Artists, WAHMs and entrepreneurs who are new to ecommerce are often in a situation where they need to choose one website tool to spend their money on. So the question ends up being:

Should I sell my products on my own site with my own domain name, or just get an account at Etsy, or ebay or some other similar site?

Many people choose the Etsy or Ebay route first, and I can understand why.

Both sites have built in traffic (which can be hard to generate for brand new websites), and are very well known, either generally or in specific online communities.

The sites are easy to setup — you don’t have to worry about site design, ecommerce, a domain name, hosting, etc. You can have your site up and selling within about a day.

You don’t have to worry so much about customer fraud, since Etsy, Ebay and Paypal handle this for you (or at least will step in if you aren’t able to handle the situation satisfactorily yourself).

In my opinion, this is OK if you’re building a hobby.

However, if you’re building a business, you need to seriously consider the benefits of having your own website.

1. You will have your own domain name. I highly recommend you make absolutely certain is registered in your name with a company you trust. This way, if your hosting account goes belly up, you can move without losing all the backlinks you’ve earned.

With Etsy or Ebay, if your site is shut down or you just decide to move, you’ve lost all your marketing. You can’t take mywebsite.etsy.com with you when you go.

2. You will have control over your own fraud prevention. Now, at first it may like a good idea to have Etsy or Ebay helping you with this. But that doesn’t work out so well when one of these companies decides you’re the bad guy. Even if you aren’t.

If you are using a payment method such as authorize.net, you have access to the information you need to verify your customers yourself. And if one sets of your spidey-sense, you can always opt not to do business with them. (I mean really — when someone places an order from “Houstn, New York” and the IP address is out of Nigeria, it’s a pretty good bet that the order is bogus.

3. You can tailor your site to your target market. Etsy and Ebay both serve very specific target markets. Etsy buyers are after handcrafted items. Ebay buyers are after a great deal on everything. In Etsy’s case, you might not be able to branch out of the Etsy community without your own website. And in Ebay’s case, you are destined to sell your products at bargain basement prices — which is not conducive to profiting from your business — or even making enough to pay the bills.

4. With your own website, you can have the best of both worlds. Setup your own website (which can be easy and inexpensive with a $10 a month hosting account and Wordpress) and use the site to promote your Etsy shop and Ebay auctions. Once you have established a clientèle, you can guide them (within the rules of the other sites) to your main site, where you can sell without the fees and where you can be in charge.

Some of my baby sling clients sell the bulk of their products on their website — and then auction off their seconds and returns at Ebay.

Some crafters sell products on their main websites, but use Etsy and Ebay to expand their reach.

What has your experience been?

Popularity: 45% [?]

I am completely flabbergasted.

Just finished reading a post at a mothering forum I frequent about a WAHM who has hired three nuts to design her websites.

Normally, I’d just chalk this up to to the original poster not knowing what to look for in a web designer. An isolated case. But I have just finished teaching a web design class at my local technology center and the sites my students had paid people to build were just as nuts as what you’re describing. Apparently, there are a lot of people out there that have been hoodwinked by a web designer who knew less about building websites than their clients … who at least know that what the web designer is doing isn’t working!

One of my students had a web site that was nothing but a huge graphic with two little bitty frames in which the designer quite literally hid the content and navigation.

Another student had a site in which every page was completely different and the content looked like it had been puked up on the page by a toddler.

Yet another student had a fairly decently organized site — but you were too busy playing with the flash bubbles in the header to notice what the site said.

ARGH. Where are these people learning web design?!

Before you hire a web designer, you need to follow the advice below to make sure you don’t pay for a website that will do your business more harm than good.

How To Avoid Bad Web Designers

1. Ask the designer you’re going to hire what methods they’ll be using to build your site, and then look through their portfolio. Go to the sites and see how those sites are ranking for their keyword phrases.
2. Run far away from designers who are more interested in building a pretty site than a site that works — in other words, sells your products.
3. Finally, I’d like to suggest that you read my SEO friendly website special report* that I’m offering at SEO Power Up (or sign up for the course, once we go live with the site).

*This report is no longer available for free. But you can receive it as part of your membership in SEO Power Up.

Popularity: 58% [?]

You’ve decided that you’re ready to start selling physical products online — but there are a hundred tasks whirling through your head, needing to be done. Where do you start? How do you keep track of it all?

I’ve worked with dozens of moms who are right where you are, so don’t feel bad. Just print out this checklist that I’m giving you and keep it handy.

Here are the steps you need to take to start your online store:

1. Figure out who your target market is and get to know them.
2. Decide how you want to acquire your products, either through manufacturing them, buying them at wholesale, purchasing them through a dropship program or recommending them as an affiliate.
3. Decide on a product name and domain name. Buy the domain name NOW!
4. Make your business legal, including choosing the form of business you’ll be starting (sole proprieter, LLC, etc) and getting your tax id.
5. Choose a business name. This does not have to be the same as your domain or product name.
6. Setup a business banking account, so that your checks and accounts will have your business name on them and you can keep your personal finances separate.
7. Choose a web hosting and shopping cart.
8. If you’re manufacturing a brand new your product, you’ll need to create prototypes, test them, ask other people to test them and do additional market research to make sure your product will sell.
9. Purchase any cottage licenses you may need for manufacturing products from other people’s patterns.
10. If you’re manufacturing a product from a cottage licensed pattern, you’ll need to test your product to make sure it is up to par.
11. If you’re going the wholesale, dropship or affiliate routes, open your accounts with the suppliers.
12. Begin building your website.
13. Once your website is build, including design and logo created and installed, products uploaded and site live, you’ll need to write a press release and submit it to press release directories and your local news media.

Any questions? Feel free to ask!

Popularity: 41% [?]

If you have never set up a website, you may not realize how tricky it can be to keep things organized. It can be especially difficult if you plan to have a lot of content. Starting things off in an organized manner will help you keep track of things later.

One item that has been up for debate is whether to create subfolders or subdomains. If your domain, or URL, is www.yourname.com, a subfolder would look like this www.yourname.com/subfolder. A subdomain would look like this: http://subdomain.yourname.com. The following are some tips on deciding when to use each type of organizational method.

You will want to name each of your pages as descriptively as possible, without making them too long. Of course, keeping things descriptive will help the search engines find you. You will also want a person who only sees your URL to have a good idea of what content they would find if they clicked on your link.

Most people can organize their site info by simply using subfolders. If you have a site with information on family vacation ideas, you may choose to organize your site into folders by geographical region or by activity. If you have a site devoted to household organization, your folders could be named after rooms of the house.

Each subfolder can also have its own subfolders. Using the example of the family vacation site, the geographical region and activity folders can be further divided by cost. If you were going to have a content page that described budget friendly options for traveling to Florida, your page might be named something like: www.familyvacationideas.com/florida/budget.

If you want to create a bit of separation between your content, yet still create brand recognition, you would want to add a subdomain. For instance, if you have a website that contains information about raising children aged 5 – 8, and have been thinking about adding content about home schooling, setting up a subdomain may be your best option.

The search engines will treat your subdomain as if it is a separate website. By having incoming links to your main site, you can add to the traffic coming in to that site, as well. If someone is familiar with your main website, they will automatically relate your subdomain to your main domain. Yet, they will also understand exactly what type of information the subdomain has to offer.

Another reason to use subdomains is if you are creating a special event for your main website, such as an expo or class. Again, people that are already familiar with your main site will see that the site is affiliated with you.

There is no concrete evidence that one method works better for search engine traffic. It is simply a matter of preference over which way you would rather organize things.

Also, if you are using a sitebuilder like the Shop Kit Plus or a content management system like Wordpress, you won’t need to worry about setting up subdomains. The program will create pages and product or informational categories for you.

Popularity: 22% [?]

With so many interesting web pages out there, it’s hard to keep track of sites that you want to revisit again and again. Using bookmarks can help you keep tabs on the sites you liked and want to look at in the future. Your Internet Browser will have a tab at the top that says “Bookmarks” or “Favorites.”

When you are on a website that you want to bookmark, you can select “Bookmark this page” (or a similar phrase) and your web browser will save the URL information for that site.

Your bookmarks will be stored in the browser in your “Bookmarks” or “Favorites” menu. Normally the bookmarks are stored in chronological order, with the oldest bookmarks at the top of your list. Most browsers offer the option to organize the bookmarks in folders. This makes your bookmarks easily accessible and you can group them together based on topics.

Popularity: 12% [?]

A Microsoft Windows image format. It stands for bitmap. The images you see when Windows starts up and closes, and the wallpaper that cover the desktop, are all in BMP format.

BMP images should never be used on your physical product selling website. You should use JPG photographs or GIF graphics on your website.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Acronyms for business-to-business or business-to-consumer activities. Many websites focus on business-to-business relationships and services (like wholesale suppliers), while others focus on providing services and products to consumers.

If you are selling baby slings to individuals, than you are a B2C business. If you are selling wholesale baby slings in bulk to retailers, than you are a B2B business.

Popularity: 23% [?]

An icon that represents you on message boards, chat rooms, IM programs, 3-D chat rooms and virtual worlds. Your avatar can be whatever you want it to be. There are graphic elements, animals, cartoons and pictures used as avatars on the Internet.

I recommend that you use a picture of yourself. Also, use your business name or your real name as your username. This will help brand your product selling business.

Popularity: 12% [?]