hi and welcome to the my wife quit her
job calm YouTube channel today what I'm
going to talk about is how to set up
your own online store with absolutely no
technical experience or know-how
whatsoever you don't need to know how to
use a computer all you need to know is
how to surf the web ok so I first wanted
to start out by just talking a little
bit about what this tutorial is all
about mainly this tutorial covers how to
create and host your own online
e-commerce store from complete scratch
without needing to know anything about
computers without needing to hire
developer nothing what I'm going to
teach you today will make you
self-sufficient and you will own your
own website and you will also have a
very feature-rich
shopping cart with which to sell your
goods and the shopping cart itself is
going to be absolutely free and all you
have to pay for is the hosting which is
very inexpensive ok so I thought I'd
just talk a little bit about my
motivations for creating this video I
run a blog my wife quit her job calm
where I talk about our experiences with
creating our own online store now I've
been running the blog for quite a while
now and many of my readers I found out
currently sell in various marketplaces
such as Amazon such as Etsy and eBay now
these three places are actually a great
way to make money online but there's
also many drawbacks with selling there
as well and the first thing that comes
to mind is that you are at the complete
mercy of the marketplace so just to give
you an example I used to sell on eBay
all the time and I witnessed over the
years that they kept changing their
policies and they kept jacking up their
fees year after year to the point where
you know my wife and I couldn't really
make a profit on eBay anymore and still
make a good living and you know the
second disadvantages of using these
marketplaces
is that there's often high fees
associated with selling on these
platforms and to use eBay as an example
again right now if you sell on eBay
if you count the paypal fees that are
incurred oftentimes eBay and PayPal
together will often lop off about twelve
to fifteen percent of your profit right
off the bat and if you consider that the
average business in the United States
only makes a profit about twenty to
twenty-five percent taking a fifteen
percent cut out of that right off the
bat is huge it makes it much harder for
you to make money online and it makes it
much harder for you to make a living
with your online store okay and you know
the main thing the main impetus for
having your own site is you want to be
in control of your own destiny you don't
want to be at the mercy of these other
platforms changing their policies just
to give you an example also when you
shop on a marketplace such as Etsy all
the listings tend to look the same and
you end up competing with a whole bunch
of people because people come to the
marketplace looking for a specific good
and they also find hundreds and hundreds
of merchants selling the exact same
thing by having your own website you can
make it look unique
you can put forth your unique selling
proposition very clearly and you can
also establish a brand much better once
you have your own website and so what I
often advise my students with these
Amazon Etsy and eBay stores it's not
just quick these platforms all together
you want to maintain these platforms
while gradually transitioning away to
your own website to a web property that
you actually have full control over in
hopes of not having to pay the fees and
in hopes of not having to be at the
mercy of the platform that you're
actually selling on and that's the main
goal okay so now all of this sounds all
fine and good but what I found from
running blog is that most people never
ultimately choose to go this route
because of the following fears and
misconceptions the first fear is that
people often think that owning their own
store is really expensive people also
find that the whole process of creating
a website and an online shopping cart
very daunting people often have no clue
how to set up a shopping cart or website
and oftentimes people think that they
have to hire a very expensive developer
just to get started online and what I'm
hoping to show you today is that all
this is not true you can set up a
feature-rich
open-source shopping cart for just the
cost of hosting so in other words the
website design and everything is
completely free and today I'm going to
give you a step-by-step tutorial on how
to set up your shopping cart from
scratch and you don't need to you don't
need to know a thing all you need to
know is how to surf the web use the
mouse and enter in your payment
information that's all you're going to
need to know how to do okay so with that
in mind let's go ahead and get started
what you're looking at right now is my
blog which is located at wwm i wife quit
her job calm okay now if you scroll down
you'll see these four four banners here
and what I want you to do is I want you
to click on this blue host banner okay
and so what we're signing up for right
now is actually the web host what a web
host is is they own the computers that
are going to actually run your website
now Bluehost is the one that I ran my
online store on for two years and it's
the one that I highly recommend so what
I'm going to just go ahead and do now is
click sign up now okay here right now
it's going to ask me for a domain name
now hopefully you re at this point know
kind of what you want to sell and you
have an idea of what you want your store
name to be so just for this example I'm
going to use the domain name fast easy
online store calm okay and when you
click the next button it's going to go
ahead and check to see if that domain is
actually available okay so as you can
see here fast easy online store calm is
available and I'm now ready to just
enter in my information to complete the
purchase
that's what I'm going to do here okay
and so once we get down here you're
going to want to uncheck these three
things because they're not really
necessary and I'm just going to sign up
for a year here and I'm going to go
ahead and enter in my credit card
information
and I'm gonna click on the next button
okay so at this point I've completed the
transaction and it's trying to upsell
you here but you don't want to really
sign up for anything else and you want
to just click on the complete button ok
so at this point they're going to you
get an email sent to the email account
that you sign up with and you're going
to want to create your password so I'm
just going to do that real quick ok now
I'm going to hit on the click on the
submit button and that's it my domain is
fast easy online store comm and now I'm
going to enter in the password that I
used ok so now now I'm logged in to what
is called the control panel for my
website ok now once I've established
this account all I have to do now at
this point is install the shopping cart
ok so basically you want to scroll down
and you want to look for something
called simple scripts and click on it
and the shopping cart that we are going
to install is called open cart now
there's a whole bunch of these shopping
carts for you to choose from but open
cart in my experience is one of the best
ones on here and that's why I'm going to
use this as an example so I'm just going
to click on open card here and I'm going
to click on install and I'm just going
to have it install in the root directory
here which is under fast easy online
store comm and I'm going to click that
I've read the Terms and Conditions and
I'm just going to type in click on the
complete button
and it's installing it right now okay so
at this point it's installed the
shopping cart and it's provided a
username and password here okay so now
I'm just going to open a new window and
I'm going to type in the domain name
that I registered fast easy online store
comm and lo and behold the shopping cart
has been completely installed at the
click of a button and as you can see you
can surf around it's been populated with
a bunch of demonstration products and
you'll see that you'll be able to add
certain products to the cart you can
check out you can play around with it a
little bit but the other thing I want to
show you is the admin panel okay so it's
just to get to the admin panel for your
online store it's just the domain that
you registered slash admin and if you go
back to this screen here they provided
you with a username and password so I'm
just going to go ahead and enter that
stuff in I'm just going to cut and paste
it in then I'm going to log in okay and
here is the backend for the online store
and you'll probably want to play around
with this a little bit but you're able
to add products adjust the prices add
different product categories and that
sort of thing and really what you'll
discover is that Open Cart is really
really feature-rich and what i've shown
you today
is that you can install this with
absolutely no technical knowledge
whatsoever all you need to do is know
how to click and use the mouse and you
need to know how to surf the web and
that's all there is to it okay so the
first thing you want to do once you've
gotten to this admin page is you're
going to just want to change the
password to something that you can
remember okay so you're going to want to
go in there system user groups and then
edit the admin and at this point you
just want to enter in a password that
you're going to remember
and that's all there is to it so the
remaining steps which I will cover in a
subsequent video is how to install and
process credit cards online and the next
step is how to install an SSL
certificate in order to make the
transactions on your online store
completely secure and that's all there
is for this first video