Starting an online business in Japan

[jebac]

Hi everybody,

I've searched the forum for advice on starting an online business in Japan but the information is scattered and very case specific. Since I know next to nothing about how to register a business in Japan, I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction.

I am currently on a student visa (Masters student) and would like to register a business similar to what e-bay or yahoo auction does in Japan. My idea is purely a service facilitating trades between customers in Japan and wouldn't require me to use sell any products and wouldn't need a physical location in Japan. We would simply be earning a percentage of every transaction done through our website.

Any ideas on where to start or what I need to do in order to make this happen? Thanks in advance!

-jebac

[beavis]

You should do some research on Japanese Website Design.
http://tinyurl.com/l8suom

[edin日本]

Hi everybody,

I've searched the forum for advice on starting an online business in Japan but the information is scattered and very case specific. Since I know next to nothing about how to register a business in Japan, I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction.

I am currently on a student visa (Masters student) and would like to register a business similar to what e-bay or yahoo auction does in Japan. My idea is purely a service facilitating trades between customers in Japan and wouldn't require me to use sell any products and wouldn't need a physical location in Japan. We would simply be earning a percentage of every transaction done through our website.

Any ideas on where to start or what I need to do in order to make this happen? Thanks in advance!

-jebac

There's a lot of competition out there already. It's so stiff that MSN was forced to kill off their auction section of their website. Yahoo, Bidders and Rakuten were getting all the business.

[tre]

Does a student visa allow you to make income?

[KansaiBen]

Any ideas on where to start or what I need to do in order to make this happen? Thanks in advance!

-jebac

To start up as a one-man uncapitalised independent business you start off as a kojin-jigyo, the forms you get from your local tax office.

If you are not earning any taxable income in Japan there is not much point, but if you do, you will need to be registered to declare your work space and expenses for tax purposes.

[liamoko]

You should do some research on Japanese Website Design.
http://tinyurl.com/l8suom

Seriously? IMO, this guy could use some advice himself...

[jefflee]

if you want doing online business in japan you can check and sell [url=http://www.iokbags.com]cheap handbags[url] such as <a href="http://www.iokbags.com/handbags-louis-vuitton-handbags-c-1042_1043.html">lv handbags</a>

[ericson]

Seriously? IMO, this guy could use some advice himself...

Yup, using a cms, problem is most stock cms themes are tons better than the site linked to. All the sites in the portfolio look like typical Joomla sites with half custom themes. Why pay someone to do this, Joomla is open source to start off with so just do it yourself. Cheaper and interesting to learn, but the one thing to consider is the fact that there is a performance hit with cms systems.

[Effected After]

That depends on the CMS, and the behest system. Most people creating their own systems don't know a lot about caching, while a good cms will implement multi-caching across various areas. And with a good server, the difference isn't noticeable anymore anyways.

[ericson]

Your words are correct, but then again most people starting out make use of shared hosting. Once the site becomes somewhat popular, the standard cron jobs run by cms products and the caching can easily go over the 10% resource utilization cap that companies normally have. They will then start throttling your bandwidth and force you to shift to VPS or managed hosting. The latter two options definately being overkill for what the op requires at this stage.

[Effected After]

In your own words, shared hosting is enough until the site becomes popular. Once a site becomes popular, then usually the person running it can afford a VPS. There are thousands and thousands of CMS based sites being run on shared hosting out there. Beyond that, any site that has any kind of UI is a CMS, so it's way too broad a term to be able to make blanket statements like that, as the CMS in question could be extremely lightweight - even more so than some custom solutions that have no UI.

Besides, you can get VPS for like $10/month these days, so it's not like it's a game stopper anyways.

[ericson]

Your point is valid. Haven't looked at VPS for a while. At $10 it has become pretty cheap actually. Do you know some of the specks of the top of your head?

[Effected After]

Nothing great! I wouldn't use them (I pay quite a bit for my VPS), but I've seen people link to a few different companies that offer quite cheap rates - here is one for $7/month:

http://chicagovps.net/

[ericson]

Yeah like you said, nothing great. They got 10mbps ports, with that speed, it is like running your server at home. I get more than that in upload speed, so @ op.

While the site is small, sign up for some webhosting on a shared environment, when it grows, run your site from home if you have a proper upload speed and use dynamic dns for your domain, after that when it keeps growing, switch to managed services.

[Aimeejuicy]

Okay.if you can save money and save bulk at the same time should try buyshoesnet.com cheaper fast high quality safe

[KoalaTux]

I'm moving from London to Tokyo next year, and have been working independently in internet marketing for the last year. I'd be interested in starting an online business tailored to Japan, such as translation, CV writing for Japanese nationals wanting to work abroad, help for foreigners finding work/accommodation in Japan, selling European products in Japan etc.
Would be great to hear from anyone who is in a similar position, potential business partners, or anyone with advice or comments...
Thanks!