I ended using Wix. Com for my website. It costs just $16 month for 12 months and everything else from store templates, 20GB storage, Google analitics, shopping cart and everything else you need for an online store are all included free.

Best of all you don't need to be an IT guru to get started, in fact it was easier than setting up my former eBay store.

I was paying over $400 month for an Anchor Store on eBay, plus all the Sellers Fee's etc on top....Now I have my very own eBay type store on Wix for just $16 a month and NO EXTRA FEE's or CHARGES apart from Paypal fees on sales.

So while sales may be a little slow starting off on my own website and also Quicksales, it works out I'm saving over $900 a month on what I was paying eBay......Bottom line I'm actually no worse off with being my own boss and having lower sales at the moment..

Beauty is sales are increasing on averageabout 4.75% per month since I started 5 months ago, so if this trend continues I'll be back to my eBay sales in another 8-9 months.

Best thing is I sell on my terms, not a whole eBay law library of stupid polices. You wouldn't believe how less stressful it is.

Anyway my decision to use Quicksales, Local Classifieds and a Private Website may not be right for everybody, but it's working for me, and was a lot easier than I thought to get started.

Thanks for the advice on eWay payment system....I'll taking a look at it today

We are using the services of a professional website developer. Family friend tho so we get a good price/deal there.

He also has extensive experience with search engine optimisation (SEO) a very important factor in ramping up sales on your own site. Getting traffic is the key here of course.

Its encouraging to hear that you think after 8/9 months you should get back to where your ebay sales were. We were thinking something like 12-months maybe.

Fortunately we are in a position where online sales dont have to support us 100%. Its a bonus to cover the extras we want in life really. So we can afford to take our time to make it work without the stress.

wow so many ways to avoid ebay fees, i'll have to try some.

One of my B&M customers says they use lots of seperate accounts to get the 40 free listings on each as well to avoid the fees.