I’ve been interested in doing ecommerce for a while now, and with the popularity of biophase’s ecommerce thread I figured I would go ahead and jump in and set up a store. What I found was that I was completely unprepared for the costs and steps involved in setting up a store.
So here is the process I went through to set up the store. I figured this would help out people like me who are questioning the process of going from nothing to a functional store:
Day 1 (Monday):
By this time, I’ve found some dropshippers. One of them spells out everything I’ll need in order to apply. A domain, a website (or an in progress one), a company name, and sales tax ID number.
So what did I actually do on Monday? NOTHING. I hesitated like I always do. I can’t keep doing this.
Cost: TIME
Day 2 (Tuesday):
I registered the domain for my store. It contains my primary keyword, and I added “direct” to the end since just the keyword wasn’t available. I personally use name.com to register domains.
Cost: $10
I then set up the web hosting. I personally use HostGator.com because they let me do a month at a time instead of commiting to a year.
Cost: ~$10
Day 3 (Wednesday):
Time to set up the company. Now this is a little convoluted at first. I know I need to register the LLC but I also need a sales tax ID number. I found the right websites but I wasn’t 100% confident that I would choose the right form to fill out. I considered asking my dad for help, as he’s done this before, but I realized that I should do this by myself.
So I looked at legalzoom.com. I see they’ll do all of this for me for the cost of applying + $100. I say screw it, I can definitely do this myself and save some money. So I buckle down and fill out the application at work.
Cost: $100
After I submitted the charge to my credit card, I was kind of stunned. I just set up my first company. I didn’t set it up under a generic name either. It’s just my store name with LLC on the end. If I move away from this niche, it’ll look kind of silly setting up unrelated stores unless I register a new LLC. Oh well!
I also searched for an application for a sales tax ID number. What I found for my state (VA) was an employee identification number, which the IRS website made it seem like is the same thing as a sales tax ID number. (Can someone confirm this?)
There was no cost to apply for this.
When I got home from work, I decided to start getting my website set up. I decided to go with bigcommerce. It seemed to be pretty powerful, and it handles on site SEO very well, which I know helps out a lot. Now, I listen to Leo Laporte’s TWiT.tv network, and he advertises his promo code (leo) which will get you a 30 day free trail from them.
At first I put in his code, but some text on the page said that if I ordered a plan outright, I’d get $500 free adsense credit. I decided to just sign up for a plan.
Cost: $25
Now, when I signed up, I got the $50 adsense credit that the pricing page advertises. I’ll have to email someone about the $500. I ended up messing around a bit with some settings. I chose a simple built in layout and logo. I eventually got to my payment options. I set up Paypal business (just the standard free one) and Google checkout and told my store to use those.
I also went ahead and set up Google apps. With name.com, you can simply log in and turn on Google apps for your domain with the press of a button. You can also go to google.com/a to sign up for it. Once you’re signed up, there are instructions to tie your google apps to your domain. I set up an admin@ email for my store.
Now, I needed a credit card payment portal.
The only website I knew off the top of my head is authorize.net. So I went there, and saw a $100 set up fee. I got a little discouraged, as this is turning out to be a little more expensive to set up than I had in mind. Then, I learned about authorize.net’s resellers. If I sign up through them, I can get better rates and possibly a waived sign up fee.
So I opened all of the reseller’s websites and compared rates. I picked the one I wanted and started filling out the application. I got down to the end and it asked for banking information. Crap. I need to set up a business checking account at my bank. I’ll put this on hold for now.
Day 4 (Thursday):
Turns out I was wrong before, a sales tax ID isn't the same as the EIN. I was reading the website wrong. I filled out the application for my sales tax ID. It was free and didn't take very long at all.
I ended up having name server issues and had trouble accessing my store. I had to log in to name.com to change the nameservers to point to bigcommerce. Once I did that, I had access to my store again. I finalized the layout for now, and got some more stuff set up with the store.
I was a little busier than I thought so I didn't get to email any dropshippers. I decided that I would focus on one dropshipper that specifically says it's okay if I'm actually setting up a store and don't have a fully functional one. Now that I have a store up with some demo products, that will show them that I'm ready to go once I get some product info from them.
Once I get some product from them, I'll set my store up with real product and contact other dropshippers.
Day 5 (Friday):
Today I'll be setting up my business checking account after work, and then emailing my first dropshipper when I get home.
I’ll update this as I go on. These are the steps I have left to do:
So here is the process I went through to set up the store. I figured this would help out people like me who are questioning the process of going from nothing to a functional store:
Day 1 (Monday):
By this time, I’ve found some dropshippers. One of them spells out everything I’ll need in order to apply. A domain, a website (or an in progress one), a company name, and sales tax ID number.
So what did I actually do on Monday? NOTHING. I hesitated like I always do. I can’t keep doing this.
Cost: TIME
Day 2 (Tuesday):
I registered the domain for my store. It contains my primary keyword, and I added “direct” to the end since just the keyword wasn’t available. I personally use name.com to register domains.
Cost: $10
I then set up the web hosting. I personally use HostGator.com because they let me do a month at a time instead of commiting to a year.
Cost: ~$10
Day 3 (Wednesday):
Time to set up the company. Now this is a little convoluted at first. I know I need to register the LLC but I also need a sales tax ID number. I found the right websites but I wasn’t 100% confident that I would choose the right form to fill out. I considered asking my dad for help, as he’s done this before, but I realized that I should do this by myself.
So I looked at legalzoom.com. I see they’ll do all of this for me for the cost of applying + $100. I say screw it, I can definitely do this myself and save some money. So I buckle down and fill out the application at work.
Cost: $100
After I submitted the charge to my credit card, I was kind of stunned. I just set up my first company. I didn’t set it up under a generic name either. It’s just my store name with LLC on the end. If I move away from this niche, it’ll look kind of silly setting up unrelated stores unless I register a new LLC. Oh well!
I also searched for an application for a sales tax ID number. What I found for my state (VA) was an employee identification number, which the IRS website made it seem like is the same thing as a sales tax ID number. (Can someone confirm this?)
There was no cost to apply for this.
When I got home from work, I decided to start getting my website set up. I decided to go with bigcommerce. It seemed to be pretty powerful, and it handles on site SEO very well, which I know helps out a lot. Now, I listen to Leo Laporte’s TWiT.tv network, and he advertises his promo code (leo) which will get you a 30 day free trail from them.
At first I put in his code, but some text on the page said that if I ordered a plan outright, I’d get $500 free adsense credit. I decided to just sign up for a plan.
Cost: $25
Now, when I signed up, I got the $50 adsense credit that the pricing page advertises. I’ll have to email someone about the $500. I ended up messing around a bit with some settings. I chose a simple built in layout and logo. I eventually got to my payment options. I set up Paypal business (just the standard free one) and Google checkout and told my store to use those.
I also went ahead and set up Google apps. With name.com, you can simply log in and turn on Google apps for your domain with the press of a button. You can also go to google.com/a to sign up for it. Once you’re signed up, there are instructions to tie your google apps to your domain. I set up an admin@ email for my store.
Now, I needed a credit card payment portal.
The only website I knew off the top of my head is authorize.net. So I went there, and saw a $100 set up fee. I got a little discouraged, as this is turning out to be a little more expensive to set up than I had in mind. Then, I learned about authorize.net’s resellers. If I sign up through them, I can get better rates and possibly a waived sign up fee.
So I opened all of the reseller’s websites and compared rates. I picked the one I wanted and started filling out the application. I got down to the end and it asked for banking information. Crap. I need to set up a business checking account at my bank. I’ll put this on hold for now.
Day 4 (Thursday):
Turns out I was wrong before, a sales tax ID isn't the same as the EIN. I was reading the website wrong. I filled out the application for my sales tax ID. It was free and didn't take very long at all.
I ended up having name server issues and had trouble accessing my store. I had to log in to name.com to change the nameservers to point to bigcommerce. Once I did that, I had access to my store again. I finalized the layout for now, and got some more stuff set up with the store.
I was a little busier than I thought so I didn't get to email any dropshippers. I decided that I would focus on one dropshipper that specifically says it's okay if I'm actually setting up a store and don't have a fully functional one. Now that I have a store up with some demo products, that will show them that I'm ready to go once I get some product info from them.
Once I get some product from them, I'll set my store up with real product and contact other dropshippers.
Day 5 (Friday):
Today I'll be setting up my business checking account after work, and then emailing my first dropshipper when I get home.
I’ll update this as I go on. These are the steps I have left to do:
- Set up business checking account.
- Set up online payment gateway (authorize.net).
- Email dropshippers.
- Set up store (design, add products).
- Set up adwords campaign.
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