An e-commerce store is simply a website that lists products for sale. It is an electronic (digital) version of a traditional brick-and-mortar store customers can walk around in.

Before the rise of e-commerce, retailers sold products in brick-and-mortar stores. Customers actually walked into the stores, looked at the products on the shelves, and checked out by giving cash to the person at the cash register. Running a brick-and-mortar store was very expensive as you had to buy/lease a building, pay for utilities and equipment, pre-order huge quantities of products, pay employees to run the store, etc.

The Internet gives business owners the opportunity to sell products through a virtual e-commerce store. Without having to physically enter an actual building, customers can visit the online store, browse through the selection of products, and check out using their credit card. The products are then shipped directly to their doorsteps.

Running an e-commerce store is much more affordable than operating an actual brick-and-mortar store. You don't need to buy/lease a building, pay for equipment or utilities, or hire employees to stock shelves and run the cash register. Visitors browse your virtual store on their own and go through the check-out process themselves. Also, if you follow Store Coach's advice to use a dropshipper, you don't need to pre-order a large quantity of products. Instead, you can purchase products one by one after customers order them from your store.

There are 4 basic things you need to operate an e-commerce store:

1. A domain name to use as the online "address" of your store
2. A web hosting account to host your website on
3. Shopping cart software to run your store on
4. A merchant account to accept payments from customers