Selling,With,Your,Own,Web,Site DIY Selling With Your Own Web Site

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and

----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and theresource box below is included. ----------------------------------------------------------Selling With Your Own Web SiteBy Stephen BucaroMany people have their own product, a book, a CD, a craft,or other product that they would like to sell with theirown Web site, but they can't find simple instructions onhow to get started. In this article, I'm going to explainhow to sell your product with your own Web site. It boilsdown to four steps.1. Find a Web serverYou need to put your Web site on a computer that is runninga Web server program and is connected to the Internet.There are three choices:a. Your own server. This requires you to be, or to hire, asystem administrator responsible for system maintenance,software updates, backups, and security. This also requiresa high-speed communications link to the Internet. This ispractical only for large organizations.b. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Along with abroadband or dial-up connection to the Internet, many ISPsalso provide you with a small amount of personal Web space.There are several problems with using this Web space, evenfor a small business Web site. The storage space andmonthly transfer allowance is too small, and if you decideto change ISP, you lose your email address and you need tomove your Web site.c. A Web host provider. There are many companies that sellWeb site space on their servers. These companies offerthree grades of service:- Free hosting. The hosting service makes money from bannerads that they display on your Web site. Sometimes thestorage space is too small and the monthly transferallowance is usually limited.- Shared hosting. Your Web site shares a server with manyother Web sites. Some hosting providers put too many Websites on each server, or someone else's Web sitemonopolizes the servers processor or bandwidth. This slowsdown your Web site.- Dedicated hosting. The hosting provider sets up aseparate server for your Web site alone. Whereas sharedhosting can be acquired for as little as $5 per month,dedicated hosting cost hundreds of dollars per month.Recommendation:Most small businesses can't afford a dedicated server. Youcan use your ISP's webspace or a free host for learningpurposes, but usually only shared or dedicated hosting letsyou use your own domain name. You will want to register andpromote your own domain name, not put a lot of effort intopromoting a domain name provided by a free host. There are many Web host directories that let users rate webhost providers. Visit several of these directories andchoose a web host provider with a good rating. The mostimportant specification to look for in a Web host provideris "up time". They should have a 99.9% up time guarantee.2.Design and Build your Web siteA Web site is nothing more than a collection of webpages.Webpages are very similar to documents that you wouldcreate in a word processor. A word processor, like MicrosoftWord for example, uses invisible "tags" to layout the page.Whereas Word uses "Rich Text File (RTF) tags, a webpageuses Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags. But the conceptis the same.You never actually see or deal with the tags in a wordprocessor document. Many people use a web page designapplication that lets them avoid dealing with html tags ona webpage. But most serious webpage design requires you todeal with html code directly. There are three reasons whyyou would need to deal with the html code directly. 1. Your web page design application refuses to format thewebpage exactly the way you want it.2. There is an error on your webpage.3. Most word processor documents are static. A webpageusually contains powerful little programs called "scripts"that work with the html tags on the page.Recommendation: Before venturing into creating your ownWeb site, spend a few weeks experimenting with html tagsto create webpages by hand. You don't need a Web server totest your webpages. You can load them directly into yourWeb browser. In your learning, focus on linking pagestogether that reside in different folders. This is wheremost beginners have a problem.The first step in building your Web site is to create orchoose a template. As I mentioned earlier, a Web site isnothing more than a collection of webpages. But allwebpages for a Web site should have the same basic layout,color scheme, and navigation elements.There are thousands of free and pay templates available onthe Web. Actually, every Web site is a template that youcan explore by selecting View | Source in your Webbrowser's menu. The most import thing about selecting atemplate is that you are comfortable with it. If thetemplate uses complex code, the chances of getting anerror occurring are high, and you may not be able to fix it.Recommendation: Select a template you like, but don't useit directly. From the html coding that you learned byfollowing my previous recommendation, hand code a similartemplate. Now you will have a template you understand andare comfortable modifying and fixing if it becomesnecessary.Generally, you will create webpages on your local computerand upload them to your Web site, usually using FTP (FileTransfer Protocol). Most web designers keep a local copyof their entire Web site on their local computer. Herethey can test a webpage before uploading it to the liveWeb site. If your design uses active servers pages (ASP),you may want to install a Web server on your local computerfor testing purposes.3.Set up E-commerce E-commerce involves setting up shopping cart software anda means of accepting credit card payments. There are threepossible ways to set up e-commerce:a. Set up shopping cart software and a secure order formon your Web site. Then process the orders using yourregular off-line bank processing service. This is good forpeople whose Web site is an extension of their off-linebusiness. But setting this up from scratch for a Web onlybusiness may be too costly.b. There are many companies on the Web that will set youup with a merchant account. This service may or may notinclude a shopping cart. In either case, before the userenters their credit card information, they are transferredto the secure server of the merchant account. Setup costsfor a merchant account can run into hundreds of dollars.In addition, there are transaction fees and monthly fees. c. Many small businesses use online payment services. Mostonline payment services can provide you with a shoppingcart, but in many cases, all you need is to place some htmlcode provided by the online payment service on your Website.When your customer clicks on a "Buy" button on your Website, they are transferred to the web site of the onlinepayment service where they enter their credit cardinformation. You receive an email notification when atransaction is completed.Online payment services don't charge for setup or monthlyfees, but the transaction fees are similar to a merchantaccount. Fees run about $0.35 and 2.5% per transaction.After a delay to prevent charge backs losses, you canlogin to the online payment services Web site and transferthe payment into your bank account. The oldest and largest online payment service isPayPalwhich processes over 600,000 transactions per day.4.Promote Your Web siteUnless someone makes a lucky guess as to the URL (UniformResource Locater) or address of your Web site, you willreceive no visitors. Simply placing your Web site on theInternet does not result in traffic. You need to promoteyour Web site. There are many ways to promote your Web site,some free and some pay, some very effective, some a totalwaste of time. Below are the main methods of generatingtraffic.a. Advertising. You can purchase advertising on Web sitesthat do have traffic. You can also purchase advertising innewsletters or e-zines. Don't assume that the Web sitewith the most traffic or the newsletter with the mostsubscribers is the best value. The secret to successfuladvertising is testing. Test different advertisements indifferent locations.b. Pay per click. Almost all search engines will let youpurchase search words. When a search engine user enters asearch for a word that you purchased, a link to your Website will be returned at the top of the results. Sometimesyou "bid" on a search term. In that case, when a user ofthe search engine enters a word that you placed a bid for,a link to your Web site will be returned in the resultsbelow all Web sits that bid more money.c. Traffic Exchange. A traffic exchange is a Web sitewhere you login and click to visit other people's Web sites.For each Web site that you visit, you receive a credit. Youcan exchange your credits for visits to your Web site. Ifyou don't feel like making the effort to visit otherpeople's Web sites, you can purchase visits to your Website. The quality of traffic from traffic exchanges variesbetween very poor to totally useless.d. Search engines. You can submit your the address of yourWeb site to most search engines for free. After you submityour Web site information, the search engine will scan or"spider" your Web site with a program called a "robot". Therobot will provide information that allows the searchengine to list your Web site in their database, and rank itfor relevancy. When a user of the search engine enters asearch for a word related to the content on your Web site,a link to your Web site will be returned in the results ata position depending upon the relevancy of your webpage.e. Link popularity. Different search engines use differentmethods to rank the relevancy of a webpage. One method usesthe number of links on the Web that point to the webpage.To take advantage of this, you need to get links to yourWeb site posted in as many places on the Web as possible.One method to accomplish this is to write articles relatedto the topic of your Web site and make them available forpeople to post on their Web site for free.f. Web presence. To get traffic to your Web site, peoplehave to know you are out there and what you have to offer.Getting involved and contributing useful information inonline forums and message boards is one way to establishyour presence on the Web. People reading your messages mayput information about you on their Web site. Anotheradvantage of this method is that it keeps you in touchwith what's going on in the areas related to the topic ofyour Web site.Selling your product with your own Web site boils down tothe four steps explained in this article. This article isin no way comprehensive. Complete details about each oneof these steps would to fill entire books. This articlegives you a general overview and enough information to getyou started.----------------------------------------------------------Resource Box:Copyright(C) 2004 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintainyour computer and use it more effectively to design a Website and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.comTo subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visithttp://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp---------------------------------------------------------- Article Tags: Domain Name, Word Processor, Html Tags, Shopping Cart, Merchant Account, Online Payment, Payment Services, Search Engines, Search Engine