You don't need to learn HTML to build a website; from the free software you can download to the latest version of Microsoft FrontPage, there are plenty of design tools that let you lay out pages like a desktop publishing package and never touch the code that makes them work. You don't need to buy or build an online catalogue, arrange distribution and set up credit card merchant services to do e-commerce, either. Whether you are a one-man band or a large company, you can get an online presence from sites that will do the work for you, but it is not always as straightforward as it might seem.
If you sign up for an affiliate programme with an e-commerce site, you don't even need your own products. Create links on your web pages to products related to your site and get a commission if your visitors click through and buy from them. The commission varies - Amazon pays on a sliding scale, usually between 5 and 15% - as does how long your association with the customer lasts. The e-commerce site puts a cookie on the buyer's computer so further purchases carry on giving you commissions. The time limit ranges from under a day to 30 days and, with more than 900,000 Amazon Affiliate shops online, your referral has a lot of competition.
Affiliate programs in the US went through the same boom and bust cycle as the e-commerce sites that spawned them, and there have been problems with browser add-ons that add "contextual" links to web pages, redirecting buyers to their own affiliated links or to other shopping sites altogether. These links only appear if users download the tools, but this kind of adware (or parasiteware, as online sites who feel their sales are being hijacked prefer to call it) is increasingly common; Gartner thinks more than 20 million people have some adware installed.
Don't write affiliate programmes off yet. Forrester Research estimates they are driving around $14 billion of online sales worldwide, and the tools are getting more sophisticated. Amazon is the most famous, and while most affiliates hand codeproduct links in their pages, the new Amazon Web Services lets you use XML to include searches, recommendations, lists of best-selling products and up-to-date prices on your pages.
Affiliate Windows has around 220 merchants, including Domino's Pizza and Oddbins. Its Integratable Product System uses XML web services that let you build a shopping area on your site with four lines of code, although you need to be able to run the IPS scripts and software on your server.
If you want to sell products you can make a little more your own, merchandising sites such as CaféPress and T-ShirtZoo put your images on products such as T-shirts, mugs and mouse mats. They produce, ship and collect the money for them. The base price covers their costs and you get the difference between that and what you choose to charge. In both cases, all you have to do is sign up, upload your images and link to your area on their site.
T-ShirtZoo is based in Ireland but has printers in nearly 40 countries; you can set prices in sterling, euros or dollars. The local printer prints and ships the orders and T-ShirtZoo sends you the profits (usually via PayPal). The site handles returns, delivery problems and fraud for you, too. You don't have to stick to canned images; the Africam site lets visitors take snapshots from webcams in various wildlife sanctuaries and T-ShirtZoo prints those on to shirts with the Africam slogan.
CaféPress has a much wider stock including prints, lunchboxes, hats, clocks and stickers, and has recently started producing books and audio CDs on demand. The disadvantage is that everything ships from America, with prices (and your profits) in dollars. A basic store is free, but there is a monthly charge for premium shops that allow more products arranged in categories.
When you already have your own products to sell, you can sell through sites that already attract large numbers of customers or set up on your own. If what you are selling is in Amazon's catalogue, you can sell new and used items through the Amazon Marketplace, which puts prices for third-party sellers on the page next to the Amazon price.
Amazon collects payments, takes a cut and emails you delivery details, transferring payments into your bank account every two weeks. If you are selling more than 30 items a week, you can sign up as a pro-merchant. Twenty-five pounds a month buys you tools for submitting items in bulk and you pay a lower commission; you also get a customisable zShop area listing everything you have for sale. Amazon Web Services lets you take this a step further, with tools for uploading and downloading sales information directly.
To sell items that aren't in Amazon's catalogue, you need to use the auctions area. This isn't as popular as eBay but Amazon doesn't charge you unless your item sells, whereas eBay charges you a listing fee whether you make a sale or not. On the other hand, there is no charge for running a store on eBay and you can advertise items in bulk at fixed prices.
Unless you only take orders by email, setting up your own site means building a catalogue and accepting payments yourself. Getting a merchant ID for accepting credit cards can be a slow and painful process and you then have to deal with such problems as fraud.
The alternatives are online payment systems like PayPal and the similar UK service, NoChex, and schemes such as BT Openworld's Internet Trader Pack, where WorldPay handles the transactions for you. Catalogue systems are simpler and more flexible than they used to be: Actinic's new Audio Store lets you sell digital downloads like MP3s alongside physical products, and it works with PayPal and other online payment providers.
Bruce Towsend, from Actinic, points out the advantages: "Being somewhere like eBay means you are practically guaranteed to get customers, provided the pricing is right. But there are limitations. You can't create a product catalogue with subsections, or handle product variants like different sizes and colours; and there's no stock control or back-ordering facility. The system is country-specific, and can't handle variations in shipping cost or tax regime, and there are no built-in order processing features."
If you want a more sophisticated store, you have to do more work. But whether you invest in that or sign up with an existing site, you can have your online store up and running in an afternoon.
Links
Affiliate Windows
www.affiliatewindow.com
CaféPress
www.cafepress.com
T-ShirtZoo
www.t-shirtzoo.com
PayPal
www.paypal.com
NoChex
www.nochex.com
