TMAX Publishing

Building a Web Store on a Shoestring Budget in less than Four Hours

2005-10-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

By Nowshade Kabir, Rusbiz.com

Starting a business online is no longer as difficult as it used
to be! Now, there are plenty of interesting business ideas that
anybody can pick up from various Internet resources. Startup
related cost, which used to deter many in taking action, has
become negligible. Many people already started to notice this!
According to a recent report GoDaddy has gained 294,368 new sites
in just the first 5 months of 2005 while the top four domain
registrars combined, including GoDaddy, have gained more than
half a million. Mind it! This is not the quantity of domains
registered, this is the quantity of websites hosting with them!
This recent explosive growth means one thing. Online business is
on the rise!

So, if you have one or several products to sell to a large
geographical area and you would like to start an online business
fairly quick but you don't have much money to spend on it, there
are still ways to do so.

Using the integrated features of many portals you can start your
dream e-commerce site on a shoe-string budget within several
hours. I am going to show you how to do this on Rusbiz.com.

Sign up

Preparation needed:
Write an informative, precise but easy-to-read profile of your
company in less than 600 words. If your company's name is less
than 12-letter long you are fine. If not, choose a nice name,
preferably, by shortening the company name. This you will require
for login name. Create a logo for your company. You can do it
later if you don't have a logo as yet.

Steps: Register your company by filling up the membership form.
Choose a membership other than basic. You need an option with the
ability to build a web store. Copy and paste your prepared
profile. Once you submit the form you will be taken to a page
called My Business.
Time required: Maximum one hour including preparation.

Add products to the e-catalog

This step will help you create electronic catalog of your
products that you will use on your website as well.

Preparation: Take digital pictures of your products. Each
picture should not be more than 100 KB. Make thumbnail versions
of your pictures. Thumbnails should be less than 10 KB. Both
pictures and thumbnails should be of JPG or GIF formats.
If your product requires special instructions, schemas, etc.,
make an electronic copy of them as well. This should be of doc,
txt, or PDF format and less than 50 KB in size.

Steps: Now from your My Business page click on the "Add Product"
button. You will be prompted to "Add Product" page. Next step is
to select the correct subcategory, where your product should be
listed. First, choose the main category and than keep on
selecting the right subcategory until you end up on the final
subcategory. This E-catalog is based on USPSC, electronic
classification standard, which offers a ten-digit, five-level
logical hierarchy for organizing products and services. Once you
successfully selected the fifth level subcategory you will be
prompted to a detail form. Add all the necessary information
about your product. Insert the pictures in the designated places.
Once you finished, submit the form. Continue doing the same for
all the products. You have just created your first electronic
catalog!

If you face difficulties, as a premium member you don't have to
go through the steps outlined above, you can just send all the
required information to Rusbiz customer service and they will
take care of your e-catalog.

Time required: half an hour including preparation.

Build your web store

You will be surprised to know that part of your web store is
already created from the information that you have inserted so
far! From My Business page click on Manage web store in order to
check and edit what you already have so far and what else do you
have to do. Your web store has 9 more pages apart from the
product pages. The pages are Home, Contact, Company events,
Services, Employee information, Company News, Surveys, and FAQ.
Preparation: You can gather information for some of the vital
pages to give your site a professional look and feel. As the
pages are template based, you can edit and insert needed
information, whenever you like.

Steps: From Manage Web Store the first thing you should do is
configure your web store. This means, you have to select currency
of your choice, payment and delivery methods. Next you should
choose which of the products you would like to display on your
home page. I'll also suggest you to fill up some of the above
mentioned pages, i.e. employee bios, etc. This gives your web
store a human touch.

Voila! Your e-commerce website is ready to go!

Time required: Maximum two hours including preparation.

Here are the advantages of having a web store like this one:

You don't need to know HTML
Navigation and editing of your website is easy and simple
You receive instant access to Rusbiz community of thousands
of prospective customers
Shopping cart is an integrated part of the package
Membership allows you to sell products through Rusbiz
e-marketplace
As a member you are also allowed to use Rusbiz business process
management system
You will get access to other useful features of Rusbiz system
Your website will be indexed by major search engines within a
matter of days

The best thing about this method is you can start with 3 months
Simple Membership for just US$ 65! If you need to use a domain
name, you can readdress it to your Rusbiz web store. After a
while, if you feel that you require a full-fledged e-business
website, professional developers from Rusbiz can take care of
this as well. As more and more people are getting involved in
online business, if you don't start now, you might miss the boat!
So, take action!

About the author

Nowshade Kabir, is the founder, primary developer and present
CEO of Rusbiz.com – a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to
create e-catalog, Web store, business process management and
other features to run a business online. You can read various
articles written by Nowshade Kabir at:
http://ezine.rusbiz.com

Basic Rules For Effective Email Marketing

2005-10-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

Copyright 2005 Ronald Gibson

If you want an email campaign to succeed, you don`t want to
offend anyone when sending your messages. Turn off a
consumer with your email and you can be sure they`ll tune
out your message. Don`t let that happen to you

A message that earns respect has a better chance to make
sales. That`s why our topic for discussion is email
etiquette.

Train yourself to always -- and I mean always -- stick to
the rules below when crafting your email messages.

RULE #1 - ALWAYS WRAP YOUR LINES AT 65 CHARACTERS OR LESS

Whenever you write an email, always format the lines so
that they`re 65 characters, or less, across. To do this,
you may need to do a "hard return" by hitting "Enter" at
the end of the line.

Wondering why you should limit your lines to just 65
characters? Good question! There are two reasons why "less
is more":

The first thing to remember is that looking at a computer
screen for a long time causes "eye fatigue" for many
readers. The shorter span of characters across the screen
makes reading easier and more appealing to the recipient of
your email message.

The other reason to go short instead of long is this: some
email clients automatically enforce line-wrapping at 60-65
characters on received messages. If your email is wrapped
at 70, the content will arrive all "chopped up." This makes
it unattractive...and worse -- unappealing.

How do you get your lines to wrap at 65 characters? Some
email clients, such as Outlook Express, allow you to set
the line-wrap to any character-width that you choose. That
means you won`t have to hit Enter each time after typing 65
characters. Makes life easier. You can also type 65
asterisks or dashes in a Notepad file to create a template.
Then paste your email below it to see if any lines extend
too far to the right.

RULE # 2 - BE CAREFUL USING ALL CAPS
How many times have you changed the TV channel to avoid
listening to a screaming car salesperson? No one likes
ascreaming salesperson...and no one likes a "screaming"
email message, either. Odds are, when someone has
over-amped the volume of their message by using too many
capital letters(not to mention too many exclamation points
and other punctuation) - you`re going to be turned off.

On the Internet, email messages written in all caps are
considered yelling. It`s okay to write some sentences and
some words in all caps, but don`t go overboard. (As you
can see in this message, I`ve tried to use capital letters
to help break up sections of the content from time to time).

Remember that consumers buy from a source they trust.
Emails in all caps are perceived as "shady" or uneducated,
and have an appearance that damages the credibility of an
offer.

RULE #3 - WATCH YOUR Ps & Qs (Spelling and Grammar)
Would you be influenced by an email selling you something
that had noticeable spelling and grammar mistakes? Sure
you would...and the influence would be negative, not
positive! When a consumer reads a sales message that`s
filled with errors, they think to themselves, "Good grief,
this person doesn`t even take the time to get his emails
right. His product is probably the same quality as his
emails."

When you`re in business, your image is your reputation and
your reputation is the reason people buy from you or the
guy down the block. It`s essential that you create an
image of integrity, credibility, and honesty in the mind of
your prospects. Sending emails filled with errors doesn`t
hurt your professional image...it destroys it.

Follow these basic email marketing rules and you will
dramatically improve your chances of being a successful
email marketer.

About the Author:
Ronald Gibson is a Web Designer and Web Marketer. He is
the Webmaster of AffiliateUtopia.com, which offers
information about some of the best money making
opportunities on the Web. For more information, visit:

http://www.affiliateutopia.com/

A new Blog for TMAX Publishing

2005-10-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Hello there people. Here at this new blog you will be able to find lots of business information on running a business online and in the old traditional way, offline. I use to run a website but it was really time consuming doing all the pages and updating all the pages by hand. So I closed it down to try a new way. With a blog I can update at the speed of the net. WOW! Now that's fast.

Now here's what I want to do. I want to make money online. Lots of us do. But how do we go about doing it? We go out and learn from people who have done it. I've research alot off online marketeres and I will be posting here some great links, articles, programs and products everyone can use. I want to help as many people as I can to become financially independent right along with me. Why work for someone else when you can do it for yourself. Right?

Bookmark this site now and come back to it often. It will be ever changing and ever expanding, always filling with new info. Hopefully together we can get ahead and some cash on the side.

Good luck to everyone.