Interweb experts needed

McCracken

McCracken

Logan Can't See This
Joined
Jul 9, 2005
Location
With your mom at a nice seafood dinner
I know I should have done this earlier in the week but how do you go about setting up an online store? I literally know nothing but I want to try and sell a few things from our business. Is there one out there that won't charge me an arm and a leg to use their service? I don't have a website yet but we do have a facey space page. All suggestions welcome.

edit: As for scale, I'm just looking to sling a few shirts and hats. Nothing out of this world. We're small, check that, microscopic at this point. We don't have loads and loads of stuff to sell.
 
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We just use Wordpress and Paypal. No fancy shopping carts or anything, but no worries about hackers stealing credit card numbers off the site, either.
 
I saw where GoDaddy had a deal that was $5/month and you didn't have to have a site.

I checked Paypal and they can sign you up but can you display what you're selling? I thought it was just a transaction site.
 
Without a lot of front end customization on the build-your-own out of the box carts, your best bet is to go with a hosting company and simply compare prices.
Most have eCommerce/shopping carts with some hosting plans for a monthly fee.
Don't do yahoo, they suck.
Don't do network solutions, they rape you for nickels and dimes and harrass you for upsells.
Godaddy might be okay, haven't looked in awhile.
you may want to look around like 1and1 or dreamhost.

I don't do 'cheap' sites so am never in the market to look to get one built.
Not saying yours is cheap but your budget is and the costs of maintaining one monthly should not equal or go higher than your sales from the site once its up.
I wouldn't pay anymore than 5-20bucks a month for hosting and a decent cookie-cutter cart.

When you start to make some money and want to really manage your click and mortar transactions together, give me a shout.
You'll soon see the limitations of some carts that come with hosting plans but then again, you may be completely satisfied with what you get.
Also, you can put up a site and a shopping cart but you have to get people to the site or you make squat.
You should put a small budget to pay per click ads and start figuring out what each person is worth that comes to your site and spends money.
There is a 'formula' for visitors and $$ per 100 or 1000 visitors and how it factors with how much you spend on PPC ads.

Good luck.
(yes I do this shit for a living)
 
McCracken said:
I saw where GoDaddy had a deal that was $5/month and you didn't have to have a site.

I checked Paypal and they can sign you up but can you display what you're selling? I thought it was just a transaction site.
Click to expand...

That's exactly right. Paypal just handles the transaction. You'd need to host a website somewhere else and use Paypal to handle the payments.
 
Do you even need a real site, or just some window for selling?
What about Amazon Marketplace, basically just be a seller on Amazon?
They do have individual "stores" too
http://webstore.amazon.com/

Or, there are several "stores in a box" sites like Yahoo Stores
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/

or even ab eBay store
 
Basically, I have a farm and I want to sell hats and t-shirts to help fund it. I think what's holding people back is that it's not easy to buy them. You have to call me or message me and give me sizes and an address and then go to paypal. Ah yes, the early internet years. I just don't want to pay $50/month to sell a hat and a t-shirt. I'm just looking for a place where people can go and plop down an order without having to go through me.
 
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