|
Accepting Payments Online
Whether you're selling services or products there are multiple ways to get
started. The easiest and simplest way is an all-inclusive solution. Many
companies offer turn-key solutions which include a basic website template and a
hosted ecommerce store. Usually to cost varies from $20 to $30 a month with a
modest set-up fee to process your application. Monies you make are either mailed
to you by check or transferred to your bank account. One popular program
offering is Yahoo Stores.
Simple = The Home Grown Factor
The pitfall of having an "all-inclusive-online-store template" is that the end
result is an online store or website that does not look very professional. It
could look down right ugly. This wouldn’t matter if you had an inexpensive niche
product or service that everyone wanted to buy, but this is probably not the
case. Niche products and services are slowly disappearing as more and more
websites filling these voids come online. But hey! you never know. Nothing
ventured is nothing gained.
Pay Pal Offerings
Let's assume you already have a website or even a Blog site like Live Journal or
My Space. Pay Pal offers a program where you sign-up for free to accept monies
online. They charge a very small fee per transaction when money is sent or
received. Millions of people use Pay Pal this way. Simply sign up with Pay Pal
(you'll need to have an active bank account) and in 2 to 3 days you are ready to
go.
You need to have a minimal amount of web or HTML experience to place a Pay Pal
button in your website. Don’t have HTML experience? Most city recreation centers
offer classes at reduced rates or you may seek out the help of a technical or
college student in your area. Most students are itching to get some practical
real world experience under their belts. Start by calling the school’s director
or person in-charge of student internships. But remember, you need a website in
which to paste the code. Cost for a website may range from $500 to $2800
depending on your needs and your budget. You might also consider populating your
information into a web template.
Web hosting plans costing $130 per year offer a free web template builder. You
simply choose the template you like and populate it with your own content. Now
you have a place to paste in your Pay Pal code. Most hosting companies will do
this for you free!
We should also mention that Pay Pal offers an up line of merchant tools that
include a shopping cart for a more professional store. But this will require a
good deal of web development experience for you to master.
Raising the Bar
So you want a store with a shopping cart and product thumbnails like L.L.Bean?
If you're ready to invest a little money into your business, then it’s time to
begin requesting RFPs (Requests for Proposals) from professional web design
companies in your area.
The difference between a very basic ecommerce store and a professional store is
the user experience. The look and feel of a professional store has a well
designed or even custom designed interface with a variety of options for
shopping such as coupon or specials section, send to a friend function, displays
similar or optional shopping choices, multiple thumbnails or a slideshow of the
product, multiple shipping choices for next day, overnight and so on.
You will also need to acquire a merchant gateway account and an ecommerce
hosting company. Most professional web design companies can walk you through
this process, even if you haven’t a clue of what to do. Cost for a
professionally designed custom ecommerce website ranges from $3800 to $7500.
No matter which road you take, you have to do a bit of marketing. You can’t
depend on web surfer’s to come stumbling across your website to do business. You
have to market yourself. Tell your friends, get a write up in your church
bulletin, and use every option you can think of to economically get the word out
about your website.
Naming Your Website
Pick a website name (domain name) that follows 3 simple rules:
1) Easy to spell 2) Easy to say 3) Easy to remember
If you are chatting among friends and you casually drop the name of your
website, you want people to easily remember what you said. Good domain name:
www.bigfatpumpkins.com Bad domain name: www.organicallygrownpumpkins.biz
Marketing Online
You can go to chat rooms and talk up your website. You post a few items or
services on EBay and include a link to your main website. You may also submit
your website information to hundreds of free directories over the Internet. You
might also consider setting up an affiliate program whereby you offer
commissions to people who resell your products or services. There are people who
make a living participating in multiple affiliate programs.
Take that First Step
Set up your website and grow your online presence. The longer your online store
is live on the Internet, the greater the chances are of being found. Most
importantly don’t quit your day job just yet. Building an online business at any
level takes time and patience. Six months may go by without one single sell.
Don’t get frustrated. Give the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN time to
find your website and list your website. Talk to other people who have similar
products or services online. You'll be quite surprised how helpful and friendly
these people can be in offering you some solid advice in growing your business.
After all, they have been there and done that.
Build it and they will come. Wait and they won’t.
About the Author
Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a
Web design
company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national
companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United States.
Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net.
|
|
