MichelleMc.com

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the questions I get asked most often is “Can you help me sell my products online? How much does it cost to get a website?” Most people feel overwhelmed, don’t know where to start and just are not ready to spend thousand of dollars, just to get their feet wet.

For those people, who want to dabble in selling online and are willing to invest some time learning to do it yourself, I’ve put together a list of good, affordable options to building your own webstore or basic website. There are many, many choices out there, but these are shopping carts that I have personally tested and found to be both worthwhile and extremely affordable:

First things first: Whatever you do, register your domain name yourself! Do not have the webhosts (below) register the domain name for you! If you don’t like the service, you’ll want to be able to pick up your ball and go play somewhere else.

Free or almost free:

eCrater: www.ecrater.com Ecrater stores are truly FREE. Crazy, isn’t it? Very easy to setup and the price is right. Drawbacks: (Yes, there are always drawbacks, when you see the word ‘free.’) You have very few design options. All eCrater stores look very similar and of course, they are branded at the bottom of every page : Powered by eCRATER - a free online store builder. You can’t upgrade and have this removed. If you are willing to live with that and a very clean, simple store design, then eCrater might be worth a test drive.

Buy It Sell It: www.buyitsellit.com Also free! Can you believe it? BuyItSellIt is a very cool option and extremely affordable. Choose from about 15 store layouts, add your store info, start listing your products, set your shipping and payment preferences and you’re in business! The stores have a nice professional look and the shopping cart is crazy good! I really like this one. Drawbacks: The free store displays a link at the bottom of the page: Powered by BuyItSellIt - free online store builder . But the good news is you can upgrade to have this removed for only $5 a month. Now that’s a bargain, my friends.

Very Affordable:

PSU Stores: www.powersellersunite.com offers a pre-installed ecommerce store for only $10 a month. The system is a powerful one that has a huge selection of themes you can use to change the look of your store. If you are satisfied with the default look, you can add your products and be selling no time. But most people want to customize the store to suit their needs and you should expect to spend at least a couple of weeks configuring the layout of your site. The good news is that the people on the support forums are wonderful, patient and anxious to help you succeed. (This is rare in ecommerce support forums!). Another plus is that you are not likely to outgrow this software as your business grows. I have one of my own sites hosted at PSU and have helped a friend set up shop there as well. There is a learning curve, but well worth the investment of time.

Homestead: Homestead.com is service that I haven’t tested personally, but I’ve heard good things about. I’ve watched one non-techie friend work on their $5 a month Homestead website and I was pretty impressed with the result. There is a $20 setup fee, and it looks like there are add-on fees for almost everything. But, chances are you’ll end up with a decent looking website for less than $20 a month. Whatever you do: Always register your domain name separately from the hosting service! (Did I say that already? Yeah, well, I’m saying it again). I’ve read that Homestead has been purchased by Intuit, the Quicken people, so pricing may change and probably will.

City Max: www.CityMax.com $20 a month. This company isn’t the cheapest, but I’ll say one thing for them: they really live up to their promise about having great professional looking templates to choose from, and lots of them. You can be up and running with a sharp looking website, in a very short time. Some of the payment and shipping options are a little limiting. But there are many great features that put CityMax on my “recommended” list. Most impressive of all is the overall look of the finished website, and how quickly you can achieve it.

Are the above options going to get you a custom online store that will meet your every need? No. Are they going to get you a perfect professional looking website overnight, one that you’ll never outgrow? Nope. But if you can’t afford to pay a professional web designer (me, for example), and are still anxious to test your business online: It might be worth a few days/weeks of trial and error on your own, giving these affordable options above a test run. When you outgrow them and want to take the next step … we’ll talk.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS