Do you have problem to start your own e-Commerce website? Did your last shopping cart ended up losing you money? We had problems with building an e-Commerce website when we first started. We have heard many horror stories too. Here is a story of our client that you probably can relate to and also can serve as a reminder to us all.

Bob (not his real name) had an idea to sell some watches on the internet. Yes, watches because he thought everybody wear watches so he should have a good market to sell to. Forget about this idea being profitable or not, but lets us focus on the costs for him to start the business. Firstly he went to a web designer to design his website. He spent about $2000 for that.

After that, the web designer advised Bob to get a web hosting account so he can preview his storefront prototype live on the internet. Bob ended up at subscribing to a hosting plan for a year with Lunarpages costing him about $120. Any other web host will cost about the same, be it Hostgator, Godaddy, Bluehost, Hostmonster, iPowerWeb, or PowWeb because 1 year is the shortest period these companies promote and prefer people to pay. Next, Bob hired a web developer who installed an open-source shopping cart, did some customization to fit Bob's business needs and installed the shopping cart on Bob's web hosting service. That was another $3000. Added to that was the payment processor charges like Worldpay setup and miscellaneous integration charges which is about another $700.

To cut the story short, after all the spending, Bob's web store plan did not follow through because he failed to execute the marketing part of the business plan. He spent a total of about $5820. So he lost them all. Luckily his business idea did not involve any stocks to keep.

After sitting down with many e-Commerce startup owners, we came out with these steps to avoid.

Did You Make one of These 13 e-Commerce Startup Mistakes?

These are 13 sure ways to lose money on your e-Commerce venture

1. Your store management panel cannot be accessed from ordinary browser.
2. You cannot quickly setup a store, but require help from web designers, PHP developers or may be more people.
3. Be ignorant on which providers the majority of top 500 Internet Retailers are using.
4. You do not check if your Shopping Cart Software is built on good server to ensure reliability.
5. Software installation on your desktop is required – hence can be maintained from only that PC/Mac.
6. The e-Commerce solution cost thousands for design, customization, search optimization etc. before your business can start.
7. You are not sure if your orders are accepted securely using industry standard SSL encryption.
8. No ability to retrieve orders from your online control/management panel on the server via the web.
9. Search Engine Optimization possibilities on that e-Commerce system are tedious at best.
10. Placement of your store in Yahoo! Shopping or Google Product Search is weird and complicated.
11. You got lost when trying to handle the store yourself. Simply said, it is not user-friendly.
12. The guarantee is not clearly spelled out. The later section of this article will explain further on the guarantee you should look for.
13. Not trying the demo of the web store first before deciding to use the e-Commerce shopping cart

After 14 months of research, we found one best shopping cart that meets the above 13 strict guidelines: Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

At Yahoo Merchant Solutions, or also known as Yahoo! Store, you get everything you need in an e-commerce solution:

• Create a store with easy-to-use tools.
• Use their simple ecommerce wizard to add all your product details.
• Accept credit, debit, and PayPal payments.
• Drive traffic to your site with free marketing features and discounts—including a grand opening email.
• Easily process and ship orders.
• Measure your success with extensive reporting capabilities.

These Shopping Cart Software can get you started with selling and making money online from only $39.95/month.

Yahoo Merchant Solutions (YMS) is the host to more top 500 Internet Retailers than any other ecommerce provider. Click here to find out which retailers are hosted by Yahoo Store.

You can rest assured your website is in good hands with Yahoo Store, because almost every Yahoo Store review you find on the internet will say good things about them. Some big retailers like Vermont Teddy Bear and Lance Armstrong Livestrong Foundation have to agree if they are to stay with Y!MS for so long.

Some comments we found about Yahoo Merchant Solutions:

I did not know anything about the Internet.
Yahoo! made it easy to build a web site with no computer knowledge

Debra Clark — Allure Furniture

I saw the growth potential of a Yahoo! store
and I moved everything over

Eric Strand — Designer Plumbing Outlet

You can also get $50 setup fee WAIVED with YMS if you sign up today while they are having the new year offer. Do not fall for the trap of cheap hosting provider because their displayed cost do not include store design, web/store development and installation, payment processor and much more. They will start to nickel and dime you with the add-ons, plugins and ask you to pay for web or cart designers.

Because we liked Yahoo! Merchant Solutions so much, we managed to talk to them to give you, the visitor to this website, more discounts. So for a limited time, you can get a great discount. What if we say you can get 35% Off Yahoo! Merchant Solutions + no set up fee?

Click here to view this exclusive 35% discount offer

You pay only $25.97/month for the first 3 months. Don't you agree that spending $25.97 is more reasonable than risking $5820 (like Bob did in the story at the beginning of this article)?

Yahoo! Store has 30-day satisfaction guarantee if you, in an unlikely event, do not like Yahoo! MS. You will receive a refund of your hosting fee, including any setup fees actually assessed, if you are not completely satisfied. Domain names registered through their service are subject to a $7.00 per year domain registration fee, which is cheapest anywhere (most registrar charges around $10 per domain). This registration fee cannot be canceled and is nonrefundable; however, their website said that arrangements can be made to transfer your domain name to a new provider after 60 days.

ps: For $25.97/month as your startup cost, you cannot get a full shopping cart software from anywhere else that matches their features.