Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. If You are looking for a web designer, Houston is where to look. If you just need changes to an existing site, InfoServe Media also offers expert website maintenance.
Today eCommerce is still the business option of choice. Whatever the condition of the economy, eCommerce continues to expand and develop. This can be a good source of income and could even turn into a full-time living if you succeed.
What will you sell for products? Select a product that you're knowledgeable about. You might want to sell craft materials online if you are knowledgeable about arts and crafts for example.
Making arrangements:
1. You have to have a domain name.
(a) Stay away from hyphenated domain names (it's too easy for people to forget the hyphen and end up on another site).
(b) If possible at all, pick a ".com" TLD. If .com is already used, and you pick .net or .biz, people may key in .com out of habit and end up visiting somebody else's website.
2. Another requirement is a web host. Hosting refers to the server where your online site is posted. Exercise caution in terms of who you select. You can find plenty of discount deals around. However, as with everything you do, you usually get what you pay for. In case you intend for customers to pay right on your website, it is necessary to have a dedicated IP address as well as an SSL certificate.
3. You have to have eCommerce software (shopping cart software). An excellent brand is OSCommerce. It is relatively simple to learn and it's free. OSCommerce has themes available (also known as skins or templates). There is also no charge for ZenCart and it is reasonably simple to learn. It also has themes that you can use to change the look. A PHP programmer will be needed to make any major changes the appearance of either of these packages. Several eCommerce packages are available that need a programmer to load and set up. This will generally require a lot of money, and nearly all of the large eCommerce packages won't operate with a shared hosting plan because it needs extensive server resources. So figure on paying more for hosting for a deluxe software package.
4. A merchant account and a payment gateway will be needed. It's very difficult to run an eCommerce site unless you can accept credit cards. If you set up a merchant account for yourself, you must be certain that you can use credit cards on the Internet at your bank. The majority will, but there are some that will not allow web payments.
Would you rather not fuss with a merchant account and gateway? There is a solution for all of this. Paypal simplifies everything. They offer the payment gateway and merchant account combined, and they provide all the security functionality on their website. 2Checkout is another gateway where all of the checkout is handled on their own secure site. It doesn't matter what method you use -- whether you make the arrangements for the merchant account by yourself, or choose Paypal, you will have to give the gateway a portion of the purchase cost. Usually, Paypal will cost more. If your products can't handle more than a tiny markup, plan on having to do all of the required work yourself. A good network to accept payments directly on your site is authorize.net and every shopping cart I noticed include plug-ins so authorize.net can be used. You will require a dedicated IP address and SSL certificate for authorize.net
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