Building Your Own Ecommerce Website by Karen Ngo

Building your own ecommerce website may not be as difficult or as expensive as you think. If you're like the majority of people online, chances are that you have at least thought about building your own ecommerce website. The reason most people don't get past the actual "thinking" process is because they believe there is too much technical expertise involved or the cost of building an ecommerce website is too high. With the new technology evolving so quickly, you can find many website building programs or softwares available. You can build your own ecommerce website quite easily if you have the right building tools and know the basic steps in putting one together.
First, choose a theme or concept for your site. Think of something that you are passionated about, such as singing, music, golfing, gardening, cycling, fishing, comic books, dieting, fitness, shopping, or anything else you may have an interest in, to use as your main theme. You want to be the expert of your chosen theme. If you are passionate about your hobby or concept, then you probably know more about it than most other people. Combining your own knowledge about your chosen theme with doing research on the Internet will make you an expert in no time!
You need a domain name. Register a domain name related to your site them or concept. Make a list of possible domain names that you would like to use, then choose a domain registrar, type in the domain names that you want to use until you find one that is still available, and if nothing you want that's available, try using .net, .info instead of .com, or you can separate your domain name with a hyphen. There are hundreds of domain registrars on the internet, and most of them charge about ten dollars (or less) a year to register a domain name.
Now you need to find a software to build your own ecommerce website. There are many program you can find on the internet. Some range from a couple hundreds dollars, some let you use it for free. All these programs requires you to know some of the computer language coding and may need to download a few other softwares to create and publish the your site. This process could be a bit complicated if you don't know enough about computer. To help simplify things for the not so techie people, a brand new website building tool is being released called Site Rubix. With Site Rubix, you will be able to drag and drop the content on your ecommerce website, make your own header, add videos or screenshot then publish it right within the software. You'll save lots of time on learning the various programs needed to build your own ecommcerce website.
As for the content for your website, it may be overwhelming at first. Simply express your passion, your expertise on a subject related to your theme like you would be talking to a friend, then it will become much easier over time, and before you know it, you have a website full of interesting content.
Now think about how you can monetize your site's theme. You can promote related affiliate programs or products, insert Google Adsense, selling your own ebooks, or any number of monetization models.
If you are satisfied with the look and feel of your site, you are ready to upload it to your web host for it to "go live" on the internet.Then your site has to be indexed to different search engines. Choose a reliable web hosting for your ecommerce site, because with the free hosting service that some internet companies offer, you won't be able to use your own domain name. Hosting service is not at all expensive. You can have your site hosted for less than ten dollars per month.
To get high ranking in the search engines, you need to find the best keywords relating to your site concept. To find the best keywords (the ones with high demand and low supply), type your basic keyword (site concept) into any keyword research tool you like to use. It will generate a list of hundreds of keywords related to your site concept, with the detailed data for each keyword phrase. Pick out the best keywords that is suitable to your theme and use them as your site blueprint. You will then begin creating pages of content for your site revolving around the keywords you have chosen. Use one keyword phrase for each page you create, and be sure to insert the keyword phrase several times throughout your page. The page with the right keyword density will start to receive high search engine rankings and get targeted traffic to your website.
After you create each website, submit your page to each of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Windows Live). You may need to resubmit them about once a month until you get indexed. You can check if your page has been indexed by typing the URL of your page to the search engines.
It may take some time, effort and persistent on your part. When your site starts to receive traffic and generate profit, it will be all worthwhile since it's running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week bringing in income with not much over head. Building your ecommcerce website yourself, you can save time and money, have total control of your own site without having to depend on your web developer should you ever want to make changes to your site.
About the Author
Visit Karen's blog to find out how Site Rubix ecommerce website builder can help you dramatically cut your website building time so you can focus on what is more important to you: running a building a profitable ecommerce business.
http://siterubixsitebuilder.blogspot.com/2007/09/site-rubix-site-builder.html