how to set up an online store?

March 9, 2006 4:08 AM

Hi - I want to open an online store on my my site (wordpress blog in Spanish) that would sell a select range of other people’s products as well as products I make myself and I am looking for some advice on this matter.

I do not know where to begin to plan this project. I want to concentrate on the business of selecting products and selling them and ideally would not like to spend so much time in databases and dealing with fulfillment.

Anyone doing something like this? - I guess you could call it syndicated selling. The way I see it working is the following. I get the product info and images from a producer. My site records each purchase and sends the purchase order to the producer for fulfillment. I reconcile my monthly sales numbers with their fulfillment numbers and they send me my commission. Is this the way it works?
Are manufacturers interested in dealing with stores that work by commission or would they rather sell wholesale?

Secondly, what are my options for setting up an online store? What options do I have to earn money per transaction? Are there better (or free) alternatives to cafepress.com? If I host it through my blog then it would be free but I would have to deal with everything….. I am looking for the best option moneywise and timewise…..

Muchisimas gracias - mamidelux

posted by libelula to computers & internet (3 comments total)

[removed link to store, put it in your profile so that people can take a look at it if they want to]
posted by jessamyn at 5:14 AM on March 9, 2006

I'm coming at this as an indie craftsperson, and I don't know what it is you want to sell, so forgive me if some of this is irrelevant. If you're selling something similar to handcrafts, you should be able to find people willing to do commission rather than wholesale, although they may all be tiny little guys like me - if you're interested in landing accounts with big, famous sellers, you may need to do wholesale.

I'm familiar with three different models for commission sites:

1) The crafter sends their products to the site/store manager, who photographs them, puts them up, advertises them, and handles sales, billing and shipping. The crafter receives a percentage of the sales price after the sale is made. The split is usually 60-40, with the 60% going to the crafter. For the crafter, t's basically the same as putting your stuff in a brick-and-mortar store, only online. Plain Mabel is an example of this.

2) This seems the closest to what you want to do: The site functions like a cohesive store, but the crafter doesn't send their products to a central location. They send in photos/product info, and the site owner puts them up, handles advertising, etc. When a sale is made, the crafter is notified and is responsible for sending the product directly to the customer. I believe this is referred to as "drop shipping." Please note that in my experience, the main site, rather than the individual, is still responsible for collecting the money and sending a percentage (15-30% for these kinds of stores) to the crafter, not the other way around. Check out Arts-E-Fest for an example of this.

3) The burgeoning Etsy.com which functions essentially like Ebay only just for crafts: crafters pay a small listing fee, and they handle everything: payment, photos, billing, shipping, etc.

In all cases, as the site owner, I believe you'll have a fair amount of responsibility for database management, shopping carts, web design, accounting, and so on - you're running a store of sorts in the first two examples, and a fairly complex listing service in the third. Feel free to e-mail me if you have more questions - I may be able to answer them from the perspective of a potential seller, at least.
posted by hilatron at 6:54 AM on March 9, 2006

Whoops. Arts E Fest is not the drop shipper I was looking for, as an example in #2, and the other stores that I knew of that ran like this seem to have closed. Maybe not a good sign?
posted by hilatron at 7:02 AM on March 9, 2006