Free commercial websites-How to open, market and advertise your free online store or shop

CHOOSING A NICHE

Choose a niche or product genre that you are passionate about and begin to develop a knowledge set around this niche. Your passion and enthusiasm for a particular niche topic will give you a competitive advantage over larger sellers that are forced to be more broad in their product coverage. By choosing a category that you are passionate about, you will have a greater chance of enjoying the journey of creating and managing an online store, which will require patience and the ability to overcome adversity. In a way, opening an online store around one of your hobbies or interests allows you to reallocate time productively that you would have spent on your hobby anyways.

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Niche stores include:
Arts & Crafts
Technology
Books
Health products
Beauty Products
Toys
Collectibles & Antiques
etc etc etc etc

You name it - I'll bet there's a website for free selling it.

YIN YANG GIFT STORE
This is a working example of what you can achieve with a niche webstore Here I have used an associate website by courtesy of Amazon.
I registered as an Associate, named my store, added categories to my pages and added individual products to the different categories.
In all the categories I searched for items with the Keyword Yin Yang. The results were quite impressive. They are;

Books
Clothing
Jewelry
Home & Garden
Automotive
Posters
Music Miscellaneous

The Amazon Stores affiliate link is then put on my Squidoo lens..
Please take a look.

YIN YANG GIFT STORE
This is a working example of what you canYIN YANG GIFT STORE

Select a service to provide the online infrastructure for your web store.

Amazon.com has started a service -- All Products the Amazon.com aStore program allows users to build their own free online store front that sells products from Amazon in exchange for a commission.

Another way to get started quickly is to open a store front. A store allows you to build and sell your own physical inventory of products, which will take more work but is potentially more profitable down the road if you work it hard. This type of free website where you upload your own stock images is especially useful for the arts and craft industries.

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STOCKING YOUR OWN STORE

If you are stocking your own store, build-out your product inventory by adding products to your web store. Try to be thoughtful about your product categories, and in particular, product placement. Studies have shown that consumers are drawn to products featured at the top of the page, so be careful to put the most likely sellers at the top. Put yourself in the customer's shoes with a relentless passion. Remember, people can buy from anyone; why should they buy from you? You need to make their life easier or provide some other kind of value.

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SELLING SUPPLIED STOCK ON YOUR FREE WEBSITE - DROPSHIPPING

Selling products for companies without having to keep stock is also known as Dropshipping. Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to wholesalers, who then ship the goods directly to the customer . The retailers make their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price.

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SELL YOUR ART - Get a FREE ARTISTS GALLERY

I know you want to show the world your work and would love to make a living or even some spare cash, doing what you love. Well why not go for it?

Stop making excuses. If you have a scanner to produce good quality images on your site, then all the better. Do not be put off because you think your art is not good enough or that it will be technically difficult. You have to know zero at programming or need very little IT skills. The instructions for uploading images are usually quite easy to follow.

IMAGEKIND -Create and sell art prints from your free online gallery either on your own website or in their marketplace.

Red Bubble
Easy to use site where you can upload your art and sell on as prints, clothing and cards. There is also an active community of artists commenting on each other's work.

Greeting Card Universe
Make your art into Greeting cards to sell online




Printpop.com is your online destination for digital reproductions of artwork by aspiring, emerging, part-time or student artists. This web site was built with the intention of helping artists everywhere gain much-needed exposure and also have the opportunity to make extra money. While artists could set up their own web site to display artwork, Printpop.com allows them to sell high quality photographic prints of their work, while retaining the original pieces.

There are also Free Webstores selling clothes and items that you customize with your own designs or any from the other contributor's galleries. These include:

ARTS CAFE

CAFEPRESS

PRINTFECTION!

ZAZZLE

SPREADSHIRT

The type of goods that you can sell with your own design on include:

T-Shirts
PostersMugs
Bumper Stickers
Mousepads
Postcards
Stickers
Cards
Postage
Magnets
Hats
Bags
Buttons
Ties
Keychains
Aprons
Calendars
Photo Sculptures

Again the list is endless

Promote your store, as this is a critical step. Do you remember Field of Dreams? "if you build it they will come" will not apply to your new store! You must drive interest in your own site; no one cares about your store except you. The first way to promote your store is to get relevant; submit your site to Google to be indexed. Consider adding content to your site like product reviews, subject matter articles, humor, anything to give people a reason to come to your site other than just to buy products. Content will increase your probability of becoming relevant.

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You can also promote your store by:

KEEPING A BLOG with links to your store e.g Blogger

SUBMITTING ARTICLES to free article sites e.g.articlsubmit.com

MAKING A SQUIDOO LENS ON YOUR PRODUCT OR ART

SUBMIT TO A WEB DIRECTORY e.g itsallaboutlinks.com

SUBMIT TO A SEARCH ENGINES e.g searchenginewatch.com

JOIN A SOCIALBOOKMARK SITE e.g Myspace.com,FacebooK

ONLINE FREE ADVERTISING & CLASSIFIED ADS e.g Adlandpro

ADD TO STUMBLUPON/DELICIOUS/DIGG THIS

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MARKETING POND

Use classifieds to buy, sell or advertise anything!

A new affiliate shop site has emerged
Claiming to have over 2 million products to promote
Affiliated with 1022 merchants which include Commission Junction, Linkshare, Shareasale

You Pick your products
Click to customize your shops
Pop your shop into your site
Confirm that you are an active affiliate with the merchants you've chosen
Keep 100% of your commissions

You do not have a shop website only a link to products

BLOG BUZZ ABOUT POPSHOPS

POPSHOPS

Free Web Submission is the source for free search engine submission to up to 50 search engines/directories.. They provide webmasters and site owners with free manual and auto submission to the highest-rated, free internet search engines and directories.
Note: Although the submission is free the links will lead you onto some directories that require payment before inclusion

There are lots of free downloadable books on business,affiliates and marketing at this site, including -
10 Basics for Starting Your Online Business
Network Marketing, by Brian Street
Download this FREE e-Book, and learn the ten (10) basic steps for initiating and cultivating your dream of starting your very own Internet-based business.

Categories include
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Free ebooks here

Manage and track your web store'. Now that you've got your store up and running, don't you want to see how much traffic you are generating and where it is coming from? Sign up for free Google analytics

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OneStat Free Hit Counter and Web Analytics

Looking for a hit counter? OneStat Free is the best hit tracker available. On this web site you will find all the information you need about our free counter and the traffic statistics gathered from each web site we track.

OneStat Free is the most reliable, fully password-protected tracker available today. We provide you the most detailed web analytics reports and the best of all: it is absolutely free!

Adlandpro is truly an amazing free advertising site. Although you can upgrade by paying, what you get free is enough to start with.

There are extensive tutorials/a vast community to promote to and free classified ads to take advantage of.

I also have my own profile and web page which I can invite other members to view and everyone is so nice!!!

Go there now and prove me wrong if you can.

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Offer FREE Advertising to Your List or to Your Website Visitors!! Generate extra income on a regular basis from affiliate commissions

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Create your own Online Store for Free
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