How to Sell Online From Scratch: Store, Payments, Shipping and First Orders (2026)

To sell online from scratch, open a store shoppers can buy from, connect a way to get paid, set what delivery costs, and place a test order before you share the link. In LotsStore that is a handful of pages in one dashboard, and your store opens on a free yourstore.mylots.store address. The steps below are in the order that saves you rework, with the settings that catch first-time sellers out.

Every LotsStore step below was checked against the live product, its help pages and its API docs on 28 October 2026. The few outside facts (card fees, free plans, Google listings) come from those companies' own pages, checked the same day.

The whole job on one page

Three decisions before you start

1. What you sell. LotsStore is built for products you make or hold in stock: things with a price, maybe a size or a colour, and a count of what's left.
2. Where the store lives. Every store gets a free name.mylots.store address with HTTPS. You can connect your own domain on any plan whenever you are ready, so there is no reason to wait for one.
3. Which country you sell from. You pick it when you open the store, and it sets your currency (a US store sells in USD, an Indian store in INR). It cannot be changed later, so choose the country you really trade from. You can choose from 16 countries, listed in the FAQ.

What it costs to start

LotsStore is priced per store, never per sale. Every feature is on every plan, products, orders, customers and teammates are unlimited, and LotsStore takes 0% of your sales. Your payment provider charges its own fee, separately.

Prefer no plan? Pay as you go is $15 per store a month from credits, charged a little each day. New accounts get free credits when they sign up, no card, enough to run one store for about a month. Prices checked on 28 October 2026 on the pricing page.

If you want to start at $0 a month, other tools offer that. Square Online has a Free plan at $0 a month per location, with 3.3% + 30¢ on online card payments, and Big Cartel has a free Gold plan with limited features (both checked on 28 October 2026 on their own pricing pages). LotsStore has no free plan: you start on free credits, then pick a plan or pay as you go.

Card fees are a separate line on every platform. Stripe's pricing page lists 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards (US page, checked on 28 October 2026; other countries have their own rates). With LotsStore that goes to Stripe from your sales, and LotsStore adds nothing on top.

Step 1: Open your store

In the dashboard, click Create store and fill in four things: Store name, Subdomain (leave it blank to generate one from the name), a Short description, and Country you sell from. Your dashboard opens straight away.

Nothing is public yet. Until you publish, anyone who opens your address sees a "not found" page, so you can set everything up in private. The Store readiness list on the Overview page tracks what's left: add products, publish, customise appearance, turn on payments, connect your own domain and confirm your support email.

Step 2: Add what you sell

Open Products, then Add product. Each product has a title, subtitle, price, category, SKU, description, availability and photos (the first photo is the one shoppers see). The Status field is Published by default; choose Draft if you want to finish a product before anyone sees it. Your store sells in your country's currency, so you only type the price.

• Sizes and colours are variants, and stock is counted per variant: "blue, size M" has its own number. The Inventory page shows what's low.
• Have a spreadsheet already? Under Products, click Import / export, download the template, fill it in and upload it. One file can hold up to 500 products, with variants, categories, collections, pricing, images and stock. Rows that fail can be downloaded so you can fix them.
• Categories and collections group products on the storefront.

Start with a handful of products. You can add the rest after you've had an order.

Step 3: Make it look like yours

Open Appearance and pick a Template, your Brand colors and your Logo. The editor has a desktop and a mobile preview, and your changes stay as a draft until you click Publish changes, so shoppers never see a half-finished store.

Then open Pages and write the pages customers look for before they trust a new shop:

• About and Contact, linked as /pages/about and /contact.
• Policies for privacy, shipping, returns and terms. Their links are fixed (/policies/privacy, /policies/shipping, /policies/returns and /policies/terms), and you write the text. Say plainly how long you take to ship and how returns work.

Use Navigation to put those pages in your menu and footer.

Your own domain. Open Domains, type an address such as shop.yourbusiness.com and click Connect domain. LotsStore shows the DNS record to add at your domain provider, you click Verify DNS, and HTTPS is issued automatically. Your free mylots.store address keeps working while you wait.

Step 4: Get paid

Open Payments. LotsStore never holds your money: every payment goes into your own account, and LotsStore takes 0% of your sales. Pick the ways your customers can pay:

The Stripe and Razorpay guides walk through each screen: connect Stripe and connect Razorpay. Stripe hosts the checkout page, so LotsStore never sees card numbers. UPI pays in rupees only, so the UPI card appears for stores that sell in INR. How to Accept UPI Payments on Your Online Store and How to Connect Razorpay to Your Online Store go deeper.

Last, choose Accepting orders: Review every order, or Accept verified payments automatically. Reviewing every order is the safe place to start. And keep Customers can order and pay ticked, because that is the switch that lets shoppers check out.

Step 5: Set what delivery costs

Open Shipping. A new store already has a zone for your own country, a Standard delivery method and Local pickup. That Standard delivery starts at a rate of zero, which means free shipping until you change it, so set your real rate first.

• Add a zone for each area you deliver to (countries, optionally states and postcode rules).
• Add a method to each zone: a name, a rate and a delivery estimate.
• Type an amount in Free above to give free shipping on bigger orders.
• Click Save shipping settings, then test an address inside each zone and one outside.

LotsStore uses the rates you type. It doesn't fetch live carrier prices or print labels, so work the rate out from your carrier's rate card, buy the label from your carrier, and add the tracking number when you ship. The full walk-through, with a worked example, is in How to Set Up Shipping Zones and Rates for Your Online Store.

Step 6: Sort out tax

Open Taxes. What you do depends on whether you are registered for tax:

• Not registered anywhere? Leave Where you're registered empty. Your store then charges no tax and issues receipts.
• Registered? Click Add registration for each place (for example UK VAT, Texas sales tax or India GST), then add a rate under Tax rates. For many countries the Taxes page shows a suggested standard rate with the date it was checked and its source. You check it, click Use or Add this rate, and save. LotsStore never adds or changes a saved rate for you.
• Prices with tax in or added at checkout: the My prices include tax switch decides which, and your prices show "incl. tax" or "+ tax" to match.
• Stripe Tax is optional. If you take payments with your own Stripe account, you can switch on Use Stripe Tax and let Stripe work out the tax for each shopper's address. Stripe charges you for it.

When you accept an order it gets a numbered receipt or invoice, titled for your home registration. LotsStore calculates from the registrations and rates you set. Deciding where you must register, choosing the right rates and filing returns stay with you, so check with your tax office or an adviser before you start selling. Tax on your store has the full detail.

Step 7: Test an order, then go live

1. Start in Test mode. On Payments, set Payment mode to Test mode. Stripe and Razorpay then take only test payments, so you can try an order without real money. Use Stripe's test card 4242 4242 4242 4242 with any future expiry date and any CVC, or one of Razorpay's test cards.
2. Remember what stays real. In Test mode, UPI and WhatsApp orders are still real, so don't place a pretend order through those.
3. Place the order yourself. Open your store, add a product, check out, then open Orders and see how it looks. Before you accept it, Reject order refunds it in full.
4. Switch to Live. Set Payment mode to Live mode, connect Stripe or Razorpay again, because test and live accounts are separate, and click Save payment settings. Razorpay activates live payments after it checks your business details.
5. Publish. On the Overview page, click Publish storefront in the Store readiness list, then Publish now. Your address is public from that moment, and you can keep adding products afterwards. If you would rather keep a quiet launch, the SEO tab in Appearance has Hide this store from search engines: customers with the link can still shop, and you untick it when you want to be found.
6. Confirm your support email. Open the confirmation link LotsStore emails you. Customer replies go to that address once it's confirmed.

Step 8: Run your first orders

With Review every order on, every order arrives as an order request that you accept before it goes ahead.

1. A new order comes in. To hear about it without keeping the dashboard open, turn on WhatsApp alerts in your store Settings: add your own number and confirm it with a code. You get a message for each new order with the order number, the number of items and the total, plus a button that opens the order. The messages come from LotsStore's business account on WhatsApp and only you receive them.
2. Check the payment. Stripe and Razorpay orders show as paid. For UPI, click Confirm payment received after you've found the payment in your own bank or UPI app, or Payment not found. You set how long a shopper has to pay (5 minutes to 24 hours), and an unpaid order expires with its stock going back on sale. Once a shopper reports paying, you have 24 hours to check and accept.
3. Click Accept order. Or Reject order, with a reason.
4. Ship it. Click Start processing, then Mark shipped with the courier, tracking number and tracking link, then Mark delivered.
5. Refund if you need to. After you accept, Send refund returns all or part of an online payment, and Cancel and refund cancels the order and refunds what's left.

How to Sell on Instagram and WhatsApp Without Losing Orders in DMs shows how this order flow replaces screenshots and scrolled-away chats.

Where the first orders come from

• People who already ask you. Put the store link in your Instagram profile and your WhatsApp business profile, and send it to everyone who has messaged you about a product. A store link gives each of those orders a number, a total and a stock count.
• A code for first orders. Open Discounts and create a percentage or fixed order discount, with a limit if you want one.
• Google's free listings. Google's Merchant Center help says products can appear at no cost on Google Search, Maps, Gemini, YouTube, the Shopping tab, Images and Lens. It asks for shipping settings in many countries, recommends adding your return policy, and doesn't promise your products will show (checked on 28 October 2026). It runs through a separate Google Merchant Center account.
• Reviews you approve. Customers who bought from you can leave reviews, and you decide which ones show.
• Analytics. Open Analytics to see revenue, orders, average order value and the funnel from visit to order, compared with the previous period.

Mistakes that cost first-time sellers money

• Leaving Standard delivery at zero. It ships free until you change it.
• Leaving Payment mode on Test. Stripe and Razorpay keep taking test payments only.
• Forgetting to publish. Until you do, your address shows "not found".
• Choosing the wrong country. It sets your currency, and it can't be changed later.
• Skipping the policies. Shipping times and returns are what a first-time buyer looks for.
• Setting a tiny UPI payment window. A shopper who needs ten minutes to find their phone will find the order expired, and the stock back on sale.

If you build stores for clients

If you are a web designer or agency, the same steps repeat for each client, and one LotsStore account holds all their stores. The Business plan covers 10 stores at the lowest price per store of the three plans, each client gets the role they need (owner, admin, manager, staff or viewer), and each store takes payments into the client's own Stripe or Razorpay account, with 0% of their sales to LotsStore. LotsStore for Agencies walks through the setup, and LotsStore Pricing Explained covers the plans.

What LotsStore leaves to you

LotsStore is for selling products you make or hold. It doesn't fetch live carrier rates or print shipping labels, it has no returns workflow, and it doesn't file your tax returns. You set shipping rates yourself, ship with any carrier and add the tracking number, and you handle returns directly with your customer.

Manage your store from ChatGPT or Claude

Everything above works in the dashboard, and nobody needs an assistant. If you already use ChatGPT, Claude or another AI assistant, LotsStore works with the AI agent you already use: connect it on the setup page and ask in plain words, for example "Which orders are waiting for me to accept?" or "Create a 10% code WELCOME10 for first orders." Every change shows in your dashboard. Adding a custom connector with full read and write depends on your ChatGPT plan, and on some plans only admins can add one, so check OpenAI's current plan details.

FAQ

How do I start selling online with no money?

Pick a tool with a $0 plan or free credits, and keep your first batch of products small. Square Online has a Free plan and Big Cartel has a free Gold plan with limited features (checked on 28 October 2026). With LotsStore, new accounts get free credits when they sign up, no card, enough to run one store for about a month, and you can connect your own Stripe or Razorpay account or take UPI and WhatsApp orders. Card payments still carry your payment provider's fee on any platform.

Do I need a website to sell online?

Not to get your first orders. You can sell through Instagram and WhatsApp chats, but orders get lost there. A LotsStore store opens on a free name.mylots.store address, so you get a store link to share, and you can connect your own domain later.

How do I get paid when I sell online?

Connect a payment provider you own. With LotsStore, shoppers pay into your own Stripe account (in the countries Stripe supports) or your own Razorpay account (for businesses registered in India), by UPI to your UPI ID, or by placing the order on WhatsApp and settling with you directly. LotsStore never holds the money and takes 0% of your sales.

Do I have to charge tax when I sell online?

That depends on where you're registered, and it's your decision. If you aren't registered anywhere, leave the registration list empty and your store charges no tax. If you are, add your registrations and rates on the Taxes page, or switch on Stripe Tax if you use Stripe. LotsStore doesn't decide where you must register or file your returns, so check with your tax office or an adviser.

Which countries can I sell from?

Sixteen: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and India. You pick your country when you open the store, and the store sells in that country's currency.

Can I use my own domain?

Yes, on every plan. Start on the free name.mylots.store address, then add a domain such as shop.yourbusiness.com on the Domains page, add the DNS record LotsStore shows, and click Verify DNS. HTTPS is set up for you.

Sources

Checked on 28 October 2026: LotsStore home page, pricing, Stripe guide, Razorpay guide, tax guide, API docs, the live pricing facts for LotsStore, Stripe pricing, Square Online plans, Big Cartel pricing and Google Merchant Center free listings.