Need Advice on building Sports Card Website

[greenmonster66]

So between having an Ebay Store and selling on multiple forum sites I am thinking of building a website. Can anyone recommend the best way to approach building an Ecommerce website. Not sure if I should try to do myself through companies like Shopify, GoDaddy, Wix ( many of these dont have templates for sports cards and collectibles) etc or have someone build it for me but allow me the capabilities on backend to update inventory?

Any Thoughts out there, Thank you!

[Stampsfan]

Biggest problem with Wix is the inability for anyone to find your site. Their SEO sucks, but you can build a pretty nice site... that only your friends and family would know where it is.

IMO as an IT professional, getting traffic to your site is key. Next is keeping them there (with easy navigation design, and good product). For maintenance, you want to ensure you can apply discounts, coupons, etc. with ease, and not have to go into each item and enter a discount. See how 4SC does theirs. Every week they apply a discount based on a series of parameters (price, grade, etc.). They obviously have a simple way of updating pricing, as every week those parameters change.

Your question does not have any short answers, but I can help with my experience. Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like, Neal.

Bob

[savedfrommyspokes]

A few years ago, I started a site (believe it was through Big Commerce?) to sell off many of my extras. It was a typical shopping cart site. Once the store was set up, which was not too difficult, it was even easier to add inventory to it. I used CSV files and was able to add image links to the CSV files...I self hosted the images. I could add approximately a 1,000 (presorted) cards an hour to the site. Very painless and inexpensive to set up. That is the good.

The bad is all I heard were crickets. I included with all of my ebay mailings a business card promoting the "new" site, but I did not advertise any other way. My regular ebay customers continued to buy through ebay and not my site. I decided that the cost of advertising would just be offsetting what I paid on ebay. So after a few months of crickets, I closed it down.

[swarmee]

Did you try COMC yet? 99% of the cards I sell go through them, and my percentage of work done to facilitate sales is minimal.

Otherwise, the guy who runs Openbinders (advertiser on nonsports side) may be able to help.

[rdwyer]

Try Go Daddy.

I made this site: www.ondecksportsmemorabilia.com

[cgilstrap]

www.thecard.store

I just built it at the start of this year to unload extra cards. Anyone can set up a store and run it from this marketplace. It uses paypal payments. If I had 10 folks setting up stores, I could reduce the marketplace's %.

(I have already sold cards from the site and it receives web traffic.)

Good luck if you build your own!

-CG

[Leon]

They take 18% of the sale?

Originally Posted by cgilstrap

www.thecard.store

I just built it at the start of this year to unload extra cards. Anyone can set up a store and run it from this marketplace. It uses paypal payments. If I had 10 folks setting up stores, I could reduce the marketplace's %.

(I have already sold cards from the site and it receives web traffic.)

Good luck if you build your own!

-CG

[cgilstrap]

They do if someone uses the purchase button. Still better than up front fees and back end % fees on ebay...or 20% or more buyers fees at auction. Additionally, they don't mind if you talk to folks on their site...or add links and such. If you sell using IM on their site...that's also cool.

[lowpopper]

SlabSticker.com

I can refer you to the guy who made this site if you want. PM me.




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