I need to setup website to sell items wholesale but haven't a clue how get started?

[john]

I want to set up a website selling items , I buy at wholesale then sell at retail , the problem is I have never set up a website , I contact go daddy and they have a monthly payment thing , so you don't have to lay out a lot of cash to get started , but I've distill got to sort out pictures of my stock , arrange postage to clients work out the profit after postage etc , it's all a bit daunting , can anyone help me set it up , it might be easier just to pay someone whip knows about it , I can give examples of other sites I want it to be like , so that should help , it just needs to be one page , it would have the company name contact details ie e mail address phone number , then below that the items I am selling with pictures and prices , then how to get the items to the buyers , please post a reply if anyone has the know how for setting it up , then where do I put it ? I've heard of google add words so I think I need to do that maybe , and perhaps place some adds in appropriate publications ,

[Hugo90]

That is why people use eBay and Amazon. They bring the customers to you better than you could ever do yourself. You can set up a website, but then how would people know it was there?

[Jadzia Dax]

It is best to start with ebay. ecrater, or amazon. Once you get the hang of what you are doing then get your own website.

If you buy an item for $5 and sell it for $15 plus $5 shipping You make $10 minus Fees $2.00 Actual Profit $8.00

Figure your merchandise in excel

[Jake]

You may find that getting prospects to the site is a more daunting task than setting up the site, marketplaces like mentioned in the other answers have ready made traffic, for a fee.

There are ecommerce site specialty hosts that have shopping cart and payment processing setup, some are priced based on the size of your inventory, you can expect to pay perhaps $20/mo for these easier to setup hosts than a typical $8/mo generic shared host. Some hosts have mini trial accounts with paid upgrades when you get going.

Here are a couple of "free" estore hosts that a quick search for: free ecommerce site host, brought up:
http://www.vendio.com/ecommerce/free-hosting
http://www.host1free.com/ecommerce-hosting/
http://www.openentry.com/
http://www.vstore.ca/
(I can't vouch for their quality, expect upgrade offers)

Adwords can bring qualified prospects but it is expensive, optimizing the site conversion rate as well as the ad campaign is crucial for getting profitable ads., typically ecommerce site get 1 sale per 50-200 visitors, Adwords ads may cost $0.50 to over $2 per click, that would translate to anywhere between, $25 to $400 to make one sale based on my imaginary numbers. Well established sites tend to have higher conversion rates and can also afford to break even on the first sale or 2 when securing a new customer, knowing they profit in the long run.

Getting 'free' traffic from search engines is a slow building alternative way to get prospects, you have to invest a lot of time creating extra original text content and getting links from other sites, you can't scale up seo traffic overnight like you can paid ad traffic.