Indeed! That would meet my needs!
But I have no idea how to proceed somehow and what are all the legalism/tax/security risks behind them. When I took courses with our local development business place, it focused a lot on street shops and about 1% was about internet (I know they would like to encourage local development and job making as opposed to just something digital... but...)
It might be another subject, but what do we need to look when we try to take that leap as in having the right website and setting a commercial account?
Okay several different questions here I'll cover what I can.
Commercial internet hosting, that part is fairly easy. Pick a commercial host (I use Network Solutions, but there are a lot of them out there, pick one you like) and sign up for a commercial account. For example, mine costs me about $140 per year. For that I get 300 GB of server space, unlimited bandwidth, up to 3000 individual POP3 mail boxes, up to 25 MySQL databases, and a bunch of other stuff. In other words, I get pretty much all the basic foundations I need to run as big a commercial site as I might want and that's what you want. It comes with Word Press support built in (all the basics for it are pre-installed and pre-configured). It also does automatic backups of my site and my databases and I can store multiple backups to restore from which has proven to be pretty handy at times. I built my site myself using Word Press and its various plugins, right now I'm just using free stuff but there are a few I've found I really like and I may pay for the pro versions of those in the near future. The short of this is, its not hard for you to put up your own commercial site with your own forums, galleries, etc. BTW, those email accounts all use your domain name; i.e. all my emails are something@bardicheart.com which is kind of nifty.
Now if you want to sell stuff directly through your site PayPal has some features to help you there, contact them directly and ask about that. Some commercial web hosts will also give you basic help for free or for a fee (usually pretty big) they'll build a store for you. But I'll warn you, the price tag for custom commercial stores is usually pretty high in my experience. Last I asked about one I was given a quote for $20,000. To which I replied, "Not happening, for that amount I'll go get a degree in it an do it myself!" But between Word Press and PayPal you can actually build a functional basic store to get started with. You can also do what I'm doing now which is selling through other vendor sites. They get a cut of the retail price but they also worry about all the tech stuff and advertising for me leaving me free to focus on creating... that works for me.
ISBNs... why do you feel you need these? I sell stuff through vendor sites now and never used them. Of course I'm dealing purely in digital content, and for that they just aren't needed. Only thing I've ever seen that needed them were print books, and if you're going that route you should also probably be working with a publisher who can/will take care of that.
As far as taxes, you'd have to check Canadian law since that's where you live. But here in the US I simply report the income as personal income. Essentially I'm operating as a sole proprietorship which doesn't require any incorporation. I think, but may be wrong, you can do the same in Canada.
One of the biggest problems you'll face doing business online is getting customers to your site. That's another reason I go through vendor sites. Like I said, rather than spending a lot of time and energy trying to advertise my site, figuring out how to do that, etc. I just use vendor sites that are already doing that. They get a cut of my sales, I get a ready made market. So depending what you want to sell, look for vendors that specialize in that and don't limit yourself to just one if you don't have too. For RPG Maker games, right now Steam seems like one of the better options, but I'm far from an expert since I have yet to publish my first game. I'll let others who have speak on that, someone with actual experience is going to have a much more valuable opinion than mine.
As far as VATMOSS, that's primarily a EU / UK thing. Doesn't affect those of us in the US and so far as I know isn't an issue in Canada either. Even if you are in the EU, so far as I know nothing stopping you from using a commercial host based in the US and thus still keeping the domain registration private.
Hope that helps
