Your Online Shopping Cart MasterPlan - Interview with Chloe Thomas - PPP: 058

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to set up an online store and I always tell people that it’s not necessarily as easy as you might think it is. When I first started my online store I had two products to offer: a physical copy of my book and a digital version. It took a lot of time and work to learn how to get a merchant account, manage the store, upload photos, change prices, etc. but now there are a lot of new software that makes doing all of those things a lot easier. 

You really need to start thinking about not just the dollar value of something, how much it will cost to opt in, pay for a software monthly, hire someone to get something set up for you, etc., but the long term value. Investing in these things will save you time and money so instead of spending 5 months learning how to set up a website, you could hire someone and have it done within a few days for a small price and then being 5 months ahead. 

It’s time to finding things that will make your life easier, take away the stress of having to learn a new software from scratch, etc. You need to weigh your dollar value vs. your time. Is it really worth it to waste more time doing things when you could, for a small cost, get something up and going with the help of a software or another person you can hire? You need to start getting serious about how long you want to leave money on the table. 

Today Chloe and I are talking about having an online store, leveraging an online store, the value of having it, and using the store with as much emphasis as you would with your own business. If you don’t even have a store set up, you’re not going to be going very far on your way to make some extra money. 

Questions I Asked Chloe: 

1. Why did you decide to leave your comfortable day job to start your online business?
2. Why is having an online store such a valuable tool?
3. Can you define ecommerce?
4. Is it better to link your shop off of your website? Or should you keep people on your site?
5. How does someone grow their online store?

What You'll Learn From This Episode:

• A basic run down of how to set up an online store.
• What platform Chloe recommends for eccommerce.
• Whether it's better to learn the software to set up an online store, or if you should hire someone to quickly get it done for you.
• The cost of creating an online store.