I had always wanted to sell something when I thought of starting an internet business years ago going here. Since I have been a musician all of my life, it was natural to keep my focus on the instruments I used. My experience and knowledge as drummer made it easy to start my search for products within the cymbal industry. Next, I moved on to electronic and then acoustic drums. I also added pro audio and guitars. Your website is your first step.
Hosting companies such as Homestead and Go Daddy let you build your website from one of their templates. Or you can hire a professional web design company to do it. Either way, the site should look professional and be user-friendly. Next, add products. The next step is to contact the companies and ask them to become dealers or to use a distributor who offers multiple product lines. Each company will require a dealer application. Once you are accepted as a dealer, it is possible to choose whether to stock merchandise yourself or have your suppliers drop ship your order to you. Next, create a merchant account on your site and a shopping cart to allow customers the ability to checkout on your site. The basic Paypal shopping cart is enough to get you started. Next, move on to a merchant account like Authorize.net.
Next, optimize your site and boost search rankings to increase traffic. A professional SEO can optimize your site. You can also do this yourself by adding links to your website and choosing relevant keywords. Google AdWords allows you to quickly move to the first pages. However, you should keep in mind that you can lose money if you don’t convert those visits into sales.