E-Commerce Website

[Animachine]

I have some very cool handmade fishing lures that I would love to sell online. I've considered Etsy, but I would mostly prefer to have my own e-commerce website to sell them from. Has anyone here built an e-commerce site, or had one built for them? What kind of cost would I be looking at for a site with a simple store?

[seoswat]

There are a few completely free eCommerce platforms out there, there are also a few that are very good but cost a little bit.

Magento is my favoured one, however if its going to be your very first eccommerce website i might advise something a bit more drag and drop style and simpler to navigate through.

Interspire shopping cart is very good - but it does have a cost to it

There is shopify - its a rolling pay per month

you have oscommerce, opencart, cubecart lol

You basically have alot of options.

Do you have a certain budget in mind?

[sillylucy]

I don't necessarily think of Etsy when I want to shop for fishing lures, but it might work if other crafters see your work and start to talk about it. I say try it out on Etsy and then spread the word in addition to getting your own site.

[Waynefire]

You may want to consider a Wordpress based site with a plugin. There are quite a bit of free plugins available for eCommerce. You just have to search for them and find the one which will suit your needs best.

[carl_mathew]

I have some very amazing factor designed deal with that I would really like to provide online. I've considered Etsy, but I would mostly want to have my own e-commerce website to provide them from.

[deannatroupe]

Your best bet would be to get a self hosted wordpress site and then install some of the ecommerce plugins that are available. That is the easiest way to get an online storefront going.

[suicidepanda]

I have to agree with those who suggest a self hosted wordpress site. Because of the availability of e-commerce plugins and the unnecessary difficulty of using some other sites, you will probably have a better time marketing your blog yourself than using another e-commerce site to promote your store.

[writtenword]

I also agree with the wordpress site idea, but I will add that make sure you have the paypal payment plug in set up, first thing. Actually, you can do any simple web hosting platform, and then get a paypal checkout box using an HTML code. You can make the code using Merchant Services tab of paypal if you have a paypal account. I know someone who sells art and has a paypal shopping cart on his Blogspot blog. All he had to do was to get the code from Paypal and paste it into the widgets section of his Blogspot.