building an online store

Hi -
I am an ebay seller trying to open up my own independent online store unaffliated with ebay. After reading through the several reviews of ecommerce web hosting services and shopping carts I just feel like I getting more confused about what choices to make...

I need something that can handle a line of cosmetics and also provide for future expansions of the cosmetic line. I also need something will be easy to develop and design for. I have experience with simple html and Golive but that's about it as far as my code experience goes.

I am also confused about the bottom line cost of the services, do they commonly take out a percent of your profits? Security issues are a problem as well - do free web shopping carts like zen cart not offer good security for your customers? Somebody please help! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thank you!

Usually you would rent a shopping cart from a Web host. So the shopping cart license is included w/ your hosting fee. Most shopping carts do not charge anything more than a monthly flat fee to use the shopping cart software.

First define what you want from your store
(for example: how many products you have, payments you want to accept, multi-language support, dynamic price changing as ordered quantities grow...)
After that you can post it here and we will try to show you the right direction.