My start up webshop

[Mexidan]

This will be my log to track my progress and hopefully get some useful input from experts like biophase.
I have my idea ready to go and I have 1 good supplier who drop ships, which I believe will be enough to get things off the ground.

Initially it will be a niche web shop selling products in Mexico, but I will be adding a second income stream later providing sort of a service (wont give out details just yet but I will as I´m getting closer to launch).
I am completely new to this so I will be figuring things out as I go and hopefully will be able to learn a lot and streamline my process so I can scale it to various websites focusing on various products.

Over the next two weeks I´m going to:
- Get my tax ID (i´m not from here)
- Look for a developer/designer (someone local, part-time, perhaps someone talented from University)
- Come up with a name
- Buy domain/hosting

I will be building the business on PrestaShop as I believe it best suits my needs.

Still haven´t decided what hosting to use so any tips and/or advice are highly appreciated.
It has been a difficult identifying a cheap one. Many of them appear cheap but then start charging a lot of premiums for a lot of stuff I may need.

 

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[cilaes]

the forums used to have an ad floating around for half off a year worth of hosting from webhostinghub dot com. I think I got a year of hosting for $40? Great host so far, too, and trust me, I've had A LOT.

 

[Mexidan]

Cool, will have a look at it!
Also was looking into Xpress Hosting - Web Hosting en México right now.

 

[tincho1492]

Hey Mexidan. Did you take a look to Shopify?

About the hosting, I've been using Site5 for years and don't change it for anything. Its customer support is great.

Also you can buy premium ecommerce themes from Woothemes. I downloaded a free one from there and it's really nice. They are very customizable and have a bunch of good extensions like a Multiple Notification plugin, that could be helpful for you is you have a drop-shipping supplier and want to notify them automatically once you receive an order.

 

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[Mexidan]

I did look into Shopfiy some time ago.
Looked expensive to me.. the monthly fee is what you would pay a year at other hosting companies and in addition they also have a 1-2% transaction fee.
I also read that there are some issues with payments to banks located in Mexico.
Appreciate the recommendation!

Will look into Site5 and Woothemes.
That sounds like a very useful plugin. I also want to connect to the suppliers database so I´ll never have the situation of offering a product while they are out of stock!

 

[jessica_david]

you should also take a look on 'IXWEBHOSTING COM', as i am using it since 2007 and it found very good to me, prices are very reasonable aand good part is that there is no hidden charges they only charge for what they say on starting..

 

[Mike39]

Hey Mexidan, for hosting I would suggest HostGator, they are a huge company and their pricing is reasonable, also, GoDaddy does web hosting as well. If you need to get a domain name (once you think of one), I would suggest GoDaddy for sure, look around and you can find some codes that will get you a discount!

Try here for codes to GoDaddy: https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/web-businesses-internet-marketing/25445-30-off-com-godaddy.html

Both GoDaddy and HostGator are pretty basic but will get the job done!

 

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[Mexidan]

Just a quick update:

From my earlier to-do list I got the hosting and my first domain done.

Instead of hiring someone local I have decided to go with a freelancer for now.
I selected 10 from the offers I received and asked some close friends to rate them for me.
Right now I am left with 4 people and I´m having a very hard time deciding who I will give the job to.
Its not a lot of money, but still I do not want to waste any money at this phase.

For now, I will focus on getting my page up and working and will get my tax-id after I launched.

Short term goals:
- Learn as much as I can (especially SEO, will want to learn CSS and PHP later so I can modiy / set-up my own pages)
- Generate 50 USD/month passive income

Before the end of 2012 I want to at least earn enough money for my wife to be able to quit her full-time job.

 

[Mexidan]

It has been a while since my last update because I have been traveling to Europe for a couple of weeks visiting family etc.

I have selected a guy from Vietnam via oDesk to help me set up the page.
When I hired him I was fairly confident he would do a good job but now I feel he really lacks attention to detail.
Every time I provide him a description and an example of what it should look like but every single time I need to get back with additional changes, fixes and updates.
All in all this has been a frustrating process but I do feel I have learned a great deal in the process.

The page is about 90% complete and I will post it here in a little bit to be able to receive some feedback.
Main pendings for my page are to translate all the text (About us, terms of delivery, etc) and really focus on on-page SEO.
I hope to have completed this process in about two weeks and then start working on PPC, backlinking etc to try and get my page in page 1 of google in 3 months.

I already have 3 other products I´d really LOVE to put to work the exact same way.
2 of them are not really niche markets but since the market is not the US there is a lot less high quality competition.
I feel confident that my experience from this project will make execution much easier and pain free next time around and hopefully I´ll be able to have 2-3 pages up and working by December.

 

[Determined2012]

Any new updates?

 

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