might be relevant. You’re going to
need the design info you settled on in the last step now, when you finally build your store.

Whatever design you chose needs to be

compatible with your ecommerce software,
too.

There are literally hundreds of ecommerce

shopping cart platforms. Choosing the right
ecommerce software is not easy. You need to
carefully evaluate things like loading speed,
features, compatibility with different payment
gateways, compatibility with your business
structure, your web developer skills, SEO-
friendly features, and more. I’m putting
together reviews and comparisons to help
you pick the right one.

Once you decide on your ecommerce solution, don’t hire a “CRO Expert” or expensive
development company. Just use a theme. You might need to pay a small fee of $100 or so to
get a good template, depending on the shopping cart you choose and what they offer.

Theres lots of themes for BigCommerce, Shopify and WooCommerce.

If you don’t want to worry about taking credit card payments, you can sell products online
on a marketplace like Amazon.

Love the idea of your own digital real estate? Make sure your ecommerce platform can
scale with you and integrate with popular ecommerce marketplaces to increase your
exposure.

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Setting up your online store is much more than adding your products and content. You
need to get your email marketing and automation set up as well.

This is important to set up BEFORE you get traffic. Email marketing is essential for driving
conversions. Make sure you set up coupons, thank you emails, and upsells so you can turn
visitors into shoppers. You also have to think about customer support.

Ecommerce Website Must Read

What Is The Best Ecommerce Platform For Startups: If you don’t have a lot of dev skills and
want to get an ecommerce site up quickly this guide is for you.
Here are some resources to help you get started:

35+ Best Ecommerce Tools For Emerging Startups

How to Create a WordPress Ecommerce Website: The definitive guide
19 Open Source Ecommerce Solutions for Your Store
12 steps to Build a Successful Ecommerce Website in 12 Months
How The Best Ecommerce Sites Win at Web Design [23 Examples]

Attracting Customers to Your Ecommerce Store

Apologies to any Field of Dreams fans, but if you build it there’s no guarantee they’ll come.
You need to market your store.

When you chose your cart, I told you to think about search engine friendly features. They
are NOT all the same.

The keyword-stuffing days of the early 2000s

are long gone, but SEO is alive and well. You
need to keep keywords and search terms in
mind on each page of your site, in your URLS,
and in your ad campaigns. You also need to
think about driving traffic to your site.

The best ecommerce sites invest heavily in

online marketing. If you don’t have the funds,
you better have the elbow grease. Subscribe
to marketing newsletters or listen to digital
marketing podcasts to keep a pulse on the
digital marketing industry and get your fill of
marketing tips.

Will you use sponsored content, social media, pay-per-click ads, or a combination of
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strategies? How will you monitor what campaigns are driving traffic to your store? If
marketing your site seems overwhelming, will you hire help?

Ecommerce Marketing Must Read

10 Proven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies To Surge GrowthRead battle-tested, step-by-
step ecommerce marketing strategies that work.

Additional resources for marketing your ecommerce store:

Marketing Your Products Online

Your site isn’t the only thing you need to drive traffic to. The product(s) you choose also
need to be included in your marketing budget.

Your mission is to sell products, not drive traffic. To sell products, you have to think beyond
your site and look for expansion areas.

No matter what and how you decide to sell,

the first step is to create an email list. Place
an opt-in freebie on your website, launch a
social media campaign to gain subscribers, or
host a giveaway where the entry ‘fee’ is your
customer’s email address.

Running a giveaway is my go-to marketing

tactic to get traffic and subscribers quickly.
Giveaways have the added benefit of
increasing your brand presence and product
visibility. Building an email list gives you a
group of warm leads to work with, making the
sales process much easier.

Providing consumers with coupons and content via email helps to keep your brand on their
mind, boost sales, and establish credibility. Keep your emails interesting – ask for your
customers’ input often, including reviews. Respond quickly to customer service and product
quality issues, and work on building relationships. No sales interaction is about the first sale;
focus on the next one always.

On your site, look at how and where traffic flows. Are your product pages targeted to your
persona? Are you losing would-be customers in the same place? If you’re driving traffic to
your store but nothing is selling, fix the leaks in your sales funnel by carefully optimizing
each page and taking a close look at your product listings. Use analytics to help with this
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task. There are tools that can help you monitor and optimize every step of the sales
process. Make use of them.

Look into partner and affiliate marketing to boost your brand presence by offering affiliate
marketing options and partnering with retailers in your shoulder niches. If you’re nervous
about approaching other retailers, look into options like JVZoo (www.jvzoo.com), ClickBank
(www.clickbank.com), and Amazon Associates.

You can also offer bloggers in your niche a free sample of your product in exchange for
reviews. If you’re selling products on Amazon, one easy way to gain consumer respect and
confidence (and reviews) is to ask for feedback. Include a card with each product that asks
for an honest review and provides contact information for your company (email is enough,
unless you have a dedicated customer service phone line).

Product Marketing Must Read

How to Create a non-Sketchy Amazon Affiliate Store to Launch a Private Brand
For more information on marketing your product(s), read these articles:

Ready To Start Your Online Business?

Did this post answer your questions about starting an ecommerce store? If so, please give it
a share. I’ve spent years helping business owners like you. Running a successful ecommerce
website doesn’t have to be a struggle or pricy.

If you’ve got the elbow grease and time, you could launch a profitable online store for a few
hundred dollars per month.

Your success is important to me. If you take the time to read through the resources above,
you’ll save hundreds of hours of work and you’ll know where you’re more likely to get your
money’s worth in ecommerce. I really hope you enjoyed the insights Ive shared on starting
an ecommerce business. If I missed anything you’d like to see covered, let me know in the
comments.

Darren DeMatas
Darren has an MBA in Internet Marketing and 10+ years of experience marketing retail,
manufacturing and Internet marketing corporations, 7-figure brands and startups online.
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Follow him on , to learn ecommerce.

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