Starting a business online is no longer as difficult as it usedto be! Now, there are plenty of interesting business ideas thatanybody can pick up from various Internet resources. Startuprelated cost, which used to deter many in taking action, hasbecome negligible. Many people already started to notice this!According to a recent report GoDaddy has gained 294,368 new sitesin just the first 5 months of 2005 while the top four domainregistrars combined, including GoDaddy, have gained more thanhalf a million. Mind it! This is not the quantity of domainsregistered, this is the quantity of websites hosting with them!This recent explosive growth means one thing. Online business ison the rise!
So, if you have one or several products to sell to a largegeographical area and you would like to start an online businessfairly quick but you don't have much money to spend on it, thereare still ways to do so.
Using the integrated features of many portals you can start yourdream e-commerce site on a shoe-string budget within severalhours. I am going to show you how to do this on Rusbiz.com.
Sign up
Preparation needed:
Write an informative, precise but easy-to-read profile of yourcompany in less than 600 words. If your company's name is lessthan 12-letter long you are fine. If not, choose a nice name,preferably, by shortening the company name. This you will requirefor login name. Create a logo for your company. You can do itlater if you don't have a logo as yet.
Steps: Register your company by filling up the membership form.Choose a membership other than basic. You need an option with theability to build a web store. Copy and paste your preparedprofile. Once you submit the form you will be taken to a pagecalled My Business.
Time required: Maximum one hour including preparation.
Add products to the e-catalog
This step will help you create electronic catalog of yourproducts that you will use on your website as well.
Preparation: Take digital pictures of your products. Eachpicture should not be more than 100 KB. Make thumbnail versionsof your pictures. Thumbnails should be less than 10 KB. Bothpictures and thumbnails should be of JPG or GIF formats.
If your product requires special instructions, schemas, etc.,make an electronic copy of them as well. This should be of doc,txt, or PDF format and less than 50 KB in size.
Steps: Now from your My Business page click on the "Add Product"button. You will be prompted to "Add Product" page. Next step isto select the correct subcategory, where your product should belisted. First, choose the main category and than keep onselecting the right subcategory until you end up on the finalsubcategory. This E-catalog is based on USPSC, electronicclassification standard, which offers a ten-digit, five-levellogical hierarchy for organizing products and services. Once yousuccessfully selected the fifth level subcategory you will beprompted to a detail form. Add all the necessary informationabout your product. Insert the pictures in the designated places.Once you finished, submit the form. Continue doing the same forall the products. You have just created your first electroniccatalog!
If you face difficulties, as a premium member you don't have togo through the steps outlined above, you can just send all therequired information to Rusbiz customer service and they willtake care of your e-catalog.
Time required: half an hour including preparation.
Build your web store
You will be surprised to know that part of your web store isalready created from the information that you have inserted sofar! From My Business page click on Manage web store in order tocheck and edit what you already have so far and what else do youhave to do. Your web store has 9 more pages apart from theproduct pages. The pages are Home, Contact, Company events,Services, Employee information, Company News, Surveys, and FAQ.
Preparation: You can gather information for some of the vitalpages to give your site a professional look and feel. As thepages are template based, you can edit and insert neededinformation, whenever you like.
Steps: From Manage Web Store the first thing you should do isconfigure your web store. This means, you have to select currencyof your choice, payment and delivery methods. Next you shouldchoose which of the products you would like to display on yourhome page. I'll also suggest you to fill up some of the abovementioned pages, i.e. employee bios, etc. This gives your webstore a human touch.
Voila! Your e-commerce website is ready to go!
Time required: Maximum two hours including preparation.
Here are the advantages of having a web store like this one:
? You don't need to know HTML
? Navigation and editing of your website is easy and simple
? You receive instant access to Rusbiz community of thousandsof prospective customers
? Shopping cart is an integrated part of the package
? Membership allows you to sell products through Rusbize-marketplace
? As a member you are also allowed to use Rusbiz business processmanagement system
? You will get access to other useful features of Rusbiz system
? Your website will be indexed by major search engines within amatter of days
The best thing about this method is you can start with 3 monthsSimple Membership for just US$ 65! If you need to use a domainname, you can readdress it to your Rusbiz web store. After awhile, if you feel that you require a full-fledged e-businesswebsite, professional developers from Rusbiz can take care ofthis as well. As more and more people are getting involved inonline business, if you don't start now, you might miss the boat!So, take action!
Nowshade Kabir, is the founder, primary developer and presentCEO of Rusbiz.com - a Global B2B Exchange with solutions tocreate e-catalog, Web store, business process management andother features to run a business online. You can read variousarticles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com |
