Selling games onlinel?

[Falcon]

Ok, so I am making a website to sell used games, and I want to eventually expand within a year to selling new factory sealed games. One question, do I need to have a license or something? Or call I just post a website and ship out games for money...? Any help would be appreciated since I am young and looking to have a business(s).

[Sothy]

http://home.flash.net/~dadis/pirate/Pirate.jpg

Arggggh I aint got no fancy idea atall considerin Ye Be from the Northern seas!

Here In The United States Ye be Sellin what we will, grab what wench holds a twinkle in her eye and put a BLADE right in the belly of any swine that dont run by ya like a scurvy land lubber YARRRR!

[Kamino]

you may want to do this on ebay, as you need no license to do that.

[Falcon]

you may want to do this on ebay, as you need no license to do that.

Why would I want to do this on ebay? I find it that I have an opportunity to make my own website and sell games, so I will be doing that now, and my website is now designed, so I dont have to worry about being sued :)

[Rogmeister]

Why would I want to do this on ebay? I find it that I have an opportunity to make my own website and sell games, so I will be doing that now, and my website is now designed, so I dont have to worry about being sued

Oh, don't worry...I'm sure someone will sue you anyway. We live in a sue-happy world, you know. :evil:

[Sniderman]

Why would I want to do this on ebay? :)

So I'm looking for games. My choices:

- Go to eBay, type in "Chase the Chuckwagon," and a list of that game pops up, all for the buying.

- Go to Google or whatever search engine, type in "Chase the Chuckwagon," and get a list of - well - evry Atari history site; dog food premiums listings; multiple "OMG IZ THIS TEH RAER" messages; and - maybe - your site.

No matter how much you advertise here, there and elsewhere, you will never - NEVER - get the kind of traffic you'll get from eBay. Millions of potential customers vs. the "dozens" you may attract by advertising on DP and other sites.

Personally, I think you'll be doing a lot of work for very little profit.

[briguy578]

What you can do is start selling on ebay, and post a link back to you site in every auction you have, and offer people who bought something from you on ebay a discount. That way ebay does your advertising, and you'll be able to build up some sort of following for your site.

[Jorpho]

I might suggest Amazon rather than eBay, but then Amazon isn't the first place people go for new or used PC games. (Still, there are some pretty big ZShops with uncommon items in their selection.)

[Lady Jaye]

I'd go the ebay route too. You can always become an Ebay store, y'know! And besides, that doesn't stop you from having your own website...

Even though you don't need a licence to sell games, you probably will need to register in your province as a business and therefore will have to charge GST/PST upon sales. It's not because you'd have an Internet business that you wouldn't have to follow Canadian business registration laws. For an occasional sale, you don't have to be registered, but for a more serious level of selling, I wouldn't take any chance on that level.

[Captain Wrong]

Moving to on topic. I think you may get more bites there.

<shimmy shimmy ya>

[WanganRunner]

Breakdown on biz licenses:

(This applies to me, in Maryland. I believe it's ROUGHLY the same across the US. No idea about other countries).

1.) If you sell more than $X per year, you need to pay taxes on the revenue. This applies no matter what you're selling. $X = different amounts in different places.

Now, if you're just selling off part of your personal collection, I'm not sure about that, and I don't know how much selling you could pass off as just being a by-product of collecting. If you want to be really big, you're going to have to pay taxes sooner or later.

2.) New Games - in order to get new games direct from any actual wholesale distrubutor, you're going to need a Tax ID. This can be your SSN, or it can be a business tax ID, or whatever, but they won't just sell to anyone. They also typically have minimum purchase amounts. I've looked into this in-depth, you're not going to make too much money doing this, as the discounts really aren't there. You'll get maybe $5 off MSRP on a $50 game, and you'll never sell that game for MSRP on eBay, just won't happen. Hardware is even worse, totally break-even, you won't make any money there.

Far as I'm concerned, buy offline and sell online, only buy what you can buy cheap. If business completely shuts down for a couple months because you can't find inventory, then it shuts down, don't get panicked and start buying expensive inventory you'll have to sell at a loss.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming....

[vulcanjedi]

Yo

In the US you can create a business of the Sole Proprietorship type using your name without having to file a fictious name petition for a DBA (doing business as)

When it comes to income tax time you have to file a schedule C to report the income and expenses of your business and pay your taxes on it.

The IRS requires any other business that payes you more than $600 in a year to file a 1099. So if you have any associate type links that make good money you can consider that a business :)

It is really much simpler than people think. I have been doing it for 3 years now.

VJ

[Berserker]

Why not just do both?

[Cauterize]

you may want to do this on ebay, as you need no license to do that.

Why would I want to do this on ebay? I find it that I have an opportunity to make my own website and sell games, so I will be doing that now, and my website is now designed, so I dont have to worry about being sued :)

Also youll have minimum cost to do this, no web domain cost, or hosting.... just the listing!

[Falcon]

you may want to do this on ebay, as you need no license to do that.

Why would I want to do this on ebay? I find it that I have an opportunity to make my own website and sell games, so I will be doing that now, and my website is now designed, so I dont have to worry about being sued :)

Also youll have minimum cost to do this, no web domain cost, or hosting.... just the listing!

I guess I could sell on ebay, but if people dont buy my item, then I would just have to keep on listing it again and the fees wouldnt look too good. Also, there is a fee at the end of the auction of a certain % of the total if im not mistaken, so I wouldnt get the full amount. I guess I will try having my website for a while as soon as I build up some inventory (im buying some nintendo 64, nintendo, and dreamcast stuff at the moment) and plan on posting it on my website for a cheaper price than any other store on the net. So we will see how it goes, and if I do need to resort to ebay.

[goatdan]

I guess I could sell on ebay, but if people dont buy my item, then I would just have to keep on listing it again and the fees wouldnt look too good. Also, there is a fee at the end of the auction of a certain % of the total if im not mistaken, so I wouldnt get the full amount. I guess I will try having my website for a while as soon as I build up some inventory (im buying some nintendo 64, nintendo, and dreamcast stuff at the moment) and plan on posting it on my website for a cheaper price than any other store on the net. So we will see how it goes, and if I do need to resort to ebay.

When I get a little more time, I'll make a long reply to this to try to help. To make a long story short, if you don't have much to sell eBay is going to be the cheaper route. If you have a lot to sell, then your own store isn't a bad idea but you definitely won't be making much money from it.

More to come :)

[rbudrick]

You might have to check your local laws as whether you will need a business license...

I'm not sure how it goes for doing an all-ebay business though. If you hit it big, the IRS may want a cut...to be honest I'm not positive about this, though.

-Rob

[SoulBlazer]

Are you kidding? Amazon is the FIRST place I go to for new or used games online. I only use EBay if it's a rarer or harder to find item. I sell most of my stuff on there also.

[goatdan]

All right... here goes.

First off, I don't know the local laws in Canada, but if you are planning on doing this full time you'll probably want to become some sort of legal entity. If you aren't a legal entity, at least in the US, eventually you'll get caught for tax evasion. Actually, it happens relatively quickly because the Government can figure out that someone that makes nothing can't be renting an apartment and driving around. They're good at that stuff ;) Anyways...

So you've decided to make a Web site to sell games at. The first thing I would suggest looking at is why you are making the Web site. Is it to earn lots of money? Is it to do as your full time job? If it is, find a different product to sell. I'll be honest here -- video games do not make much money. If you buy a game for $5.00 and sell it for $10.00, you made a total of $5.00 in that transaction. Then, you have to factor in gas for going to send it, time lost and pay for the Web space. If the person used PayPal to pay (or a credit card), you have to pay fees. Suddenly, the $5.00 that you made is really like $2.00.

Lets say that you are selling decently at first -- I would say that a decent month of orders for the GOAT Store when we were starting up was 10 orders. Most of what we sell we get less than $5.00 on. Let's say that we were making about $30.00 a month. Hosting cost $19.95, and the Web domain was an additional dollar. So, we were looking at a gain of about $9.00 / month from sales.

Bottom line here -- you have to do this because you love it. Not because you want to make money. Gary and I love doing the GOAT Store because we both like collecting games, but we are both to the point that we feel our collections are pretty much done. We both pick up some things now and again, but now we hunt to help spread stuff for others at a fair price. We truly enjoy doing it, and we also enjoy doing other things that have come along like the Dreamcast publishing that we are doing and building Web site features such as the affiliate program that we just made. But we definitely aren't doing it for the money.

Now that we have that out of the way, you have to look at promotions. Why are people going to come to your site? This comes down to a lot of different things -- Where you promote your site, how you promote your site, what your prices are like, how your service is and how your site looks. All of this works together to make your store attractive. There are a million and four different ways to do all of the above.

A quick overview of some of the things we have done -- we started with unique products that you couldn't get anywhere else (Jaguar and 2600 JAMMA Joysticks) and once we had a decent foothold and no longer had time to make them, we dropped them. We have an extremely complex site that gets picked up in a million different ways by Google and the like, we try to be amongst the lowest in price for everything we carry online and we look at service as the most important part. Lastly, our site has been developed in peroids throughout the last four years to be the most user-friendly we could make it for collectors. Our current projects are to make it so that our wish lists will email people (if they wish) whenever we get products that they have on their wish list in and to open a new collectables section with promotional goodies. Both of these are a few months off, but they have been in the works for a while.

We have a lot of other ideas that we want to do too. We probably have about a 6 page, single-spaced document of things that we want to do for the site. It's a never ending process, but we enjoy and are proud of the store and want collectors especially to have the best experience we can give them there.

All together, between Gary and I we probably spent 15-20 hours a week working on the site, making packages and so on.

Back to the money thing for a second -- we have never taken money from the company. In fact, we're a little in the hole to both of us right now.

Perhaps the biggest problem -- you need to reach what I call a "critical mass" of items to sell. If you sell on eBay, you already have this -- there are a bazillion things there, so if someone is looking they might also see your item and purchase it. On a regular store like us, that means that you need to carry a whole bunch of stuff. We currently have in stock just slightly under 2000 unique items. Our unwritten rule is to always try to stock at least 20% of a system's releases for sale. If we have that many, it is a lot more likely that someone will order than if we just have a few things.

The positives and negatives about having a store as a standalone or on Amazon for that matter (as I see them) are:
+ Visitors can purchase things immediately
+ Things that are listed are in stock and ready to sell
+ You don't have to search much to find things you want
+ Presentation of goods can be uniform
- Web site costs
- You need a lot of promotion to get people there
- You don't make much money
- There is no guarantee that you'll sell anything on a regular basis. You could go a month without any sales.
- Credit cards. Either you don't have take and then people don't take you seriously, or you get the ability to accept them and spend thousands implementing it. :(

The positives and negatives about using eBay as I see them:
+ Nearly guaranteed sales
+ HUGE marketplace to sell to
+ No promotional costs beyond eBay fees
+ Ebay Fees aren't done each time for a listing
- Ebay Fees
- Ebay isn't very good with customer service
- Stupid buyers can ruin your Feedback ratings

It is totally up to you of course. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or post here and I'll do my best to answer them :)

[Logicdustbin]

I think I would listen to Goatdan......the first thing I did after reading his post, was to click the link to his store :D

[Falcon]

Ok a lot of good info provided, I thank you very much for that, and do realise all of the positives and negatives, but thats the risk people take, and also, I do enjoy playing games/selling them. Although I should mention that the post office is about 10 houses away from me (Shoppers Drug Mart), so no gas needed since I can drop it off after school. Another thing is that im only 17, and I plan on being an entrepreneur, so this may be a starting point for me, and I want to experience the highs and lows of a business. I still dont drive anyways, I dont have my G2 yet.

Its also a good point that you make, goatdan, about profit. Your right that not much profit is made on each item, its always better than a loss. Another thing is that I only want to do this part time, since I will be going to College next year, and I only hope to enjoy maintaining the site such as yourself.

May I also add, that its not guaranteed that I am going to make this site, I am just at the moment gathering a lot of games for cheap from friends that have old games, I'd figure I would take it off of their hands and sell it or keep in for a future collection of my own.

Btw, for maintaining a website like this part time, you still think I need a license.. or should I go and do some research on this?

[Flack]

Before saying anything else, I just wanted to make a comment to Goatdan ... wow! Thanks for that level of sharing and honesty. Anyone who ever mentions running their own store should have to read that post and take it to heart first.

And now, my two, regularly scheduled cynical comments:


... after school.

Strike one.


... im only 17 ...

Strike two.


... I only want to do this part time ...

Strike three.

Being an entrepreneur means more than calling yourself one. It means taking the initiative to find out the answers to your own questions. I'll bet any questions you have about business licensing or anything else could be found with just a few minutes either through Google or a phone call to your local chamber of commerce.

Anyone ever thinking about running their own web busness ought to print out Goatdan's post and read it a hundred times before investing a penny or minute of their time.

[goatdan]

Ok a lot of good info provided, I thank you very much for that, and do realise all of the positives and negatives, but thats the risk people take, and also, I do enjoy playing games/selling them. Although I should mention that the post office is about 10 houses away from me (Shoppers Drug Mart), so no gas needed since I can drop it off after school. Another thing is that im only 17, and I plan on being an entrepreneur, so this may be a starting point for me, and I want to experience the highs and lows of a business. I still dont drive anyways, I dont have my G2 yet.

If you are doing this to learn how a business functions, you're in luck. It's a great way. I have about a million hours of taxes that I still need to catch up on, and I have become an expert at accounting. Starting your own business is a GREAT way to figure out if it is for you in the future. Gary and I want to do something bigger together in the future in the real world, and we have used the GOAT Store as a testing grounds for us.

That having been said, you not driving is going to be a pretty big problem. You need to have access to some sort of transportation even if you can walk to the post office. Buying materials, investing in more inventory and so on is very important, and it is important that you do it quickly. You'll also need regular trips to the bank and stuff like that.


Its also a good point that you make, goatdan, about profit. Your right that not much profit is made on each item, its always better than a loss.

I think that you missed a little of my point. There is an EXCELLENT chance that you won't profit. And if you are setting up your own site, you're going to have HUGE problems.

I gave the example of the $9.00 / month profit as an example of how small it could be. If you are looking for actual profit, you should go to eBay. You have what is more or less a guarantee there of making something. By yourself, you have no such guarantee.

We started by each putting up $2000 of our own money to purchase things. So we opened with about $3000 of inventory after start up fee expenses. At a rate of $9.00 / month, it would have taken us something like 37 years to break even... if we had kept selling at the same rate. If you're planning on starting with $500 of inventory, you are going to be in really rough shape.


Another thing is that I only want to do this part time, since I will be going to College next year, and I only hope to enjoy maintaining the site such as yourself.

I wouldn't say that I'm *only* maintaining the site. Here's a sampling of what my Pocket PC has under the "GOAT Store" to do list currently:
- Update banking files in Quicken
- Contact [people] about new Dreamcast game release
- Contact pressing plant about pricing next Dreamcast pressing
- Make packages (at least three times per week)
- Send packages
- Descriptions for SNES letters S & T (we are working on describing every item we have in our database. Currently, I'm about 19,000 descriptions done out of 20,000. This has been a project for the past year.)
- Make new GOAT Store contest page
- Add new items to inventory
- Put new items away

It most definitely is not just updating a web site. Sometimes, I wish it was.


May I also add, that its not guaranteed that I am going to make this site, I am just at the moment gathering a lot of games for cheap from friends that have old games, I'd figure I would take it off of their hands and sell it or keep in for a future collection of my own.

Think about how you are planning on making your site. Here's a few things:

- the shopping carts they give you for free are free for a reason
- HTML editors are very picky and bloated. Are you willing to learn HTML inside and out? (Personal note: 100% of GOAT Store is made by hand in notepad.)
- Do you know much about Web design? Good Web design takes a lot of planning and testing. Bad Web design is a huge turn-off. You can't just say that you're going to make a good Web site and do it. It takes a lot more than that. The GOAT Store was the fourth Web site we made, and it has undergone TWO major revisions since the start:
1) The first site was just HTML. All sales were updated by hand. This sucks.
2) The second site had a page editor built into the backend. Once something was ordered, we took it out by hand. A lot better than Rev. 1.
3) The current version is a PHP interface with a MySQL database that houses everything. Everything is kept in real time. This site was under development for an entire year before launching last January. Now that it is open, we have a zillion things we are still trying to do.


Btw, for maintaining a website like this part time, you still think I need a license.. or should I go and do some research on this?

Business license? If you want to try your hand at being a business owner and are serious -- yes. But you should most definitely hire a GOOD Accountant to help you walk through all of this. One of the first things we did was spent $500 on three hours with a damn good accountant. He got everything set up for us, talked about profit / loss ratios and so on so that we wouldn't lose our butts.

If you've ever heard the statement "you get what you pay for" that's really true in the world of Accountants. If someone is offering you a deal for really cheap, then he is offering everyone that deal and not enough people are taking it. The ones that charge a lot do so for a reason. Their time is in demand.

I'd also really suggest finding someone that runs a business in town and talking with them about it. We got our accountant on a tip.


Before saying anything else, I just wanted to make a comment to Goatdan ... wow! Thanks for that level of sharing and honesty. Anyone who ever mentions running their own store should have to read that post and take it to heart first.

:embarrassed: Thanks. I don't mind sharing this stuff and I'm as open as I can be with as much as possible regarding everything I can be. I don't mind talking about this with anyone who is wondering, because if I didn't find it fun I sure would've given up long ago.


And now, my two, regularly scheduled cynical comments:



... after school.

Strike one.



... im only 17 ...

Strike two.



... I only want to do this part time ...

Strike three.

Actually, I wouldn't be so bold. The only thing that sets up a red flag for me in the above is the part time thing because when it is starting you'll need to do a lot. And I would suggest looking for someone to help. There is a ton of work you'll need to do, and doing it by yourself is a huge task.

Just as an FYI, Gary and I started the series of events that eventually formed the GOAT Store when we were 17 also, as an after school thing. It can be done. But you have to be damn determined.


Being an entrepreneur means more than calling yourself one. It means taking the initiative to find out the answers to your own questions. I'll bet any questions you have about business licensing or anything else could be found with just a few minutes either through Google or a phone call to your local chamber of commerce.

I agree with half of this. The top part is dead on. The bottom part... not so much. A real-world accountant is the way to go.


Anyone ever thinking about running their own web busness ought to print out Goatdan's post and read it a hundred times before investing a penny or minute of their time.

Thanks again :) Really -- if you or anyone wants to know anything, post here or PM me and I'll be happy to talk about anything I can. It may take me a while sometime, but I think its fun :D