start ecommerce biz

If I want to start my owm ecommerce biz, what's the minimal requirements. Initial investment needed? Thank you

 

I think, It's depends on product you want to sell,,,

 

You need some ecommerce engine, hosting and.. products

You can choose hostgator hosting, it is rather cheap.

As for shopping cart, you can try some free shopping carts which could be easy integrated into the design you created:
http://search.yahoo.com/?p=easy+integration+shopping+cart

or you can try to use MagentoCommerce.com, it is also free, but you will need a more powerful hosting plan for it.

 

what kind of products do you think is potential for ecommrce biz?

 

downloadable products, software for mobile platforms, phones, netbooks ..

actually people sell everything

 

IMHO, the initial investment to get your feet wet will be $400.

This doesnt include SEO package

 

It depends what you're doing... if you dropship, you can do it from $0 capital, depending who you use. Whereas otherwise you could get online and selling from $0 by using a free host with free domain (not a TLD) and free software, but stock would be you main issue. The minimum you would need is a professional domain in my honest opinion

 

I wouldn't consider all the work put into setting up a dropship store a $0 investment. Time is money and setting up an ecommerce site with a dropshipper takes time.

Not to mention the other requirements are that you have a credit card on file with the dropshipper(In a lot of cases).

If you're looking to make money online by selling products, you should just become an affiliate. It's less setup work and less investment in time and money.

If you have tested your market and you decided upon what niche you are going to stay with for a long time, then setting up an e-commerce store would be the solution. Just make sure you take the time to setup a real nice store that people can trust, otherwise you'll be wasting your time. The number 1 most important factor is TRUST with an Ecommerce store. Once you overcome that, the cash will literally begin to pour in if you set it up correctly!

Good Luck and PM me if you have any questions or anything else I might be able to give you some tips or suggestions.

 

Yes affiliate programs do take the least of your time but the difference in earnings is huge.. For example i found an affiliate program and a dropshipper for the same product. The affiliate sales will bring you around 10%(and this is already a big number) while you can earn upto 40% on dropshipping or even more..

 

That is difficult question. First of all, Natan, you need to clarify several questions for yourself:

1. Have you decided what products to sell?
2. Who will be responsible for storing products? Will all products be stores somewhere in your own warehouse or will you rent the place for storage?
3. Who will be responsible for shipping? Will you use such services as UPS, USPS, FedEx or probably some local mail services?
4. Will you manage all the accounting yourself?

So after all these questions are clarified it would be possible to evaluate initial investments into launching an on-line store.

 

It really depends on what your products are. I would start by using a system like shopify.com and then doing some basic SEO, and possibly using Google Adwords to spread the word.

 

You need to have a shopping cart. It's one of the basic requirements in putting up an e-commerce business. http://www.algozone.com does have a wide array of shopping cart templates for all kinds of products that you may want sell.

 

I'd go with $200 for startup capital or $800 including a resale/sales tax license and an oscommerce or magento cart system running on a shared server

 

I think that it is better to use dedicated server for Magento

 

what you need is
- money for make website
- credit card for paypal
- money for submitting your website to directory like :salehoo,worldwidebrand and other
- money for buying some product or you can do dropshipp from china

 

You will need not only a shopping cart but also an open source software that allows entreps to create fully branded online store builder.

 

Does any one know about good ebook using virtuemart joomla or anyone know joomla thread in this forum. thanks....

 

I think most people forgot here the most important part, and that you will need clients, because without it, you will go B/K. so put all the thoughts on bringing clients to the shop, and making them buy, that means seductive shop, and targeted advertising to potential clients related to your niche, split your overall budget into different sectors and use the most with the advertising budget which should be the biggest egg.

 

$30 a month for paypal pro... which incorporates merchant services + hosting plan + a site + the product.

 

Recommend "Magento shopping", free open source, good feature but a lot of setting.