The Virtual Woman: A Woman's
Weekly Guide To Cyberspace
Increasing Your Net Worth
Well kids, for those of you predicting the Internet was a silly faze-falling somewhere between Sea Monkeys and Spice Girls, you're probably scratching your sorry little heads wishing you'd plunked down a few thousand bucks in Yahoo! stock a cuppla years ago. If so, you'd be in Hawaii right now nursing a mai tai wondering where to make your next investment. Or perhaps, more importantly, you'd be contemplating which golf course to playing on for the day. But not to worry, the cyberbandwagon is vast with plenty of room and time to hop on board. Especially if you're a small business owner looking for some tips on how to use the web to turn up the volume in the new millennium. Read on, write when you have a chance and for those of you prescient enough to spot the Internet's potential a few years ago, aloha!
Dear Virtual Woman:
I have been hard at work
creating an online gourmet gift basket store, but now that it's up and running, I need
some help on how it should be marketed on the Internet. Can you point me in the right
direction?
- Michele, Seattle, WA
Dear Michele:
SellItOnTheWeB.Com (http://www.sellitontheweb.com/) rocks! This site is two parts Portal and one part Ralph Nader for everything having to do with selling stuff online. Product reviews, a 101 intro to e-commerce, interviews with web store owners and a host of great links are just a few of this extensive site's features. Check it out-you won't click away disappointed.
Dear Virtual Woman:
I have a successful editing business
in a small town, and get a lot of business through word of mouth, but I am interested in
expanding my services to other parts of the country. I'd like to create a website to pull
in potential clients, but I don't have any web design experience and I'm at a loss as to
where to start. Any ideas?
- Rachel W.
Dear Rachel:
Thanks to the myriad of e-commerce stores starting to spring up all over the Web, you need not be an HTML or Java jockey in order to get up and running. Whether you have a service-oriented business like yours, or run a product-based biz, websites like Big Step (http://www.bigstep.com) will do all of the work for you. A free service, BigStep offers help with creating, building, and maintaining a website, as well as offering marketing tips and generating web hit reports. If you have a bigger budget to work with, the Y!Store located at http://store.yahoo.com/ad.html lets you create, for a monthly fee, your own site by just pointing and clicking, allowing you to choose from several design templates with an easy-to-use, web-based interface. Whatever you create is easily changeable, so as your business develops and you, for example, add new services to your business, you can go in and update your site yourself as needed.
Dear Virtual Woman:
I've just set up a basic web page
for business, but my budget didn't allow me to add an online shopping cart system or
credit card alternative for the visiting customers. Is there an inexpensive way that I can
include credit card orders on my website?
- Tracy Lyon, Lafayette, LA
Dear Tracy:
The Credit Card Processor, located at
http://www.creditcardprocessor.com, is a great place to start. The company has been in
business for six years providing merchants with credit card, check, and ATM processing,
and also offers small businesses helpful services like check guarantee services and
equipment leasing.
Total Payment Systems (TPS), found at
http://www.totalpaymentsystems.com, is also a relatively inexpensive way to expand your
payment options. And, as an added bonus, TPS will perform a professional analysis of your
current or payment processing, and will then design a custom solution to fit your
particular needs and provide a Bankcard quotation free of charge.
Happy Surfing!
Find these links and more at WWWomen.Com (http://www.wwwomen.com) the web's largest search directory of topics for women online. Email the Virtual Woman with your Internet questions or send snailmail to: WWWomen.Com, Attn: Virtual Woman, 3701 Geary Blvd., #325, S.F., CA 94118. Copyright, 1998-99. WWWomen, Inc. All rights reserved.
This column can only be re-distributed with written
permission by
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service or WWWomen, Inc.
Contributing Editor: Mary Bergner
© Copyright 1996-99. WWWomen, Inc.®. All Rights Reserved.
WWWomen is a registered trademark of the WWWomen company.