Website creation & hosting

[Modee]

I use GoDaddy for all domain registration (sometimes for the first year I do the $1.99 yahoo deal) and also for all hosting. GoDaddy has plans for a few dollars per month and unless you are running a forum that bandwidth with that cheap plan is fine.

It has been a while since I investigated - is GoDaddy still the lowest cost? HostGator - UNLIMITED bandwidth? How they do dat?

Then I create the websites myself using Dreamweaver based on templates I purchase or from scratch. A good template costs maybe forty dollars.

I use cartmanager + google checkout as my shopping cart, or on some of my sites I use PayPal buttons.

[John14789]

What would you suggest? For my new online store I'd like to have a blog but I don't know if I should have the blog on a seperate domain or store.com/blog.

What do you think?

Do you have a blog attached to your stores?

How do you get traffic to your stores?

[Modee]

Sales Websites with forums/blogs on them

I don't have any kind of forum or blog on my websites that sell a product. There are some websites where this sort of thing might be beneficial, such as say websites devoted to a certain sport, such as bodybuilding, that also sell supplements.

I would imagine that any forum/blog that drives traffic to the website could bring about sales.

But my websites are directed towards specific products and I want people coming there to buy, not talk!

[John14789]

I get your flow bud. But wouldn't a blog be a good source to get your ranking higher and keep your website active in the eyes of the search engines?

Without constant updates to a site the site will eventually drop in SE ranking, correct?

[Modee]

Updates and a blog are not necessarily the same thing. But anyway the main thing that raises page rank and so on is TRAFFIC. If people come to a site that is rarely updated, that is fine!

[John14789]

But you use mainly adwords and yahoo sponsored searches, right?

No other means of advertisement?

[Modee]

We've now covering all sorts of topics here that have nothing to do with the original thread. :-) As far as paid "advertising," yes I use only Google adwords and Yahoo sponsored search. I create my own free banner ads on my own websites drawing people from one site to the other. I also use SEO of all sorts, including getting into all the free indexes, writing articles and blogs, backlinks, etc.

[John14789]

Ok well to get back on topic how would I attach a already established blog to a online store?

[Modee]

That's a software question and it would depend on the blog I would imagine. But, as far as what URL, I'd just do it like I did here, with the modeeworld.com being the home page, and then one sub directory being for /forums and another for /blog

Or if the software supported it, combine forums and blogs all in one directory.

[John14789]

What do you do when your products from ebay sell quicker than your products on your online store?

[Modee]

I have more than one of each item if that is what you mean, so that would not matter to me.

[John14789]

Well I meant even the extras you have of the same item gets sold on ebay faster than in your online store. Suppose you have five of the same product and all those five products get sold faster on ebay than in your own store. I guess to solve the problem you'd have to keep a couple things just for the online store. What did you do to solve this problem when you started your online store?

[Modee]

I sell some of my goods on EBAY and on my websites, and some only on EBAY or only on my websites. I mix it up pretty well.

If I had a limited quantity, and I could afford to wait a bit, I suppose I would sell only off EBAY because people tend to pay more off EBAY (Ebayers are real cheapskates). But sometimes, time is money and as long as I am making a profit I go ahead and sell wherever I can.

For items that I have a limited stock in, that I sell on both EBAY and off-EBAY, YES - I do hold on to one or two for my own websites sales. But I assume you can get more of these items, so even if you have nothing in stock at the moment you can always get a hold of something, correct?

[John14789]

I always have products in stock but different models and makes so it's difficult to manage. If one sells on ebay and I have on my online store then it's difficult to get that exact product quickly. Does adwords provide quick sales?

I know you specialize in only a certain brand and product type so I guess it's easier for you.

[Modee]

I have so many websites up that if it weren't for the fact that I am prepaid at GoDaddy until 2023 on a shared server (their Ultimate plan), and prepaid for a couple more years at Hostgator for their Baby plan, I'd get a dedicated server. The cost in the long run is not much higher and the speed is much better.

A shared server is like sharing the public pool, trying to do laps. When the pool is mostly empty no big deal but try to exercise in a crowded pool - forget it!