Online Store Products, Services And Tools I Recommend

95 thoughts on “Online Store Products, Services And Tools I Recommend”

1. Pingback: Tweets that mention Online Store Products, Services And Tools I Recommend | MyWifeQuitHerJob.com -- Topsy.com

2. Great list Steve, it’s good to get into the mind of an online store entrepreneur. I suggest checking out Grasshopper and kall8 for great phone services as well if you need to appear to have a phone tree with several destinations. I haven’t found need of that yet. I still lean toward Mailchimp too, but I know aWeber is really popular. ReadyNAS is heavy duty for a personal computer or two, are you running servers at home? If you wished you could really figure out more on one of these tools what do you think it would be? Great stuff!

   1. @Rob
      There so much competition these days that it’s hard to do a thorough review of every service. It’s best to go with what works for you and what you have experience with. I was a ready NAS duo at home rather than a regular PC running RAID because its easier to maintain than a server. Ready NAS also offers boxes with 5 slots so you can run RAID 5. Evaluating more of these tools is not a question of time as opposed to a question of need. Decide the minimum requirements for your business and pay as little as possible.

3. Steve, nice blog post! I would love to discuss an affiliate partnership with you. I represent Volusion’s affiliate program. Email me to discuss this. We’ll make it really interesting for you (private commission offer).

4. Hi, I’d like to get into the online store, business advertising, and e-commerce business.
   How do I go about doing just that, safely ?
   I live in South Africa, and business opportunities here are rare if you do not have thousands in startup capitol.
   I am a 3D game designer, and also a free-lance salesman currently busy with a 3D car racing game which I’d like to use for business advertising.

   But at this current moment I am employed at a motor vehicle dealership as a parts manager(very demotivated – and depressed doing business for someone else instead of for myself), but has been dreaming of my own thing since childhood. Also had a few small businesses, which offcoarse failed due to unstable partnerships, finances and mistakes made.

   Advise please !

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6. Steve Chou,
   You have given so very much from your own experiences to others in creating this site. I, for one, have searched on line for many many months for a resource like you offer here. I have downloaded or read perhaps 10 different eBooks and gone through maybe 100 different sites about ‘On Line Marketing’, ‘Affiliate Marketing’, and ‘On Line Stores’ in my endeavour to find answers to some very ellusive questions. Mostly I am just like the many others interested in your site, I crave information which is accurate, complete, and current. What sincerly impressed me the MOST about your site is that you appear to be an HONEST man, from all that I see which you have shown. I commend you for this character trait, which is rapidly vanishing, and for being generous enough to share a great deal of valuable information with people like myself without seeking personal gain.
   Thank you,
   Dennis Simmons

   1. I agree, thanks a mill Steve

7. Hello,

   Do you know anything about SiteBuildit.com(SBI)? You would set up your name and create your website through them. They seem to be a bit more expensive but it seems they have great tutorials and help for setting up your site.

   Thank you.

8. The sharing is marvelous! You have revealed the must-have softwares, applications, tools and elements in order to have a successful online business! Would like to know if you purchased the licensed Adobe Photoshop? It is quite expensive, right?

   1. Photoshop is WILDLY expensive [I’d been a graphic designer for almost 20 years so this is something I know a little about, and not something I’d expect Steve to know — he can school me in electrical engineering 😉 ]. While Photoshop IS the standard, there is also Corel PaintShopPro — vastly cheaper [$49.99 at Corel.com] which only professional designers could tell the difference… and only when it comes to print color matching. For online work, it will do everything you need and more.

      I promise I don’t work for them, have nothing to gain for the recommendation, but have used their software [and Adobe Photoshop as well] since 1992 and feel very confident endorsing their product.

9. I am trying to find a product or products that I can sale in my business. Stores on line will set up my first store front. I am Looking for someone I can trust. I am about making money. I have clientele, that not the problem. The problem is when
   I visit some of the websites, they are asking for money. The problem I have is I going to sale their product in my store. They are talking about membership before I sale the product. I know it is a business and a services at the sometime. I don’t need no fraud in my life. Worldwide brands are excellent. I don’t want put my ideas out until everyone see my store front. My license #3971550 on Stores on line.

   Thank you for your help

10. Hi Steve,

    I followed your advice and purchased a template from Algozone. I have to admit that their templates are very nice and professionally designed. However, there are 2 problems with them:

    1. It is very expensive. A decent template would cost somewhere $150 – $300. Not a biggie for those who want to really invest into their business. However…

    2. Their customer/technical support service is very horrible. The template I bought is around $200 and I was expecting some sort of excellent support. After I found out a tons of bugs with the purchased template, I contacted them for help but was either being ignored or they replied to me with some B.S. (most of the time less than 2 short sentences) and closed the support ticket right away without me indicating that the issue was resolved. So I ended up fixing all of the bugs myself, which is such a nightmare because their template is nothing like the original zen cart template (they use a lot of their own scripts and functions that could not be easily located). Nobody on the zen cart community forum was able to help me as well. Some of the bugs are very critical such as the website only display html codes but not regular text. Other bug had to do with checkout and credit card information. These will drive your customers away in the first instant, especially if your store is newly created.

    Just to let you and others know so you would think twice about buying their products. I bought some other ugly templates from different website and don’t experience such thing.

    1. Hi Vincent,
       Your comment is well timed. I’m in the midst of writing an article about why I no longer recommend Algozone for the blog. Now I’ve used and recommended many people to Algozone in the past and things have gone well. However, I had a recent run in with them which I’ll describe in more detail in my post. Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

11. Hi first off I want to say thank you for the wealth of info you provide on your site! Its awesome! I had a question, Since the dollar is weak do you still import from China? Or would it be cheaper for you to buy domestic with your fabrics or other products? Thank you!

    Regards,
    Chris L.

    1. Hey Chris
       Let’s just say that the dollar has to get substantially weaker for it not to be worth it to import from overseas. Prices are rising however.

12. This is a brilliant list Steve. I owned an online store a few years ago and used some of the these services. I still use PMI for mail forwarding and incorporated with Bizfilings.

    Good resources here thanks.

13. wow lots of information here thank you !!!!

14. Over the past couple months I have enjoyed your blog so much. Thank you.

    I have a question for you. I just found out that that quickbooks for macs, or even quick books online (a possible mac option) do not integrate with big commerce nor Volusions . So with my mac there will be no seamlessly back and forth flow reducing manual entry and errors between quickbooks and my online store.

    As it has been explained my three options are:

    1) Use right networks to host quickbooks pro or premier in a cloud. Access anywhere, nightly back-ups that last 90 days, (Keep using my mac)

    2) Buy a PC and then get quick books ( Hmmmm, I am finding lots of software packages are not mac optimized). But a very unexpected cost.

    3) keep my mac and do quick books on line or for mac but no integration.

    I don’t have a clue about accounting, never used quickbooks. So maybe seamless integration would improve my organization from the start?? I haven’t sold a thing yet, are choices 1 and 2 a waste of money until I have clientele and flow?

    Also what is the cost of seamless integration as far as data, customer information security is concerned?

    All thoughts would be appreciated.

    Thanks so much!

    1. Hi Celeste,
       Despite what you read online, there is no solution that is 100% seamless. There will always be some special cases and such that you’ll need to handle manually. I wouldn’t let this accounting issue stop you from launching your store but I would definitely have a long term plan in place. If you think things are going to be slow during your first year, then you can probably get by with a spreadsheet. And perhaps if you start making some money, you’ll have more leeway to purchase a PC, quickbooks in the cloud or whatever service you deem necessary.

15. Hi Steve,

    thanks for putting all this together. It is so helpful. By the way, what about website design? once you have domain name and SSL certificates, how do you design your website and to upload your product?

    Thanks

    1. Hi Anny
       Have you signed up for my newsletter and 6 day mini course yet? I cover your questions in the tutorial

       1. Yes, I did sign up already.
          Thank for putting it together

16. Hello, I was wondering what you mean with the free stores. I use miiduu and bought a package they offer. I do use my own url but I dont get to host my website my self. Thanks.

    1. Does anyone here use doba.com

17. I contacted big commerce and got this about hosting. I am not sure what you mean in your post about it being self hosted.

    Hello Kevin,

    We host the software on our server. We provide a total eCommerce solution and have a ton of features to help drive traffic.

18. China keeps their currency artificially low on purpose to infiltrate markets worldwide with their manufactured goods.

19. NI HAO PHANGYO ,
    i will be launching my online store in India within 2 week i find your website very useful thanks ,i will like to meet you may be in my next visit to china .

20. Hi Steve, My Name is Dave Webb I sent you another one of these messages last night but for I different question..I was just online looking at some China wholesale products just out of curiousity and I saw some things like Laptops, tablet PC and a few other electronic accessories. What do you think about those type of products that I just mentioned prior, I ask cause I noticed the names on those products are not what people from the U.S.A. are a customed to and also I was just wondering is there a some products that you would recommened staying away from? and if so Why?
    Thanks again,
    Dave

21. Hi there Steve
    My wife is in the midst of quitting her job and with 3 kids to feed I’m looking for that extra income. I’ve always wondered how to open an online store and always thought it would cost way too much to even ponder on the idea. When I came across your blog it was like hitting the lottery, literally. You basically covered all angles to the extreme and the magic word “no technical knowledge required”. I’m looking to start an online business with as little $$$ as possible. Topics like shopping cart, credit card, web hosting, web design, worldwide brands was mentioned in your videos, and basically everything you need was covered. Needless to say all the hard work has been done by your good self and sharing your experience and knowledge is without doubt very honorable and a time saver for many of us.
    I have a question:
    Having setup your online business, correct me if I’m wrong. Buyer buys say item X, I received order and place it with dropshipping company A who send item X to buyer.
    Q: Is there a way to get dropshipping company A to auto send item X to buyer without me having to inform them. I ask this question because say I go on a holiday with the family and I have no access to internet but I don’t want the business to be at a standstill with my absent

    1. sorry, another question.
       the shopping cart, can i provide different type of currency depending on location?
       for example. bluehost has my webpage, naturally, i’m assuming here, that it will auto to US$ and yet a i hv a buyer in Singapore and when he view my store i wld like the system to auto detect his location n give him the equivalent in Singapore dollars instead of US$ – cheers

       1. There are plugins that do exactly what you’re talking about.

    2. I am a student of Steve’s, and there are many plugins that do just that. They seamlessly integrate. There are competitive plugins for just about anything. I set up my store at BigCommerce. I’ve come across enough plugins that I am able to automate customization of products, printing of printable products, packaging, and shipping, all without being involved at all. E-commerce is huge, and offering a plug-in for any need is pretty much available. It just depends on how much you want to do yourself. You can do most things, and add more automation to your business as your business scales.

22. Hi Steve,
    I’m curious as to how you handle the shipping. As my store grows (yay!) and more orders come in, I’m finding the packaging/shipping aspect very time consuming. Do you have certain days that you package and ship, or is it an everyday thing? Thanks!

    1. Packing is definitely an everyday thing. We have people who pack orders for us.

23. Hey Steve,

    I couldn’t find your contact button. Feel free to delete this if you find it too self-promotional.

    We here at http://www.klinkle.com have a product that may help many of your readers get started. We’d love for more high profile people like yourself to suggest the product. Reach out to us if there’s anything we can do to help make your list!

    Best,

    Eric

24. Hello Steve,
    I have really enjoyed your information. Thanks. Planning to do the full course in the near future when I finish my current project.
    My next project is for a multi-vendor site in the marine industry, in which I work.
    Can you recommend shopping cart software which supports multiple vendors?
    Regards,
    Tim

25. Hi I was just wondering what the link is to your wife’s site?

    Thanks:)

    Nicole

26. Nice list, Steve. This is very informative, thanks for the good info.

27. Super helpfull article and listing of options. Thanks a lot Steve.
    I have just installed the openCart and they changed a bit how you get to the OpenCart.
    I also could not install by myself, simply because there was an issue ( the process of installing keept on freezing…) so the people hrom BlueHost were really really helpl, even if took them several attempts to do it.
    I hope it was just a glitch. Otherwise I have the cart installed in 20 minutes ( with all the issues)

    THANKS!!

28. Is it fair for you to say on your home page “The products and services that I use for my online store every single day. Highly recommended!” when I don’t believe you use either opencart or BigCommerce? Sounds like affiliate advertising instead… I didn’t think you used either of these for your online store but open source instead.

    Great site – always enjoy your newsletter.

    1. Hey Joe. That’s a fair question.

       I run a class of over 500 students and I work with them on these shopping carts every day. So while I don’t use them for myself, I do in fact “use” them all the time. Hope that clears things up.

       1. Thanks for the clarification. I know you’re always looking for good articles to write…

          How about “A week in the life of Steve Chou”?

          I would be curious how you balance your full time job with this “part time” (haha) endeavour. Do you sleep? 🙂

29. Hi Steve, thanks for this informative list. Based on your estimates, approximately how much do you think it would cost to start an online store using one of each company/site per required service? Can you provide a general figure? Thanks in advance.

30. I can’t begin to tell you how helpful you have been, for me. You have been very generous with the advice and free coaching. I also appreciate this list, it answered a few questions.
    There’s one thing I would add or possibly change. I saw that you endorse legalzoom. Even though they do a great job, they are not the best deal by far.
    LegalShield offers those documents for free, with even their basic family membership. By the time you pay for one or two documents, you could have gotten the forms along with hours of actual consultation.
    That same membership also gets your will done and virtually unlimited legal counsel on any subject. It was one of the best deals I ever found. They impressed me so much that I bought into the company.
    Not trying to hijack this post as a spammer. But these guys have saved my hide more times than I can even tell you. They are as valuable, to me, as your site. I couldn’t do what I do without both. It’s worth looking into.
    I have a video clip that shows how it works on my site and here.
    Michaelerikmatlock.legalshieldassociate.com
    Thanks again for all you do.

31. sdfsdfsdf

32. Thoughts on webbly?

    1. I’m a student of Steve’s- I’ve had a website on Weebly and am currently using BicCommerce. Functionality and versatility don’t even compare.They lack so many features and plugins that are critical for some businesses.

33. Hey steve, thanks for giving good information on your blog about starting an online business. when we sign up for your class will you give us a list of profitable niche to start a online store? Recently I signed up for salehoo but it seems like every product I thought of selling was too hard or competitive according to salehoo. I found one company that offers dropshipping but I still have doubt and I haven’t created a website yet.

34. Awesome list of resources!, thanks for sharing. These will come in very handy for my business!

35. successful online businesses by doing the following:

    Find a need and fill it.
    Write copy that sells.
    Design and build an easy-to-use website.
    Use search engines to drive traffic to your site.
    Establish an expert reputation for yourself.
    Follow up with your customers and subscribers with e-mail.
    Increase your income through back-end sales and upselling.

36. Pingback: eCommerce vs. Other Online Models with Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com | TechBleach.com

37. Nice list steve, i love bluehost and mediatemple. You should include mediatemple also.

38. Don’t forget the best productivity / group collaboration tool ever, Slack!

39. Pingback: eCommerce vs. Other Online Models with Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com | The eCommerceFuel Blog

40. Great list Steve. I prefer Bluehost only for VPS hosting. When it comes to shared hosting I prefer Hostgator. I am also running few domains with Namecheap and I have a really very nice experience with them. But yes I agree with you that Godaddy has a very user-friendly interface.

    Thanks for sharing such a nice list of services and tools with us.

41. Hey – I was about to buy a camera from amazon and I was reminded of a podcast where you discussed someone buying a camera from your affiliates page. Is there an easy link to it? I’d love to support you (even in a small way) because I really enjoy your podcasts. Thanks!

42. Thank you for sharing your wealth of information, it is very kind of you.

    I live in Hawaii, and have a hard time with using these wholesalers due to shipping and handling. Shipping and handling is almost twice as much as the product. How does one deal with this?

    Thank you for taking the time to read this. =)

43. Pingback: Opencart On Godaddy

44. I always use google adwords is very helpful in improving my sales, and to this day I still use it. Thank you.

45. Hi Steve, nice article, finally I found everything on one place described on way i wanted.
    I am newbie Entrepreneur, so I am going to bookmark this blog so I could return on it when I wonder my self for something, thanks for sharing.

46. Thanks for sharing this,i have used godaddy(not good) and hostgator ,i am thinking of switching to bluehost .

47. Hi Steve,

    With World Brand, if you are a person who just wanted to test the market with a particular product, just to see the feedback from it, would you recommend World Brand? since they putting you through to large suppliers who obviously will not sell you anything in small quantity. Am i making sense?

48. Hi love your site. I am having an issue with inventory and storing and organizing my new stock for my business. I have just found your site and will look through your articles ect and mini course. This is a big issue for me at the moment and I would love some assistance or direction as to some steps I should be taking ect when working from home to not only barcode but manage the stock I have effectively . Thank you very much

    Kind Regards

    Sonia

49. Hi Steve,

    I’ve been a fan of your podcast for a couple months now.

    I think the audience you have would benefit from my company’s logo design services (http://littleguylogos.com), and would welcome a link among the tools ad resources on this page. I’ll email you separately, as I have an affiliate program, and I have a feeling that if you do end up adding LGL to this list, you’d prefer to use a link with an affiliate ID 😉

50. My husband and I currently sell on Amazon (mostly FBA, but some MF as well). We are looking into building a webstore with Big Commerce and eventually buying your course to make sure we are doing everything we can as efficiently as possible. My question is regarding inventory management. We currently use Inventory lab and have an accountant we hire monthly to do our sales taxes as well as the end of year taxes. We do not have any Quickbooks software or anything like that. Could you recommend another listing and inventory management software besides Inventory Lab (it appears they only do Amazon)? And is there any other software we would need to keep track of our inventory. Thanks for all your invaluable assistance so far with your free material. I really enjoy reading your articles and how knowlegable you are.

51. Hi Steve,

    I wanted to touch base again regarding a potential collaboration with Packlane + My Wife Quite Her Job.

    Packlane is an online shop specializing in beautifully printed custom packaging with minimum orders as low as 10. You can choose a box style, upload a design quickly, preview it in 3D, and receive a quote instantly. Your designs are saved so you can revise them or restock at any time with fast turnarounds on shipping – perfect for a business that needs to be agile.

    We’d be honored to be showcased next to some of the other great resources you have listed on https://mywifequitherjob.com/online-store-products-services-and-tools-i-recommend/.

    We’d also love the opportunity to explain the power of great packaging design and how it can level up your business to your readers + listeners via a guest contribution. We’d be happy to write something specific for your audience – is that something your team would be interested in?

    Have a good evening!

    Cheers,
    Shirene

52. Hi Steve it would be good if you can add a video of how to use Long Tail Pro as you suggest to use that now over the Market Samurai tool which you have been touting in your videos.

53. Thank you for sharing your recommendation. I like BlueHost but IMHO, SiteGround & InMotioning are better than this.

54. Hi Steve,

    Do you recommend any inventory management tools? There are so many on the market; a few are TradeGecko, Stitch Labs, Order Hive, etc… What do you think?

    thanks.

55. Hi,

    In regard to using photoshop for editing product photos. If you don’t have the skill or time to use photoshop you can use a site called http://www.removemybackground.com – they will ensure that all your pics meet Amazon requirements at around a dollar per photo. Check them out

56. Do you ship your own products? Or pay somebody to do it for you? Where do you store inventory?

57. Wow lots of information here thank you !!!!

58. This is a complete business tools list. Thanks a lot Steve.

59. Hi

    I need to build 2 websites in Bluehost For Amazon Brand Registry

    Do you know someone can help me with that?
    I will pay for the service

    Thank You!
    Or.

60. Pingback: Online Store Products, Services And Tools I Recommend – Internet Marketing 101

61. Wow, what an amazing list of business tools.

    Thanks for sharing

62. This is a awesome idea that you have written on your website. i have got more idea. thanks a lot for this bet idea

63. Is there anyone you recommend for Product Photography for Amazon products? I don’t think I’m doing the best job with my smartphone lol.

64. it was fully greate article, thanks man for share it

65. Thank you for such a wonderful website and sharing such useful information. I am an American living abroad and at +3 timezone so quite anywhere from 7 to 10 hours ahead of US business hours. I would like to start my businesses in the US targeting US customers from here and while traveling.

    You recommend a telephone service i see here. I would prefer for clients to only contact me via email. I will not be able to afford staff to start up or maybe not for a while. Do you think it is in an issue to not have a phone number? Do you have any advice for communicating with customers in my situation?

    Thank you:)

66. Thanks for sharing such a great list of Products/Services, which can help to Start an Online Store.

    Right now I don’t have any plan to start an Online Store, may be in future.

    But, Yes I started another Blog after seeing the Success of my first Blog Ease Bedding Dot Com.

67. Pingback: Blueprint for ecommerce success

68. Hello Steve,

    You are doing a really good job on your website, I’ve found lots of people starting a new life because of your courses. I would like to offer to your course students exclusive conditions of any e-commerce templates from http://www.templatemonster.com – how can I get in touch with you?

69. Thanks for sharing this great list of business tools. Will definitely start using them.

    Regards

70. This is Selina and I have dropped a note on your personal facebook. Also, my colleague Angel contacted you as well through email. Could you give us some feedback.
    Thanks!
    Selina

71. I have an affiliate site
    And let me tell you about how I will use these tools.
    Because I think these tools will be of great help to me

72. Thanks for sharing online store list. keep it up! Thanks again

73. Here are only some that i already knew but I got enough good knowledge by your post. Thanks for sharing.

74. Looking for other alternatives has anyone tried this company? Twinsourcesupply.com they are located in Minnesota but they ship all over the U.S.A and they are way cheaper compared to other packaging suppliers.

75. These products and services are best and I’ve just used the two services which are mentioned in this article.

76. Awesome list, @steve! I didn’t see project/task management there (I use Asana and the secretive Todo of Microsoft)

77. Hey Steve! Love the site and your videos! I’m starting an ATV rental business and I need a good reservation system to add to my site…. Can you recommend a starting point for me?

    Thanks!

78. Steve, you are a breath of fresh air.

    Wondering if you have any recommendations for banking… Seems like not all banks are best for online business.

    Thank you for your help.

79. Your article and content are amazing. Love your page.Thanks for this amazing content.

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