Your Questions About How To Do Business Online For Free

Jere answers:

There probably are free online shop creators but they will have tonnes of ads on them. If you’re serious about creating your own online store, you could try out the free trial periods offered by popular web-hosted shopping cart providers. Website cited below. They should have the payment gateway integrated into their solution. Hope this helps.

Tyler

Jere answers:

Go to http://www.boston.craigslist.org On the right is a bunch of cities. Go to the left and there is a link to place an ad for free.

Jere answers:

To directly answer the question, the best way to promote an online business is still word of mouth. Or more accurately, social networking. With social networking you can reach new customers, and showcase new jewelry to your past customers. There are several ways to accomplish this:

1. Create a facebook page. Populate the page with quality images of your products. For more likes and extra traffic to your website you can run contests. Give away a gift card, a product, or offer a discount for the person who gets the most likes.

2. Open a twitter account and connect with like minded businesses there. You could search twitter for jewelry or hand made, and follow people from the search results. Post regular updates about products

3. You mentioned you cannot afford ads, but you should check out Google Adwords anyhow. Instead of trying to pay for an ad on the keyword “jewelry”, have your ad show for “hand made jewelry” or similar. The longer key-phrase will in most cases cost less. You can also set your max pay per click however you like. I have had ads run for as little as .30 cents before.

Another suggestion I would like to make is that you check out Etsy.com if you have not done so all ready. The website is dedicated to hand made items, and is a great place to sell your jewelry.

Jere answers:

“Where I can sell my designed shirts, pants, etc.”
—– You can set-up a blog on blogger or WordPress and sell them on your blog. You can set-up also using free-hosting sites. You can sell them on eBay.

“How do I receive the money and ship out the ordered items?”
—– Sign-up on PayPal or any online payment merchant account.

“And how do I setup the online website?”
—– Blog have cool designs and easy to manage. You may use CMS also for your site, it has cool plug-ins/modules to choose from.

“where do i go and how?”
—– You can ask Google for some help. 😉 Good luck!

Jere answers:

I would suggest going to the library. I know it’s old fashioned, but several of the suggestions above are bordering on “scams” for the uninitiated and boy… At 13 you’ll be uninitiated! I know I was when I tried to import Noodles and Lighters at your age from Hong Kong to England to sell to my mates at school and the local newsagent… Turned out that 50 lighters on an airplane was both dangerous and illegal and importing food is also illegal.

So – you DO need an idea… But you also need a bank account. Actually… Until you turnover £60,000 a year, you do not even need a VAT number (assuming you are in the UK) but you WILL need to pay tax on your profits, and that will mean having to file accounts and THAT means that you need to keep exceptional book-keeping records.

In short – go to the library and look up “how to write a business plan” books. Advice online is dangerous right now, as it comes from many different countries – all with different laws – and everyone is trying to make money out of you.

Decision 1 is whether you want to be a sole trader or a limited company. The first is easiest… But if you mess up bad, you’ll lose everything you own (and actually, you parents might lose everything as they are legally responsible for your debts). A limited company in the UK is cheap to set up, but there are a huge number of legal issues that you need to comply with.