Nina Frye had an idea one day to create an ecommerce store (LTDChix.com).

The problem was, she was a mom who had never done it before and had zero idea how to get it done. Fast forward now to years later and now Nina has a fully-functional, successful store. So, how did she get there? What lessons did she learn along the way?

If you’ve ever thought about starting up your own online store, you MUST listen to this podcast of me talking to LTDChix.com. Nina gives all of her lessons and advice on how she got started, as well as mistakes made and tips. She dishes it all. GREAT interview and you will learn a lot. Please leave feedback in the comments.

Here are the show notes:

The story of how we got started. Moms overwhelmed!
Target a niche!
How did you start the site? Steep learning curve.
Worked with Score. Did a test market first. Found local place to print, spent $2500. Took to a local fair and test marketed to moms. Sold out!
Sent out press release to local newspaper. Simple news release.
Signed up to mom blogs and pitched them. Giveaways work! 2 or 3 or month.
It’s expensive to run a website. Find a good local web guy/gal who you can trust.
Startupnation.com helped a lot. Gave me media lists, help me find a pr person. Got on MSN.com through contest.
Go to retail stores. Promote that on your site. Cold call them. Looked to see where your competitors are, and called the stores they are at one by one.
Setup a wholesale price. Setup a sales sheet, not your website, an order sheet they can fill out and send back.
Use coupon codes. Make shopping cart easy to buy. Use authorize.net for merchant account.
Google Adwords and converting at 60% sometimes.
Learned how to be an ecommerce expert by reading.
Cafepress.com is a great place to try out custom artwork sales.
Going to license artwork for overseas sales. Mom humor on all kinds of products.
We went to show in NYC and found licensing companies to approach. Pitched them. Got a lot of no’s.
What would you do differently now two years later? Spent too much doing website the wrong way first time.
We copyrighted the images using us trademark government.

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