How to Start an Online Store — How-To #007

We built our first online store backwards. Beautiful storefront, custom everything, a launch day with twelve visitors — eleven of them ours. The store that actually sold things came later, and it started on somebody else's shelves.

Difficulty: Beginner · Time: a week of evenings to list your first products · Cost: listing fees plus your first batch of product — keep the whole opening under $100.

Here is our stance, and we say it as people who run their own store: do not build the store first. Build the sale first.

The internet will tell you to buy a domain, pick a platform, and design a logo. That advice is not wrong — it is early. A storefront with no traffic is a shop on a street nobody walks down. Marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace already have the foot traffic. Your job this week is to put one product in front of that traffic, learn what happens, and earn the right to a storefront of your own.

The fee math, because nobody shows it up front. Every platform takes a cut, and the cut comes out of your price whether you planned for it or not. On Etsy, at current rates, a $25 sale loses about $2.80 — a twenty-cent listing fee, roughly 6.5% of the sale, and payment processing around 3% plus a quarter. That is eleven cents of every dollar, gone before you see it. A standalone platform like Shopify charges monthly rent plus its own payment fees — fine when volume covers the rent, a leak when it doesn't. Our own store runs print-on-demand, so there are no boxes in a garage, but the margin trade is real and we price for it. Whatever platform you pick: read its current fee page, do the math on paper, and price the fees in. Fees you did not price for are just donations.

Start where the buyers already are

Pick one marketplace and open your seller account there. Etsy for handmade, vintage, and designed goods. eBay for almost anything with a resale market. Facebook Marketplace for local goods you can hand over in person. The choice matters less than the principle: go where the search bar already has buyers typing in it.

Your own website is not the enemy. It is the second step. When you have repeat buyers — people who come back and ask "do you have a site?" — that is the moment a storefront of your own pays for itself. Until then, the marketplace is your landlord, your cashier, and your foot traffic, all for a percentage you already priced in.

One formality, before the fun part: if you sell physical goods, most states expect you to be registered to collect sales tax. In New Jersey, used here as an example of any state, that registration runs through the NJ-REG business registration application. Readers elsewhere: your state has its own version — check your state's revenue office before your first sale ships, not after.

Pick one product, not a catalog

One product. Five listings at most. Not a brand, not a line, not a collection — one thing you can describe in a sentence and photograph in an afternoon.

#006 said to sell the smallest version first, and a store is no exception. A catalog of twenty untested products is twenty guesses wearing a trench coat. One product is an experiment you can read: it sells or it doesn't, and either answer teaches you something you can use on the next one.

What counts as one product? The thing you can make, source, or customize repeatedly without reinventing it each time. If you can't make ten of them the same way, it isn't a product yet — it's a project. Projects don't scale; products do.

Price the fees in, or the fees eat you

Do this on paper before you list anything. Start with what the product costs you to make or buy, add the shipping you will actually pay, add the platform's fees from the fee page you just read, and add your time at a rate that isn't zero. That total is the floor. The price goes above it.

Now check the ceiling: what are comparable products actually selling for, not listed for — sold listings, not wishful ones. If the floor is above the ceiling, the product doesn't work on that platform. That is not a tragedy; it is information. Change the product, change the platform, or change the cost — but don't list it at a loss and call it marketing.

And resist the opening-week discount. A new store discounting on day one teaches buyers the price is negotiable before anyone has paid full price. Earn the first sales at the real price. The price is part of the product.

Photograph it like it costs twice the price

Online, nobody touches the product before buying. The photos are the product until the box arrives — and then the box has to match the photos. Five shots, phone camera, a window for light, and a clean background:

Front. Angle. In use. Something for scale — a coin, a hand, a familiar object. And a close-up of the texture or the detail you are proudest of. That last one is the photo that sells, because it is the one that says a human made this and cared.

Skip the filters that change the color. Nothing kills trust faster than a product that arrives looking different from its picture. Accurate beats beautiful, and honest light beats both.

Write the listing for the search bar, not for yourself

The buyer types plain words into a search box. Your title's first line should be those plain words: what it is, who it is for, the material, the size. "Hand-poured soy candle, vanilla and cedar, 8 oz" beats "Ember's Whisper — a love letter to slow evenings" in search every single time. The poetry has a home: the description, the brand story, the about page. Not the title.

Then answer the questions a careful buyer asks before they message you: exact dimensions, materials, how long until it ships, what happens if it arrives damaged. Every question the listing answers is a message you don't have to write and a sale that doesn't stall.

End the description with the plain truth about shipping time. "Ships in 3–5 business days" said up front costs you nothing. Said after the order, it costs you a review.

Ship fast, then double down on what sells

Ship within a day or two. Upload the tracking the moment it exists. Pack like the unboxing is part of the product — because on a marketplace, the unboxing is the part the buyer photographs. A short handwritten thank-you note costs a minute and buys more loyalty than any coupon.

Then count. Weekly, fifteen minutes: which listing got views, which got sales, where the buyers came from. Double down on what sells — more of that product, better photos for it, a variation of it. Fix or drop what doesn't. A store is a garden, not a monument: you feed what grows and pull what doesn't.

And ask for the review. Once, politely, after delivery: "If you're happy with it, a review helps a small shop more than you know." Reviews are the compound interest of marketplaces. The first ten are the hardest and the most valuable.

Questions we get asked

Do I need an LLC before I open a store? No. Plenty of stores start as sole proprietorships and formalize when the money or the risk justifies it — #003 walks the comparison, #004 the filing, #005 the account. Sell first, formalize on evidence.

Etsy or my own website — which first? Marketplace first, website second. The marketplace brings buyers on day one; the website earns its keep when repeat buyers give you a reason to own the shelf.

How much money do I need to start? Under $100 for the first listings if you sell something you can make, customize, or source cheaply. The real cost is inventory — which is exactly why you start with one product, not a catalog.

What about dropshipping? It's a real model with thin margins and a heavy customer-service load, since you own every complaint about a product you never touched. Not the beginner's best first move. Sell something you control first; learn the machine before you automate it.

Do I have to charge sales tax? On physical goods, in most states, yes — and the rules are the state's, not the platform's. New Jersey is the example above; your state has its own registration and its own thresholds. Check before the first sale ships.

What comes next

This is installment #007 of How to X, opening the storefront run after the formation week and the side-hustle turn. This evening, #008 opens the money week with the personal budget — because a store that makes money still needs an owner who keeps it. One step a day, morning and evening. Buyers first, fees priced in, ship like it matters.