What's the cheapest way to have an online store with its own domain name with little web programming experience?

If you have “extensive programming experience”, then you’re familiar with the good-fast-cheap triangle. If you’re familiar with the good-fast-cheap triangle, and you think you want cheap, why are you sacrificing “good” or “fast”, because an online store that is not good or not fast won’t get much business, don’t you agree?

Etsy.com or http://en.dawanda.com/

But it depends on what you’re selling. Etsy and Dawanda is for all things handmade (including supplies for crafts) and vintage stuff.

You might want to try shopify.com or bigcartel.com. Both are set up to be easy to use and I’ve seen some fairly impressive results with each. Unfortunately I haven’t used them myself. You can also use them with your own domain name from what I understand.

If you want to create a site yourself Magento is excellent but definitely has a learning curve to it. The software itself is free so you’re really just investing your time. I would not try to run it on a godaddy account as they are usually not up to the task.

Which brings up a good point. Godaddy is a big name in hosting, but their hosting, support, and services are for the most part horrible. I’ve never had so many problems with a host and have started telling clients I’ll pay the difference in price if they just go with anyone else. Godaddy is fine for registering domain names if you can get them super cheap, but for anything more you should probably look elsewhere.

As alternatives, Dreamhost is great for general hosting. If you choose to go with Magento I’d recommend Simple Helix because it will run a lot better there. They’ve done some work to optimize and it makes a difference in how long pages take to load.