Ecommerce

[thebillionaire]

Ok, I want to know alot about Ecommerce, so far all I know is that you sell stuff online. Thats all!

Say I have a site that sells pens. What would I need, saying that I have a Ecommerce website ( what the hell is a Ecommerce , what does it include, and what is the shopping cart option) I also want to know about merchant accounts (I think thats where the money you earn is transferd. how is the money transfered there?). And Finally shipping the product, what to use to ship products. Since most of you own Ecommerce site's Chris, Incka, and someother I was wondering if you could help a bit.

Thanks.

P.S Don't tell me about google I want to learn from people who have Experience, people like you guys.

[incka]

I don't own an ecommerce site. I'm making one but I do not have one.

Chris has one and a person who has body building websites has one but that's about it from website publisher.


You need a credit card processor, such as Pay Pal or 2CheckOut.

You need a shopping cart, CPANEL will automatically install quite a good one if you have CPANEL...

[Chris]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/ecommerce_primer/

[Peter T Davis]

For me, the most difficult part of doing an ecommerce site is the fullfillment. Packing up customer orders, and getting them shipped. I was doing primarily ecommerce back 1998-2001, but just got burned out with keeping products in stock, packing them, shipping them, and such. I always liked the building websites part of it, the marketing part, the working with customers part, but the logistics part was boring to me. Any ecommerce site I do in the future will include either using a good dropshipper, or me hiring someone to do the back-end stuff.

[Mike]

I have a question on ecommerce: If your starting an ecommerce site, do you need (or is it better) to have a phone number to contact?

Later this year, or early next year I'm hoping to have an ecommerce site, but with my age and everything it would be hard to have a contact number.

[Chris]

Customers like having someone to call.

In fact, when I got my merchant account, one of the requirements was having a phone number that I answered as the business. Additionally, the phone number is printed on credit card statements with the business name.



I personally do not mind doing the logistics work that Peter hates. It is pretty much akin to data entry but it is the main work I have to do for my site and so if you figure the hourly rate it comes out to alot so I don't mind.

For instance I spent all Friday printing out labels, packaging, recieving (unloading a semi) etc. My wife helped for a little bit when she got home. The profit gained from the products shipped out that day was over $6000. So thats like $750 an hour -- I'll do the menial stuff for $750 an hour.

That was of course an above average day, but normal days (this time of year) it only takes me about 45 minutes to ship out the products (not 8 hours).

This is another area that having a high priced item is good. If it takes 7 minutes to process an order for shipping and your profit per order is $50 it is definitely worth it.

If you are making only a couple bucks per order it might not seem as worth it. It'll still take 7 minutes but you will earn much less.

[chromate]

What would be really nice is to have a software type product or maybe an ebook that you get almost 100% profit from selling. Making it downloadable, you don't have to bother with logistics / packing / boring stuff.

EDIT - Just thought, that would also be a nice product for people in the UK wishing to do ecommerce as it involves no shipping. :)

[incka]

Although I would not refer to what chromate is saying as ecommerce, I am planning to do that as well.

The ecommerce site I am making is a real product though, and like Chris' products has high profit, infact, even higher profit than he is getting... The only problem is shipping... How do you ship 1 metre cube products?!?!

[Mike]

Originally posted by Chris
Customers like having someone to call.

In fact, when I got my merchant account, one of the requirements was having a phone number that I answered as the business. Additionally, the phone number is printed on credit card statements with the business name.

Suppose I would have to employ someone then:(

More reason to find expensive products to sell;)

[chromate]

Originally posted by incka
Although I would not refer to what chromate is saying as ecommerce, I am planning to do that as well.


It is ecommerce.



Originally posted by incka
The ecommerce site I am making is a real product though, and like Chris' products has high profit, infact, even higher profit than he is getting... The only problem is shipping... How do you ship 1 metre cube products?!?!

You're saying it's high profit, but you don't even know how much it is to ship? :) I wouldn't even bother trying to ship something 1m cubed personally. And then you've got to consider storage too.

I've had an idea for an ecommerce store for a while now. Products range from $100 - $600. They're light and small, so shipping would be easy. I know who makes them, but can't find where to contact them. It doesn't help that they're based in the far east, so I don't understand any of what I'm reading. :)

[incka]

I've got storage Chromate, a hell of alot of it...

[Chris]

Originally posted by chromate
What would be really nice is to have a software type product or maybe an ebook that you get almost 100% profit from selling. Making it downloadable, you don't have to bother with logistics / packing / boring stuff.

EDIT - Just thought, that would also be a nice product for people in the UK wishing to do ecommerce as it involves no shipping. :)

No. But you have to worry about piracy.

[Chris]

1m cubed products could be shipped. For me to ship something that size across the US it'd be $30 or so.

Shipping something that large overseas, hundreds of dollars.

[pas]

What would be really nice is to have a software type product or maybe an ebook that you get almost 100% profit from selling.

For software, you should have a support policy in place (like all support requires payment). Otherwise, the odd 5-10% of users will consume vast amounts of your time expecting free support for just about everything.

[thebillionaire]

whats a merchant account? and what does the shopping cart process?

[chromate]

Originally posted by pas
For software, you should have a support policy in place (like all support requires payment). Otherwise, the odd 5-10% of users will consume vast amounts of your time expecting free support for just about everything.

Or you could just be like Microsoft and respond only when you can be bothered, ignoring all the annoying people. ;)

[Chris]

A merchant account is what you need to accept and process credit card. There are also payment processing services (Paypal, 2checkout) that are not real merchant accounts. These have higher fees.

"Shopping Cart" software handles the ability for a user to add items to their cart and checkout, including payment processing. There are also ecommerce software suites, which include other features like customer and inventory management.