The first thing we need to do is find an payment processor.  There are many around the net, for example there is Paypal, 2CO, and Google  Checkout.  These are all a great place to start because you only pay a per transaction fee instead of a monthly fee. I would suggest reading the terms on all of the merchant account providers before you make a decision.

All of these providers will allow you to accept credit cards and bank transfers.  Once your business grows enough and there is some steady income you may look into a merchant account at your bank or authorize.net.  These will save on your transaction fees but there is a larger monthly fee.

Now that we have chosen and signed up for a merchant account it is time to find products to sell.  There are many ways to find products, but we are going to do it without having to put out a bunch of money up front and but inventory.  One way to do this is to look for suppliers that offer blind drop shipping.

Blind drop shipping is when someone orders a product from you, you turn around order the product from your supplier, and the supplier ships the product to your customer with your shipping label on it. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?  Well it is.  The best way to go about this is your trusty google search engine.  For example, lets say you want to sell computers and PC parts.  Go to google and do a search for “wholesale computer dropshopper”.  There are many to choose from and you could contact more than one before you decide or you can try a couple.

Some of the reputable PC Distributors that I found are:

Ingram Micro
SYNNEX
Ma Labs
Bass Computers
MaxGroup

When you decide on a distributor you will need to fill out there vendor or partner registration.  You should have your reseller permit to submit with the application.

Now you will need to choose a niche of products.  For this demonstration I’m going to choose energy efficient small form factor computers and parts.

In the next article I will go into detail on choosing the web hosting for your new store and choosing a shopping cart to display all of your products.

In this article series I am going to take you through the steps to create an online e-Commerce business. Some of the things we will go over are:

1. Writing a business Plan
2. Sourcing suppliers
3. Creating a merchant account
4. Purchasing Web Hosting
5. Installing your shopping cart
6. Setting up your shopping cart
7. Adding Products to your Shopping Cart
8. Signing up for an Ebay account
9. Advertise and list your products on Ebay
10. Creating product feeds for Google base/ shopzilla
11. Submitting your product feeds
12. Other Cheap/Free Marketing

Getting Started

When you are planning your new venture you should take the time to draft a blueprint or business plan so that you can keep track of your ideas, structure your business, map out your finances and marketing campaigns.

There are many resources on writing a business plan, but the most definitive guide I have found is at sba.gov. In the Small Business Planner section you will find a detailed blueprint on everything you need to make your business legal and write your business plan. A good business plan is not written overnight and should be constantly revised. This is the time when you should think about what products you are interested in selling.

Now that you have your business plan started you can move on to making your company legal and choosing a name.  I would suggest a name that describes the products you want to sell. If you want to sell computers a name like “Mike’s Computers ” would be more personal than “Super Computer Blaster Deals”.  You also have to take into account the domain name you will be purchasing to tie to your store.  There is an art to choosing a domain name and finding one that is still available.  Check out this blog post on chosing the right domain name.

The next step is to get your resellers permit and a DBA if your are going to use a name other than your own personal name. You can find the forms on your local and state government websites.  Here in ohio both can be registered for $75.00. For the Ohio DBA you can follow this link. OH DBA For the Ohio reseller license you can follow this link: Reseller License OH

This is the end of part 1.  I think I have given you a big chunk to chew on until part 2 is compete.  I hope you enjoyed this article and I hope you will come back and read the next part.