I'm very excited to share with you that I've recently settled on a niche for my new online store. For the past two months or so, I've been doing a good bit of brainstorming, research, and analyzing of ideas for potential products to sell, and I think (slash hope) that I've done a decent job of selecting a niche.

If you already have an online store, and are looking for ways to improve it, here's a checklist of 8 quick, actionable items you can do today to grow your business.

The following article is a guest post written by Daniel Clutterbuck of Webtise.

The prospect of starting a business alone can be daunting – how can one person cover marketing, sales, finance, IT, stock, delivery and more? It’s difficult, that much is true, but it’s not impossible. Thanks to technology and a few handy tips and tricks, anyone can start up their own business without too much trouble. As long as you stay organised and focused, you can get your business to a level where it will soon be running like clockwork. Here are some great tips to get you started:

In the past year, I've had the amazing opportunity to start my own business, work from home, and enjoy the freedom of being my own boss. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel lobby, sipping coffee and working on my laptop, since my wife and I are currently traveling and working on the road. It's an incredibly free feeling to be able to pick up and travel whenever we want to, not having jobs to tie us down. I've always had that entrepreneurial bug--always having a new business idea and wanting to start something new--but it wasn't until this past year that my business grew enough to support us full-time.

Before starting an online store, it's important to find out if there is enough demand for your product. I would highly recommend NOT ordering $10,000 worth of doggy snowsuits from a Chinese manufacturer without first knowing if people are going to want to buy them! Spending money on R&D or inventory without first determining demand is a great way to flush all your startup capital down the toilet.

No matter how great you think your idea is, make sure you know some solid facts about the demand for your product before investing a lot of time and money in your idea.

I'm going to explain several different ways to test market demand, but it's probably best to use some combination of these.

If you already have an online store, and are looking for ways to improve it, here's a checklist of 8 quick, actionable items you can do today to grow your business.

Is a blog really that important for your ecommerce store?

When you start an ecommerce business, you might think that you just want to sell your products and not worry about things like writing good blog posts and attracting a following. It's tempting to throw up a blog because everyone's doing it, and then fail to update it regularly with quality content. After all, you're a store owner, not a writer, right? Plus, you have more important things that demand your attention.

I'm Leighton.

A few years ago I graduated from college and married my beautiful wife, Ryan. My degree was in Graphic Design, but I wasn't quite sure what type of job I wanted to pursue. My wife is a true globe-trotter, having grown up as a daughter of missionaries and having lived in Paris, Benin (that's in Africa), New Jersey, and Haiti before she went to college. She did not like the idea of settling down in America just yet, and I was eager to explore the world as well, so shortly after getting married we decided to find jobs as English teachers in China.

A call to action (CTA) is where you encourage the visitors to your site to take a specific action. A call to action might be something like "Sign up for our newsletter" or "Browse products."

As an ecommerce website owner, you eventually want visitors to purchase something, so your calls to action throughout the site should funnel your visitors towards making a purchase. The final calls to action will be "Add to cart" and "Checkout," (or something like that).

In my experience working with numerous budding ecommerce entrepreneurs, I've seen one mistake trip people up over and over again. It's something that we've probably all experienced at some point in our lives (in general life circumstances), and if you aren't careful there's a good chance it will kill your chances of success with ecommerce. What is this dangerous problem? 

I firmly believe that deep down inside, most people have the desire to own their own businesses. Maybe it's something about human nature--we like freedom, we like control, we like success. If you ask any random person on the street if they'd rather work for someone else or own their own business, I'd bet almost anything that most people would choose the latter.

You know what that feels like--that's why you're reading this sentence right now. You have that desire, and I completely understand, as I have the same gnawing urge. So how can you do this successfully? Is it really possible to build a business to where you can quit your job, be your own boss, and even make a lot of money?