If I'd rather run my own website and not use amazon, would someone be so kind as to estimate my costs? Everyone's saying around 5k, what does that include? Would I needa hire an IT and someone else to do graphics? Is that a one time expense or continual? Also what type of security would I need to secure payments and cc info, and how much would that cost?
Its 2014. You can build a beautiful website for significantly less than $5K. I'd say your upfront costs can be as little as $1K. (Of course, they can also be as high as $100K, but it doesn't sound like you're looking for any sort of enterprise solution.)Its impossible to determine what your monthly costs will be without knowing more about your business.
I always recommend Volusion for people starting out in ecommerce. Plans start as low as $15/month, and a 3 year old and an 83 year old can both figure out the Volusion backend. Typically, the easier a platform is to use, the more limitations you run into, but the abilities of Volusion are actually quite vast. You can do everything with Volusion from hosting to credit card processing to site design to marketing.
I currently use Magento Enterprise for my site, and it is not worth the money, at all.