Mistake No 2

Moving on from my error in accumulating inventory I now had a problem with where I was going to sell.
I always wanted a little boutique type store either in the mountains or by the beach but due to the fact that I was just starting out and needed to also work a day job to bring home the bacon and pay for my inventory this obviously was not going to be feasible. (I told you, doing my homework was not one of better traits as a child!)
Ahhh.. the Internet.
Oh yes, this will be good, doesn't look that hard and know my way around the legalities and ecommerce maze, thanks to my financial background, I'll give this a crack.

Yep, I did the unthinkable and attacked the domain of the webmaster.....

Learning everything from the ground up with no experience in web design or HTML I read anything and everything to do with the subject and checked out other sites for design ideas but this was nothing compared to actually getting this site up and running.

The maze of software, ecommerce carts, web hosting, domain names, paypal, etc, etc was never ending and in the end I went with a software package that I could drag and drop with little to no HTML required.

This was great except the templates were not what I had imagined my site to look like and did not give the creative control I was looking for, so on I went researching and downloading applications and software to try and tweak as much as I could  and to this day are still tweaking away whenever I have a spare moment.

So this is Tip No 2 - Do hire a professional

Make a design brief, have exactly what you want on paper and get a professional to interpret your ideas.
This will save you time and and money in the long run, give you professional credibility in the net space and you can focus on what is really important, which is marketing your product and making sales.