SO what are those 12 steps to start your online bakery? We'll you would be a little surprised to see how being online is MORE profitable than being in stores!
All right, guys, let's hop right into it. It is Damian for Marketing Food Online.
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Welcome to my YouTube channel. I am a food entrepreneur and I teach at food entrepreneurs like you, how to get your food business or food product or food truck, or pretty much anything related to food up and running and making you a profit. And in this video, I'm going to go over 12 steps to get your bakery products online.
I'm going to go step by step on how to do that and what exactly is needed to get your website up and running as well to help you get started. So before we do, we hop right into that. Let me let you in on a little secret. If you don't know by now, you definitely want to be incorporated with a food business. And if you're not sure how to actually do that, you can even check out ink file.com.
We're going to have a description down in the description section of link for you. Check out heat file. You can create an LLC with info.com. They've actually incorporated over 250,000 businesses like yours, and they do it online. And it literally takes about 10 minutes and they have a fantastic special, they've actually got a silver package where you can incorporate for $0 million. Plus your state fee. Now those state fees of course vary by state, but it takes less than a few minutes just to do it and check out and file.com and let's hop right into it. So step one, you need to check out whether or not you can do it from home. Now, cottage food operations is a food based business that's out of your home. Most States actually, don't let you do it from home as far as selling online, but there's many that actually do so you need to check out first, number one, can you operate under the cottage food law or rent out a commercial kitchen?
Now you could create a business and use a commercial kitchen for your commercial food business enterprise. And of course, use that to ship products and make the products there. And of course the licensing inspections and everything is already done is done through that commercial kitchen. Every state has commercial kitchens, and it can allow you to create your own bakery business online by doing that. So you got to check and see what is your state allows and how does it work? Can I do it under the cottage food law from home directly, or do I need to be in a commercial kitchen, step two, licensing permits and potentially food handlers cards. Now you be some States require what's known as food handling certificates. So you got to take a small course that normally they're about 50 to , not very expensive, but it's basically a food handlers course.
That'll cover food, handling food, sanitation, packaging, uh, storing food and all of that good stuff. And it'll vary by state. Some States require it. And some States actually don't, which is great, uh, and also license and permits. Now the state will have a license and a permit that you may potentially need to get on the state level and on the local level and the counties and cities that you're operating from, they may also have business licensing or other permits that will be necessary for you to operate a food business in that County or city. So check number one, your state, and then the County and city that you live in. Step three, you need to incorporate now, as I mentioned in briefly in the introduction, I gave a little plug there for inc file.com because they have a really, uh, the price for you to do it actually online.
Isn't very, very inexpensive, and I'm always trying to help you guys save money when you're starting your food business, but make sure you incorporate now, believe it or not, some States don't require you to be incorporated. They may require you to have business licensing and they may require you to have certain permits and such, but some States actually don't require you to have it yourself incorporated. I highly suggest to protect yourself, please, please incorporate your bakery business, okay? Because you need to protect your personal belongings and personal assets in case something potentially ever happened, uh, from your business that you're not going to be liable. Your business will be liable. Okay. And the simplest the most easiest way is that LLC, you can choose to do whatever way you want. They have S corporate, the C Corp and a lot of different ways to incorporate your entity as it's known, but doing it as an LLC is definitely the way to go in my opinion.
Okay. All right. So next up number four, step four, ultra ultra important after you incorporate, make sure you get a food business insurance policy. Okay. Now those are about four to 500 bucks a year, and you can actually get a setup every month. You're paying it monthly, as opposed to putting that much money out front. Because even though you're producing baked goods as such, somebody could potentially get sick or have an allergic reaction or something to that effect. And you want to make sure that you've got an insurance policy in place for your food business. Okay. That has nothing to do with a homeowner's policy or any of that sort it has to do with your food products and the things that you make for your food business. Okay. So step five. Um, so where are you going to sell online? I highly recommend, yes, you build your own website, but I'm going to get to step six and explain something a little different.
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Step five is building your own website. Now you can literally do this yourself. You don't have to be a website builder, a weebly.com, a Shopify. They have website building software that makes it really easy to build. The reason why I ask I say about the two of them, those two in particular. And by the way, in the description, you can find a link for both of them and you can check them out on your own and sign up and just give it a shot. They actually have a trial period that you can check out the website and kind of get, get accustomed to it and get familiar before you sign up. So the web hosting aspect of it, once you have a domain name, these are the two, these are two platforms that I personally have built websites on, and they do the web hosting for me.
So web hosting for your website is ultra important as well. And all of that can go directly through Weebly as well as Shopify. Okay. So step six, this was the one I'm going to talk about not only building your own website, but you need to build a store on eBay and Etsy, not on Amazon yet. And I'll explain why, but eBay and Etsy first. Why? Because eBay and Etsy have builtin customers already looking for baked goods and food products on those platforms, millions of customers go to those sites to believe it or not. After you build your own website, you're honestly not going to get millions of visitors. It's just how the internet works. It has a lot to do with SEO and a bunch of other technical terms up, but that's a whole nother video. So open a store on eBay and Etsy, get your products online, to have some type of presence online.
They'd build your own website. Like I said, through Shopify or Weebly. Okay. Step seven. What do you want to make? What exactly are you going to make? Create a menu of recipes? What's silly. What's so great about baked goods. And here's the great thing because I'm in the baking business. You're not limited by literally everything. Anything you can create an enormous amount of like either cakes, uh, different types of cookies, uh, chocolate pretzel rods, um, baked bunk cakes. You can do even believe it or not. Some cheesecakes, there are certain cakes that we still make that you can ship perfectly in the mail. Okay? But the flavors and different, different types of flavors combinations are endless. So your imagination will only be the limit that you've got baked goods online is just a no brainer. And you're reaching millions of customers by doing this. Okay.
Now, number eight, this is really important when you feel the orders pick a specific date every day of the week, Spitz specifically pick one day, okay. Accumulate your orders. Maybe it happens to be on Monday. Okay? So from Tuesday all the way to Sunday, you're collecting orders. And then on a Monday, you're going to fill them, okay. Now I say this because it's best. If you can ship out all those fresh items on a Monday, because priority two day mail USBs is what we use. And literally by Wednesday or even Thursday, you will have your product there and it's fresh. Okay? Believe it or not, it's perfectly fine. I've actually been doing this for 12 years. We ship hundreds of different types of baked goods. And this is a really great way to start. Okay. You can change is always changes up down the road, but if you're just starting pick one day that you can bake all of your orders, uh, number nine packaging.
So how are you going to package it? What's your logo going to look like? What is the brand? What's the concept behind you and what you bake. That's what your brand is. And if you don't have a logo, there's companies out there that can make them for 40, 50, even 60 bucks, you don't have to spend a lot of money. Actually, there's a company I use. It's a logo, nerds.com. So if you're looking for a logo for your baked goods and you want to create something really unique looking, I'll have done a description again, I'll have also the link for that too. The logo nerds.com. They can make a, um, a logo for you in a matter of about two to three business days. And they give you six different designs to choose from, which is even better. So take a look at that as well.
You don't have to be a graphic artist or designer to do that. That's going to be the look of your baked goods, and that can go in your boxes. It can go in your packaging, whatever it may be. Step 10. You're going to have to have a payment processor. So in e-commerce you have a web hosting like a Shopify, we believe, but how are they going to check out? You need to establish that when you create your own website, you need to have a PayPal account or like a Stripe account, PayPal and Stripe are payment processors. So if someone uses a credit card on online on your website, they need to have some type of an account to process it. Now, even with Etsy and eBay, you got to have a payment processor signed up, so go to PayPal or stripe.com and get yourself an account setup.
It's actually free to start the account. And then that way they can process your or your orders for you. Okay? Now, step 11, this is where you begin to create your listings. These are going to be the products that you're going to sell. You got to create the listing on the website, like on eBay or Etsy. You've got to add pictures, descriptions, keywords, information about the product, a price point, shipping, shipping, timeframe, all of that stuff. So that's going to get you started, that's the final step to get you in the online world with your baked goods. Okay. And then step 12. One of the most important that'll encompass, everything is you got to have social media presence on all the platforms everywhere, because that's how you're going to promote your product. Now you could do that by, by doing it for free. If you take the time to do it, you don't have to run ads, but you can literally begin to promote your products through social media.
So these 12 steps are a great foundation to get your bakery business online by creating your own website on Weebly or Shopify, get that web hosting up and running, and then get yourself set up with a payment account and then get yourself incorporated and everything else. And then that's going to be a great stepping stone for you to get started. So I hope that breaks down really simplistic understanding of how you can create a online bakery business and begin to make money with your passion for baking. So this was helpful as always, please do, give me a big thumbs up and if you have any questions, let me know, and I'll see you guys on our next video. Thanks for watching marketing food online. And if you are looking to create your own food truck started home-based food business. Under the cottage food law franchise, a food operation start a packaged food business, private label, your own food product, sell on Amazon, get your own online store or sell food online. Remember to subscribe and check out these videos for more resources, take care.