Get Your Business Online Now!

Filed Under: Business

This post is for those remaining independent brick & mortar stores who are watching their sales decline as a result of competition from the Internet. I have heard from too many camera, electronics, hardware, bookstores, you name it complain that they cannot compete with the large mail order/Internet companies. There is only one thing to say. Get your business online NOW! The only reason that I can come up with to explain why you have not already done it is that you don’t already do this is because you think that it is a daunting and difficult task and that you can’t compete. Guess what, you can. It’s not hard and you can have your store set up in as little as a day (ok, you can probably have it done in a couple of hours but I won’t go there), filled with product and ready to sell and market. Here is how you do it:

  1. Buy a domain name if you don’t already have one. Buy your domain from either www.GoDaddy.com.
    They are easy to work with and they have helpful customer service when you need it. Quite simply they are the best around and they are the least expensive (don’t try to save a buck or two by searching for someone cheaper…and a buck or two is literally all you would save).
  2. Sign-up for a Yahoo! Store. You do that here.
    This will cost you all of $40.00 per month and it handles everything (yes you will need to figure out the everything part but it is pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it).
  3. Pick a template from the Yahoo! Stores selection. Doesn’t have to be fancy.
  4. Start filling in information for your store (there is a wizard that walks you through everything).
  5. Payment processing - use PayPal
    to make your life easy at first (sign-up for paypal if you haven’t already).
  6. Add your products (again there is a wizard that will help you).
  7. Set up shipping and some admin stuff (again the wizard will help you).
  8. Once you have done that go back to GoDaddy and change the nameservers so that they point to the Yahoo! nameservers (sounds complicated but it really is just a cut and paste).

You done. That is all you had to do to establish your online presence. If that all sounds a bit much, you can contact me and for about $250.00 I can get everything set up for you and give you a run through of what is what. That’s not a sales ploy, either, it is genuinely that simple to do and you will be off and running.

Tagged: No Tags

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Subscribe to comments feed (this is global, not just for this entry)