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E-commerce Website Problem

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loopers
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 12:52 pm    Post subject: E-commerce Website Problem Reply with quote

I wanted an e-commerce website. I plan to sell games that can be downloaded online. Let us say I got the whole website written in HTML and Javascript and I put it in geocities.com, I still face two big problems.

1. When the consumer or visitors to my website wanted to buy the products from my website using credit cards, how can they do so? Do I need to apply for a special software from the bank or something like that?

2. If I only upload my website on geocities.com, how can I make sure that it appears in the yahoo.com and google.com search engine when sombody search for the word "games"? Sometimes I wander how can some website maintain their number 1 position in those 2 popular search engine

My idea of doing this website so that I can make some money to finance my own studies in IT. I wish I can get through this problem by creatig a good website all by myself. This is because my family is really struggling financially.

Thanks for anybody who can answer my 2 questions.
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ShaolinTiger
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 1:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok let's take this point by point.

1) Don't use geocities. Half decent hosting is very cheap now, .co.uk domain registration is about £6 for 2 years loopsgames.co.uk? and hosting is £20-40 per year.

2) You won't be able to do it very well in just HTML/JScript you need ASP/PHP/JSP really.

3) There are plenty of 3rd party sites that will process your transactions for you and provide you the code to use their shopping cart system on your site. They take care of the security/credit card checking etc and just pay the money to one of your cards or your account (fee per transaction I believe).

4) Search engine optimisation is a huge job, it's complicated, it's a lot of work and it takes a very long time. Being on geocities you won't get good ranking, what you really need to do is pick something individual you are never going to get a good ranking on 'games' pick 3 keywords that are individual to the games you are selling and target those. Sites maintain top places through 1) paying 2) a lot of hard work (like ourselves).

If you want to make money you have to spend money, if you are going to do something do it properly.

Don't do it half way.
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Giro
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 1:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SEO is easy really if you know how the hard boring part is getting reciprocal links Rolling Eyes Webpostion gold is a good tool to use for SEO. Do agree on the point about games as a keyword very competitive!!

From google using keyword games - Results 1 - 10 of about 68,900,000. Search took 0.09 seconds.

Top site was gamesdomain.com which has 5,010 sites linking to it. And has 78,100 pages. Near impossible to beat.
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browolf
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 2:13 pm    Post subject: Re: E-commerce Website Problem Reply with quote

loopers wrote:
I wanted an e-commerce website. I plan to sell games that can be downloaded online. Let us say I got the whole website written in HTML and Javascript and I put it in geocities.com, I still face two big problems.

1. When the consumer or visitors to my website wanted to buy the products from my website using credit cards, how can they do so? Do I need to apply for a special software from the bank or something like that?

2. If I only upload my website on geocities.com, how can I make sure that it appears in the yahoo.com and google.com search engine when sombody search for the word "games"? Sometimes I wander how can some website maintain their number 1 position in those 2 popular search engine

My idea of doing this website so that I can make some money to finance my own studies in IT. I wish I can get through this problem by creatig a good website all by myself. This is because my family is really struggling financially.

Thanks for anybody who can answer my 2 questions.


It's highly unlikely you'll ever rank highly enough on search engines
for it to be useful. This is no fault of your own but is as Ol Man says.

You have to find other ways of getting traffic.
For instance getting listed in directories and download sites such as tucows. targeted banners (www.ukbanners.com)

Consider Viral marketing, for you this is an email with a small interesting mini-game/amusement in flash/shockwave with links to your site. This is emailed out. the viral marketing comes in cos the thing is so cool ppl send it all to their friends.

Setting up credit card enabled ecommerce is no small venture and not for the faint hearted so i believe.
Consider making time locked or restricted in some way software which can be unlocked with a code. People could purchase
a serial number via some alternative electronic means such as Paypal (www.paypal.com) or
http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Financial_Services/Banking_Services/Electronic_Cash/?tc=1/

As shaolin says geocities isnt going to work, you need hosting.
You could probably get away with minimal server side programming a reason i can think is to get info on people who download the game demo. You can have an opt-in/out mailing list where u can keep ppl informed of updates and suchlike.

hth
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ShaolinTiger
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ol Man wrote:
SEO is easy really if you know how the hard boring part is getting reciprocal links Rolling Eyes Webpostion gold is a good tool to use for SEO. Do agree on the point about games as a keyword very competitive!!

From google using keyword games - Results 1 - 10 of about 68,900,000. Search took 0.09 seconds.

Top site was gamesdomain.com which has 5,010 sites linking to it. And has 78,100 pages. Near impossible to beat.


Hehe you can tell me it's easy when you've got a site with common keywords (e.g "security forums" to number 1 on most engines, including Google)...it aint easy and it aint fun.

And we didn't bother getting the links yet...people have just linked to us so far.

When we start the links section we'll be working on anchor text and shiznit.

Games is a silly keyword to chose, you'll never get it.

As for what browolf says, you can rank high in the engines if you know what you are doing and you're prepared to put the footwork in and spend a hell of a lot of time reading about the changes in SE algorithms and SEO trends.

Getting listed anywhere you can is good, the higher the PR of the site you get listed on the higher your PR is.

Viral marketing is good aswell, works for itself.

Setting up credit card enabled e-commerce is actually very easy now as there are hundreds of companies that take all the hassle out of it for you.

http://www.securetrading.com/gettingstarted.htm

http://www.secpay.com/

http://www.actinic.co.uk/services/occs.htm

http://www.domicilium.com/payments.htm

It's not a big deal any more.

There are also lots of pre-built shopping cart solutions that deal with all of that if you are willing to set up a SSL enabled site, but then that's all hassle again.
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browolf
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ShaolinTiger wrote:

Setting up credit card enabled e-commerce is actually very easy now as there are hundreds of companies that take all the hassle out of it for you.

http://www.securetrading.com/gettingstarted.htm

http://www.secpay.com/

http://www.actinic.co.uk/services/occs.htm

http://www.domicilium.com/payments.htm

It's not a big deal any more.


i was wondering if that had happened now(these days). I'm guessing tho it may not be worth it with small amounts of commerce. Maybe something to plan for when you've got the steady traffic and a reasonable buy %.
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ShaolinTiger
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd say it's the other way round, it's worth using these sites when you only have a small amount of traffic as you don't pay anything unless you sell stuff and they deal with all the security and the monetary transactions.

It's worth setting up your own system when you have a steady flow of income as then you can benefit from running your own SSL enabled e-comm system.

I know a lot of tiny almost hobby sites that use these 3rd party shopping carts, it gives more customer confidence aswell.
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delete852
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK i used to market a couple of websites for this ISP, first I would recommend you to do the following, find articles on meta tags, and alt, tags and stuff like that, when a search engine, looks at your page they look for keywords, in keyword space, in descritpion, title, and the body. Some companies use gateway pages, where you optimize a page for a number of keywords, and then at the end of the page, there is a code, to transfer the user to a different site. There is this really good mailing list, that I used to learn A LOT of things. I really forgot what it was, but I still have e-mails on my computer. I will post the url to the mailing list a little later. It starts with info on picking keywords, and ends with submitting your fully optimized website to search engines. It is a big job, and requires a lot of time. it is pretty boring too, try to submit to big directories, what you have to realize, is that a lot of search engines, take their results from a number of places. For example a lot of search engines look in opendirectory project, and if you have a high rating on a couple of good search engines you willl have a good rating on others. Yahoo.com is a very good search engine but it now costs like $200 to submit your site to them. Ask me if you have any questions, I ll try to help you out.
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browolf
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 5:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ShaolinTiger wrote:
I'd say it's the other way round, it's worth using these sites when you only have a small amount of traffic as you don't pay anything unless you sell stuff and they deal with all the security and the monetary transactions.

It's worth setting up your own system when you have a steady flow of income as then you can benefit from running your own SSL enabled e-comm system.

I know a lot of tiny almost hobby sites that use these 3rd party shopping carts, it gives more customer confidence aswell.


wow that does sound good. I live and learn. Smile
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Giro
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 1:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shaolin its good that people linked to you with out you having to mail 200 sites, Must mean something(Why Google uses reciprocal links as voting points) But SEO isnt to hard, Tools like Webpostion make it easy.

delete852 you are right keywords are the most important thing, You should sit down and think of all the search terms that people would use to find the subject on which your site is based on first. Keywords in the domain name are also important, So are keywords in the text/links of the pages that link to you. And im quite sure that Yahoo directory does accept non-profit sites for free and profit for 200?

(And Dmoz they are the most important to be in!! But one thing is your site needs to be finished with no dead/blank/under construction pages or broken links and you should submit to the most suited subject ).
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delete852
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 3:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Listen man, i am sorry that I am a little late, but I totaly forgot about this. Here is that course. Send a blank e-mail there

1stSearchRanking.1000.1813@optinpro.com

It will send you letters, maybe a letter a day, about how you should do it. It is really good. pm me if u need more info.
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flw
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 6:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For U.S. people wanting to sell via web a good way to start small is to use a service called "PayPal" for credit card purchases. They take your customers credit card info at thier site (SSL) and returns them back to yours when transaction is complete. The do get a cut off the top though, but they have to make money too.
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delete852
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yea, you can also send money to other e-mails, and these guys don't even have to have a pay pal account. Later they can make it, and recieve the money.
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