Who has an online business?

Two things to think about:

How are you going to accept online payments?

What are you going to do about security? For a start Wordpress has terrible security - all Wordpress sites are under constant assault from hackers exploiting security holes, and you can expect to have to deal with occasional security breaches even if you diligently keep up to date.

Hey SaltyWetGuy,

...what a name! :p

What I Do
Businesses:
- Computer Repair (Services) www.UpTimePC.com
- Social Media Advertising (Services) www.SMB.UpTimePC.com
- Electronic Cigarette (Products) www.Vapealution.com
- Vaporizer (Products) www.BlazerVaporizer.com

Hosting
I personally use BlueHost. They have great pricing, and 24/7 support. They also have unlimited storage, so its great for those who have lots of content they need to host. It also has unlimited emails, bandwidth, and a free website domain upon registration. They also support Opencart, Wordpress, and many other great platforms.

Platform
I have multiple online stores, where I sell both products and services. I use OpenCart for the majority of my websites. Its an opensource e-commerce platform and had so many great features. The downside to openccart it that it has some bugs, and errors every now and then. Good news is they have a forum where you can post your questions or problems, and you will get assistance quite fast. Although opencart has its ups and downs, so do most or all e-commerce platforms. I stick with opencart because of its ability to customize anything.

Payments
As for payments, I recommend setting up PayPal right away. This is a great way to start receiving payments. You can also upgrade to PayPal PRO for $30/month, and have the ability for customers to use paypal directly on your website without ever leaving your page to paypal. Alternatively, you can find a different payment processing company to process credit cards.

If you process credit cards directly on your website, you will need to purchase SSL on your domain for your website. This makes the credit card transactions secure from hackers etc. There are some payment processing companies which allow you to process payments directly on your website, and use the payment processors SSL (free for you) instead. This will eliminate the need to buy SSL. Paypal PRO offers this feature, along with Square API, and others.

JamesA1 wrote: ↑Two things to think about:

How are you going to accept online payments?

What are you going to do about security? For a start Wordpress has terrible security - all Wordpress sites are under constant assault from hackers exploiting security holes, and you can expect to have to deal with occasional security breaches even if you diligently keep up to date.

how about squarespace then?

What are you going to do about security? For a start Wordpress has terrible security - all Wordpress sites are under constant assault from hackers exploiting security holes, and you can expect to have to deal with occasional security breaches even if you diligently keep up to date.

Before we get deeper, please answer this question for us, though mainly it's for yourself: Why did you want to start an online business in the first place? Share your vision with us.

BrandonBerner wrote: ↑Hey SaltyWetGuy,

...what a name! :p

What I Do
Businesses:
- Computer Repair (Services) www.UpTimePC.com
- Social Media Advertising (Services) www.SMB.UpTimePC.com
- Electronic Cigarette (Products) www.Vapealution.com
- Vaporizer (Products) www.BlazerVaporizer.com

Hosting
I personally use BlueHost. They have great pricing, and 24/7 support. They also have unlimited storage, so its great for those who have lots of content they need to host. It also has unlimited emails, bandwidth, and a free website domain upon registration. They also support Opencart, Wordpress, and many other great platforms.

Platform
I have multiple online stores, where I sell both products and services. I use OpenCart for the majority of my websites. Its an opensource e-commerce platform and had so many great features. The downside to openccart it that it has some bugs, and errors every now and then. Good news is they have a forum where you can post your questions or problems, and you will get assistance quite fast. Although opencart has its ups and downs, so do most or all e-commerce platforms. I stick with opencart because of its ability to customize anything.

Payments
As for payments, I recommend setting up PayPal right away. This is a great way to start receiving payments. You can also upgrade to PayPal PRO for $30/month, and have the ability for customers to use paypal directly on your website without ever leaving your page to paypal. Alternatively, you can find a different payment processing company to process credit cards.

If you process credit cards directly on your website, you will need to purchase SSL on your domain for your website. This makes the credit card transactions secure from hackers etc. There are some payment processing companies which allow you to process payments directly on your website, and use the payment processors SSL (free for you) instead. This will eliminate the need to buy SSL. Paypal PRO offers this feature, along with Square API, and others.

I've got a question for you, if I may:
With two sites selling physical products, where do you warehouse and how do you ship?

I'm thinking of starting a niche product website (using Shopify), but my concern is the physical handling of inventory.

I have recently been reading a bit of the entrepreneur sub reddit which has a lot of postings in the area of your interest. Some good info on starting an online businesses with AMA's, advice and stories.

What we do - sell geeky products like board games and collectibles (Starlit Citadel)

Hosting & Platform - Nexcess and Magento

Payments - Credit Cards & PayPal & Check. We tried Bitcoin for a bit, realised no one was really using it in our space so gave up on it.

As for warehousing, we have a warehouse and ship it out from there. If you don't want to handle it yourself, you can always hire people to do it for you. It can be expensive, but it can save you a lot of trouble.

StarlitCitadel wrote: ↑What we do - sell geeky products like board games and collectibles (Starlit Citadel)

Hosting & Platform - Nexcess and Magento

Payments - Credit Cards & PayPal & Check. We tried Bitcoin for a bit, realised no one was really using it in our space so gave up on it.

As for warehousing, we have a warehouse and ship it out from there. If you don't want to handle it yourself, you can always hire people to do it for you. It can be expensive, but it can save you a lot of trouble.

With great caution, anyway. Third party warehouses are notoriously unreliable (in addition to being expensive!) for whatever reason.

I have an online business with clients around the world. I am a time management coach and consultant and teach online courses.

My setup:

Web site/blog - Wordpress - http://captaintime.com
Online School - Teachable - http://captaintime.teachable.com/
Email Marketing System - Mail Chimp
Social Media Management - Social Report
Online Booking Calendar - SchedueOnce - http://captaintime.com/schedule/

ebusinesstutor wrote: ↑I have an online business with clients around the world. I am a time management coach and consultant and teach online courses.

My setup:

Web site/blog - Wordpress - http://captaintime.com
Online School - Teachable - http://captaintime.teachable.com/
Email Marketing System - Mail Chimp
Social Media Management - Social Report
Online Booking Calendar - SchedueOnce - http://captaintime.com/schedule/

Going to RFD is not a good use of time...

TheRed wrote: ↑Going to RFD is not a good use of time...

Then why are you here?

scouzer wrote: ↑With great caution, anyway. Third party warehouses are notoriously unreliable (in addition to being expensive!) for whatever reason.

From what I recall, it depends on how much homework you do and what you want to pay for. In my own business, we only used 1 before going in-house. When I worked for others, we used like 3 in the meantime and 1 was good, 2 weren't great at all (getting stock quantities right, shipping on-time, etc.) but it mostly was a matter of if you were willing to pay them to get the work done or not I found. However, small sample

Thanks everyone, great advice. I'll look into these and start a site up asap.

scouzer wrote: ↑With great caution, anyway. Third party warehouses are notoriously unreliable (in addition to being expensive!) for whatever reason.

Totally wrong. Many are excellent and inexpensive.

I found that Word Press is a better platform to use as it is great for Search Engine Optimization.
For social media management, I love Hootsuite because its extremely user friendly.