How Can I Start an Online Baby Boutique? (6 Steps)

Apply for a sales tax permit and a federal tax identification number. Some wholesale vendors will require that you have these in order to purchase their goods. Particularly if you are going into business with your husband or someone else, consider forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC).
Choose an E-commerce site to host your online boutique. Volusion.com offers an entire package that includes your domain name, shopping cart and web hosting. Corecommerce.com is another E-commerce site that offers packages---both of these sites offer business email addresses, website templates (and the ability to use your own design), marketing tools, accounting tools, data feeds, Google AdWords coupons, the ability to create coupons or newsletters for your store and the ability to accept a number of different payment methods, such as Paypal, Google Checkout and credit cards. GoDaddy.com allows you to pick and choose the services you need, such as a domain name or shopping cart.
If you aren't familiar with SEO and online selling, an all-inclusive site such as Corecommerce.com may be the way to go. Volusion.com and Corecommerce.com offer a free 30 day trial. Vendio.com is a hosting site that allows you to operate your store for free. However, you won't have an exclusive domain name and your URL will be lengthy. This is important---a shorter URL such as Cutebooties.com is easier to identify than one that includes the hosting site's name and additional information, such as Vendio.com/stores/Cutebooties.com.
Set a theme for your store when selecting or designing your website. Choose a catchy name and logo for your online boutique. Familiarize yourself with your products. Create an 'About Me' page that includes your business history, vision and goals. Detail your shipping and return policy on a 'Shipping and Returns' page. Create a Privacy Notice page that details how you will use your customer's information.
Locate suppliers. Look for baby gear closeouts on eBay and other auction sites. If you don't already have specific brands in mind or you intend to design your own gear, contact American Apparel for basic wholesale baby gear. Also contact websites such as Children's Wholesale or Wholesale Kid for purchasing wholesale baby clothing, shoes and accessories. Until you know what will be a hit, limit your purchases to no more than 10 to 15 items of each style.
Take high quality images of your inventory. Include relevant information in your product listings such as clear descriptions, sizes, colors and clothing or shoe materials.
Promote your store. Thoroughly read through your website host's advertising tools. Take advantage of the Google AdWords coupon if offered. Submit your baby product feeds to Google. Your host site may have an easy way to do this; otherwise; you can visit Google.com and import them yourself (see Resources). Take advantage of Google Analytics, which you can use to analyze your traffic. Identify which key words (products) bring in the most customers.
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How to Make Money Designing Clothes Online

Review the major companies that offer designers the infrastructure to produce, process and deliver their designs. Major brands include CafePress, Zazzle, and Printfection. Compare the base prices on the garments you plan to sell, initial or ongoing fees, shipping rates, shipping destinations and customer reviews. Order a similar product from each supplier and rate each according to garment quality, print quality, price and shipping time.
Navigate to the account creation page of the best supplier as determined by the previous step and follow the onscreen instructions to create an account as an online store. Account creation requires personal contact information such as your name, address and, in some cases, your business entity's information. You must also provide details on how you wish to be paid. Common options include check or via PayPal. Some services also charge setup or monthly fees.
Use the integrated tools to customize your store and create your clothing designs. Select the types of garments you want to offer along with the sizes and colors available. Each service has tutorials on the specifics of their tools and the sizes, resolution and formats that produce the highest quality garment designs.
Open a new tab or window in your browser and navigate to a Web hosting service. Follow the onscreen instructions to sign up for a domain name and Web hosting service for your store. This gives your store an added layer of professionalism as many of the suppliers ship your products with your logo on the packaging to further brand your store. Some sites, such as CafePress, do not support the option to use your own domain for their online stores.
Promote your online clothing store. Common approaches include creating articles about custom clothing with links to your store or creating a Facebook fan page to promote your brand and building a social group of people interested in your type of clothing. For example, if you promote clothes for surfers, interact with other groups and fan pages to invite their members to your fan page and subsequently your store. Use pay-per-click advertising for keywords related to the types of clothing in your store and banner ads on sites related to your target market. Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool's 'keyword' and 'placement' options to research keyword search volumes and related websites, respectively. The keyword search volume gives you an idea of what words to use for your pay-per-click campaigns and the 'placement' tool allows you to research banner ad space available on websites for your target market.
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How to Transform a 'Brick Mortar' into an E

Hire a Web designer who suits your business needs. Since your business is moving to the Internet, this is the one of the most critical components. Without a good website design with an intuitive layout, you could lose many potential customers.
Research a Web hosting service that specializes in your field. When it comes to the company that keeps your store alive, you want the best you can get. Since the business is moving to an online realm, you won't be able to see problems like you would in a physical realm. Your business will be relying heavily on your IT department and a third-party hosting company.
Create a virtual inventory. Even though all of your products will be moving through the Internet, a brick-and-mortar building may still be required, unless of course you have the capability of shipping directly from the manufacturer or you're selling a product or service that doesn't require an inventory. Make sure your virtual inventory matches what you have in stock. Set up a an electronic system to scan a product when it leaves your business and goes to your customers. This scan should remove the item from your virtual inventory and list an item as unavailable on your website if the quantity is moved to zero.
Warehouse your product. Depending on your business needs, you may need a warehouse to hold and sort your inventory. If you have a small inventory with small items, you may be able to run this out of your garage. Either way, you will want to set up accounts with package delivery companies or the United States Postal Service for your shipping needs. If you run a business out of your home, you may qualify for tax breaks on the area of your home that you use for business purposes.
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How to Transfer Data in Web Form to a Database

Create a database. Note down the input fields on your existing web form. For example, if your form contains fields for 'Name,' 'Address,' 'Email' and 'Phone Number,' create these corresponding fields in your database.
Create a form handling page. This will contain scripts that will connect the web form to your database and store the entered information. You will need to use programming languages such as ASP or PHP along with SQL to create a script to have the data stored in your database.
Edit your web form. Using an HTML editor such as MS Frontpage or Dreamweaver, change your '
' tag to submit to your form handling page. For example, if your form handling page is named 'formhandler.php,' the '
' tag will look like this:
Save your web form and form handling page and upload it to your web hosting account.
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