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.

To login into our client area: Go to this page.

A few more neat features of this system:

• You can view and pay your bill online.
  (or print and mail it in).
• Ability to open up a support ticket that will receive my quick, personal reply. We’ll talk more about the advantage of the support ticket, later.
• If I’m making changes to your site on an hourly rate, you will be able to view a time sheet related to work on your website. A good way to see where you stand regarding upcoming invoices and avoid surprises.
• Estimates for changes you are considering, can also be saved for later viewing, if you are not ready to move forward on a particular project. (quotes are valid for 90 days).

Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.

Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.
Al Pacino, The Godfather III

The Godfather I and II are on my list of all-time favorite movies. But I do love this quote from Godfather III. Even Silvio mimics the scene in The Sopranos (best TV series ever). Gosh, you are learning so much about me! But this post isn’t about my favorite movies and tv shows … it’s about building websites, believe or not.

Hey, where you been?

For the past 3 years, I’ve been on sabbatical from the web design field, except for managing a few low maintenance accounts. For the first year out, I focused on my freelance writing, which I continue to do. At the same time I began developing my own eCommerce websites: ScruffyPuppy.com, SchnauzerGear.com, Recovery-Gifts.com . Strangely enough, many people, after visiting my new online stores, would repeatedly to ask me “How much would you charge to make me one of those?”

For three years, my answer was always the same: I don’t do that anymore.

It’s such an odd feeling to say no. Especially when it basically means “No. I don’t want your money.” I mean, who says that? To my great surprise, people don’t like to take no for an answer, and they just kept right on asking. Eventually, they pulled me back in.

So, this year, I finally decided to stop saying NO. And I’ll be working on a new eCommerce site for a local design firm. I also will be welcoming back an old client, whose site I designed years ago. I’m flattered and pleased that this company returned and asked me to work for them again. I’m also glad about it, because the previous company slapped their company name on the credits for my design work! We’ll fix that, right quick, won’t we? I also have makeovers in the works to a few sites I designed several years ago. Time for a new look!

As you can see, it didn’t take long to get pulled back in. And I’m thrilled about it. I just love this stuff. Watch for lots of updates, over the next few months, about websites I’m working on.

Most of my own websites serve as a testing ground for CMS (content management systems), shopping carts, and payment processing options. I’ve settled on a few favorite systems and now feel able to incorporate the software into sites that I build for my clients.

The Yorkie Gear website uses a CMS combined with a beautifully simple checkout. The combination is perfect for clients who want to update their own websites, and/or want to sell a limited number of products. It’s also perfect for businesses that already have a merchant account and would like to process credit card orders manually through their own terminal each day.