Making money

December 17, 2003

I have three websites currently online, and they are all making me money. One of them is tied to my brick and mortar company, and that works as my silent salesman. It does a very good job at that. The other two are infomational sites that i make some money on advertising, and some product placement.

Ecommerce is fairly new to me, and osCommerce is even newer. It a great product and it seems to be worth it's weight in gold for features and support. I have however seem, or noticed in the forums what appears to be a lot of people getting the program, installling it, making minor changes and calling it a store. And although it is, in MY OPINION, it's not a store because it's not somewhere someone would shop in. It looks unprofessional, or they didn't think about the color and being able to read the text, or one thing or the other. So in my humble opinion, there are a lot of "stores" around that will not being making any money.

Your answers don't have to give specific information about the how and where, but as a person not new to business, but new to online business. I would like your answers to reflect vaild information that I could use to help me and other along the way.

So my questions:

-- Who is making a living running an osCommerce shop? <define living: More money than just covering your hosting bill>

-- Are you running a "stock" store?

-- Do you have contributions added, which ones seem to be worth installing more than others?

-- Did you design your site, or have it professional done?

-- What was the average cost to get your store online and making money?

-- What is one thing you did, but wouldn't do over again if you had to redo your site?

I want to thank anyone that responses ahead of time, as I think this information will be valuable to everyone that run osCommerce, and with the internet boom and shopping bringing in about 1.7 Billon dollars in sales each year give or take on that number, I think there is plenty to go around. :)

burt · December 17, 2003

-- Who is making a living running an osCommerce shop? <define living: More money than just covering your hosting bill>

Yes.

-- Are you running a "stock" store?

No. Highly modified.

-- Do you have contributions added, which ones seem to be worth installing more than others?

A few. Mainly self built pieces of code that make the shopping experience easier. The ones you should install are those that make the shopping experience for your customer easier. Also definately SIDKiller.

-- Did you design your site, or have it professional done?

I made them.

-- What was the average cost to get your store online and making money?

The latest one cost about $200 all in, and made that inside the first day. :)

The previous one cost about $300 to set up all told. I made about $400 profit before I got bored of it and then sold the whole thing (hosting, domains, site etc etc) for just under $1000.

-- What is one thing you did, but wouldn't do over again if you had to redo your site?

I tried to take Oscommerce to xhtml strict. But it meant too much coding time for little gain. So that's on a back burner (for now).

December 21, 2003

Is this a bad sign? Of all the times this post was viewed, there is only one shop making money?

Come on guys and gals.. I am not looking for you to give trade secrets awat here.. Just general advice where you have found to make you money with OSC that everyone can benefit from.

Jamie

ashishraj · December 22, 2003

Looks like it is really so depressing, almost all of us here are nerds who are more interested in doing things than acutally earning!

December 23, 2003

I have a store I am making money with. ;)

-- Who is making a living running an osCommerce shop? <define living: More money than just covering your hosting bill>

I am a SAHM and so any money I make is extra. I run my store as a subdomain of my main site (a parenting site) and my members donate enough each month to cover my hosting costs. So I literally have no overhead. I made $225 last week which is just fine as a part-time income. Just enough to give us a little extra :)

-- Are you running a "stock" store?

Nope. We have quite a few contributions and will be adding more shortly.

-- Do you have contributions added, which ones seem to be worth installing more than others?

Yes, many. And I ditto the above poster who said to get those contrib's that benefit the customer.

-- Did you design your site, or have it professional done?

I'm running the standard pixame template right now because my site has been up less than a month. But I'm currently working on getting a professionally designed template.

-- What was the average cost to get your store online and making money?

Absolutely nothing. Didn't cost me a penny.

-- What is one thing you did, but wouldn't do over again if you had to redo your site?

I can't think of anything...

December 27, 2003

I'm the e-commerce manager for an OSC store part time, so these answers are in relation to the store owners, i.e. my parents... :P

Who is making a living running an osCommerce shop?

umm Yes you could say that, 7 figure turnover...

-- Are you running a "stock" store?

No, its been modded considerably

-- Do you have contributions added, which ones seem to be worth installing more than others?

I don't think theyre contributions, they were developed for us by our programmer.

-- Did you design your site, or have it professional done?

I designed, and we had an outside company do all the modificiations to the code.

-- What was the average cost to get your store online and making money?

?2k (and it was worth EVERY penny) to get it exactly the way we wanted in terms of design, research, usability testing, changes we've made to it over the last year. However, that doesnt take into consideration advertising, which is considerable.

-- What is one thing you did, but wouldn't do over again if you had to redo your site?

I dont think there is one, its been a fantastic experience thats been worth every second we've spent on it.

ozEworks · December 30, 2003

Who is making a living running an osCommerce shop?

umm Yes you could say that, 7 figure turnover...

a 7 figure turnover is not profit ")

after tax you could expect 10% which of course is a 6 figure turnover. You are millionaires so what are you doing here :D

JonCloud · December 30, 2003

My Store is Profitable and is my primary income.

JAson

mpiscopo · January 2, 2004

I don't see how osCommerce has anything to do with making a profit. It is only a tool which is used to market and process orders. Making a profit has much more to do with your business model and how you run your business.

More meaningful questions would be;

How have you optimized your online store for search engines?

How do you get traffic to your site?

Are there any osCommerce enhancements which you highly recommend (you already asked this in your original post)?

etc.

Just my thoughts...

mpiscopo · January 4, 2004

BTW, Looks like Nivatel is using osCommerce. They are a large company selling calling cards. They definately are a large successful company. www.nivatel.com

January 4, 2004

I don't see how osCommerce has anything to do with making a profit. It is only a tool which is used to market and process orders. Making a profit has much more to do with your business model and how you run your business.

More meaningful questions would be;

How have you optimized your online store for search engines?

How do you get traffic to your site?

Are there any osCommerce enhancements which you highly recommend (you already asked this in your original post)?

etc.

Just my thoughts...

I think my first post was misunderstood. I understand the osCommerce doesn't have anything to do with you making money. I mentioned it in the first post as this is the osCommerce forums. In reality you could use any shopping cart, or even create your own to run your site.

My question was directed to people running an ecommerce site, and again since this is the oscommerce forums, I ask the people running this program.

I asked the question: Are you running a stock store for this reason. In the My Store forums, there are tons or people fussing that people are running a stock store. One reason for this is they have seen a stock store working on theirs for so long that it's not appealing. Well to the average shopper, who hasn't seen them over and over again, and hasn't installed them over and over again, I wonder what it looks like. The only way I can answer that one would be to have a store that IS stock, and is making money. Customers must not mind the stock appearance if they are buying. That of course is just one of many reasons people will or won't buy from a shop.

I will agree with you on that last two questions, both of those are very good questions to ask anyone who is running a successful shop. My other non ecommerce sites are rated very high in Google, and Yahoo, and I get most of my business from them. So I would agree that having your shop optimized for the search engines. For the most part, the shops I have seen don't have a rating in Google. Of the ones that do, it would be interesting to see how they got it there.

So in my opinion, there are a lot of questions about ecommerce and how it works best. These questions, and answers will help us all grow with our sites.

For the sake of this thread, I am talking to the users of oscommerce, even though I know you could in reality use most any cart program.

Jamie

burt · January 4, 2004

It would be interesting to register two domain names, then set up a modded Osc Shop on one name and a standard Osc shop on the other. Run both from the same database (easy to do).

Promote them both equally. And see which gets the better sales.

In fact, I am due to launch a new site towards the end of January, and I will do this.

By "modded" I mean:

- extremely different look and graphics to normal Osc

- All the extra Search Engine bits and pieces

- Some other additions to make it a bit better from a customer point of view

The non-modded version will be:

- standard Install

- new Logo (to replace oscommerce.gif)

Place your bets now as to which one will be the more successful.

January 4, 2004

two stores, one database? you are not afraid of corruption?

burt · January 4, 2004

two stores, one database? you are not afraid of corruption?

I have over 20 stores working off of one database. It is not a problem.

SuperJosh · January 5, 2004

two stores, one database? you are not afraid of corruption?

I have over 20 stores working off of one database. It is not a problem.

Really? Well, now that is interesting. So... this will probably end up being a different thread, but how would you go about doing this (and maybe we should take this PM)

January 6, 2004

easy... different table name prefixes (site1_, site2_, Site3_) setup different stores/sites to access the database using different table prefixes. I'f you have plenty of space and database speed/bandwith to accomidate the combined site traffic this will work. I run 5 club site/forums on 1 DB. This makes for easy/quick backup :-)

burt · January 6, 2004

No, all the sites are using the exact same database. Each site has a totally different look and domain name.

This means I can promote my products in a number of different ways, even to the extent of giving affiliates their own site! And running from my database.

SuperJosh · January 7, 2004

No, all the sites are using the exact same database. Each site has a totally different look and domain name.

This means I can promote my products in a number of different ways, even to the extent of giving affiliates their own site! And running from my database.

Right, sooooo.... how would one go about doing this?

wizardsandwars · January 7, 2004

BTW, Looks like Nivatel is using osCommerce. They are a large company selling calling cards. They definately are a large successful company. www.nivatel.com

They might be a very large company, but their web presense is very, very limited.

The hardly have any traffic at all. Not that they should with that website, lol.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_...www.nivatel.com

January 12, 2004

I bought stuff recently from a stock osCommerce shop, reason, prices were cheaper than elsewhere and free shipping in UK.

If there were 2 stores as burt mentions, one with a completely customised professional look, one stock but with the same products/prices/discounts on a product I was looking to buy. I would buy from the customised/professional looking store.

But I wouldn't buy from the more professional looking store if they were more expensive for exactly the same product.

January 12, 2004

ok i just wanted to make sure by one database that you didnt mean all the tables are the same, i understand being able to use different prefix's as i do that with forums, etc.

for me as far as buying from one versus another if same price, the next is their location, if they have an 800#, calling them and talking, seeing how i get treated, and also make sure they take amex. with amex i am protected more than with the other cc's

BiZ · January 15, 2004

I have two stores, one of which is running oscommerce, the other isnt. oscommerce software is actually far better then the store I have on another site which I wont name.

the store that is NONE oscommerce based,makes over 100 grand a year in internet transactions alone. the business itself brings in more income but the internet sales is one avenue.

as one member mentioned already, the questions are not how or whether oscommerce can make money, but how you market your product.

one piece of advice is, is making the store easy to use. Depending on your customers, each market has its audience, and with the market that brings in over 6 figures in sales is the market that is general stupid.

meaning, the average customer is not computer savvy, and needs only the most simpliest store front available, with no added additional features etc.

anyhow..

as far as my oscommerce store, it doesnt make much money if any at all right now. its a small ventucer that I work on, and in the process of building the market before real income starts pouring in.

But your best advice, is to be sure you select the right colors, make sure the functions are easy to use, and that its not hard to check out when someone is ready to make a purchase.

dont get to graphical with images, unless you have a good tone or look.

jme751 · February 5, 2004

You can share products among more than one shop and change the individual info for each shop i.e., different banners, different emails etc by adding multiple configuration tables and calling to them (configuration_store2), but i havn't been able to have different pricing for each shop (product_price_shop2).

jamie

Chance · February 5, 2004

Our store is an extension of our brick-and-mortar business. The business has been around for about 4 years, the site around for about 4 months.

We support our store with targeted mailings (we sell emergency equipment, and fire/rescue/EMS/police addresses are both of a limited number and easily obtainable), mail to all our current account holders both on the site and with traditional accounts, and we encourage current customers to use the web site to purchase items they would normaly call the store to order because its WAY easier on everyone.

Because of this, regional sales (we are in the southeast) are great. Country-wide and worldwide sales? Eh, we get orders from all over, but not nearly the volume that we get from our region.

Actual online sales, using a credit card, are not that great. However, we have linked our customer database to the site, and net 30 sales are hopping. Also, the site serves as a super-showcase for our big ticket items- whole department quotes on turnout gear and other equipment, emergency apparatus like fire trucks, etc.

In the past 4 months, we have generated more leads for large ticket quotes and purchases with the website than all the other company salesmen (about 6 last time I counted) had combined.

I know many osCommerce users can't use this- most people don't have a sales staff and quotes and blah. However, this is how osCommerce has benefited us.

I wish I could have a stunning osCommerce design- I am sure it would improve sales. However, I am not a graphic artist, and quite frankly I suck at images in general. We run a quasi-heavily modified stock store, and it produces great results for us.

Pompeylad · February 8, 2004

And theres me thinking that it was against the law to hold no stock and still sell your items to the public? As everyone wants items devliered yesterday, so how can you have next day devliery if you hold no stock?

Pompeylad.

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