Hello,
It has been a while since I posted here. I have a few questions for those who are already successful with online business.
How do you promote your shop?
How do people know your shop exist?
How long have you been waiting for first sale?
Im based in Japan and "sale" from Japan. There are many great websites, even on this forum thread[B]"Promote Your Side"[/B]. I dont have many products yet, but thinking to move into one category. At the moment I have many different products.
I had emails with questions, even registration but except people from auction in Europe where I sell and promote myself, almost nobody comes 
I went online about 4 months ago.
Any help will be very appreciated.
Adam
You hit the nail on the head, simply putting up a website won’t do much. You have to advertise, how you advertise is up to you but you can try local newspapers, online ect…and I would stick first with trying to advertise in Japan versus trying to sell products in the UK or US which I would see as a pretty big hurdle trying to compete selling from Japan in the UK, US with competitors who may already be based in those countries. In addition to what the majority of people believe it takes money to make money, start slow, start small, if what you’ve tried isn’t working, change, try something else, change the advertising, change the website, try again, keep the budget small, and the biggest plug of all time, don’t ever go into debt trying to get your business off the ground that you can’t pay off if things don’t work out, keep the operation as debt free as possible, literally, if you don’t have the money on hand to either pay for advertising or inventory then don’t spend it period, remember this and you’ll always stay a few steps ahead of the competitors when things take off…
snorocketThank You. You are so right. First of all I do not sell on Japanese market only internationally. You are very right about budget, Im not the person who is going to go into debts in order to try to make big what is not. (hate loans!) Im small and going to be small as long as I know I can step up further. My main market is Europe. As you mentioned there may already be someone, and I know there are (at least on eBay.com, 5 or 6 people sell from Japan) I try to be competitive. I came back from Europe last week and found electronic stuff double the price comparing with Japan (HD Video cameras) but the problem is, Europe have PAL system, but region is still the same as Japan (2). I used to sell a lot of DigiCams on auction in my country, but Europe became cheaper these days and my business went down. Japanese keep their prices unchanged long time, while in Europe they drop very quick for the same product. I know products which are very cheap here but expensive in Europe. This keep me going slowly, but still not many people know about me. I was thinking to start with more than one online auctions in Europe. This would help too. Maybe involve my shop in some charity?
Business is business.
If the money is easy more pile into an area until it is hard. The internet is very very cruel in this regard. Far worse than anything that has gone before where geography might protect your markets.
So think way beyond cs-cart and sales and get into understanding business.
I think we are going through another online revolution at the moment and if you do not plan for very big and very best OR very niche - in your area then you are not liable to last.
That said cs-cart is software that is good enough to allow you to do this and is liable to be so at least for the next few years.
Snorocket advise is a load of twaddle IF you know your market to the core and know business to the core and know how to plan and calculate and deal with risk.
But for very many businesses it is a load of spot on advice.
Page Thank you for reply. Yeah, internet is cruel, there are not only shops but blogs, news etc which are successful and get millions of hits and there are the same website but without any success. There must be something more than advertisement, that brings people in. Planning is one way to go, but action is another 
How is that some websites are on top Google search and some are somewhere, invisible?
Thank You again guys
That is a massive area and not really what this forum is about.
You need to find a general internet and SEO forum and be prepared for some serious learning and lengthy work.
There is software that can help monitor progress such as web ceo which also gives some guidance and help on seo work. The free version is pretty impressive.
Thanks guys. Thank you PAGE for tip. You`re right, this forum may not be for something I asked, but I had no idea where to ask. At least now, Thanks to you, I know where to go from here 