Setting Up Internet Store

[Jutta]

Hi there
I am new to that forum, and I am new to e-commerce. I have reached the stage where I am ready to set up an internet store (selling physical goods) and facing the following dilemma:
- Should I open a Yahoo store in Australia. Seems like they have no longer their various store package options available, but for one which is called Yahoo Store Plus and cost AU$1,999.
- Is there a way around to open a Yahoo store in USA as a non-US-citizen?
- What other browser based store would be the most economical solution for a newcomer?

I came across Monstercommerce, Finest Shops, Instant-E-Store.

Any sharing of your ideas and advise is much appreciated!

[jestep]

I personally wouldn't recommend setting up with Yahoo especially if you have to pay that much to get setup.

I think the best thing for you since you are starting out, is to use a paid or free shopping cart system, and start out using a 3rd party processing system. Paypal and Ikobo are two that would be good to start with as they are widely accepted and both can be setup so your visitor doesn't have to sign up. Once your volume has reached a sufficient amount, you should switch to a traditional merchant account. Since you are in Australia, you will have to use an offshore provider or a local bank. Both of these are going to have a fairly large setup fee, so you want to make sure you are doing a good volume before you commit to it.

If you have experience or are willing to learn, you can go with oscommerce, which is free and has a lot of function and support. Otherwise there are a lot of pre-built solutions that require much less setup and are much cheaper than a Yahoo store.

[Corey Bryant]

You do need to be careful about opening up a store and not being a US citizen. Yahoo is not compatible with a lot of gateways / payment processors and most of those cater to US citizens unfortunately. You would need at least a US bank account, address, and phone number to have a US merchant account.

With you not being in the U.S., you might also take a look at mals-e.com - they might be better suited to your needs.

Definitely consider Paypal but I would stay away from Ikobo until all their problems settle down. I do not even think they a 3PP right now but only providing P2P payments.

[toyourhealth]

Here's a thought. When I was just starting out with Internet sales I used a company called CCNow at http://www.ccnow.com.

I am not sure that it is available to you in Australia but it is a great third party credit card processor for those who are new to Internet sales, those with just a few products to sell or for those who can not get a merchant account and associated gateway.

If you are not sure if your website can pull sales or are just testing the water, its not a bad system to try.