MichelleMc.com

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the questions I get asked most often is “Can you help me sell my products online? How much does it cost to get a website?” Most people feel overwhelmed, don’t know where to start and just are not ready to spend thousand of dollars, just to get their feet wet.

For those people, who want to dabble in selling online and are willing to invest some time learning to do it yourself, I’ve put together a list of good, affordable options to building your own webstore or basic website. There are many, many choices out there, but these are shopping carts that I have personally tested and found to be both worthwhile and extremely affordable:

First things first: Whatever you do, register your domain name yourself! Do not have the webhosts (below) register the domain name for you! If you don’t like the service, you’ll want to be able to pick up your ball and go play somewhere else.

Free or almost free:

eCrater: www.ecrater.com Ecrater stores are truly FREE. Crazy, isn’t it? Very easy to setup and the price is right. Drawbacks: (Yes, there are always drawbacks, when you see the word ‘free.’) You have very few design options. All eCrater stores look very similar and of course, they are branded at the bottom of every page : Powered by eCRATER - a free online store builder. You can’t upgrade and have this removed. If you are willing to live with that and a very clean, simple store design, then eCrater might be worth a test drive.

Buy It Sell It: www.buyitsellit.com Also free! Can you believe it? BuyItSellIt is a very cool option and extremely affordable. Choose from about 15 store layouts, add your store info, start listing your products, set your shipping and payment preferences and you’re in business! The stores have a nice professional look and the shopping cart is crazy good! I really like this one. Drawbacks: The free store displays a link at the bottom of the page: Powered by BuyItSellIt - free online store builder . But the good news is you can upgrade to have this removed for only $5 a month. Now that’s a bargain, my friends.

Very Affordable:

PSU Stores: www.powersellersunite.com offers a pre-installed ecommerce store for only $10 a month. The system is a powerful one that has a huge selection of themes you can use to change the look of your store. If you are satisfied with the default look, you can add your products and be selling no time. But most people want to customize the store to suit their needs and you should expect to spend at least a couple of weeks configuring the layout of your site. The good news is that the people on the support forums are wonderful, patient and anxious to help you succeed. (This is rare in ecommerce support forums!). Another plus is that you are not likely to outgrow this software as your business grows. I have one of my own sites hosted at PSU and have helped a friend set up shop there as well. There is a learning curve, but well worth the investment of time.

Homestead: Homestead.com is service that I haven’t tested personally, but I’ve heard good things about. I’ve watched one non-techie friend work on their $5 a month Homestead website and I was pretty impressed with the result. There is a $20 setup fee, and it looks like there are add-on fees for almost everything. But, chances are you’ll end up with a decent looking website for less than $20 a month. Whatever you do: Always register your domain name separately from the hosting service! (Did I say that already? Yeah, well, I’m saying it again). I’ve read that Homestead has been purchased by Intuit, the Quicken people, so pricing may change and probably will.

City Max: www.CityMax.com $20 a month. This company isn’t the cheapest, but I’ll say one thing for them: they really live up to their promise about having great professional looking templates to choose from, and lots of them. You can be up and running with a sharp looking website, in a very short time. Some of the payment and shipping options are a little limiting. But there are many great features that put CityMax on my “recommended” list. Most impressive of all is the overall look of the finished website, and how quickly you can achieve it.

Are the above options going to get you a custom online store that will meet your every need? No. Are they going to get you a perfect professional looking website overnight, one that you’ll never outgrow? Nope. But if you can’t afford to pay a professional web designer (me, for example), and are still anxious to test your business online: It might be worth a few days/weeks of trial and error on your own, giving these affordable options above a test run. When you outgrow them and want to take the next step … we’ll talk.

I have good news for my web design clients: I’ve implemented a new client management system, which will allow you manage your account online.

To login into our client area: Go to this page.

A few more neat features of this system:

• You can view and pay your bill online.
  (or print and mail it in).
• Ability to open up a support ticket that will receive my quick, personal reply. We’ll talk more about the advantage of the support ticket, later.
• If I’m making changes to your site on an hourly rate, you will be able to view a time sheet related to work on your website. A good way to see where you stand regarding upcoming invoices and avoid surprises.
• Estimates for changes you are considering, can also be saved for later viewing, if you are not ready to move forward on a particular project. (quotes are valid for 90 days).

Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.

Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.
Al Pacino, The Godfather III

The Godfather I and II are on my list of all-time favorite movies. But I do love this quote from Godfather III. Even Silvio mimics the scene in The Sopranos (best TV series ever). Gosh, you are learning so much about me! But this post isn’t about my favorite movies and tv shows … it’s about building websites, believe or not.

Hey, where you been?

For the past 3 years, I’ve been on sabbatical from the web design field, except for managing a few low maintenance accounts. For the first year out, I focused on my freelance writing, which I continue to do. At the same time I began developing my own eCommerce websites: ScruffyPuppy.com, SchnauzerGear.com, Recovery-Gifts.com . Strangely enough, many people, after visiting my new online stores, would repeatedly to ask me “How much would you charge to make me one of those?”

For three years, my answer was always the same: I don’t do that anymore.

It’s such an odd feeling to say no. Especially when it basically means “No. I don’t want your money.” I mean, who says that? To my great surprise, people don’t like to take no for an answer, and they just kept right on asking. Eventually, they pulled me back in.

So, this year, I finally decided to stop saying NO. And I’ll be working on a new eCommerce site for a local design firm. I also will be welcoming back an old client, whose site I designed years ago. I’m flattered and pleased that this company returned and asked me to work for them again. I’m also glad about it, because the previous company slapped their company name on the credits for my design work! We’ll fix that, right quick, won’t we? I also have makeovers in the works to a few sites I designed several years ago. Time for a new look!

As you can see, it didn’t take long to get pulled back in. And I’m thrilled about it. I just love this stuff. Watch for lots of updates, over the next few months, about websites I’m working on.

Uno Mas on it’s 10th Anniversary.

On March 3, 1998, I officially launched my first website: Uno Mas Down Syndrome Online, an online support group. My original intent was that it would become a local support group for the Temecula Valley, but it quickly started attracting participants worldwide. Today, the website celebrates a decade online! And also marks ten years since my entry into the world of html. The site has undergone three transformations since the original design, two of which you can see here.

Happy Birthday, Uno Mas!


Uno Mas style at 5 years.

I wanted to give a shout out to my cousin, Ann Marie, in New York who launched the amazing AMRY’s website around the beginning of the year, and is already taking orders from around the country.

While I didn’t design Amry’s Tasty’s Treasures website, I did get carried away when she asked me for advice about selling her homemade baked goods online. I gave her a few suggestions on where to get started and boy, she really took the ball and ran with it! I think she did a great job.

I helped with a few of the graphics and offered some coaching by email. But what you see on her site, is result of her own hard work and determination to get her new business off the ground. Watching her website take shape really re-kindled my enthusiasm for doing web design again. It’s truly such a fun process (albeit an often frustrating one, I’m sure Amry will agree!).

Take a look at her AmrysTastyTreasures.com website and try some of her delicious home-baked cookies!

Can you stand yet another dog website? Well, if you love Yorkies, this one’s for you: www.YorkieGear.com . My newest website was built as an experiment to gauge the feasibility of creating a website that would allow the site owner to manage content by themselves. I am proud of the result and pleased with the simplicity of the design.

Most of my own websites serve as a testing ground for CMS (content management systems), shopping carts, and payment processing options. I’ve settled on a few favorite systems and now feel able to incorporate the software into sites that I build for my clients.

The Yorkie Gear website uses a CMS combined with a beautifully simple checkout. The combination is perfect for clients who want to update their own websites, and/or want to sell a limited number of products. It’s also perfect for businesses that already have a merchant account and would like to process credit card orders manually through their own terminal each day.

My brilliant, beautiful mother passed away in October after a long courageous battle against breast cancer. Her heartbroken family and friends have filled her blog with wonderful photos, stories and memories of this unforgettable woman. The blog was added as a memorial, around the time of her death. You can visit her site at www.HelenHaddad.com

I created Helen’s website six years ago, to help promote her first novel “Picture of Guilt” which was published in 2002. All the pages on the main site were built in reference to her writing career. At this time, I’ve left them just as they were. When my mom’s illness entered a critical final stage in late September, our family began to use the homepage of that website to communicate about her condition with her friends and family. So many beautiful email messages started to pour in for and about Helen; it seemed that a personal section of the website was needed. Eventually, I added the blog as a way for family & friends to stay informed and to post their comments, or photos to Helen’s website.

My mom’s absence is painfully felt every day since she left us. My father says that the website posts and comments sustain him everyday. Thank you so very much to the many people who have taken the time to remember my mother on her blog. You have no idea how much these contributions have meant to my Dad and our entire family.

Michelle

(Scruffy Puppy is an online gift boutique, owned and operated by yours truly: (Michelle Mc). I also built and maintain the website www.ScruffyPuppy.com among several others I will be blogging about.

Have you visited the Farmer’s Market at the Temecula Promenade Mall? Be sure to keep an eye out for the Scruffy Puppy booth. Stop by and say hello. You’ll get a chance to see the exceptional quality of wonderful dog-lover gifts, up close and personal.

Here is a photo of our first effort at setting up a booth. It was a learning experience, to say the least. We learned we needed more tables, better displays, and a lot more endurance. The day was exhausting, but lots of fun. We plan to set up shop there every other Wednesday, so be sure and check our calendar … and then come on down and introduce yourself!

Holiday Gift Packs have been added to the Scruffy Puppy product line, just in time for Christmas!

These 3 and 6 piece gift sets are currently available in 10 popular breeds:
Black Labrador
Beagle
Boxer
Chihuahua
Dachshund
German Shepherd
Golden Retriever
Scottish Terrier
Shih Tzu
Yorkie
The gift sets come packed in holiday tissue, ready for wrapping as one great gift, or use the items to fill up a stocking for the dog lover on your list. Add a few treats and scratch that name off your long list.
Larger gifts can also be ordered on Scruffy-Puppy.com, such as many fun doormats. One popular version is our “Home of the Loyal and Spoiled” breed specific line. This is a nice big gift to unwrap, but shipping is very affordable. ($6.50 via USPS Priority Mail).
More gift suggestions to come. Stay tuned … and don’t forget to gift a little something to your vet, dog groomer and pet sitter. I know just the place to find the right thing: www.ScruffyPuppy.com !

Well, my Scruffy-Puppy.com website has been up for a few months but is off to very quiet start. This is intentional, actually, because I’ve found listing all those great dog-lover gifts in 75+ dog breeds to be a much bigger task than I expected. But the holidays are here and the inventory is here, so I am determined to get the Scruffy Puppy website loaded up and ready for your shopping pleasure!

One of my favorite items is a beautiful 5-charm, silver-plated keychain, available in over 30 dog breeds. These unique keychains are so cool! They resemble a charm bracelet, with 4 dog lover charms plus a specific dog charm of your favorite breed.

Of course, I also carry each of those breeds in a Sterling Silver Charm for your charm bracelet. These charms are a substantial 7 grams of solid Sterling and are fully crafted in 3D … none of those puny, flat one-sided charms here. The back of the charm looks like the back of a dog. I also expect to be adding some handsome Pewter Dog Breed KeyRings for those who would like something less girly!

Scruffy Puppy can be found at www.ScruffyPuppy.com

I’m proud to announce the redesign and launch of our new Schnauzer Gear website. Although the site has been up for about six months or so, I was not happy with the previous shopping carts that were in place. Finding the right solution has been surprisingly difficult, but I think the current format is a keeper. I invite you to take a look, especially if you are a fan of the Schnauzer breed.

As a new contributor, my travel piece has been published in the Winter 2005 article of 951 Magazine. This is my second piece for this magazine and it was truly a pleasure to work on, as the subject is one of my favorite topics: Weekend escapes in Southern California. The most challenging part of this assignment was the size constraints. Imagine trying to squeeze six gorgeous properties into 2000 words or less. Excruciating!

I grudgingly narrowed the focus of my writing down to three types of getaways: Beach, Mountains, and Desert (Coronado, Catalina, Palm Springs, Julian, Idyllwild and Pechanga). Could I have written about the Temecula Wine Country and Riverside’s Mission Inn? Oh, you betcha. And I would have loved to written about those destinations. But, c’mon people, you can only say so much in three pages! And if I had attempted to include them, there would not have been room to do justice to any of them.

Three pages of my photographs and reporting were featured in the fall issue of 951 Magazine Southwest edition. This article featured twenty “Faces of the Southwest” representing a cross section of interesting people living in the Temecula Valley.

For this piece, I interviewed and photographed 35 people, which was eventually whittled down to only 20. I was pleased with the overall look of the article, but I felt bad for those 15 people who took the time to meet with me and ended up on the cutting room floor. I want to assure you that the editing was out of my hands. I wish all 35 profiles could have been included!

I will be a regular contributor to the magazine, so watch for more of my work in upcoming issues.