Teach Soap

My husband and I are thinking we should do our own site instead of etsy (although it does seem fairly convenient) I feel like I would be drowning in a sea of others just like me. Do you guys ever feel that way? On the plus side, I guess it couldn't hurt (except for the listing fees etc) to try it.
Anyways, I saw a commercial for "intuit.com" and apparently they will do your webhosting for ya for $5 a month (is that good? Seems reasonable.) Looks like they let you customize your page too using their graphics or your own, and from what I could tell their graphics look pretty good. They showed this one for a bakery and it had some pretty good pictures of the bread, to use on the main page. oh well. Anyways, I used to be able to do that kind of thing, but that was 10 years ago, and I haven't done it since and things have only gotten fancier! My husband was going to try to do me one, but he is busy with his own job and so I wondered if maybe this was a good idea. Plus it supposedly registers you with search engines, and helps you put a paypal thing on your page I think. *Do the other places not do this?*

I guess my biggest issue is a shopping cart type deal, and how to list my products on the pages. I want to have options-i don't want it to be only two ways-like if i don't want to do it their one way then i am on my own. What do you guys think? Has anyone used them/heard of them?

You might want to read their reviews on Amazon. I suggest looking up Homestead on Amazon, too. They appear to be the same company or one may be a spin-off of the other.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R187EE3CE8 ... EE3CE849H2
I don't have a desire to join Etsy and I do see your point of view. Others who participate there can tell you if the listing fees plus 3.5% of each sale plus PayPal's cut are worth it for them.

Best wishes!

I also didn't want to do Etsy. I made my own site using webs.com site hosting. You can customize it with your own pictures. It costs me $4.95 a month. No ads but not my own domain name either. For $8.95 a month (I think) you can get your own domain name. They do have a free option but then you have ads on your site and I found that the ads are for the same type of products you are selling. So I would have other soapmakers ads flashing across the top of my site and it bothered me. I find webs.com very easy to use. As far as a Shopping Cart goes, I use www.mals-e.com. It is a free cart (you can upgrade to a premium cart for a price) and it works great for me. I don't do a large volume of sales yet and so it is nice and simple and again, free. HTH.

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Haven

Haven, do you know if you can redirect a domain name to a shop on webs.com? The going rate for a domain name is about $10.00 a year. Even less sometimes. Godaddy recently had a special for $7.39 a year. A friend of mine who is a techie who has no vested interest in selling me anything told me that's it best not to have your domain name hosted via the site you're using. Makes sense to me, given his reasons.

How much HTML does one have to know to use webs.com or Mal's e-cart? Also did you need a dedicated IP, SSL certificate and were there any other costs besides the $4.95 a month for hosting?

Since PayPal offers a free shopping cart is there a particular reason why you used Mal's?

TIA!

Thanks for pointing that out. As far as the cd goes, it seems like while it was misleading to offer a box software image and then it not be actual software, it doesn't appear to say it would do anything different than what the website is offering (and you don't have to buy any cds if you just do it straight off their site. Hmmm. ) Then again, hearing any complaints makes me question it. One thing I am concerned about is, and this goes for any company, if their webhosting or site building doesn't work out then what? Do I have to lose my domain name that I'm building my company around because they won't let me take it with them? Also, if I used all their templates I would have to start from scratch if I left. Maybe I should just build it on my own with Publisher, then find someone to host. I don't know...do companies require you to give up your domain name if you register it with them and then want to go to another host svc? And I agree, I was also wondering if Paypal has a shopping cart, why use that E-mals one? Is it better or something?
Apparently I am more out of the loop than I thought about the website thing lol!
Thanks for your input yall!

That's why my techie friend said not to purchase my domain name via my web hosting site. Some companies will hold the domain name hostage if you want to leave for a new host. I looked at one recently and it's 60 days before they'll redirect a domain name once you leave. That's 2 months that you don't have access to your domain name and your customers are going "Huh? What happened to the website?"

Intuit/Homestead apparently requires that you relinquish control of your domain name to them if you host with them. Seriously, look up the reviews for Homestead on Amazon.com.

What I like about Godaddy is that you can go into your control panel and redirect your domain name yourself. However, having a domain name through them means I wouldn't have a website hosted by them.

I'm out of the loop on a lot of this too. I'm just looking into various plans.

edited for typos, clarity.

Yeh I don't think I am going to go with intuit. Like I said, every review was a negative one-it really makes me want to run away screaming in the other direction. But I don't want to use godaddy either-My business is a Christian based company and I find alot of their ads distasteful and irrelevant. Anyways, I guess this just means I will have to check into this more though....

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Haven

Thank you, Haven. I really appreciate it!

You're welcome.

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Haven

Oh ok. So you still use paypal for the payment itself, just not their version for a shopping cart. Well if it's free I guess it is worth checking out! Thanks alot!

No problem. You are welcome to check out my site and play around with how the customers see things. My site is www.havenssweetscents.webs.com.

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Haven

Just to throw in my 2 cents... I'm going through this same process right now. Actually HAVE BEEN for quite a while but only tinkering when I have time. I'm not finished or settled on everything but I can share what I know so far.

I too have very little interest in ETSY. I don't like the idea of having to up my prices to cover all the fees. And I agree there is already too much competition. I'm sure it's a great company and wonderful for many but it's just not for me. I do internal (non-internet) web development for my company so I decided to see what I could do on my own.

I registered my domain name with 1and1.com. It belongs to me and I can do whatever I like with it as long as I pay the $7 bucks or so for it each year. They offer hosting, domain registration as well as canned site design software and templates. Initially I was using their canned templates to play with my site but really didn't like that I had no real control over it. And I would not be able to migrate my site to another host if I ever wanted to. However you don't HAVE to use their software... you can upload your own code and then you would be able to move it to another host at will. They offer both Linux and Windows servers and lots of software options as well as several hosting packages to fit your needs.

They have a control panel which let's you easily and pretty immediately redirect your domain... which I did when I decided to try out a new host (A to Z) who supports ColdFusion (which I use in my job). I could have switched the domain registration to them too but like Kate says... I like the idea of keeping them in different places and I don't feel like waiting for the transfer to happen. If for whatever reason I decide I don't like my web host I can simply create an account in minutes with another host and then point my domain there. Assuming I have a local copy of my website files (I do) I could probably have it up and running on a new host inside of an hour or two.

As far as the web site software, I tried Wordpress on someone else's recommendation (see Wordpress.org). It is basically an open source blogging software with tons of free plugins. Many people use this for their website even if their site is not a traditional blog. I liked it but found it a bit clunky and a little slow. However I would still recommend looking at it and trying it out to decide for yourself. THOUSANDS of people use it and love it.

This brings me to last week where I discovered MANGO... which is simply another free canned blogging tool just like Wordpress. I set it up in under 30 minutes and have been playing with it ever since. I REALLY like it so far. It is not quite as widely used as WP but still very popular. I think it does the same job as WP but maybe a little better and a little easier.

Both WP and Mango use an online Admin page to control the content and settings and plugins on your site. Both have lots of free "skins" that control how your site looks and changing to a new skin can be done in a few clicks. Unless you are very picky like me... you may not need to do any actual coding. Both allow you to have multiple custom non-blog type pages (which we will need to show our products etc) though to me Mango makes this a little easier. Both allow people to "subscribe" to your site and be alerted when new posts are made.

Getting started is not too hard though you may want to get a techie friend or a teenager involved for support . Both require a database to be configured which is not really that difficult. And once it is setup you don't really need to think about it again. You mainly just need to name it and setup a user and password... then feed that info into your setup program. Both require a one time download of their files and an upload to your host... then almost everything (including updates) is done online from your admin page.

You can make changes to individual files and upload those but it's not mandatory. If you want some help with HTML or other code I highly recommend looking at the free tutorials and reference at

I have not played with a shopping cart yet but planned to use Mals because I understand you can make the product links fit into your visual design.

Sorry this is so long... I just hope to maybe save someone some time and effort.
I will certainly add my site to my signature when it's ready to go live.

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- Mickey!

My hubby is in IT and set up my website. He used ZenCart. Once it's all set up, it's very easy for me to update. There is a product module that lets me add products. There's a coupon module that lets me add coupons (great for my local friends that don't want to pay shipping). It does some reports and other things that I haven't really had time to play with yet. Our payments are seamless but go through paypal. It's customizeable through templates or you can do your own thing from scratch. There are hundreds of free templates out there and we just used one as a starting point. I think all told it's about $60/year just for hosting. I got exactly the look I wanted...clean and simple!

You can look at it at http://www.renasoap.com

Rena

First of all, thanks to everyone who responded. You all have given me alot to think about. Everyone's site looks so good, it is making it easier now for me to think about what all I want and how I'd like things to look.

Second, Rena I was looking at your loofahs. Those look so cool. Do you have any idea if those can be dipped in MP melted base or no? I have never done CP before.