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When my wife and I got into the WWW. E-commerce world, we had visions of easy money and an auto pilot type of business. You know the kind that runs itself and the money just rolls in. Oh yeah, low start-up cost, little time, and low commitment. Just read the commercials and Internet ads.

The Internet can be your friend or it can bite you like a scared dog. Try researching, starting an Internet business. You will find every easy money method in the world. Here is a list of things to consider and these things are just the surface. This is not meant to scare you but to inform you of the reality, before you fall into the money pit. Just remember you have to give before you receive and sometimes we learn from the pain.

Websites necessities or basics:

Host/Server ' to store all your files and images. E-mail and other perks. $8 to $12 month

Purchase your domain ' www.mysite.com $8 to $???

Merchant/Credit Card service 'Credit Card processing. This is a low price. $25Month, $15 service charge, and 30 cents per transaction and 2.5% of sales. (OUCH!)

Paypal ' You can use Paypal for your payment option. It's free. I don't use it. Nothing is free.

Rent a ready-made store - Now you can go with a company who will host your site and provide a storefront for you. They will even give you products to sell. These are usually database type and provide no SEO. In other words, the only people who purchase from your site are your friends and family. No one can find your site in the Internet desert. You're on page 200 (if lucky). They run from $40 to $200 month.

Find a wholesaler? No problem, everyone is a wholesaler. What do you want to sell? Leather, Home D'cor, Knives and Swords, Collectibles or maybe Kitchen cookware?

Where are the real wholesalers? The ones they buy from. There are many scams and scam tools for sale out there. Now try ordering from them. Late? Back Ordered? Packing? Drop ship costs? Shipping & Handling Costs? Drop ship or Inventory? Taxes???

Build your site - There are many templates out there that look good but if you don't know how to program HTML forget it. You will probably buy a book or software that shows us dummies that we can create HTML websites without having to know HTML. On the outside it looks good, but on the inside they stink. How are you going to find the time and keep up with the latest in this "part time business"? Search Engine robots don't like bad programming among other things.

Gather Information - Now that you have a wholesaler, download all the prices and images. Create your spreadsheets to upload all the product information (change them to CSV or some delimited format. Or you may have to do this one at a time' Ahhh!

Fix the images - Adjust the resolution, size, etc. to fit your WebPages. Get the right software to do this'It will save you days of work and cost. I hope you get this done before the prices change or the item is discontinued. Remember that if you have more than one wholesaler, you have more than one tax and drop ship charge. You also have different information and images. They could be in other formats.

My wife and I thought an Internet Shopping Mall would be so cool. We could have different stores, oh boy'That's where the name MallAboutTown.com came from. Oh yeah. Now you have to have a logo and a theme and all the right colors and, and, and.

It's kinda like building a house.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - You should have been thinking about this from the start. Buy links, buy PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, buy search engine submissions, buy content, submit articles and link to directories and other Websites, read, read, read and determine who is telling the truth.

After all the smoke clears, you will be in the hole a few bucks. When that first sale comes in you will feel like that golfer getting a hole in one. Then you're back at it, harder than ever. It's an addiction. I guess it could be described as the spouse that won't leave an abused relationship. Like any business, Internet business is not for the short-term commitment. There is so much I had to leave out because many things depend on what direction you take on this journey. Good Luck, remember if it's too good to be true'..

Our advice is to personally talk to someone that is successfully operating E-commerce site, (not on E-bay) and get the facts. This is what made E-bay so popular. But even E-bay can be tough.

Good Luck,

Marc and Kemella Allyn