Internet Real Estate - Creating An Ecommerce Website	Visited: 2614 1.5/5.0 (2 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Blair Gwilt February 02, 2007

Owning your own profitable piece of internet real estate may not be as difficult or 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.

The truth of the matter is, the only real costs involved are reliable web hosting, a domain name, a keyword research tool (like Wordtracker) and the time and effort you decide to commit.

Let's go through the steps involved in building a successful ecommerce website.

First and foremost, is your site concept or theme. Think of a hobby or passion you have that you know a lot about, or would be interested in learning more about. It could be gardening, cycling, fishing, comic books, dieting, fitness, shopping, or anything else you may have an interest in.

Become an expert on your chosen theme. If you are passionate about your 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!

Think about how you can monetize your site's theme. It could be through promoting related affiliate programs, Google Adsense, selling your own ebooks, or any number of monetization models.

To get high ranking in the search engines, you need to find the best keywords relating to your site concept. These are the bread and butter of your ecommerce website. To find the best keywords (the ones with high demand and low supply), type your seed keyword (site concept) into Wordtracker.

You will receive a list of hundreds of keywords related to your site concept, with the supply and demand data for each keyword phrase. Pick out the best keywords 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 liberally insert the keyword phrase throughout your page.

You will probably need to experiment a little to find the right keyword density for your web pages, but once you do, you will start to receive high search engine rankings and hordes of organic, targeted traffic to your site!

Creating the content for your site may seem a little overwhelming at first, but if you think of it as talking to a friend about your passion or hobby, it will become much easier over time.

Register a domain name related to your site concept. 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. Make a list of possible domain names and type them into whichever registrar you decide to use, until you find one that is available.

Avoid using free webhosting for your ecommerce website. Not only will it lower your credibility, but you won't be able to use your own domain name. You can find reliable web hosting for less than ten dollars per month.

After you create each web page, submit your page to each of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Windows Live), then resubmit them about once a month until you get indexed. Be careful not to over submit.

You can find out if your page has been indexed by typing the url of the page into the search engines. You can also get free hit counters from several different sources to keep track of the traffic you are receiving.

It will take some time, patience and persistence on your part, but once the traffic and profits start rolling in, it will make the effort all worthwhile.