eCommerce Websites

Yea, yea I know this is a boring topic right?  Or is it?  When you realize that an eCommerce website is a way to sell items online then maybe it's not such a boring topic after all.  There are many ways to sell products online but for me an ecommerce website is the best of them all.  I've tried selling on eBay and yes I've sold some items but buyers on eBay are pretty much just bargain hunters and there is so much competition.  Combine that with the fees eBay charges and well, it's pretty tough to actually make any money at it.  Sure eBay works great for getting rid of things you no longer want or need or even for selling an item that is very unique but my experience is that the effort just isn't worth the return which brings us back to your own ecommerce website.

There are lots of options to pick from when starting an ecommerce website and I'm not going to go into detail of them all today.  Today's topic is just to introduce you to the different options and then on other days I'll go more into detail on each of them.  Here are some options for you to consider (in no particular order):

1. ProStores - Easy to use and setup. Template based.  $29.95/month +.05% transaction fee.  ProStores is an eBay company.
2. Yahoo Stores - Very similar to ProStores. $39.95/month +1.5% transaction fee
   
3. Nexternal - This is another turnkey solution but much more costly and presumably (at least according to Nexternal) more feature rich than ProStores.  Nexternal doesn't post their price on their website (that alone always makes me nervous) but I've discovered that they charge $250/month for their service.  I did receive one testimonial from a Nexternal user who loves the service but agrees it is expensive.
4. Volusion - 24.95/month (and up based on the number of products you have to sell) with no transaction fees.  Free templates, premium templates ($400 - $700) or custom designed.
5. Amazon WebStore - $59.99/month + 7% commission (ouch)

Well those are just a few of the leading providers of packaged ecommerce website solutions.  Of course there is also the option of creating your site yourself or hiring a company like PointBWeb to generate an x-cart based ecommerce website for you but we'll talk more about that later.  To give you an example of one of the sites they created you can take a look at Wild Heart Western, a women's western boutique.