Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, local marketing tips, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
ive done some reading and realize i need to buy a domain name and a webhost to build a website.
How do shopping carts work as in how do i recieve the money? Will it go directly to my business bank account?
i want a site that looks proffesional but doesnt break the bank no more than 40 dollars or so a year and id rather pay by the year not the month just seems easier
im just starting out but need to know what would be a good site to use that is cheap and i can do everything i need to do all in one place. build, create, check, whatever
also how much space do i need? cleverdot has a reasonable price of 40 a year with 2000 MB of diskspace. is that enough?
ill probably only need to sell up to 14 items for my first year.
also i want to do my own accounting does any one have anexcel sheet that i can print off to keep track of my records. i cant afford an accountant and im decently computer savy. im juss not sure what information i should keep track of obviosly the profits of each item and my taxes but what else.
Hello. I'll try to answer your question. I'm pretty new, but have been digging away at this forum and other sources of information for a little while now...
A website does give you a potential 24x7 ability to advertise and take orders. That is a powerful thing. Of course, like anything, it is what you make of it. If nothing else it is great for business cards that direct potential customers to a website.
Minimum:
1) registered domain name
2) hosting company
3) shopping cart software
4) way to take money:
--- a) third party which provides a separate, secure purchase transaction (google checkout, yahoo, paypal, etc)
--- b) merchant account AND a SSL certificate for website (SSL cert allows you to be encrypted - some hosts use a "shared" SSL cert that will give you the same function)
Quite frankly, there are many optional things you could add to help or make your site stand out - most of which I learned on this forum. Do some searches, read the stickies, and browse the ecommerce section. There is some great advice there if you take the time to search and read through it.
You might want to check out Volution e-Commerce Solutions. One of our major vendors uses the interface, which is available on a month-to-month or annual plan, and it looks great. There are also a number of free solutions available such as oscommerce and Zen Cart, but require some experience to setup and operate.
Also separate your domain from the hosting company meaning buy your domain from one place and the hosting from another so just in case the hosting shuts down you can move somewhere else and vice versa. If you need any pointers I will be happy to help.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER USE IPOWER AS A WEBHOST!!!!!! THEY SUCK!!!!!
we started with them and everything about them sucks!!!!
We now use HostGator and thy have been excellent in every area of webhosting.
I had mine with Hostmonster and I think it's pretty good. I also tried Godaddy for a while and it was fine, people kept saying it's a bad hosting site but I never experienced anything bad with them.
Just use Word Press(wordpress.com). It's free, can be set up to look like a website and all I had to pay was $10 for the domain name on Go Daddy. I did not need an elaborate site, just the basics.
Last edited by Solmu; April 10th, 2009 at 07:40 AM.
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Website for my clothingline? 
a online 
