by Albert Juul

Created on: April 28, 2008

There are many different ways to go about starting your own internet retail business; one of the most popular is on eBay. eBay is by far one of the easiest and most widely used mediums for people who want to start there own web based retail business. Depending upon what one wishes to sell eBay can be highly profitable, however given eBay fee structure it can also be quite expensive.

Before selling anything on eBay it is a good idea to research the item or items that you wish to sell, to do this eBay offers Market Place Research, this will give you an idea of how well a particular item sell and whether to sell it at auction or keep it in your eBay store. Market Place Research is free for premium and anchor store subscribers and allows you to see how well a particular item has sold in the past 60 days.

If money is an issue and you don't have a lot to spend on inventory you may want to consider drop shipping. Drop shipping is were you list items for sale that you don't currently have in your possession. When a particular item sells you purchase it from your supplier at a wholesale price and your supplier ships it to your customer under your business name and address. Some popular drop ship companies are doba, simplex, and shopster just to name afew.

Another option to consider when starting up your business is to open your own e-commerce website. If you are an eBay seller then a good choice for an e-commerce website is Prostores, which is a company that is owned by eBay. What makes Prostores an ideal solution especially if you have a high volume of inventory already selling on eBay is the ability to import your products directly from eBay into your Prostore catalog there by saving your self time as well as a major headache by not having to enter information that you already entered for your eBay listings.

Prostores is also much cheaper initially than eBay, starting at $9.95/month. Prostores also charges a transaction fee for all items you sell however the fees are much, much lower than the fees charged on eBay. For the Prostores starter subscription the fee is 1.5% of all items sold, for business, advanced and enterprise subscriptions the fee is .5% for all items sold. If you do not wish to spend the excessive amount of money that eBay charges for its services than Prostores is definitely worth considering.

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