My choice in web hosting provider

2007-09-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hello all. The first choice that I made was an easy decision, my web hosting provider. I chose to go with Yahoo (called Yahoo Small Business) for my domain and web hosting, and while I might've been able to save a few bucks by going with a discount provider, I feel confident in my decision. Yahoo gives me a one stop shop for hosting, domain name, email, advertising, and much more. Convenience has everything to do with why this is the right choice for me, and I recommend for you as well. Later on when I am ready to add eStore or web store capabilities to another website it will be very convenient to go to the same place. Yahoo gives me some nice bonuses as well, like $100 in search marketing credit (believe me that when the time is right I am definitely going to take advantage of this). It is difficult to talk about prices or bonuses since by the time that you read this prices could change. All that I can say is that for the convenience I feel the price is nominal. Let me talk about some of the features that I am fond of...

Email - I get more email addresess than I can ever possibly use. I can't tell you how cool it is to have the email address joe@joewbowman.com. If you do not already own the domain of your name, get it now before someone else grabs it up! Whether or not you ever do anything with a website, I can't tell you how impressive it is to have your firstname@FirstnameLastname.com listed on your resume or similar articles.

Design - While I am still trying to get my arms around website development I have found the Yahoo Sitebuilder very easy (I'm sure real web developers are scoffing right now).

Site Satistics - Yahoo has a really cool tool that tells me how many times people have hit which webpages.

Site Status - They make it so easy for me to see how much disk space and bandwidth I am using. I can tell you now it will be decades before I ever threaten any of these limits.

Advertising - While I haven't used any of these yet, Yahoo has some really cool tools that will allow to easily access any advertising that I do in the future. It integrates into my website management portal really well.

I hope you find this helpful. If you have comments on Yahoo or other web hosting I appreciate any feedback you might have. Please feel free to contact me at http://www.myecommercejourney.com/ .

Regards,

Joe

http://www.myecommercejourney.com/

What is My eCommerce Journey?

2007-09-05T17:09:00.000-07:00

My eCommerce Journey is the windy road that I will take in my quest to develop a successful eCommerce website. It is my hope to detail my process from start to finish and share with you what I learn along the way. Sure I could create an eCommerce website on Yahoo in 15 minutes, but I think there is a little more to creating a successful online business than that. It is not my hope to create just any web store. I want to do the research behind it and create something that is profitable for years to come. The things that come to mind now that I will consider include:
Web hosting
Website development
Finding a product
Market testing a product
Marketing a product
Setting up your merchant account
Developing an your store
Building and maintaining a customer base
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Distributing your product

I am certain there is much more that I am not yet considering. No I am not a programmer or web developer, and I don't think you need to be either. My background is in project management, and for the past five plus years I have focused on the credit card industry. This site is my first real foray into web development, and the first page was created in just over an hour. I will go more into how later.I would love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to contact me at Joe@MyeCommerceJourney.com.

Cheers,

Joe
http://www.myecommercejourney.com/