Innucopia Recommends: Our Favorite DIY Tools |
Websites
Email: Free Gmail Account
Payment Processing (Accept Credit Cards Online)
Incorporate your business
Illinois Taxes
Professional Logo Design
Email Newsletters
Press Releases
Affiliate Programs
Blog
Online Video
Online Community Building
Recommended Reading
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There are many tools out there that can help you get a professional website up and running in no time for a low cost. You don't have to spend thousands for a professional looking website these days. How to choose? Innucopia has already done the research for you and can recommend excellent tools, depending on the work you've already done and your knowledge of building websites. Contact Innucopia if you'd like a website where all you have to do is learn how to add new text once in a while, or if you want some custom web design. Top three DIY suggestions:
See some examples of Innucopia's work or Contact us.
Cost: For a website, you must 1) purchase your domain name which can be very inexpensive, 2) pay monthly hosting costs (can vary, but can be as low as $10-50), 3) pay any related fees for extras such as a shopping cart or SSL Certificates, and 4) pay development costs, can be low ($0-500) depending on your level of expertise.
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The first thing I normally recommend to a new client (after making sure their desired domain name is available on my domain and hosting site) is for them to get a Gmail account. It's free, you get more than enough space to hold all your message, forever, and it blocks spam well. Also, you get a lot of free tools that you can incorporate into your website, such as calendar and photo album. Read about some Google/Gmail tools in a pdf 'how to' I wrote for artists.
Cost: Gmail and it's associated suite of services are Free; you can purchase something like 10gb for extra server space (for a large number of photos you want to store in your web albums, for example) for something like $5/year.
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Accept Credit Cards Online |
Businesses that want to accept credit card orders online can set up a PayPal account for no setup or monthly fee (which is not common). The customers do not have to have a PayPal account, and the transactions are handled on PayPal's secure server for extra security. The merchant pays only low transaction fees when the service is actually used. Account setup takes a few days.
Cost: Around 2-3% processing fees plus $0.30 per-transaction fee).
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Incorporate your Business |
If you want to protect your personal assets, you may want to think about incorporating. SmallBiz.com offers a lot of information and a great service where you can do it all online.
Cost: Depends on type of incorporation and state.
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Are you selling products or paying employees in Illinois? Here is the Illinois business tax portal. If you're selling products you'll need to register to pay sales tax.
Cost: Varies
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I highly recommend Logoworks to get a great original logo. $20 off Professional Logo Design
Cost: $399 for the Gold Package which includes unlimited revisions.
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Start a newsletter for your web site or business today with iContact. Send personalized text or HTML messages, RSS feeds, and surveys from any computer, and automatically keep track of your subscriptions. Broadcast your message to all subscribers with one click. Learn more about our recommended email marketing software.
Cost: Monthly fee starting at 9.99 for 500 subscribers
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Press releases are an excellent way to get word out on the web about new products, company news, and other announcments. Innucopia recommends PRWeb for online press releases, where you can get press release advice and do the press release for low cost. Build Online News with PRWeb.
Cost: Varies, minimum $80 for a wide distribution.
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You can earn money from your website traffic by linking to other websites' products or paying other websites to link to yours.
Cost: Contains both free and pay options.
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Blogging is an important tool for websites to keep their website fresh and up to date, their content relevant, and to increase the number of sites linking to yours. Blogger.com provides a free and easy tool to set up a web log.
Cost: Free
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Online video is hot and growing. Google Video provides a great way to host and syndicate your content.
Cost: Free
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Online Community Building |
It's possible to build your own social network using Ning. Here's an online community for artists called the Studio that I created for HeartlandArts.Net, my website for local artists and art shows.
KickApps also provides a really cool tool for building online communities.
Cost: Free
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Additional Tools for Do-It-Yourself |
The more you know about all of the above, the bigger the benefits to you and your business. Innucopia recommends a number of books and software tools, and refers you to our News page, where you can find links to recent online news articles on the subjects.
Cost: Varies
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Questions? Contact Innucopia. |
