To set up an online store for the first time, a person must accept the fact that there is a lot of work involved and a lot to learn. The very first step after determining a name for your business and store, is to try and find a suitable domain name.
1. First, a domain name should be searched and purchased (about $10 US funds per year). This is important because it will give the impression of a level of professionalism in all of your transactions going forward. Once this is purchased, it should be set up with your computer's onboard email program so that all email correspondence to all of your clients is from your domain name.
2. A PayPal account based on the email from your domain name should be set up (this is free). It must be a business level account simply because you cannot receive online payments with a personal PayPal account.
3. Either produce or have produced by a graphic artist, a professional looking store header 850x150 pixels size. This will be used to determine store colors and general theme for your GT5 installation.
4. Begin accumulating a list of free classified sites such as Kijiji and Craigslist to use for promoting your store.
5. Set up a free store at
http://www.blujay.com . . . it can be used as a means of promoting your store but can be useful in a number of other ways, including a place to create, organize and store product listings. If you have no experience at all in producing an ecommerce product listing, this is a very good place to gain some practical experience.
You will need to develop at least rudimentary image editing skills to process the images used in your product listings.
