9 Challenges of Starting an Online Business and How to Overcome Them ...

1. Your Domain Name

One of the challenges of starting an online business is deciding on a name for your ecommerce store. Then you have to get it registered. There are several places to go, and I chose HostGator.com. I purchased both the dot com and dot net variations of the name I chose and I chose a five year package. It’s inexpensive and I had read years ago that Google likes to see a long term commitment. It makes it look as if you believe you’ll be around for a while.

2. You Can do This Nicely with a Few Hundred or a Few Thousand

Once your store is open for business, you might decide to set up a monthly budget for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll hire someone with the proper expertise to do this for you. You’ll have other things to do, and good SEO requires knowledge not acquired overnight. At some point on your journey, you’ll probably need funds to hire someone for a bit of code you’re stumped on. For now, you need to get a web host and I highly recommend HostGator.com for about $15 per month.

3. Designing Your Store

Once you have your domain name and your host in place, you can Google free zen cart templates, but try to avoid template monster. You’ll thank me. You might choose to pick a free template from picaflor-azul.com. Look around her site and you will find all of the services Anne can provide; from free templates to full custom designs, and all kinds of installations. It just depends on your budget as well as how much you’re willing to learn to do things yourself.

4. The Zen Cart Forum

You’ll find that zen-cart.com/forum.php is your best friend throughout this whole process. If you need help at any time, just ask on the forum, and if you want to pay someone to do the work, just state what you need and ask them to private message you, since transactions can’t be discussed on the forum publicly.

5. The Learning Curve

I knew nothing about PHP (the web script language) when I first began, and I had very limited HTML knowledge and most of what I knew had since been deprecated (phased out). I decided to take a free template and then redesign it to my own specifications. I had so much to learn, but the zen cart forum was there for me. Through them, I found Mary at angelwingcreations.thefantasiesattic.net for very affordable coding when I needed extra help. Eventually, you’ll have to learn some of this stuff, because you don’t want to pay for every little thing you decide to change on your site.

6. Merchant Account

You’ll need a way to accept payment for all of the things you’ll sell. I decided to go with PayPal as my merchant account. I found their fees to be similar, if not better than most, and it was a company I was comfortable dealing with. You can choose to offer PayPal as well as get a merchant account.

7. Google Loves Content

One of the most important things you can do for your website is to have content, lots of it, and continue to add more. You’re not replacing what you wrote; you’re just going to add to it by adding more pages to your store. If you’re not comfortable writing, you can go to a place like Textbroker.com and hire a freelance writer for pennies per word.

8. Marketing Strategies

You might decide that your business might prosper by having a strong social media presence. You can implement Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. I’m in a very competitive field and my SEO expert doesn’t think a paid campaign such as AdWords would do much for me at this time, so I’m concentrating on content, but a pay-per-click strategy like AdWords might be perfect for you.

9. Don’t Expect to Get Rich Overnight

Unless you have a unique product that you’ve put on YouTube and it’s gone viral, be prepared to wait a while before you get seen on Google by anyone not directly searching for your store name. Just continue to add your content and if you don’t have outside SEO services, try to read as much as you can about it and implement best practices yourself.

The biggest obstacle I had when starting out was I didn’t know how to begin. I couldn’t find a single website that actually told me I had to START by getting a web host. I also didn’t realize that templates could be tweaked, and I thought I’d be forced to spend many thousands of dollars for a designer. If you’re thinking about starting a website, has this been helpful to you? Do you still have a bunch of unanswered questions?