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Chapter Four: Choosing
a Host For Your Internet Store
We've been through the fact that scam artists will cheat you into a losing business.
We've talked about the basics you should have for your computer to start an Internet business.
We've delved into the confusing world of the Internet, and simplified that concept a bit.
Now, let's talk about your Internet Store Hosting.
A "Hosting" company is the company you choose to actually lease that sliver of Server hard drive space from. That's where the computer files that make up your Internet Store will reside, and that's how your site actually gets out there on the Internet where people can find it. Different Hosts provide different services, and it's important to know something about them.
There are two LEGITIMATE methods you can use to start an Internet Store. Neither one of them involves sending money to any company with a name remotely like
"Ace Complete Internet Stores And Products, Inc.", so let's rule the scam artists out entirely and concentrate on reality.
In Reality, there are LEGITIMATE
Internet Store Solutions, and there are LEGITIMATE ECommerce Hosting Providers. I personally use them both, and find that there are different advantages to each one.
Method One: Using an Internet Mall
Let me explain this concept like this:
My teenage boys love to go to the Mall.
They'll spend an entire Saturday there, along with a week's allowance. When asked what
they've been doing all day, they'll just say, "Um, chillin', that's all."
When I was a kid, it was called
"hangin' out", but it's the same thing.
Why do they like it there so much? Well, according to them, the Mall has
"EVERYTHING!" They're right. People to see, places to go, things to
do; everything
they're looking for, right there in front of them, within walking distance.
Your Internet Store can do the same thing. It can
"chill" at the Mall. In this case, that happens to be an Internet Mall. When your Internet Store is at the Mall, it's not laying around the house grumbling, it's having fun, and it's probably not getting into TOO much trouble. Just like my kids.
Why let your site go to the Mall? Because it's right in the middle of things.
There are two main things you should be thinking about when starting out on the Internet.
Money and Traffic ("Traffic" is the Internet term for Customers).
There's never enough of either at first. To earn the Money, you need the Traffic. To get the Traffic, you need to spend Money. I spent years telling all my kids never to play in Traffic, and when my Grandson gets a little older, I'll be telling him the same thing. My sites? I booted them right out there on the freeway from day one.
Here's what I do when I build an Internet
Store Solution site:
I go to my Internet
Store Solution provider, and open a new Store. This typically costs about $50 a month or less.
I create the Store itself
through my Internet Browser, Microsoft's "Internet Explorer". (For those who don't know, this comes free with virtually every home computer sold today).
My Store provider has a "store
builder" that can be used to create a store. Using just my Internet Browser, I can tell the store what color and style it's text and background should be. I can tell it to put my "Buttons" (links to other pages within the store) across the top or down the side of the page. I can upload (send) images of my logo and my products directly to the store from my computer, and put them in the right places. I can create product pages with pictures and descriptions of the products I want to sell, and activate the "Sale" button on each page, so that my store can collect money from my customers.
I play around with it until I have things the way I want them, then I tell the
Store Solution provider to open it (make it viewable to the Internet Surfing public). I can access and edit my store from anywhere I can get an Internet connection. There have been plenty of times I've run my business while traveling, using a laptop computer plugged into a hotel room phone jack.
The Store Manager (the area provided with your store where you manage it's functions) is loaded with all kinds of easy to use tools, from
spreadsheet exports to email forwarding to charts of my hits and sales.
Almost
immediately after I place a product in my Internet Store, it shows up online. The last site my partners and I opened
with our Internet Store Solution provider paid that fifty bucks back in
it's first couple of DAYS, and has gone on to make very good money.
The biggest advantage to a good Store
Solution provider is ease of use. You can create one store, several stores,
easily navigate through them and change your products and pricing, and it's all
done "point and click". There is virtually no programming to learn. The Store
Templates look very professional, which definitely helps our sales. The Sales
and Customer Tracking tools are tremendously helpful.
The disadvantage to an Internet Store
Solution is that the stores CAN all pretty much look the same if you're not
careful. With some providers, you can change background and text colors, and arrange the pages a bit differently, but they all end up being very similar to each other.
The better Store Solution providers allow you to choose from varying templates,
so that your store doesn't look virtually the same as the stores built by all
their other customers.
You'll find detailed information on the Internet Mall Provider(s) we recommend in our online
Resource Center.
Method Two: Using an ECommerce Hosting Provider
There are advantages to using an ECommerce Hosting Provider instead of an Internet
Store Solution.
The main advantage is that you have much more control over the way your site looks and functions. You can create your own unique presence on the Internet, without being limited by a choice of just a few "templates", such as you would be in an Internet Mall.
The disadvantage to simply renting
server space from an ECommerce Hosting Provider and building your own storefront is
the time and knowledge it takes. If you're not already a pretty good programmer,
you may not want to do this.
ECommerce Hosting Providers will all set you up with the your basic needs at a good price. Internet hosting (rented space on a Server hard drive, remember?). They should include a Shopping Cart (the software program that holds your products and prices), and may include some kind of Merchant Account (the
"gateway" software that collects money from your customers' credit cards, and puts it in your bank account).
All these things are well and good
if you're comfortable creating your own HTML pages. SOME of these companies DO offer
some basic templates that can be modified, but for the most part, you're on your
own.
The main
reason people use these providers to day is to create REALLY super-customized
sites and stores. Mainstream ECommerce Sellers, for the most part, don't need to
go this route when first getting started.
If you do
decide to try this, I recommend Microsoft FrontPage to create the pages that you
build on an ECommerce Hosting Provider platform. The software is easy to learn and use
(although it WILL take some time if you're new to it), and you can create an Internet Store with an
extremely unique "personality" that my be missing from an Internet Store
Solution provider.
You'll find detailed information on the ECommerce
Hosting Provider(s) we recommend in our online
Resource Center.
In conclusion:
You can successfully use either an Internet Mall or an ECommerce Hosting Company. As I've said, the trade-off between a Mall and an ECommerce provider is this: With a Mall, you get more initial Traffic. With an ECommerce provider, you get more control over your site's look and functions.
However, there are lots of scams out there. Again, for info on companies of both kinds that we recommend, you can go to our
Resource Center. We'll tell you which ones we've found to be legitimate.
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Product Sourcing - Finding Products to Sell |
