Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
|
|
|
|
Domains and Web hosts Last issue we started getting into the e-commerce market. We decided what we are going to sell, how much (roughly) we plan to spend on the project in both time and money, and an exit strategy to bail out if things don't go the way we plan. My e-commerce business is going to be fairly simple: I'll sell preconfigured servers, capitalizing on my knowledge of servers and software, hopefully trying to find businesses that don't want to go to the hassle of doing this all themselves. By offering all operating systems from free Linux to commercial products like SCO UnixWare 7 and Windows NT I can cover all the bases of cost, features, and customer requirements. If they want a bare-bones low-cost Web server, Linux and Apache on a no-name Pentium. If they want Windows NT running IIS on a multiprocessor Compaq server, we can do that. You may have noticed I haven't come up with a long list of things I'm going to sell. I won't sell hardware other than my server. OK, if a client insists, I'll preconfigure and test a printer, modem or multiport board, but that's value-added stuff for the client, not a revenue generator for me. I can't compete with the discount chains selling printers and modems. What they can't offer is the specialized knowledge I have, and that's what I sell. You should approach this the same way, too. If you want to offer customers a product over the Web, you had better have some angle to make it tempting because the average customer already knows they can get the hardware at the local computer megastore for about the same you will charge. You'll also note I kept the offerings really simple to start with: there are only a few variations of a basic product I'll sell. That's for a number of reasons, the most important being that an on-line store packed with hundreds of items means many more problems than on selling a single product. Grow later, start small. Let's assume you've figured out what you're going to sell. Maybe you have some hardware you want to specialize in, or maybe you've got some custom software you want to market. Remember not to expect the world to beat path to your door. Unless you have millions of dollars to invest setting up nationwide advertising campaigns you will have only a trickle of customers to start. Rely on word-of-mouth for the most part, and you'll see the customer base slowly increase. Since our e-commerce site isn't being depended on to keep us fed each month, this approach is wise, careful, and most likely to succeed. Should it fail (and they do sometimes fail) we've limited our losses and learned a lot. Before we set up our Web server to offer our product to the world, we need to take care of one other task: registering the domain name we will use. There is some debate as to whether you should do this before you decide how you will connect to the Internet. Some argue that many ISPs will register your domain for you as part of the package they offer. This is true, but I've known a couple of businesses have their wonderful name swiped from them by an unscrupulous ISP (and in one case, sold back later for many more dollars than it would have cost to register in the first place). Registering your domain is a simple task. Come up with a name or three and visit the Network Solutions home page at http://www.networksolutions.com. At this site you can type in any number of domain names and see if they are available. Obviously, you want one that is. Try lots of names until you find one you like that is not registered already. When you come up with your domain name, don't bother with a .ca extension for your site at the beginning. To have any real respect you must have a .com domain, and that's what you should try and register. You can always get the .ca later, if it is available (but it doesn't hurt to check now, of course). So you find a name that is available. My e-commerce site sells servers preconfigured, and I came up with the brilliant name "Servers To Go". A quick check at the Network Solutions web site shows that serverstogo.com is available, so I register for it. The cost of having your own domain name is reasonable, running $50 US a year. Network Solutions will invoice you after your domain name is registered. If you really are serious about your e-commerce site, you might want to register the variations on your name now, such as .net and .org. On the other hand, I figure why waste another $100 US a year. When I make my first million, I'll worry about it. If you are going to be doing business on the Web, you also may want to consider registering your company name the normal way. This will prevent any conflict about the company name in the future, but does cost much more. The most common alternative is simply to do business as the new name under your existing company or as an individual. Legal protection for the name isn't as solid as registering the name properly, but in many cases it's not an issue. Fine, we've got our domain name registered. Now we have to look at other issues, like the equipment we need to run our fledgling e-commerce company and how we connect to the Internet. Next time. . |
|
Send mail to
tparker@tpci.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|