Do It Yourself Site Building Question

I am sure these sites give you the opportunity to edit HTML/CSS file.
Just look somewhere in your user panel.

It's funny because it really is simple to create and launch an ecommerce store, but at the same time there are dozens of little steps. So if you look at it from a bird's eye view all at once it's kind of overwhelming, but each of the steps is super-simple and straightforward.

With a hosted platform (like BigCommerce, 3DCart or Shopify) it really is SUPER easy to build a store. I started on a new store (on BigCommerce) yesterday morning and it's 75% complete already, and I've only worked on it a handful of hours between yesterday and today so far. Yes I've created nearly 100 stores so I can almost do it in my sleep now, but even for a newbie the process should be quite simple if you are following a series of steps and completing one task after another. This page actually takes you through the steps of creating your store (dropship or inventoried), and the following page walks you through the steps of launching the store (aka "opening for business").

FYI, there's really no such thing as "submitting to the search engines." All of the major search engines will find your website naturally and index it. You can create a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit a sitemap (which is auto-generated on most popular hosted carts) and that will make the indexing process happen faster, but you don't need to actually submit your website anywhere. (NOTE: if someone is trying to get you to pay for that service they are trying to scam you!)

I hope this is helpful!

Quick question: how do you find customers?

I have a number of websites virtually all of which I have built using HTML over many years nad they took a fair amount of time and effort. In the past three months I have looked at the likes of Weebly and Wix and the templates they offer make it easy to set up a site with no third part advertising which used to be the drawback to using free sites.

Some people say that metatags are not important but I am a creature of habit and still use them and they do not do any harm.

If you want to get a quick start use one of these template type sites but if you want to stand out from the crowd it will take a little longer to build your own, or you could pay to have one built. its all about personal preference.