One of the main reasons why online entrepreneurship is such a fast growing trend for small business owners is because it is now much easier than ever before for you to enter the online marketplace. You simply have to setup an e-commerce website to sell your products using the internet and provide secure payment processing of purchases for your customers. You can choose from auction sites and free online store builders to professional e-commerce services that enable you to effortlessly build a professional looking online store.
Ebay
Ebay is the pioneer and the leader in online marketplace and gives you the opportunity to reach millions of customers worldwide. You can sell just about anything you want on Ebay and use it’s Buy Now listing option to sell products for a fixed price. You can also use the bidding system and list your goods for auction allowing prospective buyers to bid on your items and then you sell to the highest bidder. Ebay also offers selling platforms and features especially for those who want to setup an online store. You can build an Ebay Store and choose from the Basic, Premium and Anchor packages. Each package includes an Ebay website storefront complete with your very own logo and other online store features to showcase your product line.
Etsy
Etsy is the place to be for entrepreneurs who are creatively gifted at making hand-made products. It is similar to Ebay and allows sellers to display their hand-crafted items in an Etsy online store. You will have to pay insertion fees for each item but there is no need to choose from various store building packages because any Etsy seller with products to sell can list their products and add a logo along with the details about their store and product offerings .
E-commerce Services
There are also many affordable online store builder services available for e-commerce entrepreneurs who prefer to have a customized, professional looking online storefront instead of taking the Ebay or Etsy route. Some web-store building sites such as Webs and Big Commerce offer a free online store template which allows you to create an online store using templates but you may not have the ability to use your own domain name. Quite often free e-commerce services place online ads on the free online store that you build using their free website services. However you can upgrade your store to a monthly or annual package to use your own unique website domain name and remove the ads. E-crater is another very popular online marketplace that allows you to build a free online store and it is completely ad-free. Professional online store building services such as Yahoo Store Builder, Volusion and Shopify also offer very good internet store building services with monthly packages that vary in pricing and features.