Producers looking to sell their products online should be prepared to ship, says Tammy Stephens, who works in marketing at Eichtens. Eichtens is a cheese and bison farm that sells cheese and bison products on Amazon and Overstock, which just opened a Farmers Market section.

"If they're just starting out with Overstock, just make sure they have the stock and are prepared to ship it out, because with the order, you gotta ship it out within a couple days," says Stephens. "It's not something that I can place the order and they ship it out two weeks later – we try to ship it out within one to two days after the order is here."

Eichtens has practice at turning orders around quickly. The owner of Eichtens, Eileen Eichten-Carlson, says the company has been doing online ordering in some form for almost 30 years. In addition to the big-name outlets of Amazon and Overtock, Eichtens runs their own online store and sells on LocalHarvest.

Overstock's Farmers Market section is just launching, but a significant portion of Eichtens revenue comes from their online sales. Stephens says that 20 percent of their sales come from online orders, 50 percent from wholesale orders and 30 percent from farmers markets that Eichtens runs in the summer.

Different products sell better at different outlets. Stephens says that Amazon encourages customers to buy several individual products in an order to receive free shipping, leading to larger orders. On Overstock, Eichtens is selling pre-crafted bundles packaged as a single product. "This is the first time where we've done this, besides our own gift-making during the holidays, and it seems to help with the shipping," Stephens said.

"We were used to gourmet food, local and natural foods. It wasn't hard for us to jump from our normal online stuff to another company," said Eichten-Carlson. "We just had to set it up correctly."

Eichten-Carlson says that anyone looking to start selling online needs to work with the companies. "That's the main thing, especially if you're going through companies like Amazon and the other companies that are online. You need to follow their protocols. And if there's a problem with it, definitely talk to them about it, but it can definitely be done and it does help, and you just have to keep working at it.

"Make it easy for the customer to buy, that's the main thing."

As part of making it easy for the consumer, they periodically update all their web properties. "Right now we're in the process of revamping everything again. We've gotta keep revamping to bring things up and keep them current," said Stephens.

And as for what to sell, Stephens has one piece of advice: "People are looking for local. They want the product from the farm."

Eichtens' cheese products are made at their farm using milk from a neighbor's farm. "We have only young stock here now. Our neighboring farm, actually, is producing our milk for us, because it got to be too much to handle everything," said Eichten-Carlson. Their goat milk comes from a Grade A goat farm down the road, and Eichtens keeps about 300 acres for a bison herd.

Other products Eichtens sells are made by area businesses. "Some of them are local products produced here in Minnesota, some in the Midwest. We try to keep local, and most of our products are done that way. Our pastas are all done right here in the St. Paul area, and our preserves are done in the same way."

As of this writing, Overstock lists 728 products in its Farmers Market section, from cheeses to meats and vegetables, of which 549 are listed as being made in the U.S. PD