Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

 I have been noticing that lots of sites like eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo, etc. have an option to create your own e-store on their website.  Obviously, the biggest benefit is access to their huge customer base, but is this a good option for someone wanting to start an e-commerce site? 

Yahoo provides an excellent way to get started with e-commerce, simple yet offers advanced features when you`re ready to move to the next level. Your site visitors will feel more comfortable purchasing products when the e-commerce section functions flawlessly. Unless you have a big budget dedicated for e-comm.....Yahoo is the way to go.


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Jim Schoenle
Rise Digital Media Solutions
www.rise-digital.com

To share in my own experience the first business that I ever owned was through ebay. Me and a few buddies from college opened a store on ebay. Over 2 years we sold over 1,000 items and posted around 50k in profit. The problems that you could run into on ebay is that if your entering into a broad market like electronics was then you will have to do one of two things. 1. Being `extremely` creative in your listings 2. Sell your products at a lower price than your already well established competition. That being said, unless you find a niche market where you can have repeat buyers then sites like eBay and amazon would just be good as alternate ways of making sales. Also keep in mind that sites like ebay want to get something in return off of using their site to make sales. By something I mean money, and they want a significant amount which can hurt your profits.

Hi,

The real answer is to build an eCommerce website that has an "export product" feature.  This feature will allow you to build ONE website, export your products in a format that Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Google Shopping, Shopzilla & Bizrate, Shopping.com, and ALL the other Social Media eCommerce stores.

We just built a website called WholesaleKeychain.com (great niche) and we sell on eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Froogle, and all the other comparison shopping sites with this "export product" feature.

Go here to learn more:

http://www.webbizideas.com/website-software/ecommerce.html

Jeff