Home U.S. Coin Forum

How difficult is it to set up a website to sell coins??

I have no idea where to start, or how much it costs.

I am thinking about something simple like Greer's , or Uhrich's which is set up very nice.

Does anyone have any experience with this? How much would it cost?

I hope this is considered on topic.

Comments

  • holeinone1972holeinone1972 Posts: 5,368 ✭✭✭
    I had an old salt water reef store, selling clams and corals. I had a site designed for $700 and maintained for about $65 a month, but it was a friend. It had a fully functioning cart, and credit card checkout.

    You could do a simple one with homestead or something like it, for about $40 a month, but you would not have a shopping cart program, you could use paypal for credit cards.

    Rob
    image
  • GeomanGeoman Posts: 2,491 ✭✭✭
    It really depends on the quality you want and the extras, such as shopping carts, etc.

    You can go one way, the free way, such as homestead or geocities. I have seen many coin websites listing coins for sale from these types of site. You know right away it is a second rate website. And that may lead people to the premature conclusion that you don't have any coins worth while if you can't get a decent site.

    Another way to go is have someone do it for you, design it, etc and make it professional looking. You may have an better response from people surfing the site. But this costs money also. Don't know how much but I am sure someone will chime in.

    Me personally, I have some experience, but am not a professional, but know enough to do my own website. You could teach yourself web design. Going this way, I know the costs. I pay about $10/month for web hosting and the domain name registration. And I do all the code myself.

    Good Luck!
  • LindeDadLindeDad Posts: 18,766 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Another option for the non programmer type is a eBay store. Quite a few on here have gone that route.
  • Thanks for the input. I could do without the shopping cart I think, although it might be nice to have.
  • Hi,

    If you set up your own website, you do have quite a bit of maintenance, you will need some kind of Cart software and you need a real hosting company… a cheapo looking website with ads on it is going to hurt your sales.

    Lindedad has it pretty much correct… EBay would be an excellent way to go. For many reasons, not the least of which is… people will SEE your coins!

    If you have your own website…. Who knows it exists? You have to do some marketing to build a customer base… with EBay, if you don’t sell over graded junk or run a scam, you can build a customer base extraordinarily quickly.

    If you go that route… I would suggest selling your least expensive coins first, so that you can build up some positive feed back… once people get used to seeing your auctions, after a few weeks, you can start introducing more expensive and larger auctions.
  • You also need to register a good catchy theme and .com site:

    like www.2006WPLATINUM.COM


    image
  • LindeDadLindeDad Posts: 18,766 ✭✭✭✭✭
    like www.2006WPLATINUM.COM

    Outdated allready were all looking for the 2007 gold!!!!image
  • RussRuss Posts: 48,514 ✭✭✭


    << <i>You also need to register a good catchy theme and .com site:

    like www.2006WPLATINUM.COM >>



    Or something like http://www.moderncrap.com.

    Russ, NCNE
  • TomBTomB Posts: 22,090 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I am not a computer geek, but I set up my own site that can be seen in my signature line, and it only costs me the domain registration as well as a small yearly fee for maintenance. Perhaps less than $100 per year total.
    Thomas Bush Numismatics & Numismatic Photography

    In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson

    image
  • TwoSides2aCoinTwoSides2aCoin Posts: 44,619 ✭✭✭✭✭
    www.coinface.com

    I paid a guy about five hundy. He said " here is the password".
    I logged in and he said "this is how you load pictures". I said:
    "I'm a roofer, not a photographer... I paid you to build me a website, not sell me a photo hosting site".

    ~The story of a neophyte coin guy~
  • seateddimeseateddime Posts: 6,180 ✭✭✭
    coinslink.com was set up for $5.99 and cost a few buck a month to keep.
    I seldom check PM's but do check emails often jason@seated.org

    Buying top quality Seated Dimes in Gem BU and Proof.

    Buying great coins - monster eye appeal only.
  • dizzyfoxxdizzyfoxx Posts: 9,823 ✭✭✭


    << <i>

    << <i>You also need to register a good catchy theme and .com site:

    like www.2006WPLATINUM.COM >>



    Or something like http://www.moderncrap.com.

    Russ, NCNE >>



    Outstanding.imageimage
    image...There's always time for coin collecting. image
  • CoxeCoxe Posts: 11,139
    Relatively cheap and easy to set up and even host but much harder to steer potential customers to it. There is shopping cart software out there and experienced programmers could easily write their own even and ther eis even paypal to minimize the effort. I agree that an eBay store might be the best option to get the traffic/business with fewer headaches and likely lower overall costs to hit the margins for smaller retailers. I haven't done it myself (at least not yet) but if I was serious about selling a lot of the inventory, I probably would at least exploit it as an augmentation of the regular site.
    Select Rarities -- DMPLs and VAMs
    NSDR - Life Member
    SSDC - Life Member
    ANA - Pay As I Go Member

Leave a Comment

BoldItalicStrikethroughOrdered listUnordered list
Emoji
Image
Align leftAlign centerAlign rightToggle HTML viewToggle full pageToggle lights
Drop image/file