I'm a collector of odd things and my dream, for anyone interested, is to one day open up a small shop selling a curios and other things. But, first, I think I should test the waters on the Internet. I've made a bit of money doing this on Ebay, but it's a terrible site from a seller's perspective.
So, basically, this is an open-ended question. To begin with, I'd like to know: how do I go about setting up an online business? Should I buy a domain or are there other sites that aren't ebay, Amazon or Half.com I could use? Are the things I sell too random to jusitfy owning my own domain and, if I were to buy a domain, should I hire a student from the university or a professional?
Here's a list of some things I've sold on Ebay: A badly taxidermied squirrel, a lot of 3rd edition AD&D books, a multi-faced latex bust, rare and uncommon books, vintage/retro small appliances (like a hanging toaster oven), 80s cartoon lunchboxes, original King's/Police Quest in original box, etc, etc.
Edit: To clarify, I don't think Amazon and Half are suited for the sorts of things I'm selling.
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If you had a brick and mortar store, people might go there when they wanted something unusual but with no promises about what you might have in stock any one day you'll end up as more of a novelty than a successful business in my opinion.
If you do want to go it alone, I think you're going to need to carefully research how to drive traffic from google for the items that you have, when you have them.
However, generally what are your problems with eBay? Just the cost?
Yeah, that's one thing I'm afraid of. I think an actual store in the right location would have a chance. But, I'd have to find the perfect spot, and that'd mean really high rent I'd reckon.
And, I don't like Ebay because of the costs and inconvenience of it's listing system.
The overhead costs of brick and mortar stores would kill you quicker than rabies. Hell, hobby stores are disappearing from our landscape, and they sell shit like Warhammer and Magic: the Gathering. There's no way you could keep doors open for "curios and other things."
That said, I think eBay really is your best bet. I'm unsure of what it takes to get a "Store," but that would be step number one. Low-overhead and part-time. It's a site with staggering numbers of visitors, so I can't imagine that there wouldn't be a better venue for selling rare and strange items than to the entirety of the internets. You can control your time, as well. Have finals? Great, take a week off from listing.
There's no point, after costs, of trying to get people to come to a storefront on the internet other than eBay. While you may think the terms suck, they're pretty timid compared to the costs of actually operating a full scale business. If anything, I'd create a webpage for the business that links directly to the eBay auctions. It would be relatively inexpensive and you'd avoid costs related to security, as well as a thousand other things I don't even know about. We're not even getting into a business license and advertising.
If there were enough business you could look into opening a store. Think of it this way: if you can make some real money by selling on eBay, even if it takes time, it means there's a market for what you want to do. Honestly, I can't even imagine a better way to at least start out than a well-organized eBay Store.
Step 2 would be buying some ad-space on a bunch of websites... webcomics seem like an excellent customer base for this sort of thing.
Like how some people go to http://woot.com for the silly product descriptions, even if they never buy anything.
If you get good at writing and taking cool pictures of your cool stuff then it should drive up the auction price.
Also I can tell you that there are some major changes in the selling structure coming soon for a casual seller. They are eliminating listing fees for those who list under 5 things per month, so if you're not doing a ton of business then you can relist anything that doesn't sell at no cost. I have heard rumors that total elimination of listing fees are in the works as well.
As far as the inconvenience of it's listing system you'll need to be more specific, but I understand that it can be a pain in the ass.
Etsy is (supposed to be at least) for handmade items, ideally for things that you've actually made yourself, so I wouldn't recommend trying to list a bunch of random oddities that you're trying to sell there.
I'll just echo the others that eBay really is your best option, despite your dislike of it. The overhead costs in creating and maintaining your own ecommerce website to sell this stuff is most likely going to be too high to be feasible, unless you're selling a lot of merchandise.
I did not know they were changing stuff up...
I'll give ebay another go. Hell, it might even be kinda fun to open an ebay store.
Now I'm excited about going to the estate sale warehouse tomorrow
Thanks for the advice everyone.
Anyone live near or been to Ann Arbor? I had a question about one of the shops you may but probably didn't visit near the university that closed a few years back.
If you just mean it takes ages using their Sell form to get each item set up, then don't use it. You can start with something like Turbo Lister:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/turbo-lister-ov.html
Which is actually eBay provided, and YMMV with it.
Then there's a huge list of third parties doing listing type stuff too. Check this out:
http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ns/ListingSolutions.html
Just to clarify, you won't have to pay a fee to list your item, but you will still need to pay a final value fee if the item sells. Also, if you go over 5 items per month they're going to charge you to list your item as well. But it will entice me to sell more on eBay as well, I'm a pretty casual seller.
Yeah, starting a blog was another one of those things I thought I should probably get around to one day. Good thing I actually have something to blog about now...
I forget the name... which is silly cuz it was called something really simple. Anyway, it was next to an Asian restaurant and across from Starbucks. This store was really what got me into collecting odd stuff when I was a teenager... it had anything you could really imagine, plus an entire back room filled with such a random and beautiful assortment of old books. Probably tens of thousands of them.