posted on May 1, 2002 12:59:36 PM new
I am currently building up my website myself. I don't have a shopping cart and CC processing available from it, and I wonder if any potential sale will be lost without it.
So I have been thinking, would using Bizhosting or Yahoo stores be better.
Bizhosting is fairly inexpensive. The site says they have auction management tools too. But I signed up for a free account last year and images didn't show in my auction listings. Do they allow your auction images to be hosted there, or is it for paying customers only? I liked the inventory management, that way I don't accidently sell more than I have.
Yahoo stores are more expensive, and seems like you can get more exposure due to Yahoo Shopping. But does that really increase your sales at all?
posted on May 1, 2002 04:32:23 PM new
Y!Store absolutely rocks for me. Yahoo shopping network is promoted everywhere on Yahoo and it generates really huge traffic.
The combination of Overture advertising and the huge amount of traffic generated by Yahoo makes HUGE difference.
posted on May 1, 2002 07:33:33 PM new
yahoo shop is not easy to set up,it would require a lot of your time.
it is also like you point out more expensive.
but it does produce results for those who have something appealing to sell.
like all shops,it takes time to gain recognition ,which means you have to have some staying power.
if you have 1000 items,your monthly yahoo fixed cost is 150,when items sell,yahoo can take up to 4% of your order.
paymentech is built into the yahoo backend for online real time cc verification and batching and depositing fund into your account for 22.95 plus more.
if you are not sure you need paymentech initially,you can just take the cc transactions and key into billpoint or any pay as you go cc service.
so you can pretty much take 150 and multiple by 6 -12 months and see if you want to spend that kind of money.
as for overture and google bid for key words,that is extra,some like it and said it works ,some say no.
MOI does not have the marketing budget to pay either service,so i guess i am left in the dust.
my $$ is tied up with inventory,i cannnot afford to do both-stock and spend on getting traffic via overture or google.
many yahoo shops do not have inventory,they can afford to pay for such services.
different strokes for different folks,thats what makes the world interesting.
posted on May 1, 2002 07:44:05 PM new
just dawn on me to open a yahoo store,you must have a merchant account and paymentech will give you merchant account without having a commerical checking account.
to have a commecial checking account,some banks require you to file a DBA with the state-doing business as.
costco offers merchant account,but it requires you to have a checking account with the name of your company(so i guess this is a commercial checking account),2 years of income tax return and a sales catalog or brochure.
so it looks like most new shops will go with paymentech initially unless they are already a brick and mortar shop
posted on May 2, 2002 12:33:00 PM new
Well, Bizhosting lost a notch for me. CS just informed me that their don't have the auction management in their service anymore, even though the still advertise it.
Does Yahoo stores have any kind of inventory management? or is all manual?
tfs13
http://www.tfstudios.com
posted on May 2, 2002 01:13:46 PM new
Why do you want to lump them all together - Id think it better to tailor auction listings seperate from website items. I have a Bizhosting site and its fine for my needs low cost and Im able to maintain it myself. I also use Auctionwatch for one ebay account and Channeladvisor.com for another. If you want good auction service use an auction service and the same for a website. The sites do their main line very well but out of their core business things get very sad.
Great advice about Yahoostore - do what your budget permits.
Best of luck
Ok4
posted on May 2, 2002 01:21:13 PM new
yahoo store does not keep track of inventory for you,oracle offers net ledger for 9.95 a month but it is more accounting and payroll,no inventory/in fact this question is often raised,who offers inventory management??
ebay store and amzn zshop does,it updates your inventory as item is sold.
but then many yahoo shops do not have inventory,so it is not a problem for them.
for some items,i just remembers how many copies i have(usually not much??) or i use a sheet of paper and place it where these items are,when i go and fill the order ,i just use a pencil to update that sheet/
yahoo shop can drop items to yahoo auction,amzn zshop can drop items to amzn auction,but neither shops will drop items to ebay auction.
take a look at rubylane and collector on line,you can drop items to yahoo,ebay and amzn auctions.
on inventory management,i met a used bookstore owner in kansas and he said he has 100,000 used books and has a hard time updating his inventory.
as he is considering selling on amzn,i suggest to him to use amzn zshop as his inventory management tool.
it would cost him 100 dollars per month and if a copy is sold in his brick and mortar shop,he will need to update his amzn record,if sold by amzn,amzn does it for him.kill 2 birds with one stone.
I want a storefront where I can host my auction images. I need some kind of inventory control because I do not do this for a living, and if I set up a shopping cart and sold 20 items of something I only had 5 of.... well... that would be bad. I cannot be in front of the computer 24/7 to control that. And I am afraid that not having CC from my site could affect sales. Bizhosting has the inventory control and cartsetup, but I cannot host my auction images. I used auctionwatch, and I like it, but I was spending too much.
Currently, I pay $6.00 a month to below10host to get 50 MB webspace.. but no shopping cart of CC processing.
tfs13
http://www.tfstudios.com
posted on May 2, 2002 01:56:43 PM new
tfs13 -- Have you considered building your own online web store using free open source software? osCommerce can be installed on a Unix host which allow you to also host your image for auctions. If you DIY (do it yourself), you can find reliable hosts for $99/year (Apache, PHP, mySQL requierd), or pay $240/year for a web host that offers "free" installation of the software.
Although many web stores offer CC processing, you will still need to sign up for some sort of merchant service in order to process. For now, Paypal and ProPay are probably your least expensive payment options.
posted on May 2, 2002 03:29:25 PM new
if you are keen on selling on ebay auctions,why not just open a ebay store??
i have found out ebay bidders prefer to bid on ebay.
why should they come to your store when you are going to drop them to ebay anyway,and sometimes for less??
if you are worried about cost of hosting images,you can keep them on your pc.
i sell on amzn,yahoo and ebay and my pictures are on my pc for ebay and pictures are on amzn for amzn and on yahoo for yahoo shop.aw storefront is another alternative??
dont just go for lower prices,go for sites which produce results.
there are tons of storefronts,but do items sell??TIAS is another place where you can have a storefront and drop to auctions,but what do you sell??
if you have 5 of an item and you get 20 orders ,then you will have a backorder situation,you can either tell them they are backordered or cancel those orders.
if you cant spend time manning your shop,it makes no difference where your shop is,you will get complaints from customers and some sites will throw you out if they complain too much.
posted on May 2, 2002 07:57:43 PM new
I had the basic Bizhosting site. I liked the site but it was a HASSLE to set up. It took forever just to post one inventory item. I didn't bother trying to change the homepage every once in a while as you are supposed to. I have high speed internet and it was slow to change from one page to another. I can just imagine it with a 56K modem. I am currently trying out Homestead. They have a 30 day free trial and their packages don't seem to be very expensive. They offer E-Commerce with their gold package.
posted on May 2, 2002 08:55:22 PM new
So Bizhosting is not quite as easy to use as they claim?
It's not that I cannot be there for my shop, stopwhinning, it's just that I can't be in front of the computer 24/7. I work full time, and sell online parttime. I am hoping to get away from ebay. I want to use it for marketing than using for all my sales.
I guess I will continue using below10host.com for my site. Maybe I'll add PayPal or CCNow to process CC orders, and just hope no one orders something that is out of stock.
Unless someone else has a better suggestion.
tfs13
http://www.tfstudios.com
