How to Get Your Own Internet Web Store for Only $10 a Month

Like many other people, I wanted to have my own storefront on the Internet. There, I thought, I could earn some good money, day or night – as the typical promotion goes, "in my sleep."

That turned out to be easier said than done.

I already had several Web sites, and each of those had visitors whose numbers were limited, and who were much like me – limited in what they needed to buy, thus in what they wanted to buy, and, of great importance, limited in the amount of spending money they had with which to purchase anything. Let me give you an example of that. If your audience consists of people in the 65 to 75 year-old range, and if your store sells maxi-motor scooters selling in the range of $2,000 to $5,000 (the purple ones cost the most), and if the general income range of members of your audience is $18,000 to $25,000 a year, you are not going to sell many maxi-motor scooters – if any at all.

It was obvious that I would have to set up my proposed Web store around items wanted and maybe needed by the people visiting my Web sites, and to have items that fit their budgets.

The next step for me was to generally describe my ordinary visitor. My Web sites catered to an older group of people in the range of 70 to 75 years of age, male, military veterans (many receiving military or some other retirement pay, plus social security payments), all with diverse interests and family sizes, free to vacation and travel for the most part, and resident in all parts of the country (some with both summer and winter homes). As to items they might need, the list was narrowed to items they had not yet acquired in the areas of gifts, gadgets, and hobby – most of them already had "more stuff than they cared to admit."

That began to simplify things just a little.

The Web store would not do well by offering items of food, even the types of edibles that were hard to find in the local markets. As an example of one food product type available for the Web store was fancy stuffed olives. Another example was energy drinks. Yet another was barbecue sauce. All of those examples are of really nice items, but why would someone want to buy them on the Internet when they could find all of them in their local WalMart, Kroger, or Happy Days Corner Liquor Store?

Kitchenware. There are some intriguing items within that product group. The prices range from the ridiculously low to the exorbitantly high, and that’s a winning situation, too. A problem remained. For the most part, the intended buyers had long since filled their kitchens with everything they needed or wanted for preparation of the kinds of foods to which they were accustomed. In addition, folks who get to the age of 65 or more eat less and prepare more simple foods than do younger people.

Gifts. Think "sons, daughters, grandkids, friends – birthdays, holidays, I-remember-days. Now things were beginning to click a little better. Gifts come in all shapes and sizes, too. That looked like possibilities could arrive at reasonable speed to fill in the chinks between a wished-for Web store and the practical planning for one.

Now that the intended purchaser was known within reason, the product offering class had been described to some satisfaction, and the price range had been more or less selected, the next thing to be considered was the nuts and bolts construction job – putting together the store software, a means of collecting payments, and the process of putting saleable items on the shelves. Had my prospective purchaser been not yet described, that would also have to be done.

A remarkably complete and professional Web store software system is available free for downloading at www.oscommerce.com. It is truly a huge program system, so downloading takes lots of disk space and lots of time. With osCommerce one could market virtually anything, tangible, intangible, large, small, costly, or cheap. I had already downloaded a copy of the software for a friend who then set up his own store on the Internet from which his business wholesales hundreds of different luxury food items to retailers. His store is a sight to behold. But I could also see that for what I wanted to do, it was really way too "beautiful." It took several weeks of difficult work at the keyboard for him to set up his Web store the way he wanted it to be. Then he had to incorporate the means of collecting payment from his customers. That meant that he had to make arrangements with the company’s bank for a "merchant account" that would allow customers to pay for their purchases with credit cards. That was both costly and complicated. When he was finished with all of that, it was also very beautiful. If that sort of magnificent Web store is what you are after, osCommerce is the way to go.

Our own Web site hosting company offered us a Web store platform of lesser complexity. Furthermore, the program was set up to allow beginners to structure and product-fill their stores using templates and pull-down lists. Nothing to it. You could set up your store, front to back, (including some payment options) in minutes. There was a small problem. The store could only hold and sell 15 items, and changing existing items to new ones was rather difficult. My thought was to keep that little store in mind while I continued to search for what might be a better solution.

The solution came along from a surprising source. We all know about those "multi-level marketing plans," wherein you join up to sell the plan but not so much the products. The more people to whom you sell the plan, the more money you will make when they sell the plan to other people. After you have antagonized all your family members and friends by badgering them to join up, your business more or less dies. Well, along came a multi-level plan that was designed to work through the Internet, but it was set up so that you, yourself would not be badgering anybody. Instead, the Web store set up for you by the company did all of the propagandizing. Interesting concept – let the product setup do all the plan-selling.

It was worth looking at.

Oh my glory, there were hundreds and hundreds of products to put into your own store. You could shelve them all, or you could pick and choose which ones you wanted to offer to your own customers. On top of that, the product mix was remarkable, as was the pricing. You could sell a towel, a doggie bed, a kid’s toy, some tools, and a folding kayak – even a cruise on a luxury ship. It was astounding. The list prices ranged from very low to very high, depending on the item to be sold. But you, as the store owner, could set your own prices higher or lower, however you wanted. Each item came along with a printed description and a good quality photograph. On top of all of that, you put your own choice of store name onto its store sign.

In addition to that good stuff, the inventorying, handling, shipping, and credit card payment details were done for you, and at cost. And, as a truly big, big benefit, your store takes up zero space on your own Web site. The company that provides you with your store also provides you with the Internet facilities to hold your store. What that means is that you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg paying for hosting space.

Not only that, but there was no requirement for you to "sign people up" to keep your store. All you do is to point the way to your store. What folks do once they get there is entirely up to them. They can look all they want with no one pushing on them. They can buy anything they want or not. They can get a store all their own if they want one. Is it any wonder that I smile a whole lot? I wish that I had found this deal years before I actually found it, but then, perhaps it was not yet there. Such is life, right?

Anyway, that was the Web store I wanted. I signed up for mine several years ago at the "horrendous" cost to me of $10 a month. You can see this nicely working store at http://academywebstore.fsc2.com any time you like. (That’s right - it is open 24/7.) I set my pricing to provide for a typical discount on everything of about 40%, and I can change that whenever I want to change it. My own personal purchases, which I can make as I care to, do much better than that. I ordinarily buy things for about one third of the typical retail price, sometimes even less. But those purchases are for my own use and not to be inventoried here. I can buy 100 of the same item or a single item at a time. That is sort of like taking money out of my right-hand pocket and sticking it into the left-hand pocket.

The folks who run the show have been great with service. Only one time did a product mix-up occur with any of my store’s orders, and it was immediately corrected at no cost to me.

So, if you want to have your own store on the Internet, you need to have a buying audience or have the means to get one, a product line worth selling, a Web host providing you with Internet access and storage space for your store (unless you have a store like mine), and a handling-shipping-inventorying-credit card payment setup (unless you have a store like mine).

Visit my store if you like. You need not buy anything there. There’s nothing to "join." But if you feel like doing so, have at it.

As do you, I now want to spend my time writing. I may never, ever profit from that to any great degree, but it is what I like to do. A fellow worker one time mentioned to me that, "Gus, you couldn’t sell your way out of a paper bag." He has been proven correct over many years of observation. My nice Internet store solves that problem, too. I don’t have to "sell" anything. My customers do it all for me. All I have to do is to remove any products I don't want there and set up a discount schedule to my liking if I even want one.

I enjoy the whole thing, and it is my belief that so will you.