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So you wanna take the jump and open a online shop? Scared at the cost or even where to start? Look no further I can help you set everything easy with out the need of a web designer. How and why you ask are you gonna tell us this when you have your own web design company? It all started about 3 years ago when a good friend of mine was being ripped of by a media company charging him £6000 + for a web site you could build for less than £100. I took the site on and vowed I'd never do the same to anyone so I started out and created my own web design company. And 3:16 Designs was born, now you are the first people to know what the 3:16 means from the title of my company and simply put I wanted my company to have numbers in it somewhere and I love the WWE wrestling scene. My favourite wrestler being Stone Cold Steve Austin and his catchphrase is "Austin 3:16 just whooped your a*s" and my company name was created 3:16 Designs. So I had a name I had a dream time to start building it. Job 1: Buy your domain name A good place to get your domain name from is www.123reg.co.uk with prices starting from £2.59 per year on some extensions e.g .uk Job 2: Get your hosting plan I use this company for all my hosting needs as they are reasonably priced and the support is good. Hosting-Unlimited.net the basic hosting plan (which is all you need to start with) is £22.95 a year. So you now have a company name, an idea, domain name and a years hosting all for less than £26.00 now lets build you a shop. Job 3: Build the shop I have tried many scripts in trying to find an easy to use shop that looks good and has the support to go with it, after trying OS Commerce and Zen Cart I stumbled across a small program called CubeCart now when this script started out it was called E-Store and has progressed into the CubeCart store I use now myself. It is easily installed and simple to use and populate. Whats even better is using a service called fantastico you can install this automatically through your hosting plan in under 10 minutes. CubeCart is owned by a company called Devellion Ltd and run by a very friendly man called Allistar Brookbanks (or Brooky to his friends). One of the big benefits of using CubeCart is the support and the main reason I stopped using OS Commerce. If you get stuck or want to make a couple of changes you can visit the cubecart forum here, and post your question. The forum members and moderators (I myself am one of them and can be found in the forum under the name of EvilHomeR) will 9/10 times help and assist you. We will also point you in the right direction and make suggestions to help you on your way. Now the other big part of the forum is the mods for CubeCart, these are snippets of code we have produced to improve CubeCart. There are many mods available free of charge and some are for sale for only a few $$$’s, now trust be paying out $5,$10,$15 or even $20 for a mod may seem a lot to some people but when you consider some web designers charge $20+ for an hours work and buying a mod could save you hours of coding and errors. Trust me I have been there myself and now produce mods for the community. If your still unsure why not pop into the forum and say hi before you try it you will find a bunch of happy people willing to answer your questions. To install CubeCart go to your Hosting CPanel and locate the icon called Fantastico and click it, now you will see a list of programs find the E-Commerce section and click on Cubecart this will start the installation process. Just follow the simple steps and answer a couple of questions and that’s it in under 10 minutes your shopped is installed and ready to use. The shop itself is split into 2 area’s the shop front and admin section. The shop front is the area the customers see’s and admin is your part where you can view your customers, orders etc and add your categories and products. The admin is set up in such a way its easy to navigate and use so there you have it in less than 10 minutes and under £26.00 you now have an online shop. We still have 2 more points to cover to finish the set up properly tho and cover the gateway and copyright issues. Now CubeCart is free to use software as long as you leave all the copyright info intact however if you want a professional looking store I would suggest paying the $69 (app.£40) to remove the copyrights, it justs looks better all round. You can purchase a license here Purchase CubeCart Copyright Removal Key If you are going to sell online you need what they call a payment gateway to take money online. If you are just starting out I would suggest signing up for a PayPal business account, you can do this here www.paypal.com. The reason I say PayPal is they don’t charge you for set up and its already fully integrated with CubeCart for normal and digital purchases. So again its easy and free to set up you just pay a small fee on any transactions you put through. So anyway that’s about it all said and down in less than 24 hours and under £100 you can set up your own E-Commerce shop online and start trading. So what are you waiting for its time to enter the new digital era and sell online. Useful links to get you started www.123reg.co.uk – Domain Names www.Hosting-Unlimited.net – Hosting Plans www.paypal.com.- PayPal Business Account www.cubecart.com – CubeCart License www.cubecart.com/forum - CubeCart Forum www.3:16Designs.co.uk - My Digital article submission site. Feel free to post your own articles here. View all Carl Naylor's articles About the Author: |
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So you wanna sell online.
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