Starting an Online Business

Breaking into the dot.com business

Starting an online business can be done quickly and inexpensively – if you know how to do it right.

Who among us hasn’t thought about starting a dot.com business, where you earn a living selling a product or service you believe in to eager customers? It can be done inexpensively and quickly, according to two young Chicago entrepreneurs who eschewed a traditional bricks-and-mortar store for an online business and are succeeding at their endeavors.

“A website levels the playing field,” says Angela Lim, 28, founder of Ting Designs, a company that sells purse hangers, handbag accessories and wallets. “It enables you to appear larger than you really are with the potential to reach a vast audience geographically.”
Ms. Lim was living in San Francisco when she decided to launch an online business to provide more flexibility in her work and personal life. “I was having brunch with a friend, when she whipped out this purse hook,” says Ms. Lim, who instantly recognized its usefulness and potential marketability.

Tapping into the connections of her family in China, she was able to easily find and purchase products. She maintains a small warehouse in Chicago and notes that the relatively small size of the product makes it easy and cost-effective to ship.

To save on start-up costs, she did her own product photography and photo editing for her website. She used both a website builder and a designer, and godaddy.com for her shopping-cart needs, spending about $1,500-$2,000 on website development.

Ms. Lim took the WBDC’s entrepreneurial training course and developed a budget that would enable her to live within her means. “I knew that most businesses fail within the first two years, so I tried my best to keep my budget within my own risk tolerance,” she explains.

Once the business was up and running, she implemented a marketing plan that’s almost exclusively Internet-based. “It’s critical to be searchable on Google,” she says. Using social media tools (like a Facebook page, Twitter account and popular blog sites related to her products), a $200-$500 monthly budget for Google advertising and an automated subscriber site to send out information about regular promotions, she has aggressively pursued marketing.

Does she make a living on what she sells? “Yes and no,” she responds. “There will be months where I have fantastic results and other months, not so much. The key is to have mental toughness and the ability to learn from mistakes. Money will come naturally through consistency and staying positive.”

Another local entrepreneur fulfilling her dot.com dream is Shannon Harmon, 31, founder of Multi Culti Baby, an online bookstore offering more than 300 selections of books for children up to age 12.

“After the birth of my son two years ago,” she says, “I found I couldn’t find the types of children’s books I wanted that had positive stories about kids of all shades and colors”

She wasn’t ready for the investment of time and money in a bricks-and-mortar store and liked the idea of the flexibility inherent in an online store. She figured out a way to handle product fulfillment internally and always keeps their best sellers in stock and ready to ship on a moment’s notice.

After taking an entrepreneurial training workshop and researching how she wanted her website to look and function, she hired a designer and provided him with the direction for an attractive, easy to navigate site. “Prices for website development can range from $1,000 to $10,000,” Ms. Harmon states. “If you do your research, it’s possible to find a good designer at a reasonable price.”

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