Entrepreneur Life Dreamer... Helpful advice please?

Hi, as you now know by the title of my topic, I am really interested in living the Entrepreneur life and willing to take risks to get to it. So basically I am 15 and getting support from other friends and family that already maintain a business and advised me to start out young if I wanted to start my small online business, because I have shown great compassion for being the 'business man' in my family, and I am looking forward for this being my career, I have already spent over $479 in trusted wholesale directories including SaleHoo. Me and my brother have already made an eBay account and thinking about later opening an eBay store. Our business plan includes Xbox 360 accessories, Wii accessories, PS3 Accessories, Apple Products, Urban clothing (i.e Ecko Unltd. LRG, Roca Wear, Enyce, Timberland, etc.) in general teenage demand. Now we are working in getting our California Sellers permit/Tax ID. After we get our Tax ID we are planning to start making business with one of our VIdeo Game Suppliers and start selling Xbox 360 Accessories/console accessories. So far I would like to know how we are doing? I want to know where we might making a possible mistake? or how should we start out? or just any advice that will really help us out to become bigger. Thanks for any advice :D

eBay account: Cool-Buys!-Random-Sales!
Serious Answers please. Thanks.

What I would do is get a real nice website of my own NOT a cheap site but dont go too crazy unless you have the money too and market the crap out of it e bay takes most your profit but at your own site you get to keep it just hang in there you will figure it ouT and stay in school!!!!!!!!!

Hi Cool Buys -
First of all let me offer my congratulations for having done your homework before jumping in, and for spending some time working on your future!
Ebay is great in some ways - a lot of traffic, demand etc - but the fees are indeed high.
Amazon charges a final value fee that includes your processing of credit cards, and then yes by all means have your own website.
A trick to saving money on marketing your website is to build one good page. It doesn't need to be fancy but it does need to be solid and relevant to your items. Submit that page to DMOZ when you know your site will be ready in about 4-6 weeks. Every time you work on your page be sure your keywords etc are updated. I did this and had top 10 placement in google and yahoo for my business in less than 3 months without spending a ton of money.

Other than that, write down your immediate, short, and long term goals, write your road map for how you plan get to each one, be willing to learn and be flexible, and don't have a narrow vision of the markets - oh, and avoid the temptation to borrow money or use a credit card or buy stuff 'because you are a business'.

Last word of advice is that any money that comes in - divide part for your savings, part for the business, and then your pay.

Great job so far! I hope this helps spur ideas -

I think it is great that at 15 you are a entrepreneur. Don't give up! I would suggest also that you start your own online store. You could sell on eBay as well but use eBay as a way of getting new customers to your online store. When I make a sale on eBay I always include a advertisement for my online store inside their package. You will have to really advertise your new store because your not going to have all that traffic like on eBay. If you work hard at it and provide good customer service you can make it work. Good Luck! Boy, I wish I would have done this at 15!!!

Hi, thanks for the great advice! I was just wondering. Would Freewebs.com be a good start in making my new online business website? At Freewebs I can ay for the premium service for my own domain name. Or does any one else have any other recommendations that would be friendly to beginning website designer users?

I actually use Freewebs.com for one of my sites and they recently added the ability to add a web store but it is very basic. If you want to start off with something basic and easy to set up then I would suggest going with Freewebs. If you want a store with more features and a more professional feel I would look at some of the other shopping carts out there. I used Cube Cart for my online store. If you go and Google free shopping carts you will see a ton of options to choose from that are much better than the Freewebs web store.

You might want to look at homestead.com is not free but you can get a fully functional e-commerce store up and running within no time and its $59 a mth I think. They have smaller plans available also if you dont need a big inventory to list.

Hi, Yea I noticed how basic FreeWeb.com's Web Store tools were while I was building my sample site yesturday ( Link hidden: Login to view )
I also found Homestead.com very convincing, Thanks! I will get back to you guys later.
Also, can someone please recommend me another website to receive payments that wont take away money when I receive it? Would Google Checkout work? Also, I want to know about a shopping cart that accepts most major credit cards. Thanks!