Not an advertising thread.. hell, I won't even give the URL here. More just wondering if anyone else here has any experience with starting up an online-only retail site.
I have 6 years of ecommerce experience already, though it is all B2B and I don't have to concern myself with anything other than site development and maintenance. all other operations are handled by the appropriate aspect of the business. this site will be the first one where I will have to handle actual business aspects of it (all of them actually).
The amount of paperwork so far has been minimal, and the site is being hosted on godaddy.com which frankly I have nothing but glowing things to say about. I started setting things up this past saturday morning and godaddy had most changes to the site implemented in just a few minutes, including database creations and ssl installation.
the shopping cart I'm using is oscommerce. so far it has been a nice place to start, though already I have added quite a few contributions to get things to where I need them to be, as well as programming things myself that aren't available anywhere.. I still have to figure out a pre-order backage system and how to implement it as well as a more efficient way of displaying and admining my invetory/products... but oscommerce is basically what it took me 8 months of full time work to get our b2b site up to the standard of.. had oscommerce been around in early 2000 I probably just would have gone with that.
so I am officially registered as a sole proprietorship, got the tax forms, am almost done getting distribution setup, and maybe about 1/3 of the way of having the site to where I'll be happy with it (graphic design aspects aside). I need everything in place to be ready to make the first sale the first week of october.
anyone else ever do this? any suggestions or anecdotes? I am fully familiar with the products and the industry, able to maintain my own site.. the biggest hurdles for me (that I can see) will be graphic design and advertising/marketing. anything I am missing?
I have 6 years of ecommerce experience already, though it is all B2B and I don't have to concern myself with anything other than site development and maintenance. all other operations are handled by the appropriate aspect of the business. this site will be the first one where I will have to handle actual business aspects of it (all of them actually).
The amount of paperwork so far has been minimal, and the site is being hosted on godaddy.com which frankly I have nothing but glowing things to say about. I started setting things up this past saturday morning and godaddy had most changes to the site implemented in just a few minutes, including database creations and ssl installation.
the shopping cart I'm using is oscommerce. so far it has been a nice place to start, though already I have added quite a few contributions to get things to where I need them to be, as well as programming things myself that aren't available anywhere.. I still have to figure out a pre-order backage system and how to implement it as well as a more efficient way of displaying and admining my invetory/products... but oscommerce is basically what it took me 8 months of full time work to get our b2b site up to the standard of.. had oscommerce been around in early 2000 I probably just would have gone with that.
so I am officially registered as a sole proprietorship, got the tax forms, am almost done getting distribution setup, and maybe about 1/3 of the way of having the site to where I'll be happy with it (graphic design aspects aside). I need everything in place to be ready to make the first sale the first week of october.
anyone else ever do this? any suggestions or anecdotes? I am fully familiar with the products and the industry, able to maintain my own site.. the biggest hurdles for me (that I can see) will be graphic design and advertising/marketing. anything I am missing?