Hi all, I want to start an online store (website) that sells designer clothes. What is the best way for me to go about doing this? I want the costs of running the site to be minimal. I also want people to have to pay FIRST (I was thinking through paypal, but if there is a better way you know of, let me know), then I will ship the items to them. Any other help is appreciated. Ben
best bet would be for you to find some sort of turn key then if you do not want to purchase your supplies up front
Before you ship any product, you have to make sure that people pay first. That is the first rule of e-commerce. You also have to make sure the payments are not fraudulent and that you are shipping to a confirmed address (same address as that of credit card). You can download OsCommerce, which is a free PHP script and it should help you get started. This has built-in support for several different payment methods.
use oscommerce as its a great system to use with lots of mods readily available. i can host and help develop the site for you, the would be a small set up fee if you want me to design/setup the store then a small amount each month for hosting. PM me if your interested.
Try to find some drop shippers for your products so you dont have to lay down any cash up front. Good luck
Zencart / oscommerce / minerva are few options. Most have already voted for OSC and you may review the forums out there to check no. of satisfied users and also visit a few sites before you get into it. I too offer oscommerce hosting and installation for free (with Ads) and paid (for $50 per year) Cheers, GS
I agreed with Oscommerce, test and proven commerce site. Thousands of people using this oscommerce so trust the other oscommerce users as I trust them.
Apart from PayPal you also have 2checkout.com. There is a one time fee to pay, about $50. Therefore, their fees are a little bit higher than PayPal but as PayPal seems to easily close accounts for bad reasons, it can be good to have both. Otherwise you can see with your bank to open you a merchant account. You will have some fees to pay monthly but the commission on each sale taken by your bank will be lower than PayPal or 2checkout. It depends how many sales you plan to have every month. To setup your shop, if you use a script like OSCommerce or a simple website, you can look here or on free lance sites like Elance, ScriptLance etc. to find a designer/programmer for a good rate.
OSCommerce offers multiple payment options ... and you can always opt for merchant accounts. PM me if you need help and quote on installation / setup - we do it regularly on our site. thanks GS
I don't know of any ecommerce stores that will ship without some form of payment first. It will be tough to find a dropshipper for designer clothes, but so is finding a wholesaler.
Do you have to do anything to accept credit cards, or how would that work? My wife wants to start an online business, and she was only going to accepy PayPal. How does OSCommerce work? Also, anyone know how to get a Wholesaler's license? I live in Indiana.
With oscommerce it has multiple gateways, so if you only want to accept paypal, you just set paypal in the payment modules.
oscommerce is a lot more complex than setting up paypal, although you dont have as many options with paypal
Not really, one click and feeding values for your paypal account - doesn't really make it a lot complex. The latest version allows authorize.net / paypal and you can also look at merchant accounts options (which would require customized code) ... OSC is much better since it gives you flexiblity to control your cart any way you want to, and is rather easy for computer noob's. Cheers GS
id do you a site and source the products by drop ship and we could split the profits?? let me know heres some of my stores http://www.zackwinters.co.uk http://www.allgoneape.com http://www.carstylingstudio.com