Free with account
E-commerce from Scratch
By the end of this course you will have launched a real online store by hand: a validated niche, sourced products with healthy margins, a working storefront, fulfillment that runs smoothly, and your first sales.
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Your product deserves better than a marketplace taking its cut. Six modules: store, product pages, checkout, launch — your own storefront, your own customers, your own margins.
What you'll learn
- Validate a product idea and find suppliers without getting burned.
- Build your store — product pages, cart, and checkout that don't leak sales.
- Set up payments, shipping, and fulfillment so orders flow without you babysitting them.
- Launch with a marketing plan for your first sales, then optimize what the numbers tell you.
Is this for me?
Who is this course for?
Anyone with a physical or digital product to sell who doesn't have their own store yet — marketplaces don't count.
What do I need before starting?
A product, or a firm plan for one, and roughly $30 a month for a store platform once you launch. You can learn everything on free trials.
How long does it take?
Six modules at 30–45 minutes each. A working store takes two to four weekends to build.
Start here
Module 0: Start Here
Get oriented before you build anything: what you’ll learn, how the course works, and what you’ll walk away with.
Module 1
Module 1: E-commerce Foundations
Most stores fail before they launch — wrong niche, wrong model, wrong expectations. This module helps you pick a winnable niche, choose the right business model for your situation, and set realistic expectations for the road ahead.
Module 2
Module 2: Products and Suppliers
Products are the business — everything else is packaging. This module covers finding and vetting suppliers, pricing for real profit, and validating products with small tests before you bet big on inventory.
Module 3
Module 3: Building Your Store
Your storefront is your salesperson, cashier, and showroom in one. This module walks through choosing a platform, structuring the site for trust and conversion, and writing product pages that sell.
Module 4
Module 4: Payments, Shipping & Fulfillment
Nothing kills a sale faster than a checkout problem or a shipping surprise. This module gets money flowing in, shipping priced sustainably, and orders fulfilled reliably — the unglamorous plumbing that makes the whole store work.
Module 5
Module 5: Launch Marketing — Getting First Sales
A store with no traffic is a warehouse with a website. This module gets your first sales the smart way: launch to warm audiences first, run small disciplined ad tests, and capture emails from day one so every visitor has lasting value.
Module 6
Module 6: Growing and Optimizing
Getting sales is the start; building a growing business is the game. This module covers the two cheapest growth levers — retention and order value — plus the monthly routine that keeps every metric moving in the right direction.
Choose your track
Two ways through this course — pick the one that matches where you are.
Starter track
New to e-commerce? Do Module 0, then Modules 1, 2, and 3. Module 1 teaches the math that keeps stores alive, Module 2 gets you to a validated product with real margins, and Module 3 builds the actual storefront. Launch with that — Modules 4, 5, and 6 (fulfillment, launch marketing, optimization) matter most once you have something to fulfill and optimize.
Advanced track
Sold online before? Skim Modules 1–3 as a checklist, then go deep on Modules 4 and 6 — fulfillment economics and the optimization routine are where experienced sellers find margin everyone else leaves behind. Finish with the teardown, the glossary for precision, and the final exam to certify it.
Your build brief
Everything you write in the build brief prompts across this course's modules collects here. Download it as a designed PDF — and we keep a copy too, so when you're ready for us to build it for you, we already know exactly what you want.
Your answers save automatically as you type — on this device and to your signup email.
Teardown: the product page that sells vs. the one that doesn’t
Open two product pages for the same kind of item — say, a $40 candle. Page A shows one dim photo, a two-sentence description (“Hand-poured soy candle, 8oz”), the price, and an add-to-cart button. Page B shows the candle lit in a styled room, a 30-second video of the pour, scent notes described like wine (“cedar, amber, a whisper of smoke”), 200+ reviews with photos, a “why ours” comparison, and shipping/returns answered before you ask. Same candle, same price. Page B outsells Page A ten to one. Here’s why, using this course’s toolkit.
Page B wins on information scent — every unasked question a buyer has (what does it smell like, how big is it really, what if I hate it) is answered on the page, in order of anxiety. Page A forces the buyer to guess, and guessing buyers leave. The reviews with customer photos do the heaviest lifting: they’re proof from people like the buyer, placed exactly where skepticism peaks — right above the buy button.
The margin story is the invisible difference. Page B can afford better photography, video, and packaging because its unit economics work — the Module 2 math (product cost, shipping, fees, ad cost, all inside a healthy margin) was done before a single photo was taken. Page A’s thin page usually signals thin margins: there was never budget to sell the product properly because the numbers were never worked out.
Notice what Page B doesn’t do: no countdown timer, no “only 3 left” theater, no pop-up assault. Its urgency is real — small-batch pours that actually sell out — which is why it compounds. Fake urgency trains customers to wait for the next fake sale; real scarcity trains them to buy now.
What to steal: answer every buyer question on the page in anxiety order; put proof where skepticism peaks; do the margin math before the marketing. What to leave: the idea that a product page is a description. It’s a salesperson. Write it like one — informed, confident, and honest about what the product is and isn’t.
Want this done for you?
Rather do it with us? Our Store Build (from $5,000) — a complete online store, products loaded, ready to sell.
See done-for-you services