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Thread: My early experiences starting a video game store online

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) ianoid's Avatar
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    Default My early experiences starting a video game store online

    A few of you may be interested in my experiences starting an online store, so I figured I'd post public in case someone wanted to refer to this in the future.

    eBay is slow and anyway I have way too much stuff to sell so I decided to look into the online store options. I was expecting to have to pay, which isn't that big of a deal if you can really get some sales and you deduct it as a business expense on your taxes, for those of you legit sellers.

    So, I was about to sign up for www.prestostore.com which was a reasonable deal at $19.95 a month (I did look at alot of cheap ecommerce options) and had some nice features like Froogle and other search engine listing and I think it had unlimited listings, which is pretty important for game vendors. The advantage of these pay to play storefronts is security (one hopes) and advanced features like exact domestic and international shipping automatically being added in (with calculations per the latest US Postal Service stuff.)

    Then I noticed a few free storefronts. The disadvantage is generally less flexibility and now web space or attached home pages. I am reasonably happy with the interface at www.ecrater.com although there are several things that I would change, both for myself specifically and for the entire site. Still, it's alot quicker than making eBay listings. The shipping interface is rudimentary, for example. And when you start the page, it's not really clear how to get to the product, when I think that it should start with the product (check out my store at www.joystickjockeys.com )

    So I've had this storefront up, and minimally advertised with a couple of posts on DP and Atari Age. I get almost no traffic, and I've only sold one item. It's not like the stuff on the site is incredibly rare or special, so it's not a huge surprise. I do need to advertise more But I have learned something- advertising is everything in the online sales biz.

    So I contemplated going to eBay for better exposure using an eBay store, which isn't exactly cost prohibitive. For $20 a month, you basically get a storefront in the eBay style and 500 listings- it's 2 cents a listing without extras like gallery pix or more than 1 listing picture. However, with some research, I noticed that store listings don't come up automatically with auction listings, unless there are only 10 or fewer hits for a search- swell for rare items, but not for the stuff (eg. RC Pro-Am for NES) I am hoping to pass on for minimal profits to the common gamer. The idea behind eBay stores is to promote your listings with auctions to get traffic, and to do eBay sanctioned store emails (of which I get a couple, and I don't mind) to eBay users.

    Still, this seemed like a step backward. Being a regular and experienced eBay user, and not understanding this point made me realize that I did see stores, but only through auctions. My goal is to do less auctions and more store, not the other way around.

    Sonow I've decided to combine two long term goals in one and try to design a nice site with information (about my vast collection) and perhaps some form of shopping blog (a camera phone could be my next business expense) to get some traffic and have a web designed Paypal basket for sales. I think that content + sales is a better way to get searches and traffic, and I could try to register with the search engines myself once I get a viable site. Someone apparently wrote a free shopping cart thing for Dreamweaver (perhaps another business expense) that I hope to use. It will take more time, but perhaps using Dreamweaver I can make a reasonable site and integrate sales.

    So, about taxes. If you are serious about selling, and you accept that leaves a paper trail (check or money order deposits), you should be claiming income. At that rate, you should be claiming expenses, too. As long as you sometimes make a profit on your taxes, you probably won't be flagged for auditing. Still, in order to deduct stuff (and you can deduct the cost of items you buy, travel expenses for buying stuff (although car/gas is a tough one), and even food if it's business related), you have to be careful and document everything. eBay fees are one example of what you definintely should be deducting. At that rate, you can deduct hosting and ecommerce expenses too. For someone selling more than a certain amount (I would guess $20k) there may be advanteges to forming a corporation to keep expenses tidy, although that costs a certain amount yearly.) There's a whole science to incorporation for the little man, and the idea is to save money on taxes, which can be a big deal depending on your tax bracket.

    OK, so I hope that helps any of you potential game/web/sales vendor types out there.

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    ServBot (Level 11) s1lence's Avatar
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    Mightymango

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    Your story sounds like many others I've heard, its really hard to have a online store, at least in the beginning.
    Part of the #Vbender Crew


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