If you open an online shop, you can work at home selling goods. There are many different types of online shop you could open – some easy, some requiring more work. While some online shops require a lot of time/money, there are thousands these days that are literally a low cost business start up idea – some are even entirely free. Here are some ideas for you.

There’s no one “right answer” to “which is the best online shop” as the results everybody will get will depend on what they’re selling, where they are located, how much time/effort they put in, how great any photos look, how well they write the pages/descriptions to encourage people to buy. In addition to that, there are other sales techniques you can use to increase the lifetime value of any one customer. e.g. if you’re selling anything, then put a sticker on the parcel with your contact details/web address and inside the package enclose a “Thank You” note and your web/shop address, so people can have a look at other things you sell. Once you get selling online, you’ll discover lots of little tips and tricks that’ll improve your sales and customer retention.

Open An Online Shop: For Your Own Goods

If you’ve already got goods you’re selling, or are just starting out buying and selling goods, then adding your own online shop as an extra selling channel is a great idea. But it can be a lot of work. Selling goods online, instead of in a bricks and mortar shop, can be very lucrative. In my home town a shopkeeper was selling cheap sports shoes – he opened up a shop to also sell them online and ended up closing his real shop as the online shop was making him more money, with less overhead costs and less commitment on his time.

To open your own online shop, you’ll need to get an e-commerce website. Most hosting companies will offer you a package deal and you can set this up yourself; it usually costs $10-50/month, with some free trial deals available. The alternative is to hire your own programmer and designer and have an e-commerce site built from scratch just for you, at a cost of $3-5,000 probably.

Open up an eBay Shop

Many thousands of people simply set up an eBay shop. eBay brings them all the traffic they need for their goods and they simply list their goods, then receive orders, wrap/post the goods off and bank the cash. Getting traffic to your shop is one of the hardest things you can try to do, so this is a great ‘easy’ route if you do want to open an online shop.

Open a Free Online Shop, Without Holding Stock

There are a number of online shops that you can simply join, pick products, then promote. You don’t have to hold stocks or insure the goods, nor despatch them. Simply get traffic to your shop and the goods are set out from the suppliers. A couple of such shops in the UK are:

  • Zlio, **NO LONGER OPERATING** where you can open up a niche shop, selecting easily from thousands of branded goods from hundreds of retailers. This will take 1-2 hours for you to choose your products, but once that’s done you simply promote your shop.

One of the plus points of this type of online shop is that usually they are completely free. The company are simply providing you with a way of marketing/promoting and selling their goods, so they’re pleased when somebody opens a shop and so there’s no charge. A great low cost business start up idea! You can test run markets and products at zero cost and risk to yourself.

What these online shops do is bring together all the merchant feeds and put a shop front end on it – so you literally just pick the goods you want to display in your shop. You might, for example, want a shop that just stocks kids’ shoes – and using this type of shop you can populate your online shop with kids’ shoes from hundreds of suppliers. This kind of niche shop, if well thought out, can really bring customers in – and make you sales.

Open an Etsy Shop

If you make handcrafted goods, then sites such as Etsy will enable you to open up a shop through their website. Etsy is well known for good handcrafted products, so it’s got an eager marketplace of customers already looking through.

There are other shops like Etsy, here’s a list of UK websites like Etsy – great if you’re in the UK, or if you’re in another country and want to tap into the lucrative UK market: UK Sites like Etsy

Open a Couple of Online Shops

Ultimately, you’ll find an online shop solution that works best for you – but it’s good to explore two different avenues, so you’re not entirely reliant on one to produce 100% of your income.

Many eBay shops/sellers also have their own website.
Many Etsy shops/sellers also have their own website, or a store on a similar site
Many shop owners will have 3-4 different shops, so they can test many markets and not have all their eggs in one basket.

Things to Think About Before you Open an Online Shop

  • Do you want to physically hold stocks and send things out yourself?
  • Is there enough profit in the goods you’re selling?
  • Do people want what you’re selling, or is there something else that’s more popular?
  • How many hours/week will you really be able to dedicate to running your online shop?
  • Do you want to ‘own’ your shop, by having it written just for you, or are you content to use an online system?
  • How much spare cash do you really have, to pay for stocks, programming, photography?

Now you can start to think about which online shop might be the best one for you to get started with quickly!

The only way you’ll find out what’s best for you is by having a go!

Last updated January 2017