T1B

Is there a particular internet business software suite that anyone would reccomend? I plan on selling my BBQ sauce over the net and want to get away from ebay. I have looked around, but would like to know if there's anything anyone here has either used or heard is really good.

Thanks.

Why don't you just get a simple four page website, complete with a paypal link account.

front page
products page
order request form page linked to
payment page


Paypal also does Visa and mastercard, if you have a paypal account for your business anyone can access it.

Then as soon as payment is approved, you ship.

You can make it yourself, or kick out 4-5 hundy for someone to develop a site for you. you can get a simple site hosted for as little as 9-12 bucks a month. I have a full on database linked site that is only 20 bucks a month.

In the long run, it will pay for itself when you aren't paying ebay their commission anymore.

plus, its all a write off.

Bushice,

I have considered that myself already. I already have a Paypal account that I use for ebay to get payment. I'm literate enough with HTML to get a deece site put together. Was just looking for other options. If I could set up an ecommerce site with relative ease and it look much more professional, I would be willing to give it a try.

Thanks for the feedback though.

Check around. Some website providers have easy to build ecommerce sites as part of their deal.

In the long run, you can always update your site and improve the graphics, layout etc. Bottom line is you need a starting point.

It's the product that will sell itself, not an over top the site.

You might want to add a testimonial page too.

Frankly I wasn't really sure what you meant by "Internet business software" if you're on the internet you have a website and there are multiple ways and programs to help build it and webproviders that will help you get traffic there, but an on line software package? Do you have an example of one you know of?

My provider has a set of tools I have access to I can use to build a site. They also have a listing of supported developer programs so I know what I can and cannot use. They are Aplus.net

Can't say I'd recommend them, though. They seem to have a 5 to 40 minute outage during business hours a couple times every month. I like what they offer, but if I could easily move the site to a more reliable provider, I would.

I think PSU knows of a good one that he uses.

Yeah, PSU gave me some reccomendations via IM I will look into.

Indy,

Here's what I did for my wife's site - I researched host web sites and looked at price and the best deal I found was http://startlogic.com/. It's $71 per year and that includes the domain registration.

Next was designing the website - I just used powerpoint to get the idea of what she wanted and kept moving stuff around till it looked right. All the pics came from her brochures. I agree with Bushice when he says less is more. We have 6 total pages and that's more than enough for starters.

For me the problems started when I tried to do the site in frontpage. That really derailed us for like 6 months since nothing ever looked right. I also knew nada about html and thought you could just C & P from word or ppt directly onto the page. Uhhhh No.

Hobbes turned me onto http://nvu.com/index.php - this is a really simple tool - much easier than frontpage.
I still made the mistake of trying to C & P into NVU - it's a lot easier to just start from blank page.
PSU just cleaned up some code for me that was left over on page 1.

Plan on about 2 hours per page - and that includes writing it - uploading it, deleting it and fixing it till it looks right.

Good luck

I have yet to see a hosting provider who does not have e-business and some shopping card solutions. Another option is to get online and look around some script libraries for scripts that do shopping card solutions.

there are a variety of companies that do online charging, but Paypal is fairly well liked. You might also look into Google's similar feature that they have created to allow you to have one 'wallet' and use it to pay a variety of stores. Between, paypal, google and some company that processes credit cards or even checks sent in, you should be good to go. I know Team in Training uses a company called Paycor to collect online charges and checks sent in and even track in whose name the donations are sent. Anyway, there are a variety of companies that do similar processing. They will probably even provide you with the shopping cart features and since you are only selling one item to start with, you should have an easy time setting up. Once your sauce takes off, you may want to consider hats and shirts and shit to sell with it.

Incidentally, you may consider selling us some cheap versions and we'll leave some positive remarks/replies for you to advertise with. Just sayin.

ET is wise in many ways. ;)

I do sell it cheap...now.

Here are some of my suggestions:

Google Checkout: http://checkout.google.com/
"And until 2008, you can process all your Checkout orders for FREE."

One way to shop around is to check out Buyer Zone
http://www.buyerzone.com/finance/credit ... tid=169272
I use these guys occassionaly to get started with research for projects and to get quotes. They contact companies for you who in turn will contact you
with their solutions and will give you quotes. You can then pick the best ones you like.

Authorize.net is an example of payment gateway who can allow you to accept credit cards and checks on the internet.
http://www.authorize.net/

CCBill is a fairly large payment company. You have problably come across them on porn websites. A lot of them use them.
http://www.ccbill.com/

There are a lot of these services. I would say that setting up your website and then putting paypal, google and perhaps a 3rd credit card/check payment processor service on there will ensure that everyone will be able to pay for your sauce without any problems. Paying google for some adwords and such should also bring some business your way. You could also check with your bank to open a business account with them and see if they offer some merchant services and online credit processing.

Good luck!