How do you find a good web developer for Magento? What are some good questions to ask when deciding who to work with?

Shopify is best use case for $0 to $1M ish, depending on product line, how many transactions that makes up, and if their are some custom things that are not possible on Shopify that realistically lead to huge gains that would cover more costs of a custom solution with something like magento. I recommend Shopify to everyone starting out. That's what we used at Diamond Candles up until about a $5M run rate. We were/are growing quickly so we hit a point where payoff of customizing checkout flow, add of social sign on, etc. that could not be done because of Shopify, would cover and surpass costs of a more custom option. Best to think about this simplistic example. View the ecom platform market in about 3 buckets. 1. Starting out: $0-$1M ish 2. Wow looks like you have a business: $1M-$20 or 50ish 3. You are/could be publicly traded: $50M+ Take a look at usage #'s for market share size from independent third party analytics tools from Builtwith: http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Shopify/Market-Share http://trends.builtwith.com/shop http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/hosted-solution Just because something is found on the web more isn't the full picture. Ie. I could make a blogging platform and have a bunch of scripts and bots install it on millions of domains and I would have majority of the market for blogging platforms (ya that would take a while and isn't a realistic scenario but you can get the point). Providers dominating the different categories by companies in those areas actually doing volume and being succsessful? 1. Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, Magento GO, 2. Magento (varying editions), Yahoo Stores, Symphony Commerce 3. Demand Ware, GSI Commerce, Magento (varying editions) At the end of the day a good illustration goes like this. A truck and a moped are two different things. A truck is not trying to out 'moped' a moped and a moped not trying to out 'truck' a truck. They are both perfectly suited to different applications, situations, needs, and circumstances. The same goes with who you choose to handle your ecom platform. For 2-3 search for internet retailers first 500 and second 500 lists. Pull off all ecommerce companies doing between $10-$50M as an example. Use the builtwith.com chrome toolbar to tell you what platform they are using. Hire someone for $2 an hour via odesk to make a spreadsheet of everything and the make a pretty little pie chart. Now you know what each revenue volume level chooses as 1, 2, 3 preferred platforms. Option 3 as a side note but very important one, is primarily a platform and commerce as a service model with companies like Demand Ware and GSI Commerce leading the market with platform and services including but not limited to customer service for the brand, fulfillment, marketing services, website product photography etc. Their pricing models are based on gross revenue share. ie. SportsAuthority.com does $100M online this year, GSI takes 30% of that to cover everything. (I am not sure who Sports Authority uses, just an example) You can almost pick any traditional brick and mortar retailer and if they have a website where they sell things, they all do, GSI or DW are the people behind the scenes running the call centers, shipping etc. Diamond Candles, my company, who started on Shopify decided to not go with a the market dominating option of Magento for a few reasons. One of which being upfront cost for an agency or on staff magento CTO type. We decided to partner with a newer entrant, Symphony Commerce, which blends the 3rd category model of platform plus service. Rev. cut is significantly smaller than providers in category 3, but still get benefits of volume savings on shipping volume, scalable customer support that can handle rapid growth and occasional spikes without us having to worry about scaling or implementing best practices, and a fully customizable platform as a service so to speak that doesn't require us to have in house tech but where we are essentially renting part time ecommerce engineers from with resumes that list Google, FB, Twitter, Magento, Amazon, etc. So in summary. If you are <$1M in revenue just roll with Shopify. Greater than that but less than $50M ish then I would recommend looking into Symphony. If Symphony is interested in letting you in then you won't have to incur the upfront costs of an agency or implementation and you will have an ongoing partner equally incentivized i your long term success financially which I prefer as opposed to an agency model which economically is incentivized to offer a one time finished product and their revenue is not tied to my financial success. It is the closest thing to an equity partner while returning our full equity.

Take the # of hours it takes you to do it and charge $50/hour. That's the price. Eventually you can charge $100/hour but that will require a bigger customer. If the customer is small < $1M in gross sales per year - charge $50/hour If the customer id medium < $1-5M / sales - charge $75 Over $5M - charge $100 The challenge you'll face is clearly defining the expectations and handoff so that you're not stuck doing stuff that you can charge for and always getting interrupted from past customers.

TAX is US. For export paperwork (free tax delivery) is India. Use business location may in delaware for lower state tax

Dilip was very kind in his response. My answer might be a bit on the "tough love" side. But that's for you to decide. My intention, just for the record, is to help you (and those like you) on your path to success. And that starts with having a viable philosophy about entrepreneurial-ism and business. And I'm going to answer this because I get asked some form / version of this question very frequently from newcomers to entrepreneurial-ism. The scenario goes something like this: "I have a great idea. It's amazing, I love it, and I just KNOW it's gonna make me a ton of money. But I have no money right now so I can't afford to (fill in the blank with things like "to build it / create it / market it / etc" or "to hire the required staff needed to work in my business to sell it / develop it / etc"). And I don't want to tell anyone about my great idea because I'm worried someone will steal it and make MY million / billion dollars. But I can't afford to legally protect it either... So how do I launch without the skills to personally create the product AND no money to hire anyone else to do that either??" The answer is ... You don't. Look - let's be honest. All you have is an idea. Big deal. Really. I'm not saying it's not a good idea. I'm not saying that if properly executed it couldn't make you a million / billion dollars... But an idea is NOT a business. Nor is it an asset. Until you do some (very important) initial work - like creating a business model, doing customer development, creating a MVP, etc - all you really have is a dream. Right now your choices are: 1. Find someone with the skills or the money to develop your idea and sell them on WHY they should invest in you. And yes, this will mean giving up either a portion of the "ownership" or of future income or equity. And the more risk they have to take - the more equity they will want (and quite frankly be entitled to). 2. Learn how to code and build it yourself. MANY entrepreneurs without financial resources are still resourceful. They develop the skills needed to create what they don't have the money to pay someone else to do. 3. Get some cash so you can pay someone to do the coding. You'll probably have to have some knowledge of coding to direct the architecture of your idea. So you will likely still have to become knowledgeable even if its not you personally doing the coding. (This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of options... And I'm sure some of the other experts here on Clarity have others to add - and I hope they do) To wrap up - Here's my final tip to you that I hope you "get"... It's FAR more valuable to have an idea that a very specific hungry crowd is clamoring for right now - One that THEY would love and pay you for right now - Maybe even one they'd pre-order because they just have to have it - Versus YOU being in love with your own idea. [Notice I didn't say "an idea that some as-of-yet-undetermined market would probably love"] I wish you the best of luck moving forward.

A generalized question can only get a generalized answer. The most significant accomplishment is validating that the product you have built is a fit with your target market. This is demonstrated primarily by engagement (the people who sign-up or who previously visited, continue to return) and secondarily by growth, ideally based on word-of-mouth or viral growth but effectively converting paid traffic is a great second prize. Other significant accomplishments include: Not running out of money Recruiting and retaining great talent who believe in the founders' vision. Your loved ones not thinking you're as crazy as they thought you were a year ago. I'm happy to talk to you in a call to give you more specifics about what you want to set as your goals more specific to your startup.