Here’s a tip for newbies who are starting an ecommerce site, go dynamic. There are basicly two kinds of sites static and dynamic. Static sites are sites that are based on HTML. Ediiting a static site usually takes more time. Dynamic sites are coded with a programming languages like PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion etc. Dynamic sites can be editted very easily. Take Webpuffs for example, it is PHP driven. If I want to edit the top portion of my website, also known as the header, all I have to do is edit the header.php file. This makes changes to the header on every page not just my home page. If I want to edit the navigation on the right, all I have to do is edit the sidebar.php file. And again, this change is seen on all the pages where my navigation is shown. If I wanted to edit my header on an HTML driven site, I would have to go to each individual page to make the change. It can be a pain if you have a lot of pages to edit.

Going dynamic is something I failed to do when I first started out. My site that makes the most money is a straight html site. I started it in 2004 when I had very little knowledge of even HTML. I wish I would have created a dynamic site with PHP. In the last year and a half, I’ve finally developed enough understanding of PHP be to create a basic PHP driven site from scratch. It seems like nearly every year the prices to our products change so I have to go to each individual page and change the prices. If I add new products to the site, I have first of all create the new page, and then add a link to the page in the navigation on every single page. It can be quite time consuming. My advice to you newbies is go dynamic even if it takes you longer to get going.  In the long run, it will save you time.  Besides, there is so much open source stuff out there like Zen Cart and osCommerce to make life even easier for you.

I started this blog with the newbie in mind. Sometimes I get away from my initial purpose of this blog and have to redirect myself a bit. So here’s a post for those of you who are just getting started.

There are many ways to make money online. In this article I’m going to list a few just to get some ideas flowing.

Selling Tangible Products

This way is the way I make most of my money. Selling tangible products online can be done in many ways. Either you are dropshipping your products or you buy your products wholesale, store them at some location, and send the products out as your customers order them. There are advantages and disadvantages of both.

Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising has recently caught my attention more as I see my Adsense revenue increase. I haven’t seen a huge increase, just enough to get my attention. With Adsense all you have to do is get an Adsense account at Google and then place these ads on high content sites. Blogs and Adsense usually come hand in hand. There are people out there who are making six figure incomes with Adsense. There are many contexual ad services out there besides Adsense, but Adsense is probably one of the most popular ones.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is also something that has caught my eye recently. I haven’t made a dime with it yet, but I’m looking into it. There are many ways to make money with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you advertise for other websites. It can be something as simple as a banner or text link ad to a whole datafeed full of another websites products that you display on your own site.

Services

There are many services that you can offer on the web. The possiblilites of the services you can provide are endless If you are starting a service that is website related such as web design or SEO a great way to get started is to find forums that allow you to post your services. I’ve watched people get hundreds of clients this way without even having a website. As there business grows they start websites.

When buying a domain name, there are a few things you need to consider before you buy your domain.  The first thing is to make sure your domain name isn’t too long.  My first domain name that I ever bought was as long as my business card.  People are generally too lazy to sit and type in long domain names.  I usaully try to keep my domain names two words or less.  I will go with three words in order to put keywords in my domain, but again keeping it as short as possible. 

When I purchase a domain, I have atleast one of two goals in mind.  Either the domain is meant to be an eye catcher domain or it is meant to have keywords in it to help in the SEO process.  If you can keep the SEO part in mind with the ”eye catcher” concept, then you will have the best of both worlds.   When I say “eye catcher”, I’m talking about a domain that can easily be remembered.  It is so unique that a person won’t forget it.  Like webpuffs.com for example, when I tell people about my blog the name sticks in their head because it is unique.  Other domains that I place keywords in usually aren’t as memorable, but they make SEO a bit easier.  Keep these few thought in mind as you buy a domain name, and you will be golden.