Making the move from eBay to dedicated site.

pitkin2020

Just because the OP is paying less doesn't mean he actually get less, people do have friends who will go ut of there way to help their friends. I know my computer friend who works full time in IT and for himself in the field will always help out at a heavily reduced rate.

Strapped

I'm currently setting wheels in motion for my own site, but as cyberbob and others said, I expect to run it "in tandem" with eBay and other sites. I'm lucky in having a techie background and family who do e-marketing stuff for a living, so I'm hoping they give me some pointers on the way! If you decide to commision your "friend", I'd still expect a contract/requirements spec/tech spec/maintainence agreement/etc for the project so you can see exactly what you are getting for your £s.

steven_garner

Thanks for all of your comments.

Taking everything into account I have decided to open a Amazon store (will have to get a new bank account opened first as I would like to keep my personal money separate from my sales) so I will be doing this over the weekend.
I will trade on eBay and Amazon for another 2-3 months until I have a better range of stock, while this is happening I will be looking for someone to design the site, if I have to spend 2k I will, I see it as being a good investment.
Also as ArmitageShanks said eBay chop and change the policy’s all the time, I defiantly need to start moving away. (Impressed with repidfirecatch)

I think having a friend doing the work may be a bad idea, I don’t want things to upset the balance between our friendship and as its not his full time occupation I don’t think he will have the time/dedication to maintain the site and really do his best.

Cheers for the update Brooker Dave, im happy the move was good for you, I hope to be at the stage soon!

Thanks for all the help, im sure I will be asking for loads of help in the coming months and will regularly update the post.

Strapped

steven_garner wrote: »

Thanks for all of your comments.

Taking everything into account I have decided to open a Amazon store (will have to get a new bank account opened first as I would like to keep my personal money separate from my sales) so I will be doing this over the weekend.
I will trade on eBay and Amazon for another 2-3 months until I have a better range of stock, while this is happening I will be looking for someone to design the site, if I have to spend 2k I will, I see it as being a good investment.
Also as ArmitageShanks said eBay chop and change the policy’s all the time, I defiantly need to start moving away. (Impressed with repidfirecatch)

I think having a friend doing the work may be a bad idea, I don’t want things to upset the balance between our friendship and as its not his full time occupation I don’t think he will have the time/dedication to maintain the site and really do his best.

Cheers for the update Brooker Dave, im happy the move was good for you, I hope to be at the stage soon!

Thanks for all the help, im sure I will be asking for loads of help in the coming months and will regularly update the post.

I for one look forward to hearing about your progress. (And shame me into putting more effort into my own).

rambo89

building a website is a commitment, not a decision to be taken lightly. My advice would be to learn how to do it yourself as this knowledge would put you in good stead. You dont need to hand code nowadays, just learn how to use an ecommerce package like oscommerce or actinic

rambo89

by the way, oscommerce is free, but actinic is far easier to use

steven_garner

rambo89 wrote: »

by the way, oscommerce is free, but actinic is far easier to use

Cheers for that!

I have decided that being able to manage/maintain my own site will be a huge benifit so this sort of thing is perfect for me.

I was having a look as occommerce, once i have built my site will i be able to upload it to any web server or will it have to be hosted by oscommerce? I ideally want my https://www.company name.co.uk (that I have found out is available)
Also after looking at the demo site they have i don’t like the idea of customers having to register details with oscommerce to purchase items from me, i would rather PayPal checkout so customers can use PayPal account of credit cards, would this be possible? - Also bare in mind that im not that technical barley understand the basics

Cheers

Steve.

steven_garner

I have been recommended a web service called Ekmpower, have had a look on the site and seen some of the customers websites that they have set up and they all look really good.
They also have a very good check out system that included PayPal and Google.
I dropped them an email yesterday asking a few questions and got a reply within the hour confirming that an RSS feed can be set up with little difficulty, they don’t advertise on your website but do have a “Powered by EKM” logo on the top of the page (he said it can be removed for a 1 off fee of £25)

The subscriptions is £19.99PM (a little over what im paying for my eBay store) and I can have my own domain name for £30 per year.

Anyway –

Any experts willing to take a quick look at some of the customers pages and let me know what they think?

Also a good selling point for me is that they say you no need to experience to build a site (good for me as my only experience is pimping up my myspace page 5 years ago!)

Any help appreciated.

Steve.