Gator Happenings Hi Mohamed, The shopping holiday season is officially here, and while many of you are busy shopping online, we know that some of you are prepping to sell online. Even if you don't have an e-commerce site up and ready yet, it's easy to get started now and be ready for the new year and future holiday seasons. So, let's make a checklist of what it takes to sell online. 1. Products What you sell online doesn't have to be anything physical. Shopping carts can be configured to sell digital goods such as pictures, music, software, etc. If you don't have any inventory of anything physical to sell online, you may want to look into dropshipped products, where people browse inventory from you and place an order that goes to a wholesaler who then delivers the product directly the customer without any further involvement from you. 2. Shopping Cart Online shopping carts of the past were complicated and expensive. Thankfully, the rise of powerful open source shopping cart alternatives has made this problem a non-existent one. In the HostGator control panel inside of Fantastico, there a few free options that you can install with just a few clicks including Zen-Cart, CubeCart, and osCommerce. While it is a bit more resource intensive, Magento Commerce is a great option if you have your own dedicated server or VPS account. Last month's tip was for WordPress e-Commerce, a plugin that can make your WordPress blog a great shopping cart. 3. SSL and Dedicated IP An SSL certificate creates an 'https' version of your web site and is necessary for visitors to safely submit credit cards over the Internet. A dedicated IP address is needed for an SSL certificate to work. You can purchase an SSL through HostGator for $50 per year and a dedicated IP for $2 per month or get both free by upgrading to the Business plan from either the Hatchling or Baby plans. 4. Merchant Account and Payment Gateway Most online stores that are just starting out will use a service like PayPal to accept payments. As these sites grow in popularity, they will likely want to get their own Internet Merchant Account and Payment Gateway. At HostGator, we use Authorize.net as our gateway and a merchant account through our bank to process credit card payments. Although most of the shopping carts we mentioned support a wide variety of payment gateways, it is usually a good idea to choose your shopping cart first, and then use whatever gateway is best supported with that particular software. You can find some of the merchants that we recommend on our merchant page. You’re obviously going to need some good traffic and a basic design for your store to convert traffic into sales, but with these four things in place, you should have a good foundation to hit the e-commerce floor running. We wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season! -- The Team at HostGator Rate Your Tickets and Save
If you have ever submitted a ticket to HostGator's ticket system, then you have almost certainly seen the line on the bottom of each email that asks you to rate the response you received. To encourage more ratings, we're going to be entering everyone who rates a ticket into a drawing for a $25 service credit. Rating a ticket takes less than a minute and can save you some money on your next hosting bill. Details can be found here. VOIP Service Know anyone that uses phone service or a toll-free number and would be interested in saving up to 75% on their next phone bill? Refer them to VOIPo and make money. Visit VOIPo Affiliates to join the VOIPo affiliate program and get your affiliate link today. When someone uses your link to order, you'll earn a commission. VOIPo offers home phone service (US Only), toll-free numbers, and fax-to-email service. It's the only VoIP service backed by HostGator and can help you eat up your phone bill and get unlimited calling starting at $8.25 per month. Use coupon code GATORNEWS when ordering VOIPo services for 3 months free (on yearly plans) or 1 month free (on monthly plans). Visit the VOIPO forum post to learn more about VOIPo services. | Connect with Us:
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Have a website with some sort of signup or commenting page or procedure? If you aren't already, consider using reCAPTCHA to help prevent any automated abuse of your site. reCAPTCHA not only helps to fight spam, but also digitizes books at the same time. Check it out today. Site of the Month:
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Save 20% on your next hosting plan or order with HostGator. Use the coupon code hgnews11. October 2009 Stats:
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