Tim (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 Tim to get a web hosting account so he can preview his storefront prototype live on the internet. Tim 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, Tim hired a web developer who installed an open-source shopping cart, did some customization to fit Tim's business needs and installed the shopping cart on Tim'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, Tim'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.

13 Checklist to Find the Ideal Shopping Cart Software

These are 13 most important questions you need to ask before you decide on your shopping cart software:

1. Find out if you can access your eCommerce Hosting management panel from ordinary browser.
2. Find out if you can quickly setup a store within minutes.
3. You should be able to quickly setup a store, without the help from web designers, PHP developers or more people. You should be able to upgrade later but you should have the flexibility to start and try now.
4. Learn where the majority of top 500 Internet Retailers are.
5. Good hosted shopping cart should have a demo. Try a demo first.
6. Be sure that the eCommerce Web Hosting is built on good server to ensure reliability.
7. No software installation should be required – thus easy to maintain.
8. The guarantee should be clearly spelled out. The later section of this article will explain further on what the guarantee should look like.
9. Placement of your store in Yahoo! Shopping or Google Product Search should be easy.
10. Know that the store can be easily handled. In other words – it must be user friendly.
11. Be sure that orders are accepted securely using industry standard SSL encryption.
12. Capability to retrieve orders from your online control/management panel on the server via the web.
13. Know that Search Engine Optimization possibilities are available.

After 14 months of research, we found one hosted 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 eCommerce 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 YMS for so long.

Some comments we found about Yahoo Merchant Solutions:

We were able to scale up our store
and did not hit any major technology glitches.

Jack Sheng — Eforcity

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.

They have 30-day satisfaction guarantee if you by any chance does not like YMS. 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, you cannot get a full eCommerce Hosting from anywhere else.

If you just need a simple web hosting, try reading this iPage review. This hosting can be good if you are new.

Our research is inspired by this best ecommerce solution website.