Rent Or Own Your Website? Part 2

I just got off the phone with Kristine, one of my design partners. We were talking about a new client who has her Web Mama eCart, which is the same software as the Shop Kit Plus. This client is moving from their current host to my hosting because of issues with the database on other company’s server.

While I had Kristine on the phone, I asked her to take a peek at the Rent Or Own Your Website post I wrote on July 23. I wanted to know if she thought I was out of line with what I wrote.

And I figured she’d be the perfect person to let me know, seeing how she is a competitor and design partner, too.

Kristine pointed out that the license is indeed owned by the software developer. The reseller cannot sell ownership of the cart, only the right to use the cart under specific circumstances. Which brings me to something she pointed out something that I hadn’t even thought about when writing the original post.
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Where Do You Find Your Inspiration?

Welcome to Episode #44!

I’m pleased to be joined this week by Meri Zeiff, the creator of the verymeri collection of children’s clothing. She started off as a first grade teacher but was inspired by the kids in her school to create kid-friendly clothing with positive designs rather than the negative designs you see in so many retail stores.
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How Do I Move My Home Business Out of My House?

Welcome to Episode #43!

For many home based product sellers, there will come a time when you outgrow your home and need more space. Inventory might be piled to the ceiling and the production system might be taking over your dining room which does not contribute to good work/life balance.

This week my guest is Olivia Mullin of Olivia Mullin Company. She shares her inspiring story of starting her own personalized stationary business in 1995, growing the business locally, then expanding to larger production facilities. Now her wholesale products are featured in over 1,000 major retailers across the country.

Olivia offers her Top 3 Tips for Success as well as tips for moving your home business to larger space. She also recommends reading The E-Myth Revisited to learn about why most businesses fail.

Don’t forget to register for Product Sellers Seminar! This totally online event is September 17-19th with great guest speakers and contests. See you there!

Rent Or Own Your Website?

One of my Watersweb Shops competitors claims on her website that while her cart is the same as many other similar carts, hers is better because you can actually own it.

From her site directly:

However, the AAO Easy Site Builder plan offers the ability for the customer to actually OWN your shopping cart/site builder! There are NO differences in our site builder when compared to the other sites listed.

All other plans on the list are for a monthly “rental” of the cart and hosting, but you will not be able to take the cart with you if you should ever leave their hosting. If you ever left your host you would essentially be leaving your web site!

Now, before I make any comments, I want to state for the record that I’m not trying to suggest that there is any reason to not use her service. As I (and the website) mentioned, the cart is essentially the same.

That said, I’d like to point out that you really cannot truly own your shopping cart and sitebuilder or your web hosting account. Well, you could, but the expense and learning curve would be outrageous for a small home business. I’ll talk about that more in a bit.

I am intimately familiar with the shopping cart/sitebuilder that this site discusses, and know for a fact that the only owner of the software is the developer who created it. She then licenses the right to resell the cart. The resellers then license the right to use the cart. So, at this point, you can’t really own the cart, no matter what anyone says.

Let’s talk a bit about the hosting account. She is right in that with her version of the cart, you can take it from one hosting account to another without starting over. (Of course, if you decided you wanted to switch carts, you’d still have to start over.)

With the other competitors and our ecommerce solution, you must host the cart on our servers. (FTR, I do allow you to purchase an un-hosted license, but it does not come with free support.) We do this so we can immediately rule out server issues when problems arise, cutting out situations where the host says the problem is with the cart and the cart owners says the problem is with the host… And you’re stuck in the middle.

Sounds like “renting” isn’t so bad now. Or maybe you’re not convinced. You really want to completely own your website.

We talked about some of the basics of owning your copyright and your domain name in an earlier blog post. Those are very important tips to remember. But should we take it further? Should we make sure we completely own the website? Let’s talk about what this would require.

First, to truly own your website 100%, you’ll need your own server. This means you’re have to purchase and/or install:

• Computer and networking hardware
• Server software (Apache web server)
• Email software (Argosoft Email Server)
• FTP software (BulletProof FTP)
• Database software (MySQL)
• Script software (PHP, CGI, etc.)
• DNS software (SimpleDNS)

And that will just get your server up and running. According to one do it yourself web server site, you can use your own DSL or cable connection to connect to the Internet, if your ISP allows it.

Of course, if all of this sounds like Greek to you, you’ll also need to hire someone to update your server, maintain it and troubleshoot problems. That’s where you start running into some money…

On the other hand, if you’ve been digging around the innards of computers since 1986, this might be right up your alley.

Let’s take this a step further though. If you’re wanting to truly own your site, you will need to hire someone to create a cart for you. And you’ll need to make sure that your contract with the programmer gives you full ownership rights over the final product. Otherwise, if you just outsource the project, the creator of the code is the owner and he may just license you the right to use the code. So, you’ll have paid thousands of dollars - -and be right back where you started.

So now you own your web server and you’ve purchase your very own cart. If you really want to own everything, you’re going to need to create your own payment gateway. Authorize.net and Paypal take their cut of your money, so let’s go all the way and create your own. And while we’re at it, let’s start your own bank.

OK, so yes, I’m taking this way out into left field.

But let’s look at it. What’s the purpose of having a website? It will make running your business more effective, cost efficient and just plain easier. And what is the best way to do this? Outsource tasks to people who specialize in what you need.

So yes, outsourcing your web hosting makes sense. You don’t own the server — but it doesn’t own you either. When problems arise, you submit a helpdesk ticket and someone else worries about it.

“Renting” a shopping cart makes sense for the same reason. If you have trouble, you know exactly who to turn to for help — and you may not even have to pay extra for it, if it’s on their servers.

What’s the morale of this story?

1. It’s OK to “rent” your hosting and shopping cart. It’s even a smart business decision to outsource your critical services to experts.
2. Make sure you choose the right host and the right cart for the long term, even if it means spending more. Then you won’t have to worry about changing hosts or shopping carts.

Is There Such A Thing As “Overnight Success”?

Welcome to Episode #42!

When thinking of ways to earn money while working from home, many people see product selling as an “easy way” to make money. Some even see it as a “quick” way to earn money but neither of these mindsets are true.

My guest this week is Stephanie Wood from Can You Dig It? Organic Apparel and she shares how she began her award-winning business which ships items throughout the US, Canada, and now Europe.

Stephanie shares some very sensible advice and tips for starting a business, what her own biggest challenge was, and the three things that you need to build a successful business the RIGHT way.

We’re just two short months away from Product Sellers Seminar so sign up now for regular updates. This online event will be from September 17-19 so mark your calendars!

Wise Words Wednesday: How Unlimited/Oversold Hosting Affects Your Business

If you’ve spent any time at all looking for a web host, you’ve probably been bombarded by ads for unlimited bandwidth, Terrabytes of disk space and all that for less than $3 a month.

As a web host who sells reasonable, yet affordable, hosting accounts and hosted ecommerce solutions, I’ve been keeping a close eye on this trend towards promising customers the moon for $2.99 per month.

I like to keep up with publications and communities that discuss the web hosting industry and today, I found an article at Host Review that makes a few points I thought you’d be interested in.

First, the article points out that overselling is a reaction to competition, not customer demand. What does this mean for you? Simple. That company who is offering enough bandwidth to power a space shuttle isn’t as concered about you as it is about what the “Jones” Company is doing next door.

According to the Host Review article:

In fact, when practicing overselling a host has to hope and pray that
(even just a fraction of) users don’t try to use all of the disk space
and bandwidth allotted to them: if this was to occur, the host would be
too underfunded to provide all of the resources, and in serious
financial trouble. Even worse, however, overselling requires no
commitment from the host in terms of finances, intellectual property,
or human assets; this means that any host can engage in overselling, so
most do.

Does this sound like a company you want to put in charge of your uptime? In charge of your ability to do business on the Internet, when that is your main source of income for your company?

Second, your ability to spot a good hosting deal may have been affected by overselling.

Ten years ago, people spend $50 or more for a domain name and hundreds of dollars for hosting on a shared host. Today, people expect a 100 times more disk space and bandwidth for a fraction of the cost. It is true that bandwidth and other server resources are less expensive to offer these days. However, these hosting price wars are taking things too far.

Overselling has also distorted customer knowledge of the hosting market
and needs-based analysis of hosting plans. Instead of learning to use
rational evaluation techniques of each hosting plan under
consideration, customers have been “trained” through constant exposure
to ads emphasizing high disk space and bandwidth (and little else) to
choose the host that offers the most disk space and bandwidth for the
least amount of money. In this scenario, hosts not overselling really
don’t have any choice but to also oversell - customers only think
they’re getting a good value when purchasing services from an
overseller.

Let’s think about this. You’ve heard the old adage that you get what you pay for. What you’re getting from these companies who are overselling is a product you can’t fully use and a company that hopes you never do — and actually won’t let you. To me, this is starting out in a dishonest partnership from the beginning. If you can’t trust your host to tell you what you’re actually paying for, how can you trust them with the health of your business?

This is why I don’t oversell. I’d rather sell someone a $10 plan with 10 GB of bandwidth and 1000 MB of disk space that they can actually use. Some of my clients use every last bit of their resources, and then they have the option to purchase more. Or they can scale back to stay within their plan.

My customers don’t have to worry about their websites suddenly disappearing one day with no warning.

Host Review goes on to say that overselling is not a sustainable practice and that hosts will soon start raising their prices and adding extra services to increase prices.

My advice: Avoid the oversellers all together. Look for hosts that have built their accounts based on the needs of their customers, not on the desire to compete with other oversellers.

Additionally, learn how to evaluate what you need in a hosting account and what you an afford. If you only need 15 GB of bandwidth each month, it’s smart to buy 20 GB to be safe. It’s not smart to buy an “unlimited” bandwidth package, particularly since you have no idea how much of it that your host will actually let you use before they find a reason to get rid of you.

Also, find ways to store files offline, instead of on the server. You can buy a flash drive to keep files, or an external hard drive. This is better than storing your files on a server that may disappear one day when the host decides it can’t afford to stay in business. Once you’ve cleaned up your hosting account, check to see how much space you’re actually using.

Finally, determine how much you can actually afford. In my opinion, it’s better to spend $20 per month for resources you can use, than $2.99 a month for resources that may or may not be there and customer service who probably doesn’t care.

What are your thoughts?

Can You Achieve SEO?

I overheard a business owner today say that she had “achieved SEO” on her site.

Achieved SEO? As in, she was on a mission for SEO and she now has it? As in, she has climbed the mountain and is now sitting on top of SEO?

This mindset is what will result in search engine optimization failure for many business owners.

Let’s talk a little bit about what achieve means, so we can understand the error behind this statement.

First, achieve can mean “to carry out successfully,” according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. For example, you can achieve an increase in traffic to your website.

Achieve can also mean “to get or attain as the result of exertion.” You can achieve first place in the baseball tournament.

And finally, achieve can mean “to attain a desired end or aim.” It means to become successful.

While all of these can, on the surface, seem to apply to SEO, the problem I see is that SEO is viewed as something that you reach out for, a goal to be met. It’s viewed as the end of a means.

This cannot be further from the truth.

SEO is actually a process, it is something that you DO. You achieve higher rankings in the search engines as a result of the search engine optimization you do on your website.

You achieve higher sales as a result of the SEO that brought more traffic to your site.

So SEO is actually the means to an end — with the end perhaps being more traffic to your websites, better targeted traffic and a higher conversion rate.

It is possible that the business owner misspoke herself. Perhaps she realizes that SEO is just one tool in the marketing bag. However, there are a lot of home business owners today who think that if they just achieve SEO, people will beat down their doors.

And I don’t want to see you fall into that trap. Remember, SEO is a tool, an ongoing process, to promote your website. If you want to know more about what that process is and how to implement it on an ongoing basis, you need some SEO training.

You Have A Good Voice For TV And Radio

I found this “What American Accent Do You Have?” quiz on a colleague’s website and thought I’d give it a try.

Now, the funny thing about this is, I grew up in Oklahoma. We moved here when I was three and I have lived her since then for all but nine months. Those nine months were spent in Missouri. I’d just had a baby, so I didn’t spend much time getting out picking up other people’s accents.

One thing to consider though — my Mom is from Nebraska and I was around her the most during my early years of learning to talk. So perhaps this is what is influencing me. However, this still doesn’t account for an accent from Pennsylvania, Ohio or Illinois. LOL!
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Is It Too Late For Me To Start A Business?

Welcome to Episode #41!

This week my guest is Beth Butler, the creator of the Boca Beth language learning system. Beth’s system is a way for both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking parents to help their children learn a second language.

Beth shares stories about her love of Spanish, how she became fluent at a young age, and how she devoted her life to teaching long before developing the Boca Beth system. Now, after years of hard work and lots of marketing, Beth’s product line has grown and has also won many awards from educators.

Also in this show Michelle shares a tip for finding people in your target market on Twitter and Beth shares her Top 3 Tips for home business owners as well as her biggest challenges for growing her business.

Don’t forget to register for the Product Sellers Seminar on September 17-19! It’s a completely online event with lots of guest speakers. Come be inspired!

How Will A New Baby Affect Your Business?

Welcome to Episode #40!

So many moms dream of running their own home-based business but are scared or feel they need more answers to their questions before they begin. Sometimes this procrastination leads to inaction and the dream is lost.

This week my guest is Jamie Bird of Mini Me Baby Gear and Wet Happened? and she is living proof that moms can start their business without all the answers AND with a newborn in the family!

Of course, you still need to do your market research and have a basic plan of action but try to avoid becoming overwhelmed with all the “what ifs” and just get started. Answer those tougher questions down the road. And be sure to communicate with your customers about major life changes that could possibly affect shipping dates or customer service. Most people will be understanding.

Be sure to register to receive updates about our Product Sellers Seminar! This event is 100% online and will be September 17-19, 2008.