Web sites

[follow3]

Hello again All,

A lot of you have your own sites showing or selling your creations.

How would I go about getting a site of my own set up?

Did you all have a designer do it, or is there a simple do it yourself way of creating, editing, maintaining and hosting your own site?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[toolcrazy]

Contact me, I can help you through this.

 

[txbatons]

Steve...mine is completely homemade and DIY. I use IPowerweb for my website hosting and then use Macromedia Contribute for the design/editing/maintaining, PayPal for shopping cart/payments and Microsoft Office Picture Manager for the photo editing. I already had Contribute because that's what we use at school to maintain our class web pages and PayPal is free to use (well, except for the fees they charge). I designed my own logo and used the given templates as a starting point for my own ideas. All this runs me less than 8 or 9 bucks a month and so it easily pays for itself once you start selling.

Just know that a good rule of thumb is that it takes about a year for an active website to begin generating the amount of traffic needed to start making money.

I'll also give you an easy way to market. Once I got my site up and running, I sent 3 or 4 friends an email asking that they help me with my site by going thru a trial run with my site. They were asked to go thru the entire purchasing process...browse/buy/give feedback. Then I shipped the item to them and told them to keep it and I'd reimburse their money for helping me out. That helped me learn how to work the PayPal refund process, find bugs on my site and gain confidence before doing it for real. Plus, they were confident enough in the site and process to tell their friends and colleagues about it and that helped to generate traffic flow.

Good luck!

 

[rixstix]

Steve,

I use the Microsoft Office Live Basic service which is template based and has been very good for me. It is a no charge product offered by MS to small business, has its limitations, is sometimes called the "El-cheapo Microsoft product" but I've learned several workaround solutions that let it work for me. I'm waiting to see the next upgrade features which are being rolled out over the next 2-6 weeks. It may not be for you but take a look at it BEFORE securing your domain name because if you find that it does not fit your plan, it is a real PITA to transfer.

The service offered by Toolcrazy - Steve is also a good product/service.