it still makes sense to start off small, modest and cheap. That offers the opportunity to learn all about web site marketing, improving design and generally making the "visitor experience" better. You'll develop a clear idea of what sells well and what does not, which marketing tools work and which do not, without spending money. Just hard work and all the frustration that goes with the learning curve, but no money. When the money is there to invest in wholesale supply and bigger margins, you are less likely to be left with stocks of stuff that simply does not move.
If there is no money to spend at this point, it can't be wasted. When you are ready to spend some real money, you'll be aware of many of the pitfalls so are likely to be making worthwhile investments. By then, your web site is likely to be a real asset with a visitor base, possibly a good emailing list and other well developed marketing tools. IMHO, that beats having to start from scratch by quite some way.
There are loads of perfectly good, indeed high class in many cases, templates and software for e-commerce, on the web, available free. Unless you've seen them and compared them with what you have in mind, titanwholesale, I fail to understand why you're suggesting throwing money at it? For instance, I've given two good, free, shopping cart with inbuilt CMS - no programming skills required, in other words - examples above.
SSL and all the other stuff doesn't have to be in place on day one, either. I'd like to ensure I can get the number of sales at the required margins to justify such costs, first. Both of the payment methods I've suggested, and you've nearly concurred with them, titanwholesale, have gateway and merchant account built in at no cost. Only when these methods become an impediment to making
more sales, should the expensive options be considered at a time when budgets are tight.
BTW, Google Checkout, from what I have gathered, works a bit like escrow. That means if you try the dropship option, you'll still have to pay for the goods before you get paid. I'd stick with Google Pay, in that case. Of course, if you already have the stocks, that is not important. Paypal, by the way, is a breeze to integrate and most of the free shopping cart utilities, including the ones I mentioned, come with it built in. Doubtless Google Pay will be, too, as the developers move towards the next releases. So, once again, no programming skills required.
So thanks for joining in, titanwholesale. You've given me the opportunity to show it can be done with a very modest budget and without any programming or web development skills to speak of.
Best regards,
Mike