I knew the moment that I finally finished my digital painting, “Untitled Family,” that it belonged on a shirt. From that moment on I asked a few close friends if they would ever imagine it on an article of clothing and I got positive remarks. The next week I placed an order on Vistaprint.com for my original T-shirt.

It was a moment that I had never imagined happening. I know it’s just “getting an idea on a shirt,” but to me, it was a more significant moment. Everything always starts small. So just getting a shipment of one pre ordered T-shirt of my own art was really exciting.

My own success story is one that has been repeated by many others, as well. In fact, some 23 million small businesses account for 54% of all sales in the United States, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Since middle school, I have been interested in starting my own small online T-Shirt shop. I have always sold my old clothes on eBay, so I am very familiar with the whole buying and shipping process of e-commerce. I sold my entire infamous Abercrombie clothing collection for substantial amounts of money.

When I got to high school, I was put into Design sophomore year. At first I thought the class would be boring because it was just basic Adobe. Yet, by the end of the year I had created colorful and surreal posters. This inspired me even more and I started doing more digital paintings than before.

I had been looking into many modern shirt fashion styles and was already visualizing my line of clothing. Artists who inspired me included Rene Magritte, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol and Martin Senn. I am really into surreal and contour line art, and that is what my art is mostly based upon. Ms. Nyrie Gharibian, my art teacher, is always surprised at how quickly I finish my pieces compared to the other students in AP.

I began searching for websites when I finished the first artwork “Untitled Family.” Ms. Gharibian advised me to start copyrighting my artwork because famous retailers such as Urban Outfitters had already started copying artists from small websites going back to 2006. The Huffington Post recently reported a story of small Etsy shop owner Stevie K. who designed necklaces shaped as the countries and states, adding a small cutout of a heart on each. According to the article, Urban Outfitters stole the idea and placed the heart on a different part of the necklace.

I do not know if I want to copyright at this point in time because of my budget. I have many artworks that I know will go up online. But almost each copywriting for a piece of work starts from $150 for only a minimum amount of time. So for now that is off my table.

In fact, there are more important issues other than copyright that one must consider when beginning a online business. For example, a person needs a supplier, logo, domain, and every small detail that will make theirs unique from others.

For my own project, I had to find a printer to supply the printed designs on a shirt. Finding the supplier to print my clothes was actually quite easy.

VistaPrint.com was the first place I logged onto. The quality is perfect and there is no minimum purchase necessary. Printing one shirt is only $7, so the seller can easily make a profit.

The next step was to find a logo design. Logos are what a company or shop is known for — the colors, shapes and simplicity. My logo was based on a sculptor by Alexander Calder.

By far, the most important step was naming the shop. The name has to do with everything the clothing is known for. It resembles the clothing in a way. My store name “Ahzalea,” came from an idea I had one summer. My mother had purchased stamps and decided to take a look. They all had unique Japanese flowers on them. The name “Azalea” stood out to me. But I then decided to add an h.

I was offered five choices of websites for putting up my items for sale: Etsy, eBay, Skreened, Shopify and Bigcartel. I had already had an eBay account since the beginning of middle school. eBay is either for people have a bunch of “junk” thrown in the back of their closet or garage, or for people running factories in China, willing to sell phone cases for dirt cheap prices.

Another option was Etsy. The second I had logged onto the website, it looked too complicated. There were fees for each sale. People running stock piles of items were the highest percentage of sellers. It looked for more of a wholesale seller than for me.

There are many brands such as “Tattly” that use Shopify. Shopify allows you to have your own domain name. The only down side to the site was the pricing. It was only for serious sellers who have are willing to pay amounts of money per month. It gave me a free 14-day trial. I quickly deactivated the account in the span of the 14 days.

In the end the best choice was obvious. I chose Bigcartel.com. Big Cartel provides you with your own independent store to sell your stuff online. The easy part was the PayPal payments. I use PayPal for eBay, and it is easy and fast. The buyer can also pay without having to set up a PayPal account.

Over 400,000 clothing designers, bands, record labels, jewelry makers, crafters and other artists use BigCartel for their online store experience. The site offers affordable (or free!) pricing plans to fit the seller’s budget and pricing. The most important part is that they do not take a cut on sales. 100% of the profit is the seller’s to keep.

A small ecommerce store owner who goes by the name Richard, who runs the shop Luckybunny.bigcartel.com, said he appreciated the ease with which the website works. “I can spend my time making art and not worrying about the web stuff which can be SO time consuming to a one man operation like mine,” he wrote. “I really can’t thank you guys enough!”

Business teacher Elaine Snodgress helped me towards the aspect of designing my site, giving me ideas to make it more welcoming and easy for customers to use.

“Your site needs to intrigue people,” Snodgress said. “People will be off your site in seconds if you do not give any information or create a simple yet professional layout.”

After her intensive advice, I changed my layout and theme. I updated the site and readily gave information about my clothing material, shipping, prices and security. The most important part was that I added a couple sentences about me. It makes the customer feel more welcome and secure to use the site.

From the day I started the shop I sold a couple shirts. The most advertising I got was when the famous singer Lorde reblogged my artwork and many of people visited my site.

Small, independent sellers like me may make up a small percentage of sales, but online merchandise continues to grow. In 2011, online stores made $255,600,000,000 altogether, according to Internet Retailer. The largest share of online revenue was from retail shopping websites. Still, anyone can start their own small online store, and with a little bit of research and advice anyone’s dream site can go up and running in a week.