We are sharing with you a very
We encourage our readers to start side-hustle, passive income. setting up an online store can be an interesting option for you. It may not be a completely passive way to make money but it does give you geographic independence and also makes you are your own boss!!!
Running an online store takes effort and time. But once you set it up, and create your marketing channel, it will take considerably lesser time.
Feel free to ask us your questions in comments. We offer one time paid consultation as well to get you started- if you are interested you can contact us here. However, our guide is pretty comprehensive and it should answer all your preliminary questions on the tools available to set up your own online store.
OVERVIEW
E-commerce in India has arrived and is here to stay. These are exciting times to be an online seller!
But you have a problem: You want to start selling products online. You know your product & the business but have trouble deciding how to set up shop online. You do not have a technology team or deep pockets to create your online shop. Not to worry as we present you with some viable options that are sophisticated and affordable.
What are the options
Build from scratch: Hire a web designer agency/person to build an online store from scratch. The store is custom-built to your precise needs, therefore it is a resource and time intensive method. Initial store set up costs are high, and longer term costs of maintenance and management can range from anywhere moderate to very high. Until a decade ago this was the only way to create your online store. But, these days you have access to less time and cost intensive solutions that we cover below.
Unless you have a very unique need that cannot be fulfilled by the below solutions, we recommend against building a website yourself as it is cost and time intensive. In the end the final product may not meet your needs and will require a technology team to maintain it and add features as you need them. And all this cost & work before you even start selling!
Hosted: Have a technical person install open source online shop software on your servers. Example: Magento. With this option you do not need to build the software yourself but a technical team will be needed to maintain the servers, backup the database, upgrade software, apply security patches etc. You can hire experts to modify the software to fit your custom needs. The initial set-up cost costs may be lower then build from scratch solutions, but the longer term costs of maintenance and management can still be very high.
Cloud: Pay a monthly subscription fee to create your online store on an e-commerce platform. Example: Shopify. There is no need for an IT team as the platform takes care of hosting, technical support and updating the software with new features. Anyone with basic technical literacy can manage the online store. Recommended for anyone new to online stores. You get a wide selection of professionally designed themes to customize the look-and-feel of your store at a fraction of the cost of having it designed yourself. You cannot customize their proprietary software directly but the platform has an app store where you can install third-party apps to extend the basic functionality.
We will talk in details in part 2 of this report, on how to