Are you ready to be a cyber merchant?

The scenario: You have a product or service to sell. You have heard so much of the goldmine that is the internet which offers global market place of potential 800 million customers. How do you do it? The information given on this website is to give you the basic picture of all the necessary steps to start an internet business. Read below or you can jump to specific articles by clicking on the left column buttons

In brief, there are three important steps:

Now let's go through each of these in detail.

Step 1: Find a product/service
If you already have a product or service to sell, great. If you don't, well now is the time to start rummaging your grey matter to find/create a product to sell. Do a list of possible items that can be sold over the internet. Learn more..

Step 2: Establishing web presence
You must have a web presence. There are two ways of doing this, first by having your own website, and second, if you don't want the to go through the trouble of creating a website you can use internet auction site where they will host your product for a small fee. Having a web presence means people can access your 'shop' 24/7.  There are three important steps in this section:

1. Design a website:
   First you must have a shopfront. In cyberspace your shopfront is not a physical one but a virtual one, a website. Just as a normal shopfront requires a lot of effort in creating an attractive look, your website need to be so too. You can design your own website or you can ask somebody else (professional, hopefully)  to do it or you. Care must be taken, however, so that your design flair should not come in the way of a clear and simple website which would allow easy navigation.

2. Put your site up on the internet:
   Now, just as a real shop need a piece of land to sit on, your virtual shop need a hosting service to 'park'. There are a lot of free hosting services you can find on the internet, (e.g. yahoo! geocities), but to create a professional commercial website it is advisable you pay for it. The benefit of taking this option is first, your website will not be cluttered with unwanted advertisements, secondly you can have an exclusive domain name for marketing purpose, e.g. JoeyCards.com, (For somebody whose name is Joey and selling greeting cards over the internet). To have a website and a domain name is not expensive by most standards. There are many webhosting services available to suit various needs. Click here to learn more.

3. Accepting payment from the internet:
   There are two types: first there is always the traditional way of accepting payment via cheques, postal or money order. To do this is simple, just put your address on the website so people know where to address their payment to. The second, more efficient way of accepting payment is by accepting online payments. People can pay you over the internet and the payment will be credited to your account automatically. There are many company offering this service, click here

Having a web presence opens up another nice possibility, earning without your own product to sell. You can do this by advertising other people's business on your website or mailing list. The way people do this is by becoming an affiliate. To know more click here

Step 3: Advertise your website . (learn more)
Needless to say, people must be able to come to your shop, or a least browse through your shop. In Cyber language, you need to have a lots of hits. On the internet there are millions of web pages all crying for attention. So you need to have strategy so that people will come to your website. How do you do this? There are several ways.

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