# How much does a site cost?



## slimen232 (Oct 16, 2015)

Im trying to develop a marketplace...is this easy? How much does it cost?


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## evanalmighty (Nov 9, 2015)

It depends on who you go to, how custom you want it to be, and what language it gets developed in. You could find a template somewhere for $50 to $100, or hire someone to do it from scratch and they would probably quote you anywhere from $1,000 and up. It really depends on the scope of your project.


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## slimen232 (Oct 16, 2015)

evanalmighty said:


> It depends on who you go to, how custom you want it to be, and what language it gets developed in. You could find a template somewhere for $50 to $100, or hire someone to do it from scratch and they would probably quote you anywhere from $1,000 and up. It really depends on the scope of your project.


Ive thought of ideas like fiverr. But people are quoting 3K which is high


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## evanalmighty (Nov 9, 2015)

I may be interested in helping, how is your idea different?


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## andrewdennish (Dec 16, 2015)

I think minimum cost a website about 5000 INR


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## ProArtShirts (May 3, 2010)

Go to SHOPIFY
$30 month with fully integrated shopping cart.


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## jennGO (Mar 11, 2014)

Since you're developing a marketplace it is definitely definitely going to be in the 1000s of dollars. You have to have a database, user management for the sellers, account management for the buyers, a review system, comment system, potentially messaging system, and then it needs to generate unique URLs for each product created. That's want I can think of off the top of my head! It's going to take a lot of capital to get it right.


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## Apollinaire (May 17, 2011)

I'm a webdevelopper (before being printer) and I have to tell that 3K is not (very) high for a website. This is a "middle range" price (or starting prince for established web agency).
You get what you pay for is the truth in this business (if you find a competent developper) because you pay "only" developper (or designer or someone else...) time.

In France the minimum for a freelance in this business is 250€/day. I don't tell about student or no professional people who do that next to them current job.

So, depend of what you looking for. A CMS like Magento, Prestashop with only a basic installation/configuration and a theme (not really custom but not the basic one) costs around 400$-500$.
If you want a customized CMS it would be on the 2000-3000$ range.
With a full custom website...no limit.

I think people don't want to put many money in a website because it's virtual. But if you think it could replace a physical shop, maybe the cost seems not too much.

Slimen232 you told about a marketplace but this is a too vast subject to give you a range price like this. But if it's a A to Z development (without any CMS) you have to think about at least few thousands $.


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## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

In the U.S. you can setup a web site for @ $50 a year or so. That's with a decent amount of allocated drive (storage space) and normally an "out of the box" set of pages.

After that it is up to you as to what you want to create. There are quite a few freeware/shareware packages out there that make it a bit easier but "off the shelf" and/or extensive custom work can be pricey as others have said.


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## slimen232 (Oct 16, 2015)

Blue92 said:


> In the U.S. you can setup a web site for @ $50 a year or so. That's with a decent amount of allocated drive (storage space) and normally an "out of the box" set of pages.
> 
> After that it is up to you as to what you want to create. There are quite a few freeware/shareware packages out there that make it a bit easier but "off the shelf" and/or extensive custom work can be pricey as others have said.


Its a marketplace
Im slowly realizing $3000 may not be high.

It involves combining sellers and buyers all on one site

However, who do you trust? All freelancers say they can do it but have never made a site like it?


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## jennGO (Mar 11, 2014)

If they've never made a site like it don't hire them. The problem there is yes they can learn the code but they don't understand how to link all the features and you will spend weeks troubleshooting and teaching them the site. Make them show you their past work


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## slimen232 (Oct 16, 2015)

jennGO said:


> If they've never made a site like it don't hire them. The problem there is yes they can learn the code but they don't understand how to link all the features and you will spend weeks troubleshooting and teaching them the site. Make them show you their past work


Well the problem is. Marketplaces are rare... So if they did... It would have to be terrible or super expensive to hire them


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## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

slimen232 said:


> Its a marketplace
> Im slowly realizing $3000 may not be high.
> 
> It involves combining sellers and buyers all on one site
> ...


I worked in the IT world for the last 25 years. I oversaw a team of 15 database and web developers. Last count was 35+ web applications up and running. 

Almost 98% of all we did was custom development BUT it was not in a retail or marketing area.

If we did a web site now for our business I would most likely do the basic layout and presentation layer and then rely on either plug-ins or a web commerce experienced developer for the actual sales and ordering portions.


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## jennGO (Mar 11, 2014)

slimen232 said:


> Well the problem is. Marketplaces are rare... So if they did... It would have to be terrible or super expensive to hire them


I don't think marketplaces are that rare. Sure, in the t-shirt industry I believe that marketplaces exist in a small percentage of all shirt vendors, but just browsing freelancer.com there are dozens of projects for marketplaces for various industries. Just poking around at bidders on those for example I found this guy

https://www.freelancer.com/u/phpMaestro.html?ref_project_id=9180705

I don't know him. But judging his portfolio, he has done dating sites, handyman marketplaces, and a directory for customers and vendors. These types of projects have similar characteristics to functions you need. So this for me would suffice as experience. And yes like Blue92 said just because someone mods existing plugins or shops doesn't mean they are incompetent. Fairly common but I've worked with someone who prefers from scratch it depends on who you hire. Neither is wrong IMO


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## ApparelSourcing (Jul 24, 2015)

its very complex matter, I did R&D about a website of E commerce. i realize that it will take almost usd700-900 for a customized website as i need. then someone told me why not you make it by your own and go for website development training course. i search in the market about the top training centers and i come to know that for whole course it will take USD400. and it will take 6 month to be an expert in PHP with some extra skills. i think if there is no matter of time then this idea could be better. you also can go for it. slow and steady wins the race...


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## jfisk3475 (Jan 28, 2011)

Google does offer a free site. 5 pages and upgrade with shopping cart real cheap. It's call Get your business online. 

Sent from my SM-G900T using T-Shirt Forums


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## slimen232 (Oct 16, 2015)

jfisk3475 said:


> Google does offer a free site. 5 pages and upgrade with shopping cart real cheap. It's call Get your business online.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900T using T-Shirt Forums


Yeah this isn't a marketplace though.


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## atarizzz (Dec 17, 2015)

Strange how nobody asked the OP to clarify what exactly he/she meant by "marketplace".

OP later says "thought of ideas like fiverr" -- for $3k. 

It's obviously possible to build your own version of some of these marketplaces on a small budget like that if you really know what you're doing - or you're buying something canned. But BEWARE If you point a developer at fiverr (as in your example) and say "clone this" - they just might. Then you might wind up getting sued not realizing that the developer stole bits of code from you cloned source in order to cut corners and get your "fixed price" job completed on time.

All I can suggest here, is if you work with custom developers and they figure out that you don't know much about web development, they're going to milk you for all that you let on that you can stand to pay. Doesn't matter if it's fixed price by milestone, or hourly - to protect yourself you really need to know exactly what you want and have a detailed milestone marked plan to get it done. 

There are many many dev shops out there that basically exist more to rip people off and burn the clock as hustlers than are knowledgeable developers. Not knowing how to spot the difference & wanting to go into that business, is risky business.


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## jennGO (Mar 11, 2014)

OP described the marketplace concept vaguely in a previous thread so I know a few people here have read that and were aware. Good point on the site copying...that is always super annoying when you say "like this" and they show up with a crappy clone & you have to redirect them


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## JosephRegan90 (Dec 26, 2015)

You can either get the website from Shopify, Big Cartel for as low as 30$ but that way you would not have your own domain and at the same time having a store on marketplace is just like having a rented appartment in a building whereas if you create your website from the scratch you will have your own web store with unlimited product posting and your own customized website made especially according to your theme.
Inbox me for further details


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## David09 (Oct 2, 2015)

It depends on how you want to look like your website and what kind of customization you want to .


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## brandonlaura (Dec 26, 2015)

It depends on which type of website you are looking to get because prices are majorly depends upon the customization


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## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

"it will take 6 month to be an expert in PHP with some extra skills."

May be possible if a person is already proficient in several other web capable programming languages. 

For a novice it ain't gonna happen that fast unless being able to create a web page with "Hello World" and a button control on it is considered to be "proficient".


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## JosephRegan90 (Dec 26, 2015)

approximately 1000-1500$


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## Apollinaire (May 17, 2011)

Blue92 said:


> "it will take 6 month to be an expert in PHP with some extra skills."
> 
> May be possible if a person is already proficient in several other web capable programming languages.
> 
> For a novice it ain't gonna happen that fast unless being able to create a web page with "Hello World" and a button control on it is considered to be "proficient".


Right.
Some people will be able to know Php very well after 6 months, this is true but I know many people that after 2 years are not able to make an entire easy website (and php is not sufficient for that - think about html/css/js/mysql and now some frameworks).

The most important, how much cost 6 months time ? If you don't want to open a web agency I don't think that this invest will be interesting...


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

Blue92 said:


> "it will take 6 month to be an expert in PHP with some extra skills."
> 
> May be possible if a person is already proficient in several other web capable programming languages.
> 
> For a novice it ain't gonna happen that fast unless being able to create a web page with "Hello World" and a button control on it is considered to be "proficient".


100% agree


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

ApparelSourcing said:


> its very complex matter, I did R&D about a website of E commerce. i realize that it will take almost usd700-900 for a customized website as i need. then someone told me why not you make it by your own and go for website development training course. i search in the market about the top training centers and i come to know that for whole course it will take USD400. and it will take 6 month to be an expert in PHP with some extra skills. i think if there is no matter of time then this idea could be better. you also can go for it. slow and steady wins the race...


The 1990s are calling and they want their websites back ... just kidding.

PHP, Javascript, MySQL coding are largely for programmers. _Now-a-days you do not have to be a programmer to be a developer. _ 

Easiest lowest cost route is to utilize a CMS or a turnkey cart solution, none of which you need to be a programmer to customize. With all the plug-ins and themes around if you can post on a forum like here you can customize your own CMS or cart.

Or you can pay someone to set one of these up for you. But unless you want to be a programmer you don't need PHP to be an awesome developer.

Why re-invite the wheel? Besides those places that offer a web interface to customize your site, there are solutions like Joomla, Wordpress, and carts like Open Cart. Why try and re-create something that is already robust and proven, and as a collaborative effort took _thousands_ of man hours to create.

It won't hurt to know HTML and CSS, but even with that you can customize and create content to a large degree without it.


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## Bugmeister (Dec 6, 2015)

...and it's not just the cost of creating that site, there's extensive ongoing costs associated with making the site SECURE - safe from hacking, keeping customers safe, keeping your transactions safe. That need doesn't end when you put the site online, it's a never ending battle checking and correcting vulnerabilities and staying current with functions as your supporting services are updated. And that's assuming you're able to confirm that your contracted programmers are up to the task.

The solutions mentioned by mgparrish and others do that work for you with less impact on your bottom line.


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## Ak Sharma (May 16, 2015)

slimen232 said:


> Im trying to develop a marketplace...is this easy? How much does it cost?



Trying to develop an online marketplace is no more difficult.There are innumerable platforms available online and depending on your budget you can select any one of them.Platform such as Yo!Kart , Shopify and more will help you to build an online marketplace with little investment.All you need is to select the one based on your requirements


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## doutlet (Aug 18, 2011)

We have setup a few marketplace websites. If is a LOT of work. 

If you want something custom and top notch from the ground up you are looking at $50,000 to $500,000 to develop. 

If I was you I would start simple with a Shopify website. There is 2 or 3 shopify apps that allow you to set up a marketplace (https://apps.shopify.com/search/query?utf8=✓&q=marketplace). They may not have all the features you want. But, it is much cheaper and quicker to setup to test your idea. 

Then, If things go well invest the time and money in a custom platform.


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## atarizzz (Dec 17, 2015)

For anyone wanting something of a middle ground between Shopify and a full blown custom site (e.g. developed "from scratch"), you might consider something like OpenTshirts. They appear to host solutions now too: 

https://opentshirtshosting.com/opentshirts-website-usa

As long as the hosted solutions allow you to have access to your database at any time, that would some like a pretty nice and salable solution for the future. That is to say, if you make loads of money and want to bring everything in house so that only you know your sales numbers, you could grab your database and migrate everything to a locally hosted OpenTshirts instance at some point as growth permits.

Shopify would be great if you want to be hands off for much of the integration like 3rd party processing and focus more on design and printing instead of technology and architecture.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I think my current hosting costs are around $450 a month:

* CloudFlare Business level = $200/month
* RackSpace Cloud Sites = $150/month
* Amazon S3 Hosting = $25/month
* Amazon CloudFront CDN = $50/month
* VaultPress Premium = $29/month

The benefit of spending $6000 a year on hosting is it's really scalable during peak traffic, your Google PageSpeed will be 90/100 or better with very minor tweaking, and your SEO goes through the roof. I have a competitor website that I'm pretty friendly with and we are always knocking off each other's slogan tees. Because my site is so much faster than his, I will constantly smash him in SEO and I'm pretty sure it makes a difference in my bottom line.

Don't go cheap on hosting if you rely on your website for direct sales. If you only use your website to drive phone calls or retail sales, then hosting isn't as important. But for direct sales, I consider my website my "rent". I'd rather be on a busy street than be in the boonies. Fast website = busy street, slow website = back alley in farmsville.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> I think my current hosting costs are around $450 a month:
> 
> * CloudFlare Business level = $200/month
> * RackSpace Cloud Sites = $150/month
> ...


Can't disagree that one might end up eventually where you are, however, the op was "Im trying to develop a marketplace".

Don't think you start where you are at. Most hosts offer scalability as you grow.

Having all those things you mention doesn't mean "Fast website = busy street". 

Without solid marketing you can't figure "build it and they will come".

And you can't expect that "build it faster and they will come either".

Early on the money is best spent marketing, not building a fast freeway that has no travelers.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

mgparrish said:


> Early on the money is best spent marketing, not building a fast freeway that has no travelers.


I don't see it that way because I don't know how one can successfully market a brand if one doesn't also have the juice from the search engines.

If you're building a marketplace, you're going to be aiming for a large percentage of referral link from Facebook and Pinterest naturally, but you're also going to be targeting the masses who are attracted to the niche your marketplace focuses on. Those people use Google and Bing and without considering how to get your results higher than the competition, you're going to be suffering.

I've looked at developing niche marketplaces and the budgets I keep coming up with are in the $50,000-$100,000 range before a single item is sold. Spending 5-10% of your initial budget on proper hosting means you don't need to be concerned with problems when and if you do get that viral design customer on your marketplace.

It's a hypercompetitive industry already (marketplaces) and if you want to success, you need to be prepared financially for what the competition is already throwing at the scene.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> I don't see it that way because I don't know how one can successfully market a brand if one doesn't also have the juice from the search engines.
> 
> If you're building a marketplace, you're going to be aiming for a large percentage of referral link from Facebook and Pinterest naturally, but you're also going to be targeting the masses who are attracted to the niche your marketplace focuses on. Those people use Google and Bing and without considering how to get your results higher than the competition, you're going to be suffering.
> 
> ...


Sorry but you don't need all those those things you listed for "juice for the search engines".

SEO is largely "a chicken or the egg problem". Largely you need hits to get ranking, and a higher ranking get you more hits. 

At some point if you had so much traffic that your customers are dropping out or being sent away because you are too slow and/or not scaleable then you can hurt your rankings. But for sure this ain't happening all up front when you start your business. 

Doubt few here will _ever_ have the kind of inventory that requires so much horsepower. Or so much concurrent traffic that some of those costly services you mention are needed.

It's not just the monthly cost of hosting, what you describe is more or less an extremely custom solution up front. 

I doubt you started out where you are, if you did I bet you are spending way too much for what you think you are getting.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

mgparrish said:


> Sorry but you don't need all those those things you listed for "juice for the search engines".


I register domains for some of my design clients and when they pay me to host it on my server, the inbound Google traffic starts up near instantly. When they host on BlueHost or whatever junk host is popular, they get poor inbound traffic, if any.

Google gives a lot of juice to high PageSpeed Insights scoring websites. It's a known fact and it's obvious across the board when I analyze a poorly selling website and see they're getting 55 or 60 PageSpeed scores and look at their keyword traffic.




> SEO is largely "a chicken or the egg problem". Largely you need hits to get ranking, and a higher ranking get you more hits.


You won't get ranked at all if your website is slow. 




> But for sure this ain't happening all up front when you start your business.


We just took over an e-commerce site (not t-shirt or design related, actually all they sell are tickets to their church events) from a competitor who is going under, and moving them to one of our shared cloud sites platforms has already increased the amount of traffic they get from other brand affiliates just through Google searching. This was 2 weeks ago that we transitioned their website as-is to our much faster server and the difference in traffic is night and day. Nearly instantly.

I can post new designs on my website and tomorrow I'm already on Google's page 1 results -- because my site is fast, the Google Bot is familiar with it, and they give me a lot of pull because they know I'm not some spammer on a webhost shared with 10,000 similar junk sites. It makes a difference.




> Doubt few here will _ever_ have the kind of inventory that requires so much horsepower. Or so much concurrent traffic that some of those costly services you mention are needed.


And that's why they fail. They want a $1MM generating website but they can't throw $5000 at the foundation of it (web hosting). It's hilarious to think of how many people think they can make $50,000 a month by spending $5 on the actual blood and bones of their future empire.




> It's not just the monthly cost of hosting, what you describe is more or less an extremely custom solution up front.


You can run a great marketplace ecommerce site with about $250 in off-the-shelf webcode and around 250 manhours of customization. $250, 6 weeks, and you're running. But if you run it on garbage shared hosting, you're going to be facing the worst kind of impossible up hill battle just getting discovered.

Even if your business plan calls for purely referral or affiliate marketing, people will click away if the site takes 3 seconds to load. Remember the average consumer grunt has an attention span of 0.5 seconds before they're changing the channel or browsing to a different website.

Remember that Zazzle outsells DBH, with far far worse art. Don't market Rolls Royce to people who are happy with 83 Corollas.


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## atarizzz (Dec 17, 2015)

treefox2118 said:


> You won't get ranked at all if your website is slow.


All of that considered, makes sense to use the big CDN's (content delivery networks) like googles (for things like bootstrap, jquery, fonts, etc.) and Amazon for other stuff. 

Typically I will suck all that stuff down and serve it locally thinking it's "faster" and in some cases it is, but never thought that maybe Google awards some extra brownie points if you're serving from specific CDN's.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

Actually, one of my long term tricks I used for a few years before Yoast and the other SEO tutorial kings started mentioning it was I would use multiple domains (actually the same s3 buckets with multiple subdomains) to host from.

Google has rewarded this because most browsers are configured to only allow a limited number of connections to a particular domain name at once -- by using 3 or 4 subdomains (all pointing to the same bucket at S3), the web page rendered a LOT faster, and Google loves it.

Now that it isn't a secret anymore, I'm happy to share that little trick. Try it out sometime if you have backend access -- instead of naming your bucket images.domain.com, create multiple subdomains like images1.domain.com through images9.domain.com and have your front end use a script to throw in random numbers into the URL you're pulling from.

Also, another little trick that can help out: defer loading of any social networking "like" buttons. If you're getting an 80 PageSpeed Insights score, go and disable your Facebook Likes and Pinterest Pin buttons temporarily, flush cache, and rerun the PageSpeed Insights scoring. Your score may jump up 10 points instantly! Then just code to defer loading the buttons until after the page renders, and you'll keep that speed rank and all the SEO juice that follows it.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> I register domains for some of my design clients and when they pay me to host it on my server, the inbound Google traffic starts up near instantly. When they host on BlueHost or whatever junk host is popular, they get poor inbound traffic, if any.
> 
> Google gives a lot of juice to high PageSpeed Insights scoring websites. It's a known fact and it's obvious across the board when I analyze a poorly selling website and see they're getting 55 or 60 PageSpeed scores and look at their keyword traffic.
> 
> ...


I never stated anything about using slow websites and shared hosting?

I know many running successfully on "virtual servers" and dedicated hosting, and also open source software.

And 3 seconds load time people dropping out? 

Sorry I know way too many successful people in eCommerce not needing all this stuff you mention.

I have done a decent amount of back end programming and web development.

Me thinks you had a huge wad of cash and bought into some salesmen hype on the technology you bought into.  

But it's your own money to blow, my money says that most others reading this don't have the cash you think you need to do this and be successful.

I'm confused you stated "250 man hours of customization" and $250? You are looking at over $10K - $15k for a pro developer to do that. 

And I can't fathom spending 250 man hours on customization starting out. I can code websites starting from scratch with a custom database by hand faster than that.


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## Bugmeister (Dec 6, 2015)

treefox2118 said:


> I think my current hosting costs are around $450 a month:
> 
> * CloudFlare Business level = $200/month
> * RackSpace Cloud Sites = $150/month
> ...


How many different sites is that supporting? You seem to indicate that you're running quite a few of them "on your server" which I'm reading to mean they're all sharing the package you detailed.

If that's the case, I have to agree with mgparrish that a low traffic site doesn't need the kind of horsepower you have setup to host a dozen or more shop sites. And if you're always adding more sites to your own server then it's an indication that you have more server than you really need right now.

If you're charging hosting fees to those sites you mentioned, you're reselling your server resources and recouping some of your expenses (nothing wrong with that, of course!) which again isn't what most people are looking for or have the knowledge to get involved in.

Sometimes you don't need a Ferrari to go to the store for milk. Sure, the trip is a lot more fun...and I'd take that Ferrari if I had it!


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

atarizzz said:


> All of that considered, makes sense to use the big CDN's (content delivery networks) like googles (for things like bootstrap, jquery, fonts, etc.) and Amazon for other stuff.
> 
> Typically I will suck all that stuff down and serve it locally thinking it's "faster" and in some cases it is, but never thought that maybe Google awards some extra brownie points if you're serving from specific CDN's.







Costs me ZERO dollars.  Same with the fonts.

Amazon is great for scaling and you can use as much or as little as you need, pay as you go. But till you are having a lot of _concurrent _hits it's not a big deal.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

mgparrish said:


> I never stated anything about using slow websites and shared hosting?


You inferred it.




> I know many running successfully on "virtual servers" and dedicated hosting, and also open source software.


So do I, and when they finally take the jump and move to a professional back end, their profits go way up. Every time. I don't know one successful brand that didn't realize huge increases in sales and profits by spending more on their back end.




> And 3 seconds load time people dropping out?


Correct. In fact, a high bounce rate correlates almost 100% to a slow web site. There are no popular websites (low bounce rate) that are slow.




> Sorry I know way too many successful people in eCommerce not needing all this stuff you mention.


And if they would spend some more money on a quality host and increasing their PageSpeed score, they're be even more successful. 




> I have done a decent amount of back end programming and web development.


So? Lots of people have. Doesn't make you an expert.




> Me thinks you had a huge wad of cash and bought into some salesmen hype on the technology you bought into.


I actually used to own one of the first web hosting companies in the US back in the early 90s and sold it because I realized it wasn't my cup of tea and not what I wanted to sell. Since then I always look for ways to maximize profits without increasing how much time I spend on it. The best bang for my buck is letting Google do the marketing for me, and to get Google's attention, you need a fast website.




> But it's your own money to blow, my money says that most others reading this don't have the cash you think you need to do this and be successful.


You don't need to do it to be successful, but if you want to be successful you need to spend money to make money.

The #1 place a brand can spend money on to make money is by hiring a PR company and having a budget to get their bad designs on the bodies of famous people. Period. That's #1. If you can't afford 6 figures for a premium PR company, then spend it attracting people to your website by making your website popular with the search engines.





> I'm confused you stated "250 man hours of customization" and $250? You are looking at over $10K - $15k for a pro developer to do that.


250 man hours of your own time + $250 in decent off the shelf code.




> And I can't fathom spending 250 man hours on customization starting out. I can code websites starting from scratch with a custom database by hand faster than that.


I can't imagine trying to make money and not spend the time necessary to differentiate what I offer from the slouchers who throw $5 at a problem expecting to make $50,000.

My time is extremely valuable. I'd rather be on my boat in the Caribbean than be dealing with wondering why something I invested in isn't making money. If I'm going to go after a new profit line, I'm going to spend at least 3-6 months just analyzing the market and what competitors are doing and where they're lacking.

Every time I create a new online venture, it's after I've spent probably 500 man hours just looking for underserved high traffic niches and serving them better than the competition is.

Design skills and print quality aren't as important as serving the impression that you're a professional brand providing a desirable item.

It's why McDonalds can outsell so many others -- they offer the impression of quality and attractiveness, not an actual quality or attractive product.

Opening a marketplace could be very profitable if you don't go at it like an amateur, even if you are an amateur. You can't scale garbage-in.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> You inferred it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


But I didn't infer shared hosting nor a slow website. I'm stating you can have a website that is plenty fast enough and still do very well without spending a bloody fortune. *Please don't put words in my mouth and then argue against them. *

But I'll leave with you your fast website as a substitute for good marketing philosophy, that dog don't hunt and it's too absurd to debate.

We all do what works for us, you choose to blow a ton of money, it's your choice.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I never once blew a ton of money on a business investment. Well, except for the cheap $150 Chinese heat presses but I figure I'll use them as boat anchors some day.

And the figures I quoted at $500 a month aren't a ton of money because a start-up site can put off CloudFlare Business level for their free version initially until they ramp up traffic and be just fine. That brings it down to $3600 a year for a quality backend. $10 a day. It isn't even something to think about when basic rent in the shadiest part of town is far more than that in most urban areas.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> I never once blew a ton of money on a business investment. Well, except for the cheap $150 Chinese heat presses but I figure I'll use them as boat anchors some day.
> 
> And the figures I quoted at $500 a month aren't a ton of money because a start-up site can put off CloudFlare Business level for their free version initially until they ramp up traffic and be just fine. That brings it down to $3600 a year for a quality backend. $10 a day. It isn't even something to think about when basic rent in the shadiest part of town is far more than that in most urban areas.


Looks like to me you were still able to make a buck or two in spite of yourself then. LOL 

Good luck.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

The entire point of starting a business is to make a buck or two more than you had a minute ago. I don't comprehend the idea of starting a business without attacking it with every possible tool needed to succeed.

Of course, there are a lot of people who will fap to fantasies of success rather than go out there and grind out difficult jobs for a year or two so they actually have $20,000 in savings needed to do it right the first time.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> The entire point of starting a business is to make a buck or two more than you had a minute ago. I don't comprehend the idea of starting a business without attacking it with every possible tool needed to succeed.
> 
> Of course, there are a lot of people who will fap to fantasies of success rather than go out there and grind out difficult jobs for a year or two so they actually have $20,000 in savings needed to do it right the first time.


 yup, and a fast website substitutes for a solid marketing system


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

A well marketed slow website with a high bounce rate is inferior to a fast undermarketed website that retains visitors who will eventually make a purchase, yes.

In fact, a well marketed slow website with a high bounce rate actually costs you money. I pay for every visitor to my website because I do pay per kB transferred, so it is in my interest to actually convert as many visits as possible to a sale.

I've visited my share of t-shirt websites that had great designs but I never made a purchase because they were dog slow.

In fact, I'll smash your drivel with evidence. Let's look at it:

A 2-second improvement in page loading speed can lead to a DOUBLING of sales: Case Study: How a 2-Second Improvement in Page Load Time More Than Doubled Conversions | Radware Blog

A 4-second page takes more than a -40% hit: How to Find Your Website’s Performance Poverty Line | Radware Blog

At peak traffic times, over 75% of online customers opted for a competitor’s site instead of suffering inordinate delays: The Importance of Website Loading Speed & Top 3 Factors That Limit Website Speed

30% of customers expect a page load speed of 1 second or less: How A Site Speed Test Can Improve Conversions and ROI

If you're looking to make a real profit rather than just stroke the flute, you're going to make your business attractive to customers. An ecommerce marketplace needs a firm foundation from day one -- and that means spending money where it actually matters.

You can't market a slow site. Visitors won't come back but they'll remember it was garbage if they see a link again.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> A well marketed slow website with a high bounce rate is inferior to a fast undermarketed website that retains visitors who will eventually make a purchase, yes.
> 
> In fact, a well marketed slow website with a high bounce rate actually costs you money. I pay for every visitor to my website because I do pay per kB transferred, so it is in my interest to actually convert as many visits as possible to a sale.
> 
> ...


Again you are twisting my words.

I never said one should have a slow site.

What part of I DIDN'T SAY YOU SHOULD HAVE A SLOW WEBSITE DON"T YOU UNDERSTAND? 

I'm saying spending the amount you are stating is unnecessary and wasteful. I know too many others well under a $100 a month on their hosting doing very well. 

And No way Jose is having a fast site "marketing". 

My money says all this stuff you are talking about maybe brought you up a couple of pages but being on goggle page 15 in a search isn't much worse than being on page 8. Seriously. 

If you are not near the front on the search engines it doesn't matter how fast you think that page needs to load, by and large people are not finding you from searching.

It is beyond absurd to think you worry about people giving up on your website cause it takes a few seconds to load but yet they'll spend 30 minutes seeking out your stuff you do on a heat press on the search engine.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> A well marketed slow website with a high bounce rate is inferior to a fast undermarketed website that retains visitors who will eventually make a purchase, yes.
> 
> In fact, a well marketed slow website with a high bounce rate actually costs you money. I pay for every visitor to my website because I do pay per kB transferred, so it is in my interest to actually convert as many visits as possible to a sale.
> 
> ...


And my God all these links you posted are from SERVICE PROVIDERS selling you this expensive stuff. 

The only one that didn't was a developer blog BUT THEY QUOTE Akamai, the *leading CDN service provider*

You drank some expensive kool-aid man.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I've made more _profit_ than any 5 of my brand competitors who use $10 shared hosting and wonder why their sites get lame traffic.

And for most people, all it takes is 60 days of A/B testing on their sites. Upgrade to a real platform for 60 days and see if traffic is significantly faster, doing no other changes.

$300 invested in a faster site pays dividends on every single customer I've upgraded -- generally in 60 days or less. And if you can't afford $300 to do a valuable A/B test for 60 days, why are you dreaming of making a profit? It means you're not dedicated to making money.

Wanting to develop a marketplace? If you can't afford $300 for 2 months of hosting, you're going to have a failed site and the many hours spent developing and marketing it.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> I've made more _profit_ than any 5 of my brand competitors who use $10 shared hosting and wonder why their sites get lame traffic.
> 
> And for most people, all it takes is 60 days of A/B testing on their sites. Upgrade to a real platform for 60 days and see if traffic is significantly faster, doing no other changes.
> 
> ...


*WHAT PART OF "I DIDN'T STATE ONE SHOULD BE USING SLOW WEBSITES DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND".* I also never endorsed shared hosting for retail sales, like "Go Daddy". I don't care what your competitors do, it has nothing zero nada nil to do with anything I have been talking about.

Most CMS are too slow on those kind of sites. 

The kind of site you are paying for would be way more beneficial to those who have hundreds or even thousands of concurrent connections and huge inventories.

I can make CMS pages load fast on most any dedicated or virtual server. It's where someone might need instant scale-ability on demand like large retailers with large inventories might need to cost effectively use those services you are using needlessly. 

And sorry but I'm not buying that your business is in that class of business, nor most anyone else on this site either.

Again, you are free to waste your money as you see fit. But I can understand why you might argue this, if I'm correct then you are throwing money away needlessly. Hard to accept reality sometimes. But you're getting taken Bro.

And seems now you are down to $150 a month, from $3600 ($300 a month), and down from $450 a month originally  That's about 300% cheaper than where you started.

I also have to take exception to a couple of curves you are throwing me.

1. How do you know how much profit your competitors are making? 

2. You stated "I've visited my share of t-shirt websites that had great designs but I never made a purchase because they were dog slow." You make t-shirts for a living but you would buy from your competitors?


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

mgparrish said:


> *WHAT PART OF "I DIDN'T STATE ONE SHOULD BE USING SLOW WEBSITES DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND".* I also never endorsed shared hosting for retail sales, like "Go Daddy". I don't care what your competitors do, it has nothing zero nada nil to do with anything I have been talking about.


That is exactly what you're inferring.




> Most CMS are too slow on those kind of sites.


Most CMS isn't optimized for speed regardless of the site it's hosted on. I have yet to see a professional CMS with optimization that doesn't haul from the right combination of back end speed along with some CDN front end caching and distribution.



> The kind of site you are paying for be way more beneficial to those who have hundreds or even thousands of concurrent connections and huge inventories.


Actually, I've had a RHOD (Reddit Hug of Death) at least once a month for the past 30 months on one ecommerce site or another, and that traffic DOES convert profitably even when you have 5,000 neckbeards clicking per hour. No matter how much you "optimize" your code, if your site goes down, what's the point of having the site? Viral traffic converts exceptionally well if you keep your site humming, and if your designs are applicable to decently sized niche markets, you're going to have those viral moments. That's the most important part of selling, IMHO -- hoping for a viral campaign but also giving Google and Bing what they want to see to get a top listing.




> I can make CMS pages load fast on most any dedicated or virtual server. It's where someone might need instant scale-ability on demand like large retailers with large inventories might need to cost effectively use those services.


I don't agree that it's only applicable to large retailers at all. If you're selling just 100 pieces per day, a fast website means more profits, and 100 pieces a day is well within reach of a small DTG one man shop selling his own popular designs. Even if you only sell 50 designs a day (of your own making), you're talking about 4 hours of work for $3000 profit a week. That's 2.5% overhead in paying for a professional managed and ultra fast backend with CDN protection at the front end.




> And sorry but I'm not buying that your business is in that class of business, nor most anyone else on this site either.


Average sales of 1.8 designs at 26 sales per day is $3000 a week profit and NOT outside of what TSF earners should be making with the right designs, the right marketing, and a website that keeps visitors from bouncing out. Then again, I have said here and in other threads that I've seen decent designs that I would happily buy if not for their $5 hosted website that took forever just to get to the checkout button.




> Again, you are free to waste your money as you see fit. But I can understand why you might argue this, if I'm correct then you are throwing money away needlessly. Hard to accept reality sometimes. But you're getting taken Bro.


Since my cost of hosting doesn't approach even 5% of my total overall overhead (rent in my cities is expensive, labor is outrageous), I can't imagine that I'm being "taken". In fact, twice since 2012 I have accepted other hosting vendors' offers to "pay a lot less and we'll transfer your websites for free!" only to watch my Google and Bing incoming traffic fall, or watch my bounce rate rocket up as much as 40% by going to another host.




> 1. How do you know how much profit your competitors are making?


Come on, we're all in this business and I'm certain that MOST people are not only aware of who their competitors are but are at least friendly with them. If you target niche markets, you're not enemies of the guy selling to the same market. I've gone on vacation with a competitor or two. I know their traffic numbers and I've shared financials with them. If he's making money, I'm making money, it's not like we're actually stealing from each other.




> 2. You stated "I've visited my share of t-shirt websites that had great designs but I never made a purchase because they were dog slow." You make t-shirts for a living but you would buy from your competitors?


Of course I buy from my competition if the art is good. I like to keep abreast of what they're doing, how their print quality is, what their packaging looks like, how long they're taking to print and ship, what custom tagging they're up to, how big they're printing, what their washability is, what garment they're probably using, what the overall cost-to-door is, what their emails look like and what their newsletters and follow-up emails are. I actively monitor if my competition is sending out emails to follow up on abandoned carts, etc. Even though I'm friendly with competition, I also want to know what they're up to. And if the artwork is great, I'm happy to wear it to remind me that I have to work harder.


Anyone who hates the competition is ignoring the reality that no matter how huge you get, you're only tapping 5% of the possible customer base at best in any given time frame. If you're at the top. The rest of us have a huge amount of sales we're throwing away for whatever reason.

Depending on the niche, where the traffic is coming from, and the season, I'd say that a 0.5-3% conversion rate is successful for my specific market. But I would guess than 5-10% of visitors are possible buyers, and that means I'm failing on 90% of my sales on any given day. Why do I care if my competitor is getting 10% of those failures, when between the 2 of us (or 6 of us) we're all losing out on a huge percentage of visitors who want something but didn't make the buy?

I want more profit for less work -- the goal of all capitalists. So I put my re-seed money into areas with proven returns, and I put my new seed money into the high risk areas where I want to do some A/B/C testing to see if I can turn an expense into a profit. Website hosting has had proven returns in every A/B test I've done, and it has always made the difference when some design I created and marketed ended up getting an IMGUR or Reddit or Facebook pummeling.

2015's web hosting costs were paid for in ONE 3 day blitz from Imgur because some cute gal posted a selfie wearing the t-shirt. Even better, she bought the shirt from a competitor who knocked off my design (doesn't bother me) but I happened to have a faster website, so Google put me on page 1, and the competitor was on page 3. I got 100% of my web hosting traffic paid for in 3 days of inbound clicks that converted well because my site stayed up.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> That is exactly what you're inferring.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Sorry but you lost me at stating that a fast website is your marketing plan. 

Zero credibility when you start at suggesting costs of $450 then within a few posts you have it down to $150. And I'm not buying you know your competitors business well enough to state you make 5 times what they do. Do you file taxes for them?

Nothing personal but you sound like a young person with a very vivid imagination.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

$450 is what I posted that I pay.

$150 is what an entry level website that is expecting high volume SHOULD pay at a minimum for a solid solution that isn't going to let them down the minute they actually get some high volume.

As for knowing what my competitors make, I also know where they live and how they live because I'm friends with them on Facebook. I'm well aware of approximately what they're making, how they're marketing, what they're printing on, etc -- and they're aware of what I'm doing, too.

It's easier to throw away money than it is to make it. I would say that 50% of the t-shirt game is to stop leaving money on the table. Heck, maybe even 75% of the game is not leaving money on the table.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> $450 is what I posted that I pay.
> 
> $150 is what an entry level website that is expecting high volume SHOULD pay at a minimum for a solid solution that isn't going to let them down the minute they actually get some high volume.
> 
> ...


 I guess I was hallucinating about all those I know going under $100 a month for hosting and doing very well. Or all those Joomla sites I used to set up even up to a year ago, my eyes were lying to me, they didn't perform as well as I had witnessed without all that crazy stuff. But $150 a month is a bit closer to reality though, I 'll give you that.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

The question is, if you didn't try a quality solution, how do you know how much money you left on the table?

The analytics don't lie. If you're converting 0.5% of visitors, and you lost another 0.5% because your website rendered in 2.5 seconds instead of 0.5 seconds, how much money did you leave for someone else?

For me, going from a 0.75% conversion to a 1.5% conversion strictly due to customers "trusting" the faster site = more than the $300 a month difference between my hosting solution and yours. I know I double my conversion with a faster site, in fact I believe I'm doing better than double conversion rates versus a shared solution because I've done the A/B testing many times over the past 3 years (and going back even 5 and 6 years although Google and Bing are putting more and more into valuing fast rendering).


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> The question is, if you didn't try a quality solution, how do you know how much money you left on the table?
> 
> The analytics don't lie. If you're converting 0.5% of visitors, and you lost another 0.5% because your website rendered in 2.5 seconds instead of 0.5 seconds, how much money did you leave for someone else?
> 
> For me, going from a 0.75% conversion to a 1.5% conversion strictly due to customers "trusting" the faster site = more than the $300 a month difference between my hosting solution and yours. I know I double my conversion with a faster site, in fact I believe I'm doing better than double conversion rates versus a shared solution because I've done the A/B testing many times over the past 3 years (and going back even 5 and 6 years although Google and Bing are putting more and more into valuing fast rendering).


Not going to get into "he said he said" with you. Been around long enough to know when others are _throwing curve balls. _

I just know that many service providers offer robust SCALE-ABLE service and you can grow as your needs demand. No one needs to overspend and buy more than they need upfront. And I guarantee you most starting out their website can't setup these services on their own so it costs a lot of upfront to get someone else to do this.

You seem more about tooting your own horn than helping others.

Others can decide on their own.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

Are we talking about the same subject even?

This guy isn't setting up a simple ecommerce site to sell a few dozen of his designs, *he wants to set up a marketplace*.

You know, like Etsy or Fiverr or whatnot.

Marketplaces are not websites where you get a $5 or $50 shared hosting and hope for the best. You go at it with a plan, and you do it right the first time.

Simple t-shirt ecommerce site? $100 in off the shelf code, $50-$100 a month for a solid scaleable shared host, off you go.

Marketplace where you're attractive actual vendors to list products, and if you have 2 dozen vendors to start you'll have 2400% the traffic of a single new t-shirt site at a minimum?

We're not talking $50-$75 a month in hosting. Not by a long shot.


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## tcrowder (Apr 27, 2006)

treefox2118 said:


> The question is, if you didn't try a quality solution, how do you know how much money you left on the table?
> 
> The analytics don't lie. If you're converting 0.5% of visitors, and you lost another 0.5% because your website rendered in 2.5 seconds instead of 0.5 seconds, how much money did you leave for someone else?
> 
> For me, going from a 0.75% conversion to a 1.5% conversion strictly due to customers "trusting" the faster site = more than the $300 a month difference between my hosting solution and yours. I know I double my conversion with a faster site, in fact I believe I'm doing better than double conversion rates versus a shared solution because I've done the A/B testing many times over the past 3 years (and going back even 5 and 6 years although Google and Bing are putting more and more into valuing fast rendering).


Just need to throw in my 2 cents here on conversion rates with a "slower hosting solution".

My total for webhosting services ran me $325.69 last year for two different hosting companies. I do NO advertising at all and operate these as a side business to a full time position.

Attached is a screen shot to prove my numbers as I like to be able to back up my comments. I average a 1.92 conversion rate with my slow as a snail webhosting so I do not buy into your statements on the amount of "juice" needed.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> Are we talking about the same subject even?
> 
> This guy isn't setting up a simple ecommerce site to sell a few dozen of his designs, *he wants to set up a marketplace*.
> 
> ...


  Umm he said he got a quote for $3000, That's not going to get you any Etsy type service. That will get you a very nice website, nothing close to "Enterprise" class LOL

Doesn't seem to me he is the millionaire type with venture capital investors.

 Seriously? 

Fiverr International Limited: Private Company Information - Businessweek

If that were the case not going very far on $450 a month hosting either. Best he start with a IT staff and team of Engineers, Lawyers, and real consultants. *This is the type of business one inquires about on a t-shirt forum? * Pass me that doobie!!


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

Actually, I've seen successful marketplace websites in the past done for under $5000 -- with premium hosting. These are mostly niche markets that aren't printing, though, but there is endless opportunity for marketplace sites if you pick a good niche that contains consumers who actually buy products versus communities that only talk about buying products.

A marketplace ecommerce solution isn't much more than an ecommerce solution with multi-vendor support and commission/shared payment processing. The key is to accept that a marketplace is going to likely have significantly more traffic than a single vendor website, and to be prepared to manage that traffic as I laid out in my original post that you took issue with without providing an actual useful response for the OP's specific question.

Single vendor ecommerce versus multiple vendor ecommerce are two different beasts when it comes to hosting because the bandwidth and processing requirements are vastly different.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

treefox2118 said:


> *Actually, I've seen successful marketplace websites in the past done for under $5000* -- with premium hosting. These are mostly niche markets that aren't printing, though, but there is endless opportunity for marketplace sites if you pick a good niche that contains consumers who actually buy products versus communities that only talk about buying products.
> 
> A marketplace ecommerce solution isn't much more than an ecommerce solution with multi-vendor support and commission/shared payment processing. The key is to accept that a marketplace is going to likely have significantly more traffic than a single vendor website, and to be prepared to manage that traffic as I laid out in my original post that you took issue with without providing an actual useful response for the OP's specific question.
> 
> Single vendor ecommerce versus multiple vendor ecommerce are two different beasts when it comes to hosting because the bandwidth and processing requirements are vastly different.


It's amazing what people share with you in regards to their business costs and information.  Seems you were going on and on about your business profile and situation which is not what he has talking about either. You were talking about 250 man hours of your own time + $250 in decent off the shelf code. ???

So in that respect my bad for missing his 2nd post.  It didn't connect since the whole thought of an Enterprise website like that for $3K from a competent developer that he was quoted is not even remotely possible, not even in LSD land. So I made a mistake assuming he was asking for something sane at that price. 

250 man hours for $5K that you can have it done for??? Somewhere in the 3rd world perhaps. That doesn't leave much in the advertising budget, or should he let his fast website be the marketing/advertising?

I've seen a few cart and CMS solutions for hosting multivendors, like someone uses for fulfillment work, but $5K not going to get you very far having competent people set this up. $5K won't even get you started advertising really. That dog don't hunt either.


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## jerkstore1 (Jun 2, 2013)

wix.com is very easy


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## aldorabancroft (Nov 18, 2014)

jerkstore1 said:


> wix.com is very easy



I am agree with you. Its too easy to do on it. Just you need to get upgraded version.


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## anoclothingco (Feb 16, 2016)

After reading some of the comments I wanted to add that you should consider how big of a budget you'd like to spend on a website, and how much time you're willing to lose as its being developed. 

Customization is definitely a great thing to have in this very competitive industry, but if you're running on a slim budget, you may want to consider alternatives to hiring a web designer.

Hosting:
There are many website hosting services around today, ranging anywhere from $2 - $200+ a month for hosting. Of course, these prices vary based on bandwidth, storage, and other various factors. Questions to consider: Will my customer base be large enough for me to need a VPS hosted website ($30+/month) or even a Dedicated Server ($200+/month)? If not, consider a cheaper package option to get the ball rolling and then upgrade as your business grows. 

Marketplace Platforms:
Additionally, there are many alternatives to hiring a web designer to build your marketplace. If you have the budget for a custom designer, by all means venture that route. Many designers produce beautiful, highly customized websites. On the other hand, if you want to keep some money in the piggy bank for the marketing stage, you may want to consider a marketplace platform.

These include: Magento, PrestaShop, JumpSeller, WooCommerce, LemonStand, OpenCart, Shopify (Provides own hosting), Big Commerce (Provides own hosting), Storenvy (Provides own hosting), etc.

Here's what looks like a great source with a more in depth description of most platforms I jotted down: Top 5 Best Alternatives to OpenCart : Top Best Alternatives


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## tchandler52 (Sep 17, 2012)

There is a free market place extension on open cart that works pretty good. You can also buy their premium extension for i believe $250. A decent shared hosting you can get for less than 200 a year. As business grows you can upgrade. Host gator has sales year round. I seen up to 80% off all hosting plans.



slimen232 said:


> Im trying to develop a marketplace...is this easy? How much does it cost?


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