Hey guys. I like the idea of business, and e commerce sounds like a lot of fun. If I was to sell anything, I would like to sell pens. Love pens. But anyways, other than everything like the site, the billing software and everything, what licenses and whatnot would I need to do something like this? Like a resellers license? And what about incorporation? Would a DBA do? Thanks.
Basically, I would say you need to know everything about selling product over the net. I'll make it simple, you ask from there. Incorp. You do that if you are going in to a business that you personally could get sued. A good E-commerce program will do just about everything for you as far as category's, billing, collecting money, making shipping labels. Just about everything you need. Do a lot of research before buying a program. A lot of them really are bad. Licenses all depends on your local laws. DBA means: your name is John Smith. For your site your calling yourself Mary Jane. John smith DBA Mary Jane.
Ah okay. But then I would have to deal with all of the tax IDs and whatnot, correct? And I was thinking about OScommerce.
yes, you would have collect taxes and send them in. If your doing straight sells, that may be all you have to deal with.
Why are you wanting to spend money on becoming a company. i dont mean this to come accross negative but if your a 1 man band selling 10 pens a day, lets just say $30 profit per day - thats $210 a week. You dont need to be an llc or plc or anythign else for that matter. Get oscommerce/cubecart/x cart etc put up a nice skin and then set it up to take payments via paypal or worldpay or something similar (paypal is the cheapest) and put the rest of the money into advertising.
A license for what? Local business or something? And does anyone know where I could look to apply to resell various pens, such as Cross, Parker, and Waterman?
Do a search in Google for "dropshipping pens" or similar. Dropshipping means the wholesaler sends the product direct to the customer so you don't atcually carry any stock. Andrew WebHostingPad review
Worldwide Brands (www.worldwidebrands.com) is a good place to find products to dropship. I do think you should make sure you set up your business correctly. Get the necessary business license for your city and set up a an account with your state to collect sales tax. You should consult an attorney and CPA about the best business structure for your situation (Inc, LLC, etc). You want to protect yourself against any liability and make sure you pay the least taxes.
The question about needing a license will be up to your local laws. For example, up in BC where I am you're not required to get a business license until you've made about $20,000. And even then, you don't need to pay GST until you've hit the $30,000 mark. So the best advice would be to find your local Chamber of Commerce and go ask them. They'll tell you your options for free.
Here's a second vote for Magento. I haven't used it yet, but the features look awesome. I am planning a new site to be built on magento though.