To eCommerce or not to eCommerce

I'm looking for opinions on launching an ecommerce site. I've thought for some time that competition and idiots selling products with $1 mark ups made ecommerce not very profitable on a small scale.

However, I've been looking through BizBuySell and local listings and I have been noticing several ecommerce sites doing $5,000-$10,000 a year that are nothing more than poorly designed Yahoo! Stores lacking any seo/marketing effort at all. A lot of these stores do not dropship, maintain less than $5,000 in inventory and sell product for a decent mark up (maybe 10-20% off retail).

I've requested info on some of the sites I've been seeing recently, dealt with a few business brokers (read:used car salesman) and came to the conclusion that (with one exception) the profits were real.

I found a site for sale through a broker here in St. Louis that I really liked. The product was small (could be shelved in half an empty closet), the site could be purdy with a face lift, and the revenue was worth the amount of work it took to process orders. To top it off, the owner was going to finance some of the deal so I didn't have to go into credit card debt to cover it.

Then, I realized something. I'm not an idiot. Why can't I launch a $29.99/month Yahoo! Store and just do it on my own?

But...

Is there a single reliable source for finding a wholesaler on the Internet or are they all scams?

Do companies still sell to small e-businesses or are they fed up with ebayers and the like selling stuff for $1 over wholesale?

Are the sites I've been seeing for sale flukes or am I really just a Yahoo! Store, a decent template, and a few backlinks away from a monthly income?

Thoughts appreciated.

 

Hello CyberBrian,
It is my professional opinion that e-commerce is never easy. Like any type of commerce you have to win the trust of the buyers, need to advertise your business through traditional advertising methods, think about logistics and put a system in place. This is why many .com businesses went bankrupt in the 90's . They never understood that e-commerce is similar to traditional commerce in many ways. I don't believe that anyone can be that successful by just paying $29.99 , changing the template to a generic template and buying backlinks. You need to be careful regarding to the product you will be selling, and invest a lot of your time thinking how you will market your product and to who you will market your product(s) .. Plus you will need to find ways to make sure the potential buyers will trust to purchase items from your website. I hope that my two cents helps. Good luck

 

Ummm; that original post is from 2005? Can you necro-posting

 

I apologize I didn't realize that the post was from 2005.

 

feels like the owner never entered ecom business based on his sig sites? maybe..

 

very old post but ... ecommerce still is a good business to run !

 

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Ecommerce i've found to be my most profitable websites... go to sleep and make sales.

 

Sorry,you want to ecommerce in 2005,today is 2010,how about your ecommerce?