Hello there everyone,

Firstly, Id like to introduce myself, Im Matt and just recently joined this forum.

Im running a business through eBay however the costs associated with eBay are going up and up.

Im considering opening a web site and selling it over the Internet.

My first question is:: Do I have to have a Merchant (eCommerce) domain (webpage) in order to sell products, eg have the shopping cart, or is there another method.

And, secondly, If there is no other way whats the cheapest eCommerce domain provider available that you guys have found, and works best for your business?

So far EMWD eCommerce domain hosting seems very good, but its $20 for the domain name, $25/month for ecommerce account and $75 a year for credit card security.

Thank you very much.

Bear in mind they're US prices so they'll be about 50% more in AUD.

As you are someone coming from an eBay background I think that this kind of all-in-one package is going to suit you best.

Just by comparison, if I was to build someone an online store type site, the design and development costs alone would be at least $8,000.00 and that doesn't include hosting, ssl certificates, third party payment gateway fees or domain names.

Hi Matt

Setting up an online store isn't as daunting as you may initially think.

Basically all that's needed to start is a domain name, hosting & a shopping cart all of which are easy to obtain and the cost involved is manageable.

All you need to decide is do you want a .com or a .com.au domain (ABN is required for a .com.au)
How much disk space you require, my rough estimate would be around 1GB and how much bandwidth, to start with a minimum of 2GB, that should cover you until you start getting busy and find the need to upgrade. The price of hosting packages differs greatly between Australian and US hosting with bandwidth being cheaper in the US.

As far as the shopping cart goes there are quite a few free ones out there (open source) that work well and are easy enough to administer. A merchant account is not required as there are other payment options such as Paypal, Paymate, money order, direct deposit and so on, all depends on what you'd like to offer your customers.

SSL - you can either purchase your own SSL certificate for around $99 per year or use the shared SSL provided by the hosting company you choose to sign up with.

Hope this helps, best of luck with your venture

Cheers
Ros

Ozzie in all fairness 1GB space is a huge overkill and you know it.

Max 300MB starting out will suffice for at least the first year unless the cart is selling a better mouse trap.

Cheers

That's what I was thinking to Ros. Even 300MB is a bit much, more like 50MB. My favourite e-commerce site only uses 84.51MB of space.

It was only an estimate, I was allowing space to grow without the need to upgrade straight away when things do get busy. I took my estimate from a couple of my own clients sites that have shopping carts, they are also ebay sellers & sell a huge range of products, one is using nearly 500MB and the other 400MB, one uses magento & the other oscommerce. Maybe Matt would like to have other pages ect on the site as well? ya's didn't have to beat me down about it

Just to re-enforce Ros, we have a number of clients using well over 1GB for their e-commerce stores and even more so plenty over 500MB, so IMHO, having 1GB for an e-commerce store is not such a bad idea.

Pretty wise move I think

Regards,

Dale

Sorry Ros - wasn't my intention - long day took it's toll

No probs mate

Not my intention either Ros, sorry about that.

If you are willing to have a crack at alot of things yourself, and you have had some experience with simple browser based interfaces for editing webpages, then you can do it rather cheap.

Grab some free hosting from somewhere and setup a dummy store for experimentation. All you need is some webhosting that has a script installer (that can install OSCommerce or Zenkart) and time to play around.

You have to use the web interface to add products/manage the store anyway, so why not learn as much of it as you can.
Then when your ready, get some real hosting and apply your experience with the dummy store into the real thing.

Good Luck.
Fee

Hi Matt,

Welcome to the forum..

If you think that EBAY fees are bad then dont go into your own online store.

EBAY pays million in marketing fees to get people to buy your things on ebay. Its not as straight forward as just building your site.

Unless you have something unique that people will search for and you know you wont be beaten to the punch by EBAY advertising etc then go for it.

All the other trolls in the thread just want a buck for your hosting and design.

The uniqueness of the product/s doesn't play a major role in assessing how successful an online store is or isn't and as I advise all of my clients, their website will not be magically discovered they need to advertise and tell people it's there.

I am not a troll thanks Choppy and I'm not out to get a quick buck just for the sake of it I am however someone who has had a successful ebay store and moved away from that arena due to the ever increasing seller fees on ebay, an online store was the better option and I had a loyal customer base with many many repeat sales, however I chose to take a different path, personal choice but I have no doubt if I had chosen to open an online store that it would have been successful. There are quite a few very successful online stores that started selling their wares on ebay such as Deals Direct who started as Auction Brokers, that's just one example, and their product line isn't unique!

As for hosting there are some good value budget packages around and not everyone charges thousands of dollars to design a website!

Cheers
Ros

Hey,

Theres a pretty easy solution here.

Buy a website etc.

Still run your ebay store, but make its prices 10% more than what it is at your store.

Spam each one of your ads with links to your store, and eventually people will go to your store instead of checking ebay.

Cheers,

Chris

I have a vague recollection of e-bay disallowing that in the terms and conditions or something I read.

Be good if it could be done though.