by Charles Roring
Home business is getting more and more attractive in recent days especially when companies are laying off their workers at this present time. The rate of unemployment is the highest in The United States now. It is the result of global financial crisis. No matter what has happened in our surrounding, we need to survive. The easiest solution is work at home. There are many options which we can choose to work from home.
In this article I am going to discuss about opening an online store as the easiest way to start a home business. With the latest web technology, we can set up an online store just within ten minutes. We do not even have to master web design programming such as html, asp or php.
Many open source solutions for setting up and running an online store are now available on the internet. We just have to use them.
The first step which you have to decide before opening an online store is choosing the products which you want to sell. They can be flower seeds, used books, or even the oil paintings which you make by yourself. If the number of products that you want to sell is a lot then you need a shopping cart software such as zen cart or os commerce. Both are relatively the same.
If your products are around ten to twenty items, you don't need a comprehensive shopping cart. Maybe you only need a blog where you can promote your products. There are many blog providers such as blogger from google or 360 degree from yahoo. My favorite is wordpress.com and blogger.com.
Once you have decided the products that you want to sell from home, you can begin uploading their pictures and prices and detailed information to the internet.
Opening an online bookstore from home can be a challenging business for those who do not know anything from the internet. After setting up your online store, don't forget to promote it to other people. This can be done by registering or submit your site to various search engine such as yahoo and google. You can also advertise your website in local newspaper if you want to promote it in your town. Many home business entrepreneurs are now multi-billion dollar business.
I opened an online bookstore using free webhosting http://xavierbook.axspace.com which I design using Microsoft frontpage 2003. I also use http://xavierbook.wordpress.com Every month I sell books to buyers from faraway places although I don't use shopping cart solution such as zen-cart or os commerce.
Problems that I face when running an online store are difficulties in assessing the delivery cost or cost of shipping. In my town, the post office doesn't have online website where I can log on to calculate the cost of shipping for the products that I want to send to people in other cities. To solve the problem we contacted a woman who works in the post office and asked her phone number. Anytime we have an online customer ordering our books, we just ask her the shipping cost. She will tell us the cost which we later add to the price of the books and the packaging. Then we inform our customer the total cost of the products that he or she has ordered. Our customer will send a text message informing us that he or she has transferred the money to our bank account. We just use sms banking to verify it. After receiving the money, we send the books via the postal service.
If you are living in a big city, running an online store is very easy. You can use a shopping cart solution that is integrated with many delivery service companies such as DHL, UPS or ELTEHA. The transaction can also be done by using credit cards and payment gateway systems such as paypal.
So, today's financial crisis should not be the end of everything. You can run a home business by running an online store that is very potencial to become a multi-billion dollar enterprise.