Beginners eCommerce Question

I have what I think is a pretty unique idea for a valentines day gift. What I'd like to do is setup a site to sell it myself (I will hold stock). There will only be one sort of item for sale. What is the easiest and quickest way I can set this up. I'd obviously need to be able to accept credit card orders and all that entails.

I've thought of selling it on eBay also, but I reckon the idea is unique and stupid enough to get a fair bit of natural publicity so want my own site to get full benefit.

 

So you don't really need a catalogue as such?

You can probably just slap up any old html page with a PayPal link with payment coded in the link and use PayPal receipts as your back-office.

 

I don't need a catalogue or anything like that. The target market I have in mind may not have even heard of PayPal, is there any way I could get them to be able to use a regualr credit card.

My main problem here is the timescales as I would need to have everything in place within a week (why I didn't get the idea a month before Valentines day is just mean )

 

You are unlikely to get a merchant account up in this time. You can use WorldPay or whatever to accept credit cards or do a deal with someone with a current good setup (and no, I'm not even hinting at myself, it's a genuine idea ). Depending opn the price and geographical market, you could also accept cheques or cash.

 

I've not fully decided on a price yet but I reckon it will be around 8UKP, what I might try initially is your first suggestion of a PayPal page and I'll also try to sell some on eBay. When it's up and running I'll let you know, as ideas go it's pretty crazy.

 

Well if your target audience has not heard of Paypal - why bother using eBay since that is mainly what eBay uses?

Depending on your location, getting a merchant account is usually fairly easy. In the United States, it usually takes around 24 hours to get approved.

You also might check out 2CO as well - it should be fairly quick to get that set up.

 

You may be able to fast track a merchant account and payment gateway by using the service your bank offers. I know banks like Barclays have their own payment gateway for merchants.

The other option is to sell out to lastminute.com........

 

If you were US based you probably could get a merchant account setup. For you though I would go to a local bank for the fastest setup. Offshore accounts usually take longer than you have. Paypal or 2checkout is definitely the way to go with such short notice.

Otherwise press releases and blog promotions can get your product noticed in a short amount of time, of you have the resources or contacts to do it.

 

Get a 2checkout account to start now, because i think you don't have much time to loose ...

 

Statistics show that Pay-Pal only makes up a small percentage of online spending compared to Visa and Mastercard... you want to make sure you can at least accept those two.