Quick Start Guide to Opening
 Your Online Store

1.  How many products will you be selling in you online store?  Normally the more products you have the higher the monthly charges so why pay for something you are not going to use.  But do leave room for expansion.

2.  How much do you want to spend?  You want to keep your monthly charges as low as possible but you want to make sure you get all the features you need. 

3. Do you already have a merchant account?  If you do, what payment gateway do you use?  If you don't have your own merchant account you can still use any of the solutions below.

4.  You can eliminate monthly charges if you buy a software package.  You do not need to know any html to run the program but you will need to buy a web hosting package and install the software yourself.  You can always paid someone to install the package for you which will probably cost as much as the software itself but it will work out cheaper in the long term than a monthly subscription