Starting your shop

The main costs of a starting a farm website are hosting, designing and maintaining the website. Costs will vary with the number and type features, the amount of traffic e.g. visitors and transaction and the website content. Development and maintenance costs also vary greatly. A huge driver of costs is your ability to contribute to development and up-keep, which most can achieve with time and the help of the internet.^{^}

It is possible to set up and run a farming website for free, at least for a short while. It would not be unreasonable for a farmer with time and the ability to use online tools to budget under $50 a month.^# A website with more content and higher could easily cost double the cost. It would not be unreasonable for leading sites to budget upwards of a hundred dollars. A farm running with a private server running into $10,000 plus per year would be rare, but it opens up all sorts of possibilities.

^{^} Search Engine Optimisation, database requirements, server settings and site optimisation know-how are easy tasks to overlook and require a higher skill level. These features have a significant impact on site performance and your ranking in search engines e.g. google.

^# may not come in many of the free or cheaper offerings and drive website quality and performance.

Trial plans start from a few dollars a month, 'premium' plans (those that provide more and/or faster resources) range greatly and you can pay hundreds a month. Rare would be the farm that would need to go to the next step of a shared or private server, though the greater control and possibilities may be desirable for some. There a umber of free or trial related content design tools available on similar terms. Your website will also require maintenance with cost being driven by content, complexity and data liability.

We run our stie on the same software used by over 50,000 businesses. We secured a lifetime licence. The equivalent licences now costs over $10,000 a year. The software allows us to have many farms on the one site and so hosting costs are shared. Making sure The Farmers Lot is reliable and easy to use and allowing you to do more also helps keep costs lower. We don't know where you can find more for less!

You can do more, easier and cheaper with us. We are built on a fully featured e-commerce platform. You benefit from being part of a farming community, meaning greater variety year round. So customers only have to remember one site!

We allow you to sell a greater variety of farming products and services, many you probably haven't even thought of. We make it possible to offer your products and services 24/7 without having to be there yourself. This ability to sell anything anytime on a farming focused platform is your opportunity to make additional money doing what you do.

Our Features

Each farm shop comes with it's own display space just for your products, and just like the weekend markets there can be many other sellers. Here is a list of our features with more detail available in our feature guide.

• A admin panel where you can add products, manage orders and see sales data
• A automated check-out and order documentation
• We do all the hard work, we manage the servers and maintain the website, just add products!
• Search Engine Optimisation is built into every store, every seller that joins us can increase the customer pull 
• We offer a variety of plans from a few dollars a week
• Secure messaging with customers and market administration
• Sales reports and accounting features.

More than a farmers market!

Many websites claim to be a farmers market, but most of them don't have independent stalls each run by a different farmer. We do and you can get your own stall and turn your toil into cash, right here on The Farmers Lot. We come with all the tools you need.

You are in control of what products are sold, how much you charge and how you market your farm. Don't pay a middle man, sell direct to your customers. As part of collection of farms you are working together to help make The Farmers Lot Australia's largest farmers market, livestock saleyard and rural superstore.

A online farmers market offers many of the advantages of a traditional farmers market. People understand what a farmers market it is and are drawn to the variety it offers. Operating your own stall means you have control and you can change it up at any time. Unlike a physical market a online farmers market operates 24/7. You have a variety of tools including secure check-out and automated order documentation that means the store operates without you being there. It is a great way to make some extra money and turn a hobby into a business. Features include,

You can sell anything that is legal in a online shop, illegal, hateful and abusive sales are strictly prohibited on most sites, including ours.

Otherwise there is actually very little that can't be sold online, even hot food can be delivered to your door.

The main limitation with a online shop is during the sales process, you can't touch or feel and your ability to inspect the goods is limited.

Transacting by the internet contains risks. How do you know who you are dealing with? Inspecting a product online is difficult, i.e. you can't touch or smell your purchase.

You should undertake at least all of the precautions you would with a physical sale. In this initial phase we recommend inspecting in person, taking appropriate personal security preparations, seeking samples or small purchases if possible.

Where physical inspection is not possible inspect photo's and video's of product demonstration. Photo's marked with the store and undertaking reverse photo look-up can reduce risk. Reviews or third party recommendations are also something to look for, whatever your experience please consider leaving a review to help others.

We use Pay Pal and Stripe for payment processing, these are processed on their platform and you account details are not provided to us or the seller. This however does not mean the seller has been verified or endorsed.