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It can be very confusing trying to figure out exactly what you need to do and buy in order to get going in ecommerce. There are a myriad of products out there that are quite different in prices, ranging from free to thousands of dollars and all of them claim to be the only way to really earn any money in ecommerce! While these products and information packages might be very useful, the reality is that you don’t have to buy a huge pile of things just to get started. That can come later, once you are established. So let’s take a look at just what you do need.

For any ecommerce venture, you will need a web presence. That generally means a website or possibly a blog where you can promote and sell your product. Ecommerce is all about selling, so you will need to design your website specifically for selling. That might mean hiring a good copywriter, especially if you aren’t a great writer yourself. This is no time to skimp on quality.

Obviously, in order to sell, you also need a product! The best products for ecommerce are information products like reports and e-books that can be easily and rapidly accessed online once the buyer has paid for them. You don’t even need to write or create your own product, you can get one that has resell rights and simply turn around and sell it to your own customers.

The disadvantage to selling someone else’s product in your ecommerce business is that you are not the only vendor, so if you are able to write your own e-book or develop your own product, you will have a leg up on the competition. If need be, you can hire a freelancer through a bidding site to do the work for you. This may cost a bit more, but you will end up with a higher quality product.

Once you have your product and your ecommerce website designed to sell that product, all you are missing is customers. You will need to build your traffic in order to sell your product. This can be done in a variety of ways, including free promotion such as article marketing and banner exchanges and paid methods like Adwords and the like. In general, the free methods work, but tend to bring in a trickle of visitors. If you have the budget, paid marketing is the only way to go! Take out a couple of Adwords ads and pay for a banner campaign or two and you will soon be swamped with visitors.

The last step in building your ecommerce business is to develop repeat sales. You will need to set up a mailing list, which is relatively easy. Sign up with an auto responder and have it collect people’s email addresses when they purchase your product. They will have to enter their email address in order to download the e-book or whatever it is that you are selling. Later, when you expand your product line, you can send them a notice letting them know that you have new products that they might be interested in.

These are the only things you really actually need in order to start in ecommerce. Anything else can be considered extra and a luxury. Ecommerce can be developed slowly as you have the time and money to do so.

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This bugged me for a few weeks before I found a solution. I was creating a file through FireFTP but Firefox crashed in the middle and the file was “half-created”. It exists on the Windows desktop as an empty file but it did not seem to fully exist on the hard drive. It just sits there on my desktop titled “i dont have 8gb free” teasing me because it knows I can’t get rid of it.

When I tried to delete it I got an error message:

Cannot delete file. Cannot read from the source file or disk.

So I know the file isn’t in use by any processes — the computer actually can’t find the file I’m referring to!

Here are things I tried and failed:

• Deleting through command line.
• Changing file permissions.
• Renaming the file (same error as above).
• Overwriting the file from different programs.
• Rebooting in safe mode and deleting from there.
• Booting into a Linux Live CD, loading up the NTFS drive reader to access the file.
• Clearing processes that may have been using the file.
• Running full spyware and virus scans.

I was at my wit’s end and about to install some shady third party application when I came across a solution on a newsgroup post:

The solution was simple, using the del command in a command prompt. I had tried this already of course but the trick was to not refer to the file by it’s full name, rather, refer to it by its 8-character “DOS name” also known as the 8dot3 file name. To find the 8dot3 file name, open command prompt and type:

dir /x

Note the 8 letter file name (most likely ending with ~1) and use the del command to get rid of it for good.

del idonth~1

I remember using 8dot3 names in DOS and older versions of Windows but it never occurred to me that this would make any difference when deleting files. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t have to reinstall Windows just to get rid of this one immutable file sitting on my desktop! Hopefully this will help some of you in the future.

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I don’t know about you - But I hate the Caps Lock key. I never use it and occasionally I mistake it for the shift key. I always wanted it to be something else or at least not be there. The Caps Lock key on your keyboard is frequently renowned as the most useless key. Even the One Laptop Per Child laptops have dismissed the caps lock key in favor of a more ergonomic Ctrl key! Well perhaps it is not as useless as Scroll Lock but it is taking up very valuable keyboard estate in its current position. Amongst all keys in close proximity to a touch typist’s hand placement, caps lock is by far the least used (if typing correctly).

Anything caps lock does can be done by the shift key and more efficiently - except when you’re writing something in all caps, which should be quite rarely. Case in point, I had a friend that refused to use the shift key for reasons unknown. If he had to capitalize a letter, he would press caps lock, type the letter and press caps lock again to turn it off. Some would argue caps lock is important for the disabled with poor motor-control but Window’s “sticky keys” is a much better solution for them anyway.

What can it be remapped to?

• Esc
  The escape key is a pretty useful key for certain applications (*cough* Vim) or for closing Windows and prompts. Since it normally requires removing the hand from its regular typing position, remapping it right beside your pinky seems pretty efficient! Also, the Ctrl-Shift-Esc combo is very handy and this makes it tons easier to press (don’t know what it does, try it out!).
• Backspace
  Just like the Esc key, backspace is fairly out of the way and hard to press yet is used very often. Makes a lot of sense to make it more accessible.
• Windows Key
  Personally, I have mine remapped to the Windows Key (yes another hated key) simply because neither my IBM Thinkpad nor my IBM Model M includes one. I use the Windows key mainly to show desktop (Win-D) or to open up a Windows Explorer window (Win-E).
• Ctrl
  Although the control key is very accessible, some people find it uncomfortable to press in its current position.
• Enter key or Space Bar or Anything Else
  What can be more fun than having Enter keys on both sides of the keyboard! Or if your thumb gets tired, you can start using your pinky to type spaces instead!

How to remap Caps Lock to another key
For Linux users (on an X environment like KDE, Gnome), it’s pretty easy to remap keys using the xmodmap command.

For Windows users, there are programs that will remap keys for you but if you’re not afraid to tinker with your registry, you can do this manually and it only requires adding one registry value:

1. Go to Start->Run and type in ‘regedit’ to open the registry editor.
2. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
Note: Keyboard Layout, not Keyboard Layouts!

1. Go to Edit->New->Binary Value and name it ‘Scancode Map’
2. Now double-click and edit the value to the following, replacing ## ## with the scan code of the key you wish to map caps lock to.

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 ## ## 3a 00 00 00 00 00

The scan code for Windows Key is 5B E0, Esc is 01 00, Ctrl is 1D 00. Full list of scan codes and a more detailed tutorial is here.

1. Reboot your computer and say goodbye to caps lock!

How often do you use the caps lock key? Got another candidate for the most useless key? Have you remapped caps lock to something else? Leave a comment!

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When you are first starting up your e-business, it can be difficult to decide which webhost to go with. While free looks appealing, it does have it’s setbacks and you might prefer to go with paid, but it is good to get all the options before making a major decision! For e-businesses with a very low budget, starting off on a free webhost can be the best choice, but you need to know what you are looking for.

Free webhosting for e-business has obvious appeal because you don’t have to pay, of course! However, while free hosting can be nice, you do usually get what you pay for. They aren’t just giving away space for nothing, the webhosts still need to earn money and most do that by placing ads on your website.

Having banner ads or a notice that says “Get Your Free Website Here” on your e-business site is not very professional, so you might want to look for other options in this case. There are free webhosts for e-business that allow for ad-free websites, but they are usually extremely limited in the way of space and bandwidth. As long as you stay small and don’t need to upload videos or major files, you can use these providers for your e-business.

Most e-businesses prefer to have their own domain name as it appears far more professional than a website hosted under a subdomain such as www.freehost.yourbusiness.com. If you decide to go with a free webhost, you need to make sure that you select one that allows for outside domain names. There are free hosts out there that allow for this and it really is your best option. If you are doing marketing and promotion for your e-business, you don’t want to lose all that traffic simply by moving to a new webhost later on. A domain name allows you to switch hosts without losing your traffic, you can simply redirect your domain.

Another thing to watch for when you are searching for a free webhost for your e-business site is upgradeable hosts. This means that if you like the webhost and everything is going well, when you need to expand, you can easily do so by simply starting to pay a low monthly fee. This gives you more space, bandwidth and other options for your e-business.

If you plan to monetize your e-business website with Adsense or another type of ad, you will probably be banned from doing this on any webhost that already runs Adsense themselves. An ad-free site is more likely to allow your ads to be placed, but make sure you check this out before signing up. It’s no fun having to redesign your entire e-business website just because you missed a “no ad posting” clause!

If you find a host that offers free webhosting without ads, with paid upgrades, allows for domain names and your own ads, plus the space that you need to get started, you have the perfect webhost for your e-business. It really does pay to shop around.

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E-books are completely and utterly addicting. Whether free or paid for, these information products are rapidly becoming the most popular way to glean information online. With instant downloads and online payment processing, it is extremely easy to buy e-books on nearly any topic you can dream of, and have it within moments to read right there on your computer. While very handy technology, it does create a bit of a chaos on your computer!

The trick is to start off organized, creating e-books folders as you go. If you already have a big mess on your hands, hang on and we will deal with that in a moment!

First of all, create a folder on your main drive called “E-books”. This is your basic area to store all your e-book downloads. Think of it as a library . . . by clicking on this folder, you walk through the front doors of your e-book library. But in a real life library, you have categorized areas, everything is divided up by topic and that is what you need to do on your computer as well.

There is no need to create any folders inside your main E-books area just yet. Once you start downloading, you will want to begin adding categories that are relevant to your downloads. This differs for each person, so there is no way to tell you exactly what folders you will need to create. However, for example, if you download e-books on ecommerce, you would create a folder for this, perhaps titled “E-biz”. If you tend to download dozens of ecommerce e-books, you will need to create more specific folders such as “Traffic Building”, “Web Design”, “Payment Options”, and “SEO Techniques”, just to give a few examples.

Most e-books come with strange, rather indecipherable file names like “rneagle0248.doc”. This is of no help at all to you when you are looking through your virtual library, so the first thing you need to do when you save an e-book to its place on your hard drive, is to change the name. The actual title of the book is usually best.

Now, for those of you who already have hundreds of downloaded e-books scattered around your hard drive, there is a solution. You need to go ahead with setting up an E-books file as well, if you don’t already have one. Now, set up several folders for the most common categories that you are aware of, you can always add more if you come across another category.

Since most of your e-books will be saved under their original names, you will probably have to open most of them in order to figure out which category to put them under. This can take a while, so set aside a Saturday afternoon or a series of evenings to take on this task. Rename each book and file it correctly as you go. Your main pile of e-books should steadily diminish this way until you finally have everything neatly organized.

It is best if you can start off keeping your e-books organized, but even if you do it later on, the main thing is to always save your files with new names to the right file folder. This will keep your virtual library in order and you will be able to find your e-books in moments.

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Dropshipping has become the new way to sell on Ebay and it is growing in popularity with e-stores set up by individuals as well. There is a downside, though. Some dropshippers are unscrupulous and you really need to be careful before you start randomly selling things from any old dropshipping company. There are a few ways to make sure that you are getting a good dropshipping company and those are outlined below.

The first thing you need to do is find a wholesale company that specializes in dropshipping. Not all dropshippers are wholesalers, in fact, many sell their good for higher than normal prices! Even if they say wholesale on their webpage, you will need to check this out yourself.

It is pretty easy to check prices, just pop over to Google and do a search on a few of the items that you are interested in selling. For example, if you want to sell iPods, you can look up the regular price at Buy.com or any other regular vendor and compare it to your so-called “wholesale” price on the dropshipping company’s site. This will give you a good idea within a minute or two of how the prices rate.

Once you have a dropshipping lead that actually does have good prices (these can be very hard to come by!), you will need to test their shipping times and product quality. This might sound like a lot of work, but it is worth it in the long run. You will avoid having customers complaining to you and having to refund money by assuring yourself of the quality ahead of time.

To check the shipping and product quality, you will need to set up an account with the dropshipping company and order a sample of the product you intend to sell. Don’t worry about having to pay for it, since you will be selling it on Ebay anyway and shipping the first one from your home! This way, you get your money back without any problems, and you get to see if the whole system works.

It is often a good idea to test two or three dropshipping companies at a time so you can choose one faster. Check their websites for backordering details as well, since this could affect you in the case of selling on Ebay. You will want to know basically how long items will be backordered and what their refund policy is in these cases. This is another good reason to have two or more dropshipping companies on the line, you can always go with one when the other is out of stock.

The only thing left to do now is to choose your dropshipping company and start selling! Take digital photos of the sample items that you received and use those instead of stock photos on Ebay and your website, since this tends to portray more confidence. Start with one or two auctions at first and see how things go. If there are no hitches and your clients receive the product they ordered through the dropshipping company, you can go ahead and blitz the place!

It is important to take the time to test and review the dropshipping companies that you intend to use, since you will be on the hook if they fail. Checking out your suppliers before you sell is a generally good business policy anyway, so get in the habit of it.

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There are companies such as Picky Domain Names that specialize in finding the perfect URL for your business, but there is no reason why you can’t do the same thing yourself, for free! All it takes is a good imagination and some time to brainstorm. If you have friends who can help, all the better.

Most of the regular domain names have been bought up and used now, so it is a real challenge to find ones that are unique, describe your business and are easy to remember. That’s why you need to get creative.

-First off, there are a few general ground rules to ensure that your visitors remember your domain names. This is obviously the most important part of choosing an URL, so keep the following in mind:

-Limit yourself to a maximum of three words. Longer phrases tend to be difficult to remember and also they take too long to type in. People want information fast and if they have to try and remember a twenty letter URL, they probably won’t bother.

-Use words that are easy to spell. If you use weirdly spelled words just to get the domain names you want, you will lose a lot of visitors. For example, if myspace.com is taken, don’t go for myspayce.com, you will just end up sending traffic to the other domain name.

-Think carefully before using anything apart from .com as an ending for your domain names. It is the most common and often people will forget if you use a more unusual ending such as .name or .tv.

Now that you have the basics in mind, it is time to brainstorm. Start by writing down all the words you can think of that relate to your business. For example, if you have a diaper service, you would end up with a list of keywords that include “diaper, diapers, baby, bottom, cloth, wet, dirty, clean, service” etc. Include any slang or nicknames as well, such as “nappy, stinky,” etc.

Once you have a good long list, start trying to put the words together in a form that would work as domain names. You should be able to come up with at least a dozen that fit the description of your business. For our diaper service example you might end up with nomorestink.com, dirtytoclean.com, nappybottom.com, etc.

Next, you need to go to a domain names registrar such as GoDaddy and check to see if your domain names are available. Start with the ones you like best and work your way down the list. Chances are you will find at least two or three that are available. These are then your choices for domain names!

This whole process works best if you have two or more people to bounce ideas off of. Domain names that are wacky and outrageous are sure to come up as you work your way through a brainstorming session with friends or coworkers! And at the end of it all, you should have a handful of domain names that you can go with.

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Article marketing basically consists of submitting your promo pieces to article directories and hoping that they will be approved. However, there is a better way of doing things than simply submitting and waiting with crossed fingers. The trick is to guarantee that article directories accept your work.

It takes time and effort in order to write an article, submit it by hand to the article directories (the recommended method), and if you get rejected, you have wasted all of that time. Simply completing the submission process can take a minute or two and if you are submitting to several article directories or are trying to send multiple submissions to one, that could easily add up to half an hour, time for you to write a whole other article!

The best way to guarantee that article directories accept your work is to be familiar with their guidelines. Each directory is different, but by following general rules, you can ensure that everyone will accept your article. The editors are not usually that picky, as long as you follow formatting guidelines and stick to non-offensive information, you have a pretty good chance of adding your work to the roster.

Formatting guidelines for article directories are pretty standard. If you write an article that is between 400-800 words, you will be fine for length. Article directories tend to like their articles formatted for the web, which means writing in the same manner as this article that you are reading right now, single spaced lines, with a double space between paragraphs. This is easy to read and easy to write, as well. Avoid using TABS or indentation and stay away from automated numbers and bulleted lists. While using number is encouraged for steps, just make sure that your word processor isn’t adding them and indenting them automatically.

Your paragraphs should be fairly short as well. Three to four sentences is usually good. This means there is plenty of white space on the page and gets your article noticed faster. While the editors might accept your article even with long paragraphs, webmasters and ezine editors will be more likely looking for something that is easy on the eyes.

Spellchecking is a must for any article that will see the light of day. There is no excuse for submitting misspelled words to article directories. They will not accept this. All basic grammar rules should be followed, as well. Capitalization at the beginning of sentences and all other such rules need to be applied or your article will probably be rejected. The idea is to look professional, even if that means getting someone else to critique your work.

Links are also a no-no in many article directories and it is best to simply avoid them. If you want to add a link, you can do so in your bio at the end of the article. Otherwise, you can mention company names (like Chapters), but not the site (chapters.com). This will boost your chances of getting accepted into article directories drastically.

By following the guidelines above and making sure to read the submission rules on all article directories that you submit to, you will be sure to have success.

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Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.

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Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

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