Help with Web Design

full-time-mum

I would like to make my own web page to eventually flog some stuff as Ebay is proving to be too expensive in this instance.

I was a programmer in a former life so I feel that it is something that I should be able to do - in fact I would enjoy the challenge!

Any advice would be really appreciated, bearing in mind that when I stopped working, Windows95 was still at beta test stage, www didn't exists.....

Apparently, I have access to a web page via Tiscalli but there is so much I need to find out about; HTML, actually producing the page, getting it to appear in searches etc......

saver_sam

Try this as a starter. http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/ you just need notepad and to save pages as html or htm. or if you have word, you can type as normal as save as a web page, it does all the tags for you. then upload, hey presto done.

irnbru_2

full-time-mum wrote:

I would like to make my own web page to eventually flog some stuff as Ebay is proving to be too expensive in this instance.

Your going to have to have some sort of payment provider who'll take a comission from a sale.

full-time-mum

irnbru wrote:

Your going to have to have some sort of payment provider who'll take a comission from a sale.

Thanks, I hadn't actually got as far as this, I'm assuming that you are talking about something like paypal?

We weren't actually planning to be quite that sophisticated. Just a list of available items and an email us if you are interested.

Obviously, if I want to run a 'proper' business I will have to go down that route but then I assume that I will have a 'proper' product and a 'proper' profit margin etc.

nickmack

Good luck with this. You should certainly enjoy learning HTML from the links provided.

I'm not sure how successful it will be though, as eBay has exposure to thousands of buyers. Your webpage will be lucky to be found if it's just to sell the odd few bits.

Browntoa

you can use NVU which free web design software

www.NVU.com

some free templates here

http://www.oswd.org/

and if you already use Paypal to take paments on ebay then

PayPal's Custom Payment Pages: An Overview

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-standard-overview-outside

full-time-mum

nickmack wrote:

Good luck with this. You should certainly enjoy learning HTML from the links provided.

I'm not sure how successful it will be though, as eBay has exposure to thousands of buyers. Your webpage will be lucky to be found if it's just to sell the odd few bits.

We just thought we'd give it a go and see what happened. We aren't talking about car boot junk but a collectors product so we (OH) should be able to find some relevant forums to post into.
I think that there are probably some specific leads generated from products that OH has already sold on ebay.

The problem with ebay is that OH has approx 1000 items which sell at around £1-£3. When there have been free listing days and everything is uploaded 10% sells. However, when having to pay a listing fee, the fees come to more than the profit. Unfortunately, Ebay seem to have stopped the free listing days. We are still selling more unusual/higher value items successfully.

I suppose this is more of an experiment/learning thing, just to see where it might lead.

Skyhigh

HTML is not a programming language.
Its a Mark-Up language.

Aaaanyhow, yes you can use free webspace, such as that from Tiscali or even a free provider such as geocities to host a site.
Although geocities/freespace/yahoo will shove ads on your page, often screwing up the page format.


If you want to implement it yourself, use notepad and Google for a few HTML tutorials, its not too hard to learn
Alternatively you can use an online version, such as Google pages, which makes it alot easier, or even something such as Frontpage (bleh!) or Dreamweaver to create a simple page to list your items.

The additional benefit of Dreamweaver is that it shows you the code as you generate the page in a WYSIWYG style, which can help with learning HTML - as you can see what tags to what


:!:

martindow

Dreamweaver is nice but you can use the free Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/ and get it to produce quite nicely coded html (file-new-html document). This is far better than the awful code Word produces.

If you want to get your site found and listed by search engines I would suggest that you get your own domain rather than using free space provided by your ISP.

thewizard

Depending on how much you sell and how automated you want it you will also need to learnn a language such as CGI or PHP to automate sales although it is harder to get free hosting for this, I know an ad free one although you are limited to 5 MBs of Bandwidth per day! If your site is recieving alot of traffic and you are selling alot the 5MBs will be eaten up very quickly and your website could be offline for a couple of hours each day!!! Try using a host such as 1 & 1. Or if you want to learn ASP to automate your sales you could use office live which offers free hosting and a free domain name I think. I cant remember the link but if you cearch for it on google it should come up. Although you have to be accepted by Microsoft as this is stilol in a beta stage although the free package will still include a free domain name I think but I cant remember what else you get. But BEWARE you have to enter your credit card details although this is only for verification and you will not be charged.

The site for the free PHP hosting is www.noads.biz and you get a free yourname.noads.biz subdomain
Their sister site www.orgfree.com offers higher specification but you have some ads put onto your site.

John_M_Business

The trouble you will have - and I have sold enough on ebay during the last few months to realise - is the greatest asset that eBay has is ... the people using eBay. You get customers 'for free'.

Sure you pay them a cut, but it's more than worth it for the reduction in headaches and the knowledge that if something is attractive, it will sell.

If you really think that you will get customers anyway (either you have a list of customers who will always re-use your service, or you're confident that you will know how to market your items) then I suggest paying £500-1000 and getting someone to do it for you.

No one parts with cash for on a 'homebrew' website... or, if they do... you have to wonder!