Ask HN: What resources have you read for E-Tailing/E-Commerce? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What resources have you read for E-Tailing/E-Commerce?

2 pointsdaveambrose10 comments

Any type books, blogs, resources, etc. that you found very helpful and useful in setting up your business in this area?

Hey Dave just adding what I sent to you by email for posterity...

http://www.ecommerce-blog.org/ http://www.varien.com/blog/ http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/webtogs-diary-of... http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-new-rules-for-successful-ecomm...

They're hard to find, because you have to filter out so much "Make money in 10 seconds!" type spam. If you're looking for background, I think there's a Dummies book on the subject, although parts may be out of date. Finding an objective look at all the offerings out there will be hard though. What exactly are you looking to sell?

My partner and I haven't put our finger on the "product" yet. It would be helpful to understand the true back-end to an e-tailing or e-retailing type business.

Well, is it physical? Do you need to ship it, or just download it? Getting a transaction done is different from having to ship it, keep track of inventory, keep pages updated, etc. You don't need to update inventory of software you're selling as a download, its always there. But it matters when you have a physical product, because good software can help figure out shipping costs, taxes, etc.

There are a lot of turn-key solutions, like Yahoo or Ebay Stores, Amazon's Webstore, and a few more. Others let you build their code into your site, which can make for a more seamless appearance, but also involves a lot more coding work. Really, your product might dictate your software, so maybe you should figure it out first, and then concentrate on which features you want. They usually all have tradeoffs and benefits. Like I said, its hard to get good, objective info on them, but figure out your business first and then start looking.

It's going to be physical, for sure.

How would you analyze the transaction/inventory/shipping process of woot.com?

Not sure what you mean. It appears they only sell one product each day. Not too hard to keep track of your inventory I suppose. It looks like custom software, I can't see any 'powered by' icons or any credits.

How many things will you be selling? Also important, do you make it yourself or does someone else make it and you'll be reselling? There are a lot of options for selling on commission (aka Amazon), dropshipping, and the like.

One of the main competitors for this new service/site will be woot.com. I've been fascinated with their traffic since launch and the loyal fan base that they have. The simplest of ideas: sell one product at an amazingly cheap price, for 24 hours, until it goes out of stock.

How do they get these items? How do they manage their vendor/supplier relationships?

They probably use drop-shipping since they are only selling one product at a time.

I wouldn't count on them using drop shipping though. It means putting your customer's info in the hands of a third-party. and relying on them to ship it correctly for you. If you're supplying a different product all the time, that might be a lot of people to rely on. I'd guess they just get a giant delivery of the good's and take 'em off the pallet as they're bought.

Now, where they get them is a mystery. They could have connections to close-outs and liquidators or distributors that could get these items in bulk.

For some software ideas, you might actually want to check out this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232958

This is really helpful. Thanks.

Woot! does not use drop shippers, they have their own warehouse in Dallas and they send our all of their own sales.

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