Tony Ferguson on wed 2 aug 06
Hey girl,
My second site was on geo cities doing exactly what you did. Waited till it justified and grew for the need to get a host and do my own site. Very good advice.
Tony Ferguson
primalmommy wrote:
It is not my intention to undermine the talented folks who design and
maintain websites, and hopefully they have contacted you already, on or
off list --
But I have had pretty good luck at yahoo's Geocities. If you don't know
whether a website is going to do much for you, or you don't want to
spend a bunch of money on it, or you just want to try it out before you
get more heavily involved, try a free site. Usually it pops up with an
ad attached, that visitors have to minimize (if it's a free site.)
The disadvantage to a free site is that your address might be something
long and hard to remember/type:
http://www.geocities.com/yournamehere/pages/index.html for instance.
But there are options ranging from "a chimp could do it" (pre-formatted
sites where you just type in the text, pick the colors and download your
photos) to "a trained chimp could do it" with drag and drop text and
image stuff. I don't know any html, and while my site is not a knockout,
it serves my purposes. It has a pretty user-friendly tutorial.
I had a free site using paypal's "buy now" buttons as an experiment, for
a couple of years, to see if I could make enough money to justify
keeping it up. I bought a domain name -- primalpotter.com -- (and later
primalmommy.com as well), and directed them to my free site. Eventually
I sold enough pots that I could justify an upgrade, and got rid of the
pop-up ad. I think I pay nine bucks a month for my site and one domain
name, $35 a year for the other domain name. I sell enough web-pots in
three or four months to pay for the website (and write it off besides)
-- plus it's where I get about half of my private wheel students. My
site also links people to the local homeschooling network, the classes
offered by the Toledo Potter's Guild and my potterbarter
pottery-classifieds list.
I can also make pages that don't get published on the web -- like pix of
my kids on vacation -- and send the link just to family and friends.
It works for me. I can pull a pot out of the kiln, set it on the deck
with welding gloves, take a digital, put it on my site and have it
available for sale before it has cooled completely.
If the kids have the flu or I can't get to the studio, and run out of
inventory, the pots are up there, marked "sold, check back later" -- and
I don't have to pay light bills, rent, overhead on the "shop window"
they are sitting in.
When I get a paypal email I go right to my site and mark the pot "sold".
Sometimes visitors to my site find everything sold, and email me asking
for more pots, so before I even get new pot photos up on the site, I
email pix and make a sale.
Folks paypal me money or send me a check, I ship a pot on the way to
piano lessons, and go make another one to replace it.
The site brought me one nice wholesale job, too, and I am negotiating a
second..
I volunteered to make a website for our guild at
http://www.toledopottersguild.org and one for area homeschoolers at
http://homeschooltoledo.net -- "in my spare time"... it's not that big a
job, I can do it from home at 2am, and it keeps me off of committees
because I am already "doing something".
I never put my web address under my clayart signature because I secretly
think my pots are kind of dorky, and don't want clayarters to go there
;0) but I always sign with it at non-pottery listservers.
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
_______________________________________________________________
Get the FREE email that has everyone talking at http://www.mail2world.com
Unlimited Email Storage – POP3 – Calendar – SMS – Translator – Much More!
______________________________________________________________________________
Send postings to clayart@lsv.ceramics.org
You may look at the archives for the list or change your subscription
settings from http://www.ceramics.org/clayart/
Moderator of the list is Mel Jacobson who may be reached at melpots@pclink.com.
Tony Ferguson
...where the sky meets the lake...
Duluth, Minnesota
Artist, Educator, Web Meister
fergyart@yahoo.com
fergy@cpinternet.com
(218) 727-6339
http://www.aquariusartgallery.com
http://www.tonyferguson.net
---------------------------------
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1¢/min.
primalmommy on wed 2 aug 06
It is not my intention to undermine the talented folks who design and
maintain websites, and hopefully they have contacted you already, on or
off list --
But I have had pretty good luck at yahoo's Geocities. If you don't know
whether a website is going to do much for you, or you don't want to
spend a bunch of money on it, or you just want to try it out before you
get more heavily involved, try a free site. Usually it pops up with an
ad attached, that visitors have to minimize (if it's a free site.)
The disadvantage to a free site is that your address might be something
long and hard to remember/type:
http://www.geocities.com/yournamehere/pages/index.html for instance.
But there are options ranging from "a chimp could do it" (pre-formatted
sites where you just type in the text, pick the colors and download your
photos) to "a trained chimp could do it" with drag and drop text and
image stuff. I don't know any html, and while my site is not a knockout,
it serves my purposes. It has a pretty user-friendly tutorial.
I had a free site using paypal's "buy now" buttons as an experiment, for
a couple of years, to see if I could make enough money to justify
keeping it up. I bought a domain name -- primalpotter.com -- (and later
primalmommy.com as well), and directed them to my free site. Eventually
I sold enough pots that I could justify an upgrade, and got rid of the
pop-up ad. I think I pay nine bucks a month for my site and one domain
name, $35 a year for the other domain name. I sell enough web-pots in
three or four months to pay for the website (and write it off besides)
-- plus it's where I get about half of my private wheel students. My
site also links people to the local homeschooling network, the classes
offered by the Toledo Potter's Guild and my potterbarter
pottery-classifieds list.
I can also make pages that don't get published on the web -- like pix of
my kids on vacation -- and send the link just to family and friends.
It works for me. I can pull a pot out of the kiln, set it on the deck
with welding gloves, take a digital, put it on my site and have it
available for sale before it has cooled completely.
If the kids have the flu or I can't get to the studio, and run out of
inventory, the pots are up there, marked "sold, check back later" -- and
I don't have to pay light bills, rent, overhead on the "shop window"
they are sitting in.
When I get a paypal email I go right to my site and mark the pot "sold".
Sometimes visitors to my site find everything sold, and email me asking
for more pots, so before I even get new pot photos up on the site, I
email pix and make a sale.
Folks paypal me money or send me a check, I ship a pot on the way to
piano lessons, and go make another one to replace it.
The site brought me one nice wholesale job, too, and I am negotiating a
second..
I volunteered to make a website for our guild at
http://www.toledopottersguild.org and one for area homeschoolers at
http://homeschooltoledo.net -- "in my spare time"... it's not that big a
job, I can do it from home at 2am, and it keeps me off of committees
because I am already "doing something".
I never put my web address under my clayart signature because I secretly
think my pots are kind of dorky, and don't want clayarters to go there
;0) but I always sign with it at non-pottery listservers.
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
_______________________________________________________________
Get the FREE email that has everyone talking at http://www.mail2world.com
Unlimited Email Storage – POP3 – Calendar – SMS – Translator – Much More!
Bruce Glassford on wed 2 aug 06
primalmommy wrote:
> It is not my intention to undermine the talented folks who design and
> maintain websites, and hopefully they have contacted you already, on or
> off list --
>
> The site brought me one nice wholesale job, too, and I am negotiating a
> second..
>
> I volunteered to make a website for our guild at
> http://www.toledopottersguild.org and one for area homeschoolers at
> http://homeschooltoledo.net -- "in my spare time"... it's not that big a
> job, I can do it from home at 2am, and it keeps me off of committees
> because I am already "doing something".
>
> I never put my web address under my clayart signature because I secretly
> think my pots are kind of dorky, and don't want clayarters to go there
> ;0) but I always sign with it at non-pottery listservers.
>
> Yours
> Kelly in Ohio
The other thing to consider is a shop/content management system - my
picture site, for example, uses a free package called Gallery to put up
the pictures. (The main site doesn't have anything at present so I just
redirect to the picture site - it's a personal site, so I try out
software up there). There are plenty of free online shop systems and
most of the hosting providers can support one or more - the hosting
provider I use (powweb.com) offers automatic installation of several
shop fronts. [I'm not sure I recommend them as a host right now, though
- they're going through the chaos of being bought out & moving
everything over to a different platform... will see in the future how it
shakes out]. Total cost of hosting is about $10/month at many of them,
and using a package offers simplicity - you have to learn some of the
quirks & methods of the package, but they come with a lot more tools
than you can build for yourself for a website, and can usually be kept
updated by non-programmers (although you may want a programmer/designer
to create/modify a site template for your needs - I did that for my
employer - about a 2 day job for me [I am NOT a designer - that's the
tough part for me])
... Bruce (who knows his pots are dorky and admits it - but I'm
learning, and will be so until I kick the bucket instead of merely
knocking it off the wheel...)
| |
|
