1. Add profesional promotion and payment features
After running a website for a while and trying to get sales, you may realize that you need additional features to help you sell. For example:
-    Free Shipping
-    Flex Play
-    Coupon Code
-    Monthly Order Shipping
-    Secured Transaction (SSL)
-    Product Review and Rating
Good offers are everywhere. Without good values and incentives, your prospects will not likely to buy your products or services.
 
2. Think twice before hiring a single freelancer
Having a single web guy to do all of these extra much-needed features may become costly, and time consuming. Not every freelancer can implement all the features you need professionally. You may want a nice Flash banner, but your web guy may just know how to write code. Your web guy may be sick for a few days at the time you need him or her to fix certain bugs. If your guy leaves the project due to personal matters, the new freelancer you hire may find it hard to work with the previous guy's source code. That's where all the headaches begin.

3. Understand the pros and cons of opensource
Another option you have is to use Yahoo Store! or another opensource ecommerce solutions, e.g. Oscommerce, etc. Yahoo store can be done for a small monthly fee, and open-source is basically free. The small hidden cost will be seen when you need to tweak the design and customize the source code to fit your business.
 
But the bigger issue lies within: It is much harder to develop the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for ecommerce solutions within Yahoo! Store and Opensource, e.g. Oscommerce. Everybody knows the importance of SEO traffic to your business. With custom development, you can optimize your website in every way you want so that your site is compatible with Search Engines bots. However, online solution providers such as Yahoo only allow limited control to their back-end. Creating SEO for opensource is complicated.

4. Be careful with custom development
Custom development is expensive, but it can be more flexible and effective. Good web companies often have in-house Web solutions for their clients. The risk is that if one day you may want to change your Web company. This can be complicated. Thus, it is important to find a good Web company that you can trust, who not only has good technology capability, but also has good references and strong customer support.

5. Open an Amazon or eBay store if you only want to start small
The online competition has become extremely tough today. If you are not ready to develop a professional online business with expert support, you should go to Amazon or eBay and open a store. Amazon and eBay will charge crazy fees for each sale; however they have buying traffic and are safe. You may ask what is the negative side? Millions of sellers are thinking the same as you, so the competition will be high.
 
6. Set the right expectation
Customers are more savvy and have more choices. Competition is fierce. Big promotions and special offers are everywhere and this will take profit away from you. You should prepare a good marketing budget to develop your loyal customer base. Don't expect that business will take off from day one.

To win in the ecommerce world,  creating a simple website and shopping cart are not enough. You need a niche. You need a clear strategy to reach them, e.g. using email, blog, social media, search engines, etc. You need to offer the right product/service to the right audience at the right time. You need to build credit as a thought leader. And, you need a website that can convert prospects into sales.
 
There are no shortcut. You either do it right, or you should not do it at all. There is no free lunch; and there is no easy money (unless you are extremely smart and lucky). The opportunity is there for the taking. A lot of people still make money using the Web and you can be one of them. Just don't expect it to be quick and easy, and always look for the vendors that you can trust.