Is your business selling online? If not it's definitely something you should consider. eCommerce retail sales have risen drastically in recent years from $81 billion in 2005 to a projected $144 billion in 2010 according to a study by JupiterResearch. With the advent of free online store solutions selling online is easier and more affordable than ever. If you aren't selling online here are few points to consider:  Online stores like lulus

· Selling online will expand your customer area. - In a physical store you are limited to customers who pass through your doors. A web store has worldwide reach allowing you to reach customers you wouldn't have normally been able to sell to. This is especially important in rural areas or if you're physical store is in an out-of-the-way area.

· A web store will add to your bottom line. - Often orders will be placed at your online web store which you would normally not have gotten in a physical store. A customer may wish to order after hours or may simply not want to make the trip to your store however may buy if they can do so online. These additional sales can add to your bottom line, especially important in this economy.

· A web store can promote in-store sales. - A free web store can provide valuable presale information to customers who are shopping around to make a purchase. This can lead to increased in-store sales. This is especially true for large ticket items.

· Web stores are easy to use. - Gone are the days of having to be a programming to set up or maintain a web store. Many free web store solutions on the market today require no knowledge to set up or maintain the website. This allows you to sell online without advanced computer or HTML knowledge.

· Free online stores add to your bottom line without adding costs. - How many business investments can you say this about? Setting up a free online web store costs you nothing but its return can be huge. Your only real investment in setting up a free online store is the time it takes to set it up.

There are a number of free online store solutions on the market today. You'll want to choose one which is easy to use, has at least minimal support available and a host which has a reputation for quality service for at least 3-5 years. www.WebplusShop.com and vstore are a couple of examples.

Most free web store providers will help you with setup if you encounter any issues and many will set up your free online store for you for a small fee. Once your free online store is online and ready to accept orders you'll want to post a link to it from your existing website, if you have one. This way visitors to your current website can also easily visit your web store. From there remember to promote, promote, promote! Your free online store is just like your physical store in that you must get the word out for people to know about your store, to come there and to make a purchase. You can promote your free online store literally millions of ways from bumper stickers to newspaper ads to flyers to online ads.

Any way you can get your website name out there is a potential visitor and sale. Often creative marketing works better than expensive marketing. A good place to start is adding your free online store website address to all advertising, signage, etc. Let your existing customers know about your free online store and tell them to spread the word. Remember, the more you promote your free online store the more sales you'll make!

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Working Online From Home With an Online Store

Online Shopping is a multi-billion industry world wide and each year the number of consumers that are shopping via the internet increases dramatically. Working online from home by setting up an online store is actually not that hard. The hardest part initially is to navigate through all the options that are out there on the internet. This article will look at the different steps that you can take to get started working online from home with an online store.

If you don't already have products and want to get started working online from home with an online store, the most important first step is to do research. Make sure that there is a demand and that the competition is not too hard. Try to find a small niche with enough potential customers and build your online store around that niche.

The next thing you need is an online store front. There are basically three main options:

Build your own simple website. If you have some knowledge of web design, you can create your own website and integrate an online payment solution such as PayPal. PayPal supports all the major credit cards and they have very simple solutions that you can use on your web site to take payment from your customers.
E-Commerce Solutions. There are several good eCommerce solutions or online store systems that let you set up your store and fill it up with your own products. One of the most popular ones is osCommerce (oscommerce.com). This is an open source free solution complete with a product catalog system, shopping cart and check out system. Vendio.com is another free e-commerce solution that is worth checking out.
If you don't have your own products to sell, you can make a deal with a drop shipping supplier. This way you don't have to keep anything in stock, which is great when you first start out working online from home with an online store. You take the orders from your customers and the drop shipping supplier takes care of the packing and shipping. There are several directories online where you can find wholesalers and drop shipping suppliers. Do a Google search and you will find lots of them. Make sure you do your research on any company that you are about to make business with. There are scams out there and spending a little bit of time researching can save you a lot of time and money. Use Google and ask around in forums before you get into business with anybody online.
Ready Made Online Store. A ready made online store or a turnkey store is a complete e-commerce solution pre-stocked with products. All you basically have to do is to promote the store. The drawback with a ready made online store is that you can only pick products to sell that the provider of the service allows you to sell. This means that there are probably a lot of others that are selling the same products. This is a great way to get started working online from home if you want to avoid all the technical web stuff.
You can find ready made online store solutions in basically any niche and also companies that offers solutions with a wide variety of products by spending a little bit of time searching in Google.

The next important step is to start promoting your online store. There are several free ways you can do this in addition to the paid ones such as ordinary off line advertising and paid online ads like Google AdWords.

One of the most effective free ways is through article marketing. While it's hard to get your website on the first page of search engines, it's a lot easier to get an article ranked high. Write articles about topics within your niche with links to your website and submit them to article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticle and ArticleBase.

Another effective marketing technique is forum marketing. Find forums within your niche and start to write and reply to posts. The idea is get noticed as someone that provides valuable information and help others with their problems. Do not try to sell your store in forums - then you will get banned really fast. Instead make sure you have a link to your store in your signature and once you get noticed, people will click it and visit your site. In addition you can post free classified ads at classified ads sites such as CraigsList, Kijiji and StumbleHere.