i'm planning to open an online store in june. i'm wondering, how long it took others to start selling and making a profit? i'm not so much concerned with making money but i am worried about loosing it. i'm just tring to get an idea of what i can expect. any help on this much appriciated.
I am curious about the same thing bethy....not so much about the profit aspect at first...but at least covering hosting fees and set-up of site....I know there are people here who have successful sites...and I have the same questions as you do...hopefuly we both can get some answers from your post
I would suggest trying Etsy to start with for handmade or vintage goods. It is free to start a store, 10 cents to list an item and then 3.5 % of the selling price. I would also suggets using a site like doteasy to host a free website to start with. If you start getting a lot of traffic you can always upgrade to the next level which is 10 bucks a month on there, but traffic will be slow when you first open so the free account will be fine. You can put a link from your ads and your profile to you store on etsy. hope this helps. oh and if you do set up shop on etsy that best way to get traffic at first is to post in the forums. There are always item of the day posts and stuff like that, and you can post when you have new items up or sales. Kate
Freewebs.com and Paypal.com is what I use. Or like RedFraggle said, Etsy is good. I opened up my store in late December and I've only sold three things. Just be patient, and pace yourself. For example, don't go out and buy 10 yards of 20 different types of fabric to make clothes because you never know what could happen--you could possibly end up not making a dime and instead end up wasting all that money and fabric. Instead, make things gradually. Obviously you'll want a variety of things, but don't stock your store with a ton of items at first. Wait until things get going well.
I already have a lot of items made and supplies and tools for sale as well ....I am curious about the traffic
I've started selling things via ebay... you can open a business there ... I'm not quite at the business part yet but I'm doing alright...
my suggestion as a shopper is to keep it full, at least with a few items of each category in stock. I hate when people promote their websites over and over again and i keep revisiting and checking for new items when they've yet to add any new things over the months. There are a couple of websites i know i'll never visit again, because for the last 9 months have added nothing but one or two hemp necklaces but have promoted their sites to me twice a week in the meantime.
