Selling online takes on many forms and can be accomplished many ways. When it comes to selling online it pays to evaluate what your expectations are and what you want to accomplish. For example, before launching your online store, consider the following:

1. Much of the information found on the web about selling online is crap. There are dozens of respectable ecommerce sites such as practicalecommerce.com,  ecommerce-guide.com, website magazine, etc, but many sites are just spewing out crap by marketing e-books, or “secrets to ecommerce success”, or make thousands while you sleep, etc. that are frankly, just nauseating. Most are providing very basic information, outdated information, or just preying on new people. Those new to online businesses are their target market. They are just following all the get rich quick schemes that is being sold on the web. In fact many are just selling other people’s crappy products. Stick to reputable sites, ecommerce books, and getting advice from real online business owners (not the ones previously mentioned, but ones in similar businesses to yours).

2. Running an online store is hard work. You have to populate your store with products details and photographs, acquire product, market your site, keep up your bookkeeping, fulfill and ship orders, answer customer’s questions, continue to learn, continue to monitor your traffic and make improvements, keep looking for new products, keep up with vendors, and so on.

3. You can’t be idle once the site is built. Once the site is done and has gone live, you can’t just sit back and wait for business. In fact, creating the store is the easy part (especially if someone does it for you). The hard part is making it successful and profitable. You need to have the drive and passion to keep going once the site has been launched.

4. You can make money while you sleep. Except all the work in making that money while you sleep occurred while you are awake. This is one of the funny lies that those internet marketing scammers talk about when they try to sell your their “system”. No customer wants to think that they are buying from someone who works at home in their underwear or sleeps at night.

5. Unless you are heavily funded, keep your day job for awhile. Because it can take months to get a store up and running profitably. It takes time to generate enough income to replace your day job. Most people bootstrap their business slowly and work up to full-time status.

6. Running an online store can be rewarding and fun. You will get out of it what you put into it (effort that is), if you work smart. I personally know several online store owners who make well into six figures per year. Some do it on one site, many have several sites.

7. You can compete with the big guys. You have to have the mentality that your business can compete with the big guys. And you can. You just need to focus on mastering your niche. Don’t be everything to everybody.

8. Get rid of the idea that you have to compete with your prices. Use value-adds, etc. to make your offers more appealing that your competitors who try to have the lower prices. There is always some fool who will bankrupt their business faster by trying to compete on price.

9. Understand that social networking is all the rage and is very important to your business. Just do not think it will solve all your traffic problems for you. Stick to one or two of the main social networks (I prefer Twitter and Facebook as they have the most traffic but these could vary according to your target market)

10. Understand that SEO is important, but do not worship at the alter of Google, or Bing, or Yahoo. Online stores and shopping cart systems are by their nature not very SEO friendly. Typical product pages lack detail that makes them appealing to search engines. Integrate a blog into your store as well as FAQs, buyer guides, or anything else you can do to provide rich content to your site. The days of putting a simple ecommerce store up are over. If you want to be a successful site, you must be a source of information for your products and target market.

11. Treat your business as a business. Provide a toll free number, real street address, and ways for the customer to contact you besides email. If you leave off this information because you do not want to be bothered by customers, then you really shouldn’t be in business for yourself. Set up that Limited Liability Corporation or incorporate your business. Be legal and carry the appropriate licenses and insurance. It will gain you more respect with potential vendors that just being a sole proprietor has, plus it may save your butt when little Johnny puts his eye out with that BB gun you sold him.

12. If you focus on the money, before the needs of the customer, find something else to do. Your business will be short lived, because anyone can sell something once, but you’ll spend all your money making that first sale only. Its the repeat business over time that makes you successful.

12. Seek help. You are never too smart or good to not have a mentor or coach. Even the most elite athletes and business executives have coaches or mentors helping them out. Find someone who is doing something similar to you and seek them out. More often than not, they will be flattered to help. Offer to buy them dinner or lunch, and pick their brain. If you can’t seek help, you probably aren’t the kind of person who will do well, because you will waste a lot of time figuring out how to do stuff when you can jump right past that by getting others to help you so you can move on. You also are probably someone who will spend more time doing things yourself working in the business and not on it. Even if you grow your business to the point where you need to hire help, you will be reluctant to empower your employees because you would be the type of person who does not ask for help. It can be hard to do sometimes, but you need to do it.

13. You need to be someone that never stops learning. E-Commerce, while maturing a bit, is still evolving and so are your competitors. Knowledge really is power. Become an expert in your products, but also in your industry, and also in business.

14. You need to be someone who does not turn to money to spend their way out of poor business practices. You need to be fiscally responsible and only spend money when it has a positive return on investment.

Best of luck! As always, share your comments and your store links. I would love to hear from you and see your online store.