Thinking I need to set up an online store - any suggestions?

Given all the weirdo stuff that we stock now at my store, and some exclusive lines we have in the midwest, I need to look into creating an online store (mainly for effects pedals). I doubt that we would be listing more than 500 items, but prob would need to have the possibility to ramp up to that and maybe beyond depending on how things work. I'd like to have some control over the appearance, but i am a total neophyte hack wrt web design/html etc. Any thoughts?

oh also, if there are considerations i am not uh considering, feel free to pwn me with them as needed.

etsy?

i don't know anything, but i know some people who do -- let me send out some emails and i'll see what pops up

i thought etsy restricted you to stuff you made by hand yourself

http://diythemes.com/thesis/create-online-store/ <-- a possible DIY starting point

these days you can buy an ecommerce site and get it up & running pretty much out of the box, complete with payment modules and content management and postage printing -- e-retail has largely moved to web-based apps these days. there's not much need to build your own site anymore unless you have very specific design needs.

for ex: http://www.bigcommerce.com/

i thought etsy restricted you to stuff you made by hand yourself

― goole, Thursday, February 7, 2013 11:48 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

I see old camera stuff on there all the time

Elmo OTM as well

etsy does have different categories, handmade being one of them -- for example, you can sell vintage clothing, but they state that vintage items have to be at least 20 y/o iirc. i think camera equipment might be allowed because it would fall under their "supplies" category? idk

(hah i think i'll hold off on those emails unless needed, this looks like well-trod ground...)

thinking that the in the box thing is prob a smarter option for me, considering my lack of programming skill, but of course there are a crapton of those services out there. time to do a bunch of comparison shop stuff i guess. if anybody has good (or bad) experiences w/any of them and wants to weigh in that would be awes.

after years of having our own IT guy administer our online store (fucking nightmare), we are finally transitioning to bigcommerce, which is why it's on my mind. i haven't had much chance to fool around with that, but we have thousands of SKUs and it looks like it's gonna work for us, so AFAICT it should scale to your needs pretty easily

pick a monthly plan that makes sense for the amount of sales that will go through it.
make sure they don't ream you in the merchant acct fees department - at your regular store you get a cheap rate w/NAMM membership, right?

i am not sure how you would do this but it might make sense to find a service tht can integrate with or even double as your POS system, for ease of accounting & inv management?

this looks appealing pricewise, esp w/unlimited products, what am i missing?

http://goodsie.com/pricing

xpost haha cant integrate with something we dont actually have, hello stone age music store

you don't take credit cards?

oh no, we take credit cards obv.

haha sounds like my friend's store