when is it time to make a website for your online store?

i have a vast amount of neopets items and accounts. when do you think I should buy a domain and website?

 

When you're do too much business for you to handle on you're own thru PMs and posts on Sythe. The best thing about having a website is automation and professionalism.

 

Fantastic advice. This is my stance as well.

 

It's a trade off. A website can make you appear more professional, but there's a lot of time and some money associated with creating/securing it. Look at your competition. Do they all have great websites? Do you need a website to be successful? Will it result in more customers?

 

No offence, but is neopets even a big market?
Just asking because I guess to host a website, it costs a fair bit of money (a good one), the layout etc will also cost you. You wouldn't want to be paying monthly for a domain that you aren't making in revenue already.
So yeah, my advice you would only need a website when you're making a fair bit of money more than the monthly website costs.

Just my two cents

 

If you only plan on selling and not buying, then making a website is absolutely pointless. I can't imagine a website solely based on neopets would create enough buzz to justify running it. Investments to the site would diminish your profits.. It's just not worth it.

 

You'd be surprised, the Neopets black market has such immense demand but a lack of supply, the existing websites make so much money.

Also to the OP, I would still be against you opening a website because just having a lot of items and accounts does not warrant the creation of a website. Do you have customers? Do you have CONSISTENT customers? Can you maintain production of said products or have you just accumulated them over the years and want to sell them all at once? Are you even well known in the black market? You have to remember that creating a website doesn't just make people go to it, you have to have a source of attraction. I would see it as a waste, you could just make a large thread on different black market sites such as Sythe. You'd even be better off selling to some sites that buy.

 

Having your own website in virtual goods is a very difficult thing to manage because you have to take into consideration your profit & loss.

Most people do not have the capital to afford professional risk management and payment processing tools, and therefore they expose themselves with increasing amounts of fraud. And most will tell you that, unless you have closely established relationships with banks, fighting virtual goods chargebacks is very difficult thing to do.

There is also a need to understand the basics of fraud prevention, because if you are unable to control it below certain thresholds, you risk having your bank accounts, or paypal accounts frozen (a really shitty position to be in).

Not only this, but to grow your business, you usually have to spend money. So you have to take on expenses, and factor in the cost of your time to see growth. (You can put up a website, and expect people to come magically. You need to optimize the website for search engines, you need to find channels of user acquisition to offset your own server costs, and fraud losses, etc etc).

For virtual good's space, I wouldn't recommend building your own site unless your monthly transaction volume exceeded $50,000. And at that rate, you will be paying the most in payment processing fees as a merchant. So -really-, I wouldn't recommend setting up a business until you reached a threshold of at least $10m/yr, which is not doable for most individuals (at this threshold, you'll receive discounts on processing fees, and a dedicated account manager for most payment gateways).

Obviously this sounds like a shameless plug, but it is honest feedback, and part of the reason why PA exists. We extend the benefits of our 15 year relationships with banks and our volume to extend good security and protection for sellers while maximizing their profits and minimizing their risk.

If you'd like to start a business in the virtual goods space, I think the most logical step would be to set-up a playerauctions storefront, and use PA to process and secure your trades, build up your credibility with our reputation system (a very good thing to have if you eventually decide to get your own site), and benefit from our own on-page optimization for your desired market.

And if it -IS- a big market, then get in touch with our product team about partnering together and get a grant from our own marketing budget to help grow the demand for Neopets. We've done it in the past for other markets (mafia wars, texas hold'em, blood brothers, star citizen, habbo hotel, and now most recently CSGO).

We take the burden of a lot of work off your hands, and provide a decent platform to learn, grow, and eventually expand from. I've known far too many small to mid-sized virtual businesses, who started on their own, thought business was going great, and then eventually were slammed with $20k, $30k, $80k in chargebacks 6 months after opening.

 

As soon as it starts getting to the point that the site will pay for itself in profits

 

That is horrible advice. You're actually suggesting people wait until they get $10M/year in revenue before setting up a website?? I can't imagine anyone in this business getting anywhere near that amount of revenue without a website. Manually processing $10M in orders would be absolute insanity.

OP, setting up a website does not have to cost a ton of money, or be hugely complicated. Just focus on simplicity and ease of use for your customer.

 

This isn't anything against playerauctions, but I found some of what you said a bit hyperbolic.

Fighting virtual goods charge backs isn't hard from our experience. If its "goods not received" we win. If its "unauthorized" we have ID, and proof of email. Its a pretty strong chance of winning too. I suppose being a registered business helps as well.

You really don't need to push anywhere near that unless you're doing something huge.

You can easily do $5-20k in sales a month to start out and still make enough to live on while you expand or start another venture.

I've never heard of this happening. If you sold to anyone completely indiscriminately I suppose its possible.

But if you're checking ID, email, ip address, phone numbers, and capping first time customers to a certain amount you'll have a pretty low fraud rate. And when it happens you usually do win.

 

Everyone join Player Auctions instead of opening your own site so we can take part of your profits!!!11

 

If you feel you have a way/a person that can help you set up the website to where it runs smoothly and is a steady stream of profit for you then I think it's time you do

 

When you have 9$ to buy a domain, 99 cents to buy hosting, and learn the ability to use FTP with prebuilt templates.

 

When you have a decent customer base, and feel like automation on a website is a must that is when you should invest in a website.

 

thanks all for the advise. ill look into PA but i assume it wont be a good way for me to go. as there is no market on pa for neopets.

heres the dilemma. most people i know that are willing to buy neopets gold/items have no clue how.. so they end up google searching which then leads them so big name sites.. with OUTRAGEOUS prices.

 

Well, as soon as things gets complicated because you just have to handle too many things at once. In that case a website can maybe give a better overview on your tasks.

 

So then you'll need to re-invest the profits from your business into improving your SEO.

 

I'd say you could just sell those items to other people who may own their website or I know some people on this site always sell/buy those types of items.
Wouldn't be worth investing in a domain/website.