Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard A  I am about to launch a series of around four ebooks to sell via my website. I asked my designer/host for a quote and they have come back with $3,000 to do the following:
- Implementation of Virtuemart Ecommerce solution and shopping cart.
- Configuration Payment Gateway (eg.Paypal)
- Styling of require pages and product layout.
- Content entry of upto 5 products.
- Testing and upload to live site.
I feel I am being gouged!!
Anyone got any cheaper solutions?? My website is written in Joomla.
Thanks,
Richard |
Total Overkill for what you want to do, and for the volume of products.
Check out
www.e-junkie.com (yeah, I know - horrible name, but an excellent service. I haven't used it myself, but know many who have)
Cost is $5 per month.
They will handle the e-commerce side of it.
All you need to do is create the sales text, etc on your website, and paste in the link to the e-junkie cart.
General rule of thumb:
If you haven't got a lot of constantly changing products, and do less than about $100,000 online, then getting payment gateways, database driven shopping carts, and all that stuff is highly likely to be overkill.
The trouble with most developers is that the response they have given you is the only one that they know. Or are willing to tell you.
If your sales ramp up, and you start doing significant business, then you can look at the type of things that have been suggested.
And to add a page of content to Joomla should not cost anywhere near $600.
your developers should be able to show you how to add a new page to Joomla very easily. after all, that's one of the main reasons for a CMS.
To allow the end user to quickly and easily maintain their own website.
Leela mentions a figure of $600 to set up a complete site, which is a pretty good price. But in this case, you're not building a site. Just adding a page to an existing one, and adding some content which you will probably have to write yourself. I would have thought $100 tops if a developer was doing it.
(And if you mention what I have said to your developers, be prepared for them to throw their hands up in the air and say "Oh, that's very bad advice. don't do it." And they'll give you all sorts of reasons to protect their position, and justify their fees. )
So - your call. If the money is no problem, and you feel warm and fuzzy going with what they recommend - go for it.
Otherwise - be prepared to look at alternatives. What I have suggested is one of them.
If you want to go with Virtuemart, (which is a free shopping cart for Joomla) then get some other prices from other developers. There may be some on this forum who can chime in. If not, I'll let a couple of the guys who I've dealt with know about this forum.
And I wouldn't recommend just using the standard paypal buttons on your site for the sale of downloadable materials. Your download page can be found without too much trouble, and your ebooks stolen.
Cheers,
Eric G.
E-commerce site 
