What are the options for hosting an online store?

There are a huge number of options for hosting your site from hosting services that are free to having a dedicated server. If you are just starting a small business or have a business you want to expand to the web, you don't need very much and most of the web hosting services will do. We would recommend that you don't get a free service, since those usually have advertising on them that you can't control (that's how they make it free!).

Most of the generic hosting companies will have plans ranging from $10-20 per month, which more than sufficient for someone just starting out. You will never reach their limits in capacity and if you do, you have enough business you can afford to upgrade. In many cases, they even offer free registration of your domain name, so that your store can be www.mystorename.com.

Are there any simpler options for selling my products online?

If setting up a web page, merchant account and shopping cart seem too complicated for your stage of business and if you are not concerned about selling your products from your own store online, there two very good options. One of them is selling your products on eBay and one of them is selling your products with a zShop on Amazon.

Both eBay and Amazon zShops are great solutions for people just starting out, because you already have plenty of people searching on Amazona and eBay for products, so you don't have to advertise as much to get people to see your products. They also take care of all the credit card transactions, so you don't have to set up a merchant account. If you only sell one product, you will pay a fee, but it's not going to be as large as what you would if you had your own merchant account. They host all your information and have made it realtively easy to set up a product for sale.

Even though you usually hear about eBay as auctions, they do plenty of fixed price sales. You can find Amazon's zShops when you search for a product on Amazon and they offer other prices besides their own. This usually includes new and used.