Starting a Small Business Online Cheaply and Quickly

How to start a small business online cheaply and quickly? Well thanks to the Internet and the proliferation of social networking sites there is no need to pay for a web developer to build your site or acquire any other expensive small business software that usually goes with it. Of course this is recommended for business small enough that their volume of transaction is not that huge. With that in mind, you can jump in directly with setting up an online store by yourself.

Ways that Can Help you Set up an Small Online Business Quickly

1. Web Site - No need to set up a personal website because you can host your items at multiply.com. It’s a social networking site that has a lot of people in it. Meaning that it also has a huge customer base. The most important feature of the site is the photo gallery. The photo gallery will be your display area where people will be able see the wares that you are selling. The comments section and the personal messaging system will be the place where buyers will be able to post their orders to you.
2. Office Suite Software - Check out Google docs for your spreadsheet and documentation needs. Compared to the more expensive Microsoft Office which has Excel and Word, you’d be able to save more by tapping a web based software that is free and compatible with the files in the Microsoft Office Suite of products. And yes, you can share the docs to whomever you want, making collaboration at work easy.
3. Payment Gateway - if your planning just local sales, you could ask your buyers to do direct bank deposits when paying. You can also try using those Mobile wallet services that some telecoms are providing. If you are going for international sales you can apply for a paypal account and just send a “Request for Money” to the buyer once you have agreed upon the item for sale. Instruction on how to setup a Paypal account can be found here. Oh, and be sure to have received the money first before shipping the item.
4. Communications - Thanks to the pre-paid cell card, one can easily set up an on demand communication tool where buyers can contact you. It would be best of course to use a separate cell card and a separate phone apart from your personal phone. A lot of people will be contacting you if you post your number in public and you don’t really know what their intentions are, so it would be best to protect your privacy always. For international customers, there is email and the personal messaging suite of multiply. You can also use Yahoo messenger and Skype if customers need to chat.
5. Logistics: - if your clients are local and close by, you could use the convenience of a mall or any public place to conduct your transactions. Preferably with air conditioning because you don’t know how long you will be waiting. For national sales you can use your local courier service and just incorporate it to the price of the product. This will also encourage people to buy more items from you in order to maximize the cost of the freight. But this won’t work if you only have a few items for sale. For international shipping you can also use private freight companies but this would cost more. You can use your local postal system instead. Be informed however of what items are allowed to be exported from your country so that you don’t get into trouble with the authorities. Medicines for example will usually require a prescription from a doctor before it can be shipped overseas.
6. Marketing - I remember a time when small business marketing meant going to AM/FM radio and asking the DJ to talk about your product. If you knew the guy you could get away with just paying them with a treat of a large pizza. Now thanks to the internet there are other options available to you. One method is to join groups of people in multiply who are interested in the same thing. An update from you will inform them of the new items you have for sale. Another is to post in free online classifieds site. A tip here is to be sure to post the items you are selling and not just the link to your online store. People usually won’t have the time and patience to click on your store, but if they’re enticed with an item they like, they could continue by clicking the link to your store. Just don’t do over do it that you will be convicted of spamming the site. Spamming usually means posting the same item multiple times in different categories.

Given all that I don’t think you’d have to spend more than P10,000 to setup an online store. If your sales increase however, you’d might want to try looking into getting a web developer to setup an online store for you so that you can automate your transactions. There are already available opensource softwares such as Zend Cart and OSCommerce that are tailored for online transactions and inventory control that a developer can modify for you that will make your online selling easier. And yes, those software’s are free, so you’ll just be paying the developer for the work that he has to do.