Question regarding costs of an e-store

[benjir]

Hello,
long time browser, but have never registered to post, until now..
I am wondering if any people here, experienced in online businesses would be able to tell me (roughly) how much it would cost to setup my website idea.

The business idea is pretty much an online marketplace for a particular age demographic (18-25)
My vision is to have a website, in which users can register, and submit items to sell or auction; within their particular region, or country wide. It would also have to have some type of system for either IM, forum, or private message in which the users could talk privately to discuss prices, pick-up, or postage..

I know there are websites such as shopify, but I need a more dynamic website..
Any help would be much appreciated!

Thank you

 

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[Icy]

That idea to get the basic idea working, wouldn't necessarily be much. I don't have a price though as I've never bought a website.

Check out Joombla, or Drupla and see what plugins they have because you, with a little bit of learning may be able to set something up.

Bare in mind that it doesn't need to be ebay-like scalable at first. You need to see if it'll work. So doing something like that above gets it started, and if it is worth your time, does it matter how much it costs to get a 'perfect' version of it?

 

[benjir]

I had a look at Joomla and Drupla, both had some good extensions, but after thinking about it last night, I realized that auctions wouldn't be needed, at first, rather than auctions I think a type of 'classified' listing would be better - due to the fact that I think that the sellers/buyers are going to be within the same city/area (as the items are in a sense 'passing on' from one to another) so then once an item is listed, people can contact the seller and offer a price.
I found an open source listing application which would do the job nicely, with some hacking of the code, its called OPAL Opal - Open Source Ruby on Rails Item Listing Software - Hulihan Applications - Website | Logo | Software | Graphic Design