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Anyone know of good ecommerce DIY site?
 

After all the BS I have had ove the last 8 years on eaby ,and even Amazon, I am determined to not just talk about making my own website, I am going to do it now.

My dilema is what is the best place to set up an ecommerce store from. I don't want to hire a web guy, that costs more than I can afford ( now that I am suspended from the Fascist State of Ebay)

I have looked at Auctiva, Pro stores, Intuit and a bunch of others. They all sound good when you rad their ads. I did try Intuit, but found they are not really good if you have 500-700 items.

I need a really good site , with lots of flexibility


any experiances / advice?

Why not take a run at some free shopping carts. Hosting is dirt cheap.

Try cubecart and Prestashop. Easy to use and free. You can setup store yourself and host it for 10-20 bucks a month

BUT - Do not expect traffic and sales like you had on ebay! It takes a very long time to get traffic...

thx , I will look at them. No I know it will be deathly, but I am hoping that once I am back up on Ebay and with Az, I will add an inserto to my site with every shipment , and if nothing else that will get me some organic traffic.

Even being down on ebay for 10 days now, I made nearly 1500 in people asking "are you still selling xyz" , I say yes, and send them a paypal invoice. its making me think if I had my own site...hmm.
Thats why I don't want to spend too much on it, but I need a place to hang my 700 items.

1500 emails in 10 days? You need your own store for sure.

My web host provides, for free, an oscommerce store. OScommerce is the basis of my business. It comes all set up, you just have to add your items.

I pay $49/year for web hosting.

Ecrater is sweet, lots of room to load up the merch. But not so good if all you have is Vero.

Ecrater is free, looks amazing, no fees, any payments you wish to accept. They have good Google search exposure as well.

Yup youve got a excellent customer base especially if your still getting emails -

certainly get your own cart then email your previous customers informing them of your new site

if you get a host with fantastico then it makes installing open source scripts very easy - I personally recommend zen-cart but thats because i have experience with it - cubecart - oscommerce and magento are also very popular with great support forums

I used zen years back. Its solid and has a million plug-ins. But butt ass ugly. Has a real 1995 feel to it. :)

Magento is very slow and resource heavy. I would personally avoid it like the plague for a first cart.

But these are just my thoughts naturally

Hi Pod - Yeh I understand what you mean regarding the look of zen-cart - but with all honesty it can be designed to however you like it - Yes the free template it comes with is horrible -

But again if your good at css - and following instructions on customizations then you will certainly make a excellent looking and functioning store with zen-cart -

If anyone is interested in using zencart and would like to see some stores that are currently using it then you can go to zen-cart.com and take a look at the showcase of shops they have

some are horrible and others are great

cheers

am checking out all your suggestions, thx

I use OS Commerce as a backbone and re-design them to suit the site.
The default OS Commerce isn't too bad looking certainly not 1995 and from what I've read it's pretty similar to Zen Cart functionality wise.

I know you want to do it cheap. I charge $1500 AUD to re-design OS Commerce solutions and you can host it wherever you like.... I have no interest in making money off hosting. PM me if you want to see a couple of sample sites that's I've done with this system.... There is also an Auction modification you can use.

americommerce...
 

how about? americommerce.com

Check out 1and1.com=}

I like Volusion. It costs $100 USD per month, but it is VERY easy to use and flexible. Every time I've had a problem, I always got help within 30 minutes.

Magento is also owned by ebay :shocked: