An accidental empire
We've all heard the story about geeks starting a computer business in a garage, and like 40 years later, it's an accidental empire and the world's biggest company by market cap. Ok, so some of you are out of touch - it's Apple, cave dwellers!
Even if we don't have an interest in something geeky and innovative that could set the whole world on fire, we probably all have a special interest. Perhaps it's vinyl records. Rare model cars (DO NOT call them toys!). Guitars. Semi-precious stone polishing. Metal detecting for lost treasure. Stamps and coins. Vintage and collectible clothing. You name it, there's someone that's into it.
Growing content and a community
With sufficient knowledge of your subject comes the ability to create hobbyist content for a website. Growing content and maintaining the website over time builds traffic and a community of people that share your interest.
Start offering products or trading items and the next thing you know, you may have a full-blown internet ecommerce store on your hands. For a few, it may be the start of the journey to creating your very own accidental empire.
Motivation and funding
For many, the motivation to create an online store may be the desire to get out of their less than interesting job. The daily grind might pay the bills (perhaps!) but it offers little in terms of satisfaction. For some, it could be the need to try to generate income after losing a job. Or, it could be you work part-time and want to create additional income.
For others that are serial entrepreneurs, it might be a serious business opportunity from Day1. You might have capital earned from other ventures, or borrow from family and friends to get it off the ground, fully bootstrapped. If you can get sufficient buy-in and articulate and deliver some future benefit, you could try to crowd fund or set up a preorder campaign.
Content management and ecommerce platforms
If you're starting out as a hobbyist without any immediate intention of ecommerce, the WordPress content management system (CMS) is a popular option. It's powerful, flexible and versatile with an entire community out there of theme and plugin developers and other third party applications. If ecommerce becomes a natural extension or something that you want to try later down the line, WooCommerce is a free ecommerce software for the Wordpress platform.
If you have the entrepreneur mindset and want to get straight into ecommerce, then Woocommerce would be the ideal option, as it is free and supports over 1 million online stores. Shopify and OpenCart are also great options.
Integrate payment plans for greater ecommerce success with Partial.ly
Partial.ly integrates with Shopify, Woocommerce and OpenCart to provide the capability to drive sales of big-ticket purchases such as lifestyle, luxury and collectible, non-essential, nice-to-have items that may be difficult for people to fund in a single payment.
Partial.ly automates payments straight from the customer's bank and into yours. You can let customers customize plans if it suits you. Our customer flexibility features let people customize their plans to suit their needs, within the limits that you set as a merchant.
Offering payment plans to your customers with Partial.ly is proven to help generate sales. Learn how Planet Action Figures online store from a passionate personal interest and increased sales 100% with Partial.ly Payment Plans.
