Every online store has to have some sort of shopping cart software behind it from Amazon.com, to NeimenMarcus.com , to LouisVuitton.com to our website, eDesignerShop.net. It takes a lot of investment to build a secure, professional, dependable site.

What about small companies or individuals that want to sell online? One great avenue is eBay, where you don’t have to have a store at all to sell your items. It only costs a few dollars to list an item and it’s out there. If you have a lot of items to sell, you can open up a yahoo store which costs less than $40 to start.

So if these sites are great, why should you be wary of buying designer products there? First, they are easy and cheap to setup, but they can just as easily disappear. During the years we seen many yahoo stores come and go with the wind, leaving customers scratching their head wondering where to get support, refunds, or questions answered. This is of course the same with eBay sellers. Ebay as a site isn’t going anywhere, but individual sellers are not as dependable.

Because of these reasons, avoid buying expensive designer products from eBay or Yahoo stores. eBay is easy to spot, but how do you spot a Yahoo store? If you look at your browser, no matter if you are using internet explorer, firefox or any of the others, usually to the left of the website address is where you will see the logo of the company.

Here is the butterfly of Neimen Marcus:

Here is the “A” of Amazon:

eDesignerShop eDS:

And for your reference, All the yahoo stores, no matter what their name is, will display the Yahoo Y! logo, including sites like ampmfashion.com:So today’s tip: If you are worried about authenticity, buy from a site that you know will be around. It costs no money to open an account on eBay to sell and Yahoo stores cost less than $50! Why buy a $200+ item from a place that pays less than that to be in business?

We will be back in the following weeks with more authenticity tips for you. To see our collection of authentic designer handbags, go to: http://www.edesignershop.net

You know you’re there when you see the eDS logo