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The Ultimate Ecommerce Begginer Thread

Discussion in 'eCommerce' started by spycraft, Jul 7, 2011.

  1. #1
    Hello all,

    I wanted to start this thread to get some of my questions answered, and also to have it serve as a guide for those thinking about ecommerce. Without further ado, here are my questions:

    1) Which software should I use?

    I know that there are a bunch of options out there - some of which are hosted, while others are downloadable and fully customizable. A friend of mine uses CreLoaded and it seems to be working great, however, I find that it doesn't have the easiest backend (not hard either thought) and the creators don't offer free support. I think you have to purchase a "support plan" from them for that. Furthermore, it's not one of the most popular ecommerce software, so I don't know if it would be easy to deal with issues and bugs that may come up by googling for answers. I come from a Wordpress background, and it's safe to say that since it is so popular, whenever you google a problem, you find an answer... Support would definitely be a big deciding factor, as well as customization and SEO features.

    2) How about payment processing?

    I know that you could use a simple Paypal, but I've heard that there are several problems with that - aside from the delay in getting your money.

    3) A reseller permit?

    I guess that if you are in the US, then you would need a reseller's permit to make any sales. But what is the case if you are not in the US. Say you are in Italy or somewhere in Europe, however, you are still targeting the US market.... How would that work?

    4) Taxation?

    Again - I am sure that it's different in every country... I am European, and I mainly use Adsense and Clickbank at the moment, both of which simply send me my checks every month and I've never had to supply them with any tax info. I, of course, have to file my taxes, but that's solely my responsibility and nobody checks up on me. Are things different in Ecommerce, since you would need to get a credit card processing company involved in the equation?


    5) Dropshipping?

    Are you for or against drop shipping at least as a way to begin your ecommerce journey? What is the reasoning behind your answer? Any GOOD dropshippers out there? Any that we should avoid?

    5) Related SEO question

    I currently run about 100 sites, and each 25 are on 1 niche, so I have about 4 niches. These sites already get some good traffic, so I am considering one of two things.

    a) Build a store on each site - that would take up loads of time, but I can use the traffic that those sites are getting directly.

    b) Build a store for each niche on 4 new domains and link to those 4 stores from every site in their niche. I could link to them from every article or picture that talks about a product that is being sold..

    That is all I can think of - ANY advice would be greatly appreciated!!!
     
    spycraft, Jul 7, 2011 IP
  2. jestep

    jestep Prominent Member

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    #2
    May not get all of these but...

    1. Magento, Oscommerce, Zen. They're all free and can be extremely customized. There's a ton of developers that know how to work with them. There's a ton of plugins and addons for them.

    2. I'm not extremely comfortable giving advice seeing you're not in the US. I would strongly recommend taking paypal and taking credit cards through a merchant account and payment gateway. This will cover 99% of your customers.

    3. You don't necessarily need any permit to sell to US customers. A resellers permit is generally referring to a state sales tax permit. You're not in any state, therefor do not need this. You need to be concerned with U.S. tariff classifications and tariff laws, customs, etc.. There's probably others who are more familiar with foreign to US trade policies. Depending on your products it may be very easy. If you are selling a regulated product it will be far more difficult to do legally.

    5. Dropshipping is great. Maintaining stock is expensive and complicated and can create major loses if you cannot sell a product or there's value depreciation over time. Finding a dropshipper is the million dollar question. My advice is to completely ignore "dropshipping companies", as I've never seen a legitimate one with competitive prices. There are normally wholesalers and distributors for most industries. Find these and see if they drop ship. You may have to figure out how to establish a good relationship with them before they will do this, but this is definitely the way to go if you can do it.

    6. SEO. I'll answer this generally with regard to what I understand about your circumstances.

    I would be really careful with 25 sites in a single niche, or even 4. IMO you would be far better off consolidating into one or a few higher quality sites and focus more intensely on those. Google and the other search engines are getting better every day at recognizing site ownership. They do not want their results dominated by a single company, even if there is some substancially different content on each site. I think you would be asking for problems in the long run if you try the many sites per niche plan.
     
    jestep, Jul 7, 2011 IP
    spycraft likes this.
  3. ChrisDouthit

    ChrisDouthit Well-Known Member

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    #3
    I would recommend PayGear.com. Its free and very easy to set up. You can process orders through PayPal, credit card, or Google Checkout. Comes with all the standard features as well as premium features you would expect from an affiliate manager, but also many premium features as well.

    It has built in 1099 tax tracking, were it actually prepares and delivers for all vendors. Everyone can use their built in one click upsell feature, not just premium members. Also they give their members free membership software, so you can basically set your site up for very little cost.
     
    ChrisDouthit, Jul 8, 2011 IP
  4. MarketerScientist

    MarketerScientist Peon

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    #4
    I recommend you stay away from osCommerce. It has a critical security vulnerability which enables even script-kiddies to access/download your entire customers database!!
     
    MarketerScientist, Jul 9, 2011 IP
  5. spycraft

    spycraft Member

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    #5
    Jestep,

    In a single post, you covered most of my questions and I truly appreciate that - and thanks to everyone else for your help.

    I have sent you a pm - hope you don't mind.
     
    spycraft, Jul 11, 2011 IP
  6. pheneric

    pheneric Peon

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    #6
    can someone help me...I need an easy to make program for webshop. the oscommerce is quite complicated. Some drag and drop software is also difficult coz you need to link them. I found wix easy but it only works online. I want something that I will be able to work offline and easy just like wix. any suggestion?
     
    pheneric, Jul 15, 2011 IP
  7. byens

    byens Greenhorn

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    #7
    see kassanova.org for POS , it supported many platform like virtuemart, opencart,etc
     
    byens, Jul 15, 2011 IP