BusinessHABGlobal Goods Online Business: If you’re ready to be in charge of your own destiny.
But don’t have the capital to buy a franchise or open up a storefront.
Consider starting an online business.
When your store is online.
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You can reach millions of customers instead of whoever happens to wander in – plus.
You don’t have to pay for retail space.
However, like with any business, you’ll need an excellent product and a solid marketing plan.
See Steps to learn what it takes to start your business online.
Global Goods Online Business
1. Get the Business Background
Conducting business globally has become an essential part of the overall strategy for many businesses. U.S. businesses sold $1.1 trillion in goods to customers overseas in 2007, nearly double the total export volume of 2002. But, sadly, less than 1 percent of the nation’s 26 million small businesses are exporters, according to a Congressional committee on small business and entrepreneurship. Small businesses account for only 29 percent of all U.S. exporting volume — a number lower today than it was 10 years ago.
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Global Goods Online Business
The statistics are surprising because the ease of connectivity, transportation, and global product demand has reduced the barriers to entering markets overseas.
With a few mouse clicks, you can buy a product today and never know it’s coming from half way around the world. The opportunities to expand internationally are better than they ever have been before.
International sales especially have never been easier, as the Internet and telecommunications have fostered quick and cheap global communications, more markets are open for trade, and more transportation options exist for delivering your goods abroad.
The following pages will outline how to choose overseas markets, assemble an international sales team or devise a strategy, and start selling abroad.
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Global Goods Online Business
2.Define your product or service.
To help your product stand apart from the rest, you’ll need to find a niche.
Global Goods Online Business
Let’s say you make jewellery—but so do a few million other people. What makes yours different? If one-of-a-kind jewellery (or another product) is your gig, make sure it’s truly original.Offer expertise in an area. Even if the product itself isn’t very unique, your expertise might be a strong selling point. If you’re selling a line of skincare products, for example, it helps if you have a degree in a field related to skin health.Check into the competition. Figure out what isn’t already being offered, and find a way to fill the hole with your product.
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Global Goods Online Business
3. Register your business.
Choose an official business name and fill out the appropriate paperwork to make your business official.
- Before you register your business, it can help to have a business plan laid out. Consider your production costs, shipping costs, taxes, and web hosting fees.
- Know the business regulations in your state, and be sure to comply when you get things up and running.
Global Goods Online Business
4. Register a domain name.
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Global Goods Online Business
5. Get a web hosting service.
There are free hosting services to be found, but if you’re serious about running an online business long term, consider paying for one that offers all the services you need. You’ll be less likely to run into problems when your business starts to take off. Choose a hosting service that allows for growth
Global Goods Online Business
Some hosting services are highly structured, allowing you to choose from among different templates to create a website quite easily. Others allow you to do your own programming, giving you greater flexibility.
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Global Goods Online Business
6. Create a stylish and functional website.
No matter what your style is, it’s important to give off a professional air. Since you won’t be able to earn people’s trust in person, your website will have to do the selling for you. Your site should be engaging, and most importantly, easy for customers to use when they’re ready to make a purchase.
Global Goods Online Business
- Make sure your site design matches your product. For example, if you make traditionally styled diamond jewelry, having a website that looks like shredded cardboard with edgy fonts and images taped to the cardboard would tend to drive away your potential customers.
- Consider setting up an online portfolio. Whether you are a programmer who specializes in Javascript, a graphic designer who works on commissions, a plumber who is on call 24/7, or a copywriter who will write about anything at all, having an exemplary website where potential clients can evaluate your work is crucial to your online business success.
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Global Goods Online Business
- You don’t have to design the website yourself—there are professional designers who are more than up to the task, plus ecommerce websites will offer dozens of appropriate templates for you. If you know in advance what you want, you’ll make selecting a designer or a template that much easier.
- When designing your site you need to remember to focus on what is important. Your ultimate goal is to make your site simple and easy to use.
- Your customers should have to make no more than 2 clicks in order to land on the page where they can make a purchase.
Global Goods Online Business
- The top of every page should have a link to your shopping cart if its an ecommerce store
- Buttons should be large and clear to read and input boxes should be large and easy to enter your information
- Less is more. Don’t be wordy when you don’t need to on payment pages
- Make sure your logo at the top of the page always links to the homepage
- If you have dark backgrounds use light text and vice versa.
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Global Goods Online Business
7. Get ecommerce software.
- You can also use an all-inclusive ecommerce web service. Sites such as Shopify and Volusion offer competitive packages, with free templates, custom packages, credit card processing, and more. Ecommerce web services makes it easy to sell your products on the web, without a lot of overhead. There are no custom interfaces or templates to work with; you simply create an online store within the framework of the service.
Global Goods Online Business
8.Set up a merchant account.
Service businesses in the past had to generally rely on cash or check—setting up an entire credit card processing system was a thankless, expensive task at best. Using a service such as PayPal makes it possible to accept virtually any form of credit or debit card for your services, and includes dispute resolution should the need arise (and it will arise).
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Global Goods Online Business
9. Add catchy content to your site.
Focus on your key areas of expertise, and display them professionally. Much like you would do when having potential employers contact references, put your best foot forward for potential clients. Include descriptions, where appropriate or necessary.
- Don’t use jargon. If you are offering technical expertise, include descriptions that appeal to your client base, not your peers. For example, if you are showing that you can code with PHP and AJAX, don’t say “in this case, if the input field is empty (str.length==0), the function clears the content of the txtHint placeholder and exits the function.” The person who needs you to work on their site will just scratch their head and say “huh?” Say, instead, “Start entering text into this field, and it will auto-complete.”
Global Goods Online Business
10. Be social.
Whatever your business, whatever your venue, keeping your name in the air is key to internet success. Have a business account on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If your business is graphically oriented, have accounts on Flickr and Tumblr as well. Whenever there is news of any kind—a new contract, a new page, a new entry, a new photo—cross-post it to all your social media sites. Also make sure those sites link back to your main website, and that your website has links to all of them.
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Global Goods Online Business
11.Become an affiliate marketer.
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Global Goods Online Business
12. Add Google AdSense advertisements to your blog or website.
Global Goods Online Business
13. Why are affiliate marketing programs effective for your business?
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