Starting an online shop

I've used shopify for years. I set it up for my mom who is terrible with a computer. Yet she can figure her way around, and even manages to do stuff inside their templates without breaking anything :) She gets great help from the shopify staff. I recommend them a bunch.

For this and other requests like this, we should all keep in mind this resource http://www.workhappy.net/. Carson seems to have stopped updating it this summer, but he was going strong for awhile with reviews on great tools, books, etc. for entrepreneurs. Hope he gets back to it.

I am a new strong advocate for using SiteBuildIt (www.sitesell.com). I recently started a new business venture using their amazing keyword research, site building, (all-in-one) tools and wish I had done so with my first online venture. I am not affiliated in any way with SiteBuildIt, but I find it the perfect solution to someone new to web commerce. It is very important that you really research and conceptualize your site prior to building it, especially if you intend for your business to be entirely online. SBI helps you do that.

I have little e-commerce experience, but I can speak from common sense that you should look heavily at the hosted e-commerce providers. You'll see a lower upfront investment, and instant audience for your products, support, and the best features. These are the providers I know off the top of my head:

Ebay Stores (they'll host your store and make it easy to post products to auction)

Amazon (you can actually sell on the Amazon site, and they'll handle warehousing, fulfillment and shipping if you desire)

Shopify

Yahoo Storefront

You might be better served focusing on one site first, get it setup and pulling traffic. I would also suggest looking at both niches and picking the one that has the biggest total market, or the one where you have some initial advantage. Doing two different startups is very dificult.

You might want to dabble on Ebay or Amazon first to see if you can sell anything. Then if you want to host yourself, Magento is a good option. Even easier is Shopify.

Unless I am missing something, only Magento's Enterprise edition will be PCI-compliant and that is an $8,900 per year proposition according to Magento's website.

ZenCart (http://www.zencart.com) is open source and can be made PCI compliant at no cost. The support community is active and helpful.

Minimize your risk by preserving your cash and starting with the products that are available local to you (ie, not from outside your country).

Tie your shopping cart in with Paypal before you bite the bullet and get your own merchant account.

You might also consider testing the demand for these products before doing anything.

Technically: I agree with Patrick and RonGa. Implement a e-bay\amazon shop and link it to a off the shelf platform. Grow from there..

Business: It does not really matter what shop technology you use. If what you sell solves a problem and has a barrier to entry (semi-exclusive) and you can reliably get product to the customer then you are going to get sales with even the crappiest sales copy\shop.

Sounds like using Shopify and doing the fulfillment and customer service yourself would be the best way to get started at a low cost. Then as you grow I would recommend you move to a platform like Magento.

@VAl Booth Magento Community Edition (open source) is PCI compliant using the PapPal Pro module.

I would suggest getting some experience in EBay, where starting a shop is easy and relatively risk free.

Once you get experienced there, you can always start your own shop, and by then you might also have a loyal following that you can bring to your shop.