posted on October 30, 2003 08:51:21 AM new
I need a website. I don't know where to start, make my own or use a templete hosting service. I would appreciate any feedback from those of you who have sites.
Thank you!
posted on October 30, 2003 08:56:14 AM new
How many products are you planning to sell? If you're talking about 1000's of items, a host with Miva Merchant would be your best/cheapest option. If on a smaller scale, I did see someone recommend a site called yourownstore.com which had some nice and easy templates.
posted on October 30, 2003 09:01:12 AM new
yahoo is offering a small merchant plan ,39.95 for 50,000 items(there is a limit to bandwidth) per month,you may or may not get spidered by yahoo search engine.
find out more on yahoo site
-sig file -------The thrill is gone!!
posted on October 30, 2003 09:26:46 AM new
It's a big subject and without more information on what you would like to accomplish with your web site, I doubt anyone can be much help.
It's funny how few people actually sit down and make a plan for their site before jumping in feet first.
--
Making the world a more decorative place, one eBay bidder at a time.
That's the single most-important factor to consider.
Otherwise you can have the most elegantly-designed web site in the world and it would be like putting a billboard in the Sahara...no one will ever see it.
--
Making the world a more decorative place, one eBay bidder at a time.
posted on October 30, 2003 11:32:39 AM new
I have no idea of how I am going to drive traffic into the site. Thats why I posted the question.
I am certainly not going to expect people to show up from outerspace and click on it. I will at least direct my ebay clientele to the site, so it will be very useful in that respect at least.
I am willing to pay 40 or 50 bucks to start.
I looked at Yahoo stores and that looks like a pretty good deal but I don't like the final value fee because we all know final value fees start going up after a while.
I just don't know who to choose. I bought a book on how to increase hits, drive traffic etc but before I can drive anything I need a website.
When you set up a website, you should do a lot of pre-planning. There's several ways you can go about it.... but they all require certain basic things.
1) You need someone to create the layout and organization of your site (a web designer). This can either be yourself, or a hired professional (who would almost certainly not work for the $40-50 budget you've allocated!)
2) You need a place to host the website. This is provided by any number of ISP and web-hosting services. You are given a certain amount of space on their servers to hold your pages and images. You'll want to talk with their technical support to make sure that you can run any scripts (like your shopping cart) on their servers.
3) You probably want a domain name to build brand/corporate recognition. These need to be registered sites that you purchase for a fee from various entities. Once you own a domain name, you need to work with your web-hosting company to make sure that the domain name will reference your files on your server space.
4) You'll want to advertise your site. (many ways to do this, as many people have already suggested).
Anyhow... it's a big project, and you may want to try to find some local people who you can consult with. Remember, you get what you pay for... Or, if you're good at picking up new skills, you might want to purchase a copy of Dreamweaver, a good book on how to use it, and try designing the website itself. It would save money on start-up... plus it would help when you need to update your site. Hope that helps! Good luck!
posted on October 30, 2003 11:52:23 AM new
My advice is to buy (or check out from the library) any of the _Guerrilla Marketing_ books. Oh, heck, start with the original.
If you haven't used Google, go play with it and learn to love it. Use it to find web sites that discuss marketing, so you can benefit from the mistakes and experience of others who have trod that path before.
Books on the Internet tend to have a shelf life of about 10 minutes, I'm sorry to say.
--
Making the world a more decorative place, one eBay bidder at a time.
posted on October 30, 2003 01:20:39 PM new
the new small merchant account does not have a final value fee of 3 1/2%,but there is a 1/2 % transaction fee for the order.
instead of final value fee,there is cost per click fee if you choose to participate in yahoo shopping.
-sig file -------The thrill is gone!!
posted on October 30, 2003 02:56:13 PM new
I want to sell from both! I sell handmade items and I want to sell my high end work on a website with the opportunity for commissions. Final value fees on Ebay get expensive and I would like to off set the costs by getting some good ol .com buckys
posted on October 30, 2003 03:05:54 PM new
I'd recommend a Yahoo store.
$39.99 a month and for a limited time no set-up fee.
If you use the package you get a free domain added.
The store itself is plug and play meaning all you need to do is it make
1. Title
2. Price
3. description
4. Upload a pic
All of the pics in my Yahoo store are NOT counted in the webspace provided in the webhosting side of my account. So you have lots of space to dedicate to auction pictures if needed.
Since it includes a domain name and 25 email accounts you can make emails for auctions@mydomain and sales@ etc etc
Statistics every which way you can think of them...... traffic, sales whatever.
1.5% commission is really not much...... as the NO TRAFFIC Ebay stores still have 5.25%
The cost-per-click program is optional and I personally DO NOT participate in it.(adult items) HOWEVER if you do want to participate in being included in the Yahoo shopping directory you can submit your items.
You can choose to insert ONLY your most popular items you don't have to make every friggin store item cost-per-click. CPC is per person not per item so if one person clicks on every item you got you only pay for the FIRST ITEM CLICKED to get into your store. MOST people don't understant that part thinking every click is payable.
posted on October 30, 2003 04:47:18 PM new
where did you get 1.5% commission??
under the new plan,there is no commission or what they call revenue share.
only 1/2 % transaction fee as usual.
yes,it is a good deal,unlike amzn zshop,you can have more than one picture per item.
you can issue coupon,you can sell gift certificates,you can see the click trails the day after with IP address.
you also get nigerian,indonesian and ghanian placing orders claiming they are in norway,australia,singapore etc and want you to ship the fastest way possible.
-sig file -------The thrill is gone!!
posted on October 31, 2003 07:53:42 AM new
Hey,
thanks for all the advice. Love potion I am leaning toward the Yahoo store. I like the free stats and stats are vital to business.
They are not advertising the change in the .5o revenue share they still have 1.5 percent transaction fee listed on their sales site so I am going to call the yahoo rep to verify this before I plunk down my credit card.
Also, I have heard getting on the Yahoo Search engine is like winning a date with the most beautiful girl in your high school class, I think that is how one book put it that I read.
How does one get on the yahoo search engine?
The rep told me to go to submitnet.com and submit my site to them and for a fee they will submit to all major search engines, monitior the site for broken links etc and resubmit the pages one every thirty days are somthing like that.
Why so hard to get on yahoo? The rep told me if I submit to yahoo, it will cost me 299.00 just to get them to look at my site with no promise they would even add it to their search! what gives?
posted on October 31, 2003 08:33:08 AM new
299 a year is for yahoo directory ,not yahoo shopping.
yahoo should submit your site to vairous search engines if you choose to,when you open the store,they will ask you.there are only 6-7 engines which drive majority of the traffic.
my advice to you is -if you like the shop format and the statistics,sign up for the basic 39.95 plan and then decide whether you want to join yahoo shopping,pay google or overture etc etc.\
by the way,i believe you need a merchant account to open a yahoo store,better confirm this with yahoo rep.
you are right,the transaction fee for the new plans range from 1 1/2 % to 3/4%
-sig file -------The thrill is gone!!
posted on October 31, 2003 10:20:06 AM new
I am having my site done over with someone new. I am very pleased so far. I am saving money too, by adding in my own product. My site isn't even done and I am already hits. If you want more info, email me [email protected]
posted on October 31, 2003 12:15:15 PM new
Just to let you know, that most website offer stats, so don't base your decision on that end alone. As you mentioned earlier, site speed is very important. I don't know how fast yahoo stores are, but I'd check some of them out to find out. Alexa.com also gives site speed ranks for websites that are listed in their directory. As for yahoo search engine, I would put more effort into google. My google traffic is about triple what yahoo sends me. You also shouldn't have to pay for inclusion. As long as your site is "legit", the search engine robots will find your site. Have your site linked with a site already indexed, and they will usually add it to their rotation in a few months. As for traffic coming, it takes about 4 months for traffic to start rolling in from the search engines.
posted on November 1, 2003 09:31:26 AM new
If you're going to design your own site, you might as well pick up the free oscommerce ms2-max version. It's a full fledged e-commerce setup including carts, coupons, newsletter,inventory, sales..etc. The pro is you have a really powerful/customizable site and it's free opensource. The cons is that you need to get your hands a little dirty with html and php.
