Info Request: Good way to set up a web business.
 

My broher in law wants to set up a retail web business to sell toys and games.

What is a good way to go about it? He is looking for a good turnkey solution to build a webstore.

Thanks & Happy New Year to all

PS: My model for japanesesword.com does not work for him, i sell high price unique items, he wants to sell hundreds of the same items.

If he wants turnkey he should look at Volusion or similar but hosted solution may be cost prohibitive if he wants hundreds of items in his catalog.

Going the inexpensive route he needs OCcommerce and a place to host it.

He'll need a merchant account, Autorize.net is the choice here.

There are a lot of choices out there for eCommerce... You can go turn-key but obviously this costs more $

Hosted solutions are plentiful. Check out osCommerce and Zen-Cart for two popular ones. THey usually have supporting hosting vendors who will do all the install for you. You just upload the product.

Then there's the DIY model, can be done for around $200/year.

My company ( PRS ) specializes in eCommerce. Most of my customers have 20,000-80,000 items. I'd be happy to chat with him/you if you drop me a line off-list.

Volusion has had some problems, like completely self-destructing for hours to days at a time depending on which server you were on. In the 2-3 months leading up to mid-november, they must have crashed weekly. It's mostly because they left rackspace for in-house servers and just weren't ready to manage it on their own and things seem OK now, they made it through the Christmas season without so much as a hiccup.

As for the business: That's where I currently am. It's a tough market and unless you can get your hands on the hottest toys and games, you're not going to sell anything fast and even those can crash ridiculously fast. Take those stupid farking Zhu Zhu hamsters for example: October and November I could dump them all day between 55-70 per, in December huge shipments went out to all of the stores and I couldn't move them at 20.
Screenlife is a good place to start with games, they have low minimum orders and their product usually moves pretty well. Is he selling currently on another venue? (Amazon or Ebay)

consult with GOGARS "clown attorney"! LOL!