My New Site

[plight]

Ok, I've been trying to quit my ebay habit cold turkey by starting my own website, but I have to say it's a little harder building this than I anticipated. My friend said I should just get someone to build it for me, but I'm on a shoestring budget and I don't know how much that will cost. :( (If anyone does, please throw some figures my way) . I thought, well, how hard could building an ecommerce site be, so I tried freehostia, and I used one of thier free scripts. Well I finally got the script up after a week and now I don't know how to change the inforamtion, so currently it has all demo information on my site. I have an ecrator site, but I can't use my domain name that I bought there, at least I think I can't.

Well, anyway I need some help I'm stumbling out of the blocks here.

Oh, and Aspkin I'm going to that SEO conference tomorrow, so I'll probably be back with a bunch of questions.

[Chris Hanson]

Just use Web Page Maker. I never ever built a site before using this and I put up 3 sites in a 1 1/2 hours. Web Page Maker : Make your own web page easily!

[aspkin]

For starters, GoDaddy.com is an excellent domain register and host for almost nothing (5$ hosting). I totally recommend Godaddy.com for just getting started.

Second, you'll want to find a real shopping cart for your site. You'll have to pay something for it, but it'll be worth it in the long run. Get a PHP shopping cart, there are tons of good shopping carts out there. Check them out for what you need and get one.

Once you have one, start configuring it for your products and get started selling right away. The biggest mistake I see is people don't get started until they're 100% ready! Don't do this! Once you have your products listed, start slow advertisements until you get things rolling. Then start tweaking your site more and making it look good.

The best designs are the always the simple ones. Make sure to use bright colors, and a theme that will go with your product(s). Once you get going, use Outsourcing to Freelance Programmers, Web & Logo Designers, Writers, Illustrators on Elance or Rent A Coder:How Software Gets Done to find a graphics designer. Most of these guys are pros with working with existing shopping carts.

I also recommend Google adwords for advertising.

It's a lot of working setting up a site, but once you start having sales rolling in you'll feel like you accomplished the impossible. Freeing your self from eBay!

Also I wouldn't stop selling on eBay just yet if I were you. It'll take you at least 2-4 weeks to get things settled with your website. Again the best thing is to get started selling ASAP.

One last thing, use a checklist for things you need to get done to the site, as a way of keeping your organized. Just a basic to-do list will work.

Let me know about your SEO, internet marketing questions. That's the fun stuff.

You can check out one of my shopping cart sites here MMORPG-Exchagne. It cost $600 for the design, and $300 for the shopping cart.