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coach

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How many of you have your own website? Do you sell pens from it or use it as a "digital" business card? How much does it cost? Who is your host? Ease of page building? Just trying to decide if it is worth the extra expense.
 
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Coach, I use mine as a digital business card, sales are very limited from it. Cost is less than 100.00 per year, GODADDY of course, is the host. Not hard to do if you know a littler computer lingo, but it is time consuming to get it right.
 
I have my own website but don't use it for pens - too many other hobbies to take up the space. Besides the space is free as long as I don't use it for e-commerce.

If someone wants to see my stuff - I send them here. If that means that I lose the sale to one of you - so be it. After all, I'm not counting on my pen sales for anything and the customer IS always right!!
 
Just starting out, I did not bother to register a domain name. I just use what comes with my internet accounts. Which adds up to 145 meg. (Remember to register all your e-mail accounts and activate each ones web page then use those sites to host the pictures for your main site)

Ease of building. Well the more professional the harder it is.
But you can get started with a simple page and go from there.
 
I have two sites.. one for selling my scroll saw patterns and the other will be my pen site... the pen site is still in the construction stage with no pens for sale but some examples...
I use Front Page to do the intial construction and then tweak the html code manually after that to get just what I want and eliminate some of the unnecessary stuff that Front Page puts there..
My hosting company is aplushosting.com ... have been very happy with them and use them for all the sites I do for my customers... costs vary according to what you need.. but I got into a special they were running and am only paying $25/yr for each site plus $14.99 for the domain registrations.. so my sites are costing me $40/yr ea..
There are a lot of WYSWYG programs out there for free, you just need to do a Google search.. but remember you get what you pay for...
 
I have a site, and it's my sole source of income. I sell titanium rings, but I've also sold a few pens on it. I use Ready Hosting for one site and Exa Bytes for a backup site. Each is something like $90/year including domain registration. I have my Cart32 shopping cart free with the Ready Hosting account. They have been very reliable. I made my web pages with FrontPage. I have a counter from Site Meter that's free, but I've upgraded to get extra tracking information for something like $50/year. It helps to know where my traffic comes from.
 
We used Hostways a while back for an E-commerce site I did for my parents. This was three or four years ago, and technology and reliability have changed since then, but they were pretty good. I have my own web sites too, that I host from my house (my ISP allows this). For these, I use Register.com as my registrar because of some of the extra features they provide.
 
I use Publisher 2000 to make websites and is very easy to do, there is a Publisher newsgroup for people that need help. Bizland.com has been my webhost for about 5 years and for under $8.00 a month they have been very good with many extra features. I get orders from 20 to 200 pens a month from my website but I think I'm one of the lucky few.
 
I use my site as a business card and for informational purposes. However, if someone wants to purchase something they can contact me. I use homestead (www.homestead.com) and the package I use is about $20.00 a month including domain registration and 5 or so e-mails. I use their site building tools and it is very easy.
 
I do own website for my NW Woodturner business.

I register with One and One hosting service - www.oneandone.com
I use "MS Home Plan" as they provide ASP (Active Server Pages).

Right now the 'One and One' Hosting service are throwing "Business Pro Plan" package for free for 6 months.. Ya go and check them out.. I am not afflicate with them. I just let you know..

I purchased a template from http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/ for my e-commerce system on my homepage. (they do have templates for PHP by the way)

I use Frontpage 2003 for my editing my homepage.. Macromedia Fireworks for some photo editing. Mostly I use Photoshop CS.

I DO NOT feel any regret to have any of those as they all are so good and made my life alot easier.. I love those e-commerce template as it's all "ready to go" package.. At end of each month, I could download all orders I got from my homepage into my Quickbook software or Excel for record keeping. It's all clear and bold!

I know ecommerce template cost $$ little but in short run, your products sales would pay it off just like my sales paid it off in a week..

I love them all!

Gary Holte
NW Woodturner
www.nwwoodturner.com
Portland, Oregon
 
If you look back at previous polls, we had a poll similiar to your questions. Not about cost, but just how many people sold via websites, and how many sales were generated from it.
 
I sell exclusively from my website. My host is Avehost or WebMyStyle (http://www.webmystyle.com). They have plans ranging from $8 to $28 per month. I guess I was grandfathered in when they changed names. I pay about $60 per year for hosting. I use Microsoft FrontPage to build my website which now has about 1200 pages. I sell pens for a lot of people. I spend over $300 a month to maintain my website including marketing costs.
 
Originally posted by coach
<br />How many of you have your own website? Do you sell pens from it or use it as a "digital" business card?
Click to expand...
I sell all of my wood products on my website. Besides pens, I make perfume pens and atomizers, bottle stoppers, bowls, and bandsaw boxes.

How much does it cost?
Click to expand...
$240 per year. That includes a shopping cart.

Who is your host?
Click to expand...
PrecisionWeb

Ease of page building?
Click to expand...
I've been working in HTML for a long time, so I'm probably not the one to answer this. I code everything in a text editor (UltraEdit).

Just trying to decide if it is worth the extra expense.
Click to expand...
I sell enough thru the site to cover the costs, but not much more than that. It does get me orders that I would never see otherwise. I've had customers from all over the country. Now if only they'd tell two friends, and they'd tell two friends...
 
Like Mark, my Website is hosted by Homestead. The only thing I sell from the Site are videos and my classes via PayPal.

I got into the website to use it as a resume, and for information sharing. A Website is becoming a necessity for other woodturning and the only thing that many galleries will accept.

Worth the expense?? Absolutely.
 
I've been using Register.com for a couple of years now and it has worked well. As a die hard "do-it-yourselfer", I like their website editing software that allows folks like me (with no working knowledge of HTML) to create and update their own site. I pay $9.99/month for (up to) a 20 page site.

Although most of my business is generated by word of mouth advertising or personal contact with the customer, I do get a few orders, both for my adirondack chairs and for pens, directly from the website. I have the site mostly as a place to refer potential customers who would like to see more of my work - plus it's kinda fun just to have one!

Marilyn
Ocean Park, WA[:)]
 
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