Hi - sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place. I'm kind of still new to this forum.

I want to open an online store. Yahoo seems easiest...but I know there are other options out there. I just don't know what's the best. Does anyone have experience with any online store hosting sites?

Yahoo seems quite expensive, 49.95/month, plus .10 per item, plus .5% transaction fee plus 3.5% revenue share if your customer found you through yahoo...

I'm new at this but am looking for a cheaper and even a DIY way if necessary if that will save expenses. We'll be wanting to start small -- maybe around a hundred items or less...and then we'll see from there.

Could someone please point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

Yahoo has the advantage of driving traffic to you but the expense is quite high. If you are willing to do the leg work yourself promote do a little online advertising then yes doing it yourself can save you lots of money.
There are some nice shopping cart programs out that are free, get a basic hosting page install a shopping cart, get a merchant account or use something like 2checkout.com and paypal. You are on you way and for alot less money than yahoo.

Monte,

Your solution sounds like the practical type of solution I need. Thanks so much for the tips!

Lisa

I just posted this before, but it is a great shopping cart service

You try xmart ecommerce


check it out
www.digitalplacebo.com

it's really cheap too, unlimited hosting and unlimited products

I think you'll like it much better than yahoo...

This looks great jakeb!

$14.95/month & $50/Set up. Do you use them? My husband and I are going to be opening a site soon selling some products and this looks like it's right in our price range. We won't have many products, so our site won't be large.

Anyway I'm going to give this a great looking-over.

There are many similar and better shopping carts for less. Every Cpanel hosting account offers Interchange and Agora, OSCommerce can be easily installed and customized. Look around before you decide!

It is only momentum and lack of time that has kept me at XMart since 2002.

Although uptime has been great, several application tools have never worked. Specifically –
The mandatory site designer is glitchy.
The “Site Description” for meta tags is inop…blank.
It is impossible to optimize for search engines.
Reports tools do not work at all
“Our Specials” are displayed in double and cannot be removed.

Toughest of all for me is that customer support is non-existent. Once I received a reply and apology nearly 3 months after the reported issues. A couple of the problems were fixed, then nothing again, ever.

I am about to make a move and have a party to celebrate.

Cheers!

Bill

You can get similar shopping cart environment from other reputable web hosts. I believe support from other webhosts are much better and dedicated to you. Going with big brother maybe safer but support wise, you will had to reconsider.

Remember, yahoo are good when you bid for search engine keyword. other than that such as web hosting, i would suggest look else where.