| |
Write the Web™ 
The Web for You
Archive for the ‘Establishing a Web presence’ Category
Friday, June 27th, 2008
I just stumbled across a very interesting site that I thought I should share with my readers. It’s a site called Cafe Press. This site offers a wide variety of print-on-demand products from clothing to housewares and other gifts. You can add your own images to the products to create your very own styles, logos, catch-phrases, etc., which you can sell online in your very own Cafe Press store. The best part about Cafe Press is that you don’t have to spend any money to get started. Because Cafe Press doesn’t produce any products until someone orders them, there are no setup fees or minimum purchases required. Without spending any money, you can create as many custom products as you want, and sell them in your own, personalized online shops.
Each product has a “base price” that covers all of the costs of manufacture and production. To make money, simply set a “markup” price that you will earn as commission on sales of your product(s) (Just a word to the wise…be reasonable: I saw a thong for sale for $200 while I was browsing the site!). That’s all there is to it. It was so easy to get started that I’ve already created my own online shop with a few products that are available for immediate purchase, which I’ve included below as an example of what you can do. Of course, you can also buy your own products directly for the base price, without paying the markup.
Although it is tempting to think that I’ll soon strike it rich by selling my custom products at Cafe Press, the reality is that, like most online money-making opportunities, I’ll be lucky to pull in a few dollars per year, and that only if I can talk my friends and family into purchasing my products. There are probably 10 million unique products currently being sold at Cafe Press, so don’t expect massive sales right off the bat. However, if you have a good enough idea/design, you just might be able to create a popular product line and make decent money from your sales. But whether I make money or not, it’s fun to see what my ideas will look like on customized products. And maybe, just maybe, I will actually be able to pull in a few dollars each year for my efforts. There is one caveat worth mentioning: if you don’t make at least $25 per year, your earnings will be forfeited and returned to Cafe Press (I think I was mistaken here…after re-reading the terms, it looks like your earnings will only be forfeited if you fail to provide a valid mailing address).
And, if you’re just interested in creating a custom coffee mug, shirt, sticker, notebook, or other product for your own personal use, you can easily do that as well – you don’t have to sell them in an online store or in the Cafe Press marketplace.
As I said, I don’t think that Cafe Press is a great way to make a living, but it might be a nice way to help promote your site or your cause. For example, you might consider shelling out some of your own money to purchase your custom-branded products to give away to family and friends, or to offer as incentives to bring people to your site or blog (“Sign up for our e-mail newsletter, and you will automatically be entered to win an exclusive {Your site/brand name} coffee mug!”). In addition, your customized products can be sold as a part of a fund raising campaign to raise money for your cause or your site.
New products to support my new tagline: Write the Web™
Feel free to check out my new online store at http://www.cafepress.com/WriteTheWeb. I’m not pressuring anyone to buy my products, but if you are interested in seeing what an online store at Cafe Press looks like, this might be a good place to start. I’m currently offering two designs on a limited selection of products.
Drinkware:
The first products I created were my drinkware collection, containing the “I write the Web” logo variation, along with some self-promoting HTML on the reverse. See my product page for more details and the exact HTML codes in plain text (readable) format.
Intimate Apparel:
The next design I created was a flirty take-off of my new tagline for my “intimate apparel” line, just for the fun of it. The boxer shorts and thong feature the “Write Ride the Web” design.
Write Ride the Web (boxer)
|
Write Ride the Web (classic thong) |
Whether I sell any of these products or not (I do plan on purchasing a mug for myself, at the very least), I’ve certainly had fun designing the products, and I plan to offer some new designs when I get a chance to come up with a few more image ideas. I won’t bother the readers of this blog with every new design I come up with, but if you are interested in hearing about new products, you can either subscribe to my Lockworld Herald Site News RSS feed or, for a simpler solution, visit my online store and subscribe to my store e-newsletter (That way, you will only receive notices about new products if you don’t want to get all of the selfish news I post about my site!).
That’s all for today…now get out there and write the Web!
Posted in e-commerce, Establishing a Web presence, Level: Novice, Product/Service Review | No Comments »
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
Earlier this year, Microsoft Office Live Small Business (Originally Microsoft Office Live) launched several improvements to their service. I use this service to host my own Web site (LockworldHerald.com), and I’ve blogged about it in the past. Although they no longer offer free domain name registration, they do continue to offer free Web site hosting (which is typically far more expensive than the domain name registration anyway). In the past, I found the service to be very useful to establish an online presence for myself, but was continually frustrated at how difficult it was to edit pages using the built-in page editor. In the end, I simply uploaded all of my Web pages manually to the “Documents” folder – the only folder I had any access to. This allowed me to create my own pages by writing my own HTML codes, but was getting difficult to manage as the number of files grew.
The new improvements to the site now allow even free account holders to design their site using their own Web design tools (I typically use WordPad or Nvu, but other Web authoring/design tools can be used as well). This new structure allows me to keep my site more organized, but more importantly, it gives me access to the top-level of my site. There are certain Web services that require authentication by checking for files in the root directory (Like Google Web Apps and Delorie). In addition to making such services available, having access to the root directory also gives me the ability to create a robots.txt file that can tell search engine bots to avoid indexing certain file types or folders. Since I use a lot of AjaxIncludes scripting, this is a very nice way to keep all of those partial Web pages out of the search engine results.
Another improvement to the service is to make it easier to upload files and folders to the Web server. Previously, I had to upload files manually using a Web interface, which made it very difficult to work with changes to my site. I had to manually delete the files that I wanted to upgrade from my site, then go through and select the new files to upload. Now, however, I can simply drag the files from my computer to the Web folder and it will automatically overwrite the existing files. To make things even easier, I can even drag and drop whole folders at the same time.
The ability to use my own design tools also makes it easier to keep things up to date, and even host my own RSS feed on the site. I use Listgarden to create and manage my feeds, which has the added benefit of being able to export a “human-readable” HTML file along with the XML codes for the feed. Now, I can easily drag and drop the whole folder from my local folder to my Web folder (Unfortunately, Microsoft Office Live Small Business Basics doesn’t offer FTP uploads), and my feed and my HTML page(s) are updated at the same time. I’ll discuss Listgarden in more detail shortly on The Web for You.
While still not a perfect solution, the level of service offered by the free Microsoft Office Live Small Business makes it a very powerful service for anyone wanting to create an online presence. If you need your own domain name (www.yoursite.com), you should be able to buy one for $10-15/year and simply point it to your free MOLSB site.
There is still one major drawback to MOLSB, which is that you are not permitted to use any kinds of server-side scripts or code in your pages. It would be great to be able to write dynamic Web pages using Active Server Pages (ASP), or to build and access SQL databases, but unfortunately, this isn’t possible.
Of course, that’s where other services, such as Zoho Creator and Texty come in handy. With the right application of these services and the right javascript codes, I can build a site that acts much like an ASP-based site even if I can’t write a “real” ASP page.
Currently, I’m migrating my old site over to the new structure. It’s going to take a little bit of time, but eventually, all of my Web pages will be organized into a proper folder structure. As I work on this, there will be a few inconsistencies on my site, with some links directing visitors to the new pages, and others pointing back to the older versions. But eventually, I think the new structure will be easier to manage, at least for me.
Anyone looking to create their own Web site, but unwilling or unable to pay for monthly Web-hosting fees should consider Microsoft Office Live Basics for their hosting needs.
Posted in Establishing a Web presence, Microsoft Office Live Basics, Product/Service Review | 1 Comment »
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
 The final design and content of your Web site will, quite naturally, depend on your purpose and your audience. While it is fine for many Web sites to be composed primarily of written content and photographs or images, modern Web surfers prefer to interact with your site in some way, especially if they find your site useful or interesting. A few weeks ago, I discussed ways for you to create an RSS feed for your site. This is a quick and easy way to provide a very basic level of interaction for your visitors. By subscribing to your feed, they can stay up to date with the latest news or information about the site. You can even expand on this by using a service such as Feedburner to allow users to subscribe to your feed via e-mail. This is a great way to help your visitors stay informed about your site, but it is, by nature, a one-sided method of interaction. You push out your content, but you can’t get much back from your visitors. The best you can hope for is to get some basic statistics about how many subscribers you have (If you use a service like Feedburner).
Last week, I briefly introduced you to the concept of adding widgets/gadgets to your site. There are countless varieties of widgets available for your site, but most of them are designed to allow you (the Web designer) to provide content/information to your visitors. While it might be nice for you to have the latest news, weather, or traffic on your site, most (if not all) of your visitors will have their own preferred method of finding this information. The only exception that comes to mind is a personal Web page that friends or family members from around the world can visit to get a snapshot of your life, even from far away. For most other sites, especially for small, home-based business Web sites, it’s not enough to just push a bunch of information out to your visitors. To be successful with your site, it will eventually become necessary to gather information about your visitors.
There are a few common methods for gathering information about site users. The most common is to track your Web statistics…such as page views, user activities on your site, etc. This information can be obtained from a variety of services, such as Google Analytics. While this information can be quite useful, you have to know how to interpret it. And even so, it doesn’t tell you much about what people think of your site, or how interested they are in what you have to say.
Fortunately, Zoho Creator can help. With Zoho Creator, you can build simple or complex Web applications to allow users to interact with you or your Web site. One of the first simple applications I built with Zoho Creator was a subscription form people could use to provide their name and e-mail address to sign up for e-newsletters from my site. Although I don’t actually send out any e-newsletters, you can view a sample of this application at Lockworld Herald. Site visitors can simply type in their names and e-mail addresses (I’ve also provided a simple “about me” optional field) into the form and click submit. They will automatically be added to my mailing list, which only I can access through my Zoho account. One of the best features of Zoho Creator is the ability to create simple scripts (no knowledge of HTML or other scripting is required) to build in automatic e-mail messages to you and/or your subscribers with your own customized message. This is a really nice way to either get people signed up for an e-mail newsletter, or to get people to sign up for “membership” on your site.
Of course, if you’re planning to collect personal information from people, you’d better have something good to offer them in return, such as discount prices, newsletters, free access to member-only sections of your Web site, etc. If you don’t want/need their personal information, Zoho Creator can also be used to solicit feedback from your visitors, provide them with a means to report bugs or technical problems with your site, or otherwise provide comments to you. You can also choose to display all or part of the information you collect back on your site (Think carefully about this, however…if you’re soliciting e-mail address or contact information from people, you should never post it on your site for others to see).
You can also use Zoho Creator as your own personal content management system if you want to. Say, for example, you have a list of items you want to display to your users, but the list changes frequently. You can easily use Zoho Creator to build a Web application to allow you to add or edit the contents of the list. You can create a “view” of that list which is publicly accessible to allow visitors to see what is in the list without being able to make any changes to it. This can be a simple and easy way to keep the content of your Web site fresh and up-to-date without requiring you to constantly change you actual Web page(s) to reflect the changes in the content – a feature particularly useful if you are displaying portions of the same information in multiple pages on your site. You could even add a field to your database for the application that allows you to control whether a particular item is visible in the list or not without having to delete all of the other information you’ve entered into the application if you just need to take it offline temporarily.
Zoho Creator is a quick and easy way to allow visitors to interact with you site, but it can also be expanded as you learn how to use the application. I have used Zoho Creator to build my own e-commerce management solution. Although I don’t have anything I’m particularly interested in selling at this moment, I’m playing around with the idea to see if this is a workable solution for building my own e-commerce site. So far, I’ve been able to use Zoho to create a catalog of products available to purchase on my site. When someone clicks on an item’s name, they are taken to a page that displays the complete details for that product, as well as a PayPal “Add-to-cart” button that they can click on to purchase the item. By using Zoho for this (rather than editing the page directly in my Office Live Basics account), I have been able to set up scripts which will automatically update the PayPal “Add-to-cart” button link whenever the price of the item (or the shipping/handling fees) changes. In just a few minutes, I can easily add a new product to my catalog and essentially give that product its own page within my site. I’ll go into more detail in how I’ve done this in future posts, but if you want to take a look at how it works, feel free to check it out on my Web site,  Lockworld Herald.
Although I still have a few bugs to work out, the basic principle is working out quite well. The biggest down-side to using Zoho Creator for this online catalog has been having to worry about whether their site is up and running, or bogged down by traffic. There have been a few times when I have visited my own site and found that the Zoho Creator pages have not loaded at all. This hasn’t been very often, but it does suggest that if you are expecting a lot of traffic on your site, you might want to find a more robust solution. Of course, if you’re getting that much traffic on your e-commerce site, you can probably afford to shell out a little money for that more robust solution. But if free is your style, and you can handle a limited amount of down-time, Zoho Creator can be a powerful way to put your small business online in a very short time.
That’s all for today. I’ll go into more details about how this all works in the next few posts. The first step, which I’ll cover next week, will be to set up your own free PayPal account so you can start processing PayPal or credit card orders online through your Web site.
Posted in e-commerce, Establishing a Web presence | No Comments »
|
|
|
