Want to own an online store, ebay or create my own?

Question

My husband makes a ton of money at his job and I want to quit my boring part time job to be home with ouf kids. At the same time I want to have my own income. I thought selling various items online would be good but is ebay the way to go or creating my own website? How do I find a good dropshipper? I am clueless as to where to start. Any advice on how I can make a few hundred a month working from home?
I tried a few dropshipper websites but I'm not sure if I should go through them. Seems like I have to pay them a monthly or yearly fee and they help set up my store and ship the items for me as they get sold. But I have to post the store on ebay or some auction site, is that right? What's the best way to do this?

Answer 1

There are a ton of places that will give you the products, the store, etc.. But marketing or getting visitors is left up to you and is the hard part.

We have both a small eBay store and a website. The ebay store is a basic store with about 80 products. The monthly cost for a basic eBay store is inexpensive under $16. The costs inccur with placing items in auctions (which is one way to get people to find your store) and store inventory fees (inventory fees are like 8 cents per month per item, keep in mind that fee costs depend on the item, the store and the retail price).

eBay also takes a percentage of the item retail price but not on the shipping. (low cost items is typically 10% of a $25.00 sale, but again depends on volume, item etc. )

eBay owns paypal which is the credit card processor. They also take a small fee on the total amount, depending on the monthly sales about 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. eBay provides a ton of tools for the non-techie to build a store, including tubo lister to upload your inventory easily.

We use Go Daddy to host our website. It is very inexpensive but we have a webmaster that does all the technical stuff. Make sure you pick a host that loads the store fast. A buyer will leave if it takes too long to display a product. Visit a few a e-stores to see how they load/look, many times at the bottom it says who powers it.

If you decide to sell your own stuff the post office supplies alll kinds of free boxes and you can print postage on their website or from paypal and have the postman pick it up. Depending on what you sell you can get a new shipping scale for $40 off eBay that will weigh up to 70 lbs.

At the bottom of our eBay store home page we have a guide called Getting the Most From Your eBay Store.

Here are the links to our eBay store and website so you can have look.

http://stores.ebay.com/LAUNDRY-BAG-STORE-ONLINE?refid=store

http://www.laundrybagstoreonline.com/laundry-store-online.htm

Answer 2

Theres no sure fire way to get your store making money. You have to have a balance of the right stuff, the right exposure and of course the right prices.

Ebay is good for exposure. Now depending on your products they could do well, but it goes with the territory that you will have stiff competition there. It's a good idea to try and auction a few of the products you have there and to see how much you can get for them.

Most websites that allow you to setup online shopping have monthly fees.

However, if you have enough of a powerful computer and technical saavy, you can set up free sofware to host your own webserver (apache) and there are free (opensource) webstores you can have for free if you install them yourself!

Try the first option, if you make enough money you can get a webserver at some hosting company such as www.hostrocket.com (not affiliated with me, but I do use it) for as low as 5$ a month

HTH

Answer 3

You can use eBay, or set up your own website. If you're leary of taking on a "turn-key" webstore (which has the monthly fees), you can set up your own, buying product from wholesalers.

However, the turnkey stores have everything already set up for you, as long as you like the product mix. Remember, you have to be passionate about your business, and like the products.

You could import from this company:
http://www.dhgate.com/index.jsp?CJPID=2126942

They have quality goods that they import from China, at reasonable prices, giving you a fair markup.

Whatever type you choose, you're going to have to market it to make it worthwhile.

Take a look at this site:
https://ecommbiz.net/Online_Stores.html

That page is just about the online store options, but there's a whole lot of information about marketing as well.

Good luck, I hope this helps.

Answer 4

Hi, I started my own company at the age of 17 and became a self made millionaire by the age of 25, hard to believe I know but nevertheless true. I retired at t he age of 50 when one of my sons was in a motocross accident and suffered permanent brain damage because of miracles from above that I actually witnessed he is still with us today. Because of my good fortunes in life I now devote my time to helping people start their own businesses. Read my profile if you wish. I am always available to help and answer your questions. Let me leave you with this thought: "You are only one choice away from changing your life"

Answer 5

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Answer 6

hello! you are lucky you have your partner that has a capital. but it seem you are more interested in marketing or rather selling things. first you must know your aquaintces which things thery are interested most. because from there you can start to think which one you wanted to sell. most successful businessman start from the interest of their friends, relatives and community.

now here in my place food and communiction is best. so i put an internet cafe.

Good luck to you and i hope you assess yourself that leads you to your success in business!