Your Questions About Doing Business Online World

Jere answers:

You do not need a business license to sell online. However, if you’re willing to sell foods from around the world and willing to deal with real wholesale suppliers, you need a sales tax id or reseller’s certificate. Most legitimate wholesalers will always ask for it, so make sure you apply for one. You can check with your state agency, or google it online.

Jere answers:

As long as you obtain your degree from a regionally accredited college it should be recognized by potential employers and other academic institutions. That having been said not all online colleges are viewed the same just as not all campus colleges are viewed the same. Even within the same college the business school can be viewed more positively than say the nursing school. That is why it is so important to contact a number of schools to find the right program for you and your needs (tuition, schedule, professor interaction, and reputation by potential employers). The beauty of taking classes online is that you are not limited by geography so you can make sure you choose the absolute best college for you.
This site has some good information on regionally accredited online degrees and some colleges to help begin/expand your search:
http://www.ecollegefinder.org/

Good Luck!

Jere answers:

Gripsell9 ecommerce suite is the best online store software for India market, designed specifically to cater the needs of business planning to sell online. Gripsell is an end-to-end solution provider and can help you meet all your business requirements.
From Web Hosting (our servers are located in worlds best data centers) to Cart Management (Team at Gripsell manages your cart. Thus, to start, you do not require office, IT team, support team, backend operation team, etc – Gripsell manages it all for you. When your office is ready, you can move these services to your employees), from market research to consultancy, Gripsell offers wide range of services as ala-carte.
Best thing is that you are still in control of your shopping cart software and have access to all your data, files, server, code editing and flexibility, etc. Which unfortunately is not available in SAAS model and is one of the major drawbacks of hosted shopping cart.
When starting ecommerce business, you need to make sure that the total cost of ownership must not drain out all your earnings and profits in the future.
Gripsell9 ecommerce suite is the next generation ecommerce platform to help you setup your online shopping cart and daily deals business with ease and control.
Gripsell has 750+ Happy Customers in 48 Countries.
You can hire Gripsell to manage your ecommerce system or deploy your own team. You can host on Gripsell servers (in India, Singapore, or USA) or your own web hosting server.

Useful links:
http://www9.gripsell.com/features
http://www9.gripsell.com/demo
http://www9.gripsell.com/knowledge-center
http://www9.gripsell.com/gripsell-at-a-glance
http://www9.gripsell.com/contact
Source(s):
www9.gripsell.com

Jere answers:

Ah…yes. Before delving into my detailed answer, I figure I will offer you warning of the previous two. If you search for any Yahoo! Answer to do with online business, both of those users are there and both always present the same answer. In short, they may be trying a bit too hard to recruit you.

I actually am involved with two online businesses. One, I am embarrassed to say i sunk a bunch of money into course after course to learn the ropes of online marketing and it finally paid off. I am now profiting with a few niche sites through e-commerce.

The other one I am involved with is network marketing and actually is much more profitable. This one actually took me less time to expand and has paid some dividends.

If you are selling stuff online you will need an online shopping cart so visitors to your website can pay you. You can use Prestashop which is actually free shopping cart software (no strings attached) and upload that through your web host.

A web host is what actually hosts your website so it is visible to online world. Next you will need a website name. This should usually be relevant to the products you are selling online. I would suggest selling things that interest you and go from there.

Also, you will either need to hire someone who is a professional in online marketing and does so far a living to drive traffic to the site or learn the ropes on your own which could take months and even years to master.

You could also search for an online business opportunity. Many of them are scams and the best way to check is to visit the Better Business Bureau to see if they have too many unresolved complaints (or any at all for that matter). Also, if a contact number is provided call it to make certain someone is actually at the other end of the line and it’s not a fly-by-night.

Hope this helps!

Jere answers:

1 Choose a tightly focused theme or niche for your online store around something that you are passionate or knowledgeable about. By focusing on a specific theme for your store, you’ll garner a competitive advantage over other stores that are larger and forced to be broader in nature. This specific focus will give your store more credibility, and will position you to provide detailed information about certain kinds of products. Customers will appreciate the level of coverage you provide on a given subject, which will be helpful for making purchasing decisions. Essentially, this focus gives your store a right to exist.
2 Choose an underlying infrastructure for your online store. Many people are surprised to learn that there are now a number of ecommerce services that allow you to start an online store for free, or for limited cost. One good free way to get started is to open a Vendio store:
Vendio’s new ecommerce solution is game-changing because it allows you to start a real online store with a full commercial feature-set, for free. Given all the features, setting up an online store with Vendio will take a few hours of work, but its worth it. There are a number of solutions available that are similar to Vendio’s for a price range of $40 to $300 per month.
Another way to get started quickly is to open a Zlio store.
With Yahoo, you’ll pay a monthly fee in exchange for the framework of an online store. The upside of Yahoo is that you can sell, carry, and fulfill your own inventory of products (rather than outsourcing it through Zlio or CafePress). The downside of Yahoo is that, well, you get to fulfill your own inventory of products.
Lastly, I’m going to give a quick mention to FlyingCart, which offers a service similar to Yahoo’s but with less expensive monthly fees.
With FlyingCart, you get the basic architecture/framework of an online store and generally have to pay a monthly fee less than that of Yahoo. There are also some interesting social networking features. It lets you sell, carry, and fulfill your own inventory.
3 Build-out your product inventory. Be careful to put the best products at the top of the page. Product placement counts and studies have shown that products placed at the top of the page tend to sell the best. Keep your inventory of products fresh. Try to write reviews that will help your customers make better puchasing decisions. Stay true to the theme of your store. Stay focused.
4 Promote your store. Remember, this is not Field of Dreams. “If you build it they will come” will not apply to our new store! As entrepreneurs, its up to us to generate interest in our own online store. You should strongly consider writing some helpful articles about the products in your store and publishing them [give squidoo a try for this]. For instance, on my hot sauce store, The Hot Sauce Collector, I wrote a series of articles about The Hottest Hot Sauce In The World. These articles help my customers find the hottest hot sauces and consistently drive traffic to my site.

5 Manage and track your web store. Now that you’ve put all this energy into creating an online store, don’t you want to see how many visitors you have and how they found your site? Sign up for free Google analytics.
TIPS
This is not field of dreams! “If you build it they will come” will not apply to our new store! It’s up to us as entrepreneurs to create interest in our new store.

Work hard to offer information that will help customers with buying decisions. Trust me — they’ll appreciate it.

Consider writing an article about your store’s products. As mentioned in step 4, this could improve your search engine listings and will certainly improve your credibility.

Don’t try to ‘boil the ocean’ and be all things to all people. Try to be disciplined about your store’s focus on a specific theme.

Remember to stay focused and be patient.

Watch out for affiliate marketing schemes, ads touting work from home businesses or “online businesses”.

In particular, watch out for large upfront costs. There are now plenty of free services for starting an online store – this is a great way to get started with no upfront cost and see if starting an online store is for you.