posted on July 22, 2001 02:37:36 PM
Does anyone know where you can get a web page that you can sell from that doesn't cost 100.00 a month?
I have a web page at geocities, but I can't "sell" from it unless I pay 100.00 a month, and I just can't justify that since I am in no way a power seller of any kind.
posted on July 22, 2001 02:46:27 PM
I have two websites....one on tripod.com that is free, and I have been selling thru there for about 4 years.....I also have a domain thru fatcow and thats 99.00 a year...EXCELLENT host and well worth the money. So if you are looking for free then try tripod...BUT, they will not allow you to host auction pictures etc on there. Fatcow doesn't care if you do since you paid for it and its yours to put whatever you wish on it......
posted on July 22, 2001 03:01:22 PM
I have a freind who is using freemerchant.com, that is doing extremely well, you may want see if this will work for you. I think she pays 100 a year and they get a small cut of each sale, you may want to look in the phonebook for local web designers or internet companies, I am using, a local company called ideadude.com here in Pa. You geet beter service going with people in your own city.
posted on July 22, 2001 03:02:26 PM
Thanks, I will visit Fatcow. I have tried Tripod in the past and it was confusing to me. Geocities is so easy, but Tripod just drives me crazy! I have pictures uploaded there now. But can't seem to get anything to work for me there.
I know it must be something really simple that I am just not doing right, but anyway, I just can't get it to work.
posted on July 22, 2001 03:07:01 PM
Freeservers or 50megs.com both are free you can sell and run any business for about $9.00 they will shut off the banner ads they also offer free store fronts and shopping carts through a another website.
and if you want you can tranfer you own domain name to there server free as well .....
www.whizhost.com offers webhosting 50 megs of space for $36 a year they offer perl CGI and front page extetion you will need your own domain name for this service. http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
Email [email protected]
posted on July 22, 2001 03:15:39 PM
Thanks, but I don't think I have any local connections for this sort of thing. I have never heard of freemerchant.com but I will check it out.
posted on July 22, 2001 09:14:38 PM
There is also another good site that called Netfronts.com
They have a lot of good layouts, you can get an ecommerce account that gives you a shopping cart and the ability to accept CC's online w/SSL to encrypt. You can get your own domain name or transfer a domain name, have up to 4 mailing lists, etc. Their customer support is excellent! They charge about $189 a year for an ecommerce account or you can go with a 3 month package as well.
posted on July 22, 2001 09:40:06 PM
how about right here,it is still free to open a store front on AUCTION WATCH?
also take a look at bigstep.com-it was free except for monthly fee to accept credit card,now i think it is 9.95 plus credit card fee.
if you have aol as internet service provider,you can use the webspace they give you to design a website.
same with other ISP free webspace.
Collector on line COL is a place for under 100,i think it is prepaid 3 months for 55 a month,something like that.
you open a shop there or you store your items for free
posted on July 23, 2001 12:20:55 AM
How about make site with free angelfire.com?
take yahoo paydirect for credit cards(free)... you can link TO your auctions etc..get in free search engines..no need to pay 100.00 selling direct takes awhile to get going..no need to pay anything to start out...good luck to you
posted on July 23, 2001 07:57:04 AM
It's been over a year since I decided to stop fooling around with the free ones and get a real web site. I pay $10 a month which includes the domain name registration, a 50 mb website that I can put whatever I want, unlimited email ids that can forward to other ids and support that is second to none. The consultant who set me up did such things as check and correct my html, javascript and asp (with my permission of course), find me scripts and utilities I needed and even customized them, tests my email at odd hours to make sure it is working and has kept my site trouble-free for over a year. Quite a bargain for $10 a month. I have sent other businesses to him and they're all thrilled. I gave him a free page on my site (he did not ask, but he was happy to get it).
posted on July 23, 2001 08:50:37 AM
We recently had a discussion somewhere here at the AW message boards about this, and several people (including myself) mentioned how much they enjoyed Bizhosting.com which offers a very simple to use website hosting, shopping cart system, and website design. Very good for those who don't want to spend a lot of time learning html.
posted on July 23, 2001 09:26:42 AM
In light of the recent photopoint fiasco, I would caution everyone to be wary of these very cheap services. At least, be sure you have a backup of all your web pages and customer data, so in case your store host goes bye-bye, you can still pull through and go with someone else.
posted on July 23, 2001 12:38:48 PM
Great idea, search the engines check them out & decide which is best for your needs..Did anyone else ever notice that i talk to people all the time that have been doing auctions for a couple of years,or on the net a long time ??!! and they ask me to find them a site..
They never use the search, i cannot believe this.I use it constantly,,questions on everything from my site,to health,anything is at our fingertips & they never have done it?
It is amazing
posted on July 23, 2001 12:55:42 PM
BEWARE OF CHEAP AND FREE SITES,one must ask how they pay their bills,who is subsidising whom??
if you can sell at a profit,pay your helpers accordingly
posted on July 23, 2001 03:54:46 PM
I have been using hostmatters.com. The price is now like $12 for 50megs space. There is also a place called below10host.com. They are really cheap.
I am actually cancelling my account though. I am a small seller listing 10-20 auctions a week at the most. Did some quick figures and realized that I can use AW's service AND save around $4 a month.
posted on July 23, 2001 07:43:20 PM
I guess it all depends on what you want, if you only want to try to sell a few items you really don't need much you could actually handle everything with just emails. If you want to sell on line full time as in a full time business your going to have to pay anymore.
When ebay started playing games with links and stores, I thought you know ebay your right I should have a store and a better one than I have on freemerchant. So I started looking and stopped when I found Yahoo yes they cost money and so far they are worth it. For 300 I have about 600 items listed, when my DSL gets hooked up it will grow by at least another 1000 items so it will cost me 400 dollars a month for the store.
Sound like a lot of money?? ebay costs me 800 to 1000 a month and sales have been slow the last 30 days on ebay has brought in 5,206.31 gross compared to 10,578.51 last year for the same time period. Yahoo stores cost me 300 dollars for the store and has brought in 3,652.40 in the last 30 days and it has only been up from June 11. The majority of the sales from the store have been in the last 2 weeks on the same 30 day period because I sent some emails announcing the new store to people on my email list. I have on my EOA email that if you buy an auction item and want to add any items of equal or greater value from my site shipping is free, also I send a coupon with every order that if they buy any three items from my store or auction shipping is free, people seem to be going to the store more, well I've had about 15 free shipping sales from the site and 1 from ebay auctions. Also I am starting to pull up on a few search engines. Time will tell but if the numbers will hold, but it is already passing ebay on the return for the investment and customer service is much easier, as in I don't get a flood of have you shipped yet? did you get my check? do you hold checks? when did you ship, etc......... I should also say that I send emails with all the info that they as for but some people never seem to read them.
Another advantage to Yahoo stores is the merchant account costs me .20 and 2% to 2.5% depending on the card that is used to run the transaction and it only took them 1 day to get me processed to accept cards. Also my sales are cheaper to run there than on the auctions with people using PayPal with their .30 and 2.9%. I also look forward to not getting a email from them ever month or so about the evil ebay and how they have bugs and with their billpoint system, etc etc.
Like I mentioned I had a freemerchant account, now they are paymerchant as nothing is free at freemerchant anymore. They are very clumsy to use, they don't have a site search so if someone is looking for something and you only have a few items that's ok but if you have about 600 like we do you need a site search engine. they are less then helpful on email support and unless you pay for the gold package that is all you get. anyway the list is a long one and we don't use them anymore.
So I guess it comes down to you get what you pay for.
