Starting a business is always a little scary. There are fears of failure, expense, time drain, stress, pressure on your social life and family, the unknown and perhaps, even the fear of success. The last one is currently more realistic, with many of the risk factors of having a store eliminated. Today, stores are online, at least as well as in physical form, and commerce is ecommerce.

The cost of owning a building or leasing one, paying the utilities while you wait for income, insurance on your space and expensive employees occupying unnecessary stations are essentially outdated concepts. In the modern marketplace you can create an online store easily, effectively and with worldwide reach within minutes and at relatively low costs.

Easy

If you are not a techie web designer and even if you aren’t the type to delve deeply into the instruction manual, creating websites on formats like Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and even WordPress has become user friendly. With tutorial videos to help people create their sites step-by-step, even the most Luddite business owners can create a quality online ecommerce store within hours if not minutes.

For most applications, tutorial videos are not even necessary to even the most inexperienced site developer. With themes created to match your needs, most people must simply follow the instructions and fill in forms and copy and paste some original materials.

World Wide Reach

Your corner store is great. The neighborhood loves it. People pop in for a loaf of bread or a Snickers bar on the go. It’s great place to grab that item that was forgotten at the market and it’s a great way to socialize with neighbors. However, the extent of this store’s market reach is small. Because it caters to the neighborhood, your store can never be expected to be known beyond a certain zip code. With an online ecommerce store, you can market to and reach all corners of the world. Ecommerce stores effectively convert currencies and establish shipping, so your store can be anywhere and everywhere.

Triple Dip

The main point of going into business is to make money. Your online store can obviously do that, but there are more ways than one to bring in revenue. An online store has the potential to triple dip, as create multiple revenue streams. Obviously, the store will sell merchandise or services, but it can be a platform for advertisers and leveraged for SEO companies. Advertisers are always looking for relevant internet space to promote their brands.

If your store matches their brand’s niche, you can charge to have them place banner ads on your site. And SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies are always looking for relevant places to post blog articles. In this situation, the SEO company will pay you to post their articles in order to create a link back to their client. Their clients pay them, and they pay you. Your site then triple dips. You get revenue from three different streams, taking pressure off of sales and improve your business model.

Platform

With an ecommerce store you not only have a place to sell your products and services, but you have a platform to discuss your thoughts and ideas. This can become more valuable than the store. For example, if you have an ecommerce store that sells items that you are an knowledgeable in, you can use your blog to present yourself as an expert. Once established as an expert, you might turn your expertise into an industry where you opinion is desired and paid for.

Low Startup Costs

The cost of buying, leasing or building a building can be prohibitive. The cost of building a website can be financed with the money in your ashtray. Most websites only cost a few dollars a month to maintain and the cost of setting them up ranges from zero to not that much. Even if you bring in experts to create a fancy website with bells and whistles and SEO services, your costs are still substantially lower than the upfront cost of starting a conventional business.

This really is an exciting time to start a business. The risk is much lower, the markets are much larger, there are multiple ways to profit and your business can double as a platform for your expertise. So start. You might start small, like the neighborhood store, but there is no reason your ecommerce store can’t reach the far corners of the worldwide market.

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