complete novice needs advice

[emmacarrie]

Hey everyone my name is emma im 21 from scotland not that u needed to know all that but hey lol just looking for advice on e-commerce, well i think its e-commerce that we are entering into. our website is called chuckemz and on it we have affiliate marketing (my partner says thats how we will make most our money at beginning, i dont know much about it im more of an ideas person he does the actualy work on the website as i dont know the languages for editing the website) and we are planning on making it a gumtree type business with possibility of going into online dating, profiles, email and offering any other services we can think of but all that will only happen once we have enough money to pay people to help us. Ok basically I want to get our website up and running and off the ground but my business partner darren isnt able to do much just now as his work load in his other job has trippled as of late so any advice or information would be helpful as i am a complete novice!! What we need to do so far is sort out our affiliate marketing as it is all over the place get a payment method set up (for the gumtree bit) and get the actual gumtree bit set up. how long is that likely to take? How do you sort a wensite so that it is compatable with all browsers? as ours doesnt work very well on mozilla firefox at the moment. any advice would be great thanks :) :D

[paulomackta]

try googling for help. ecommerce articles to be precise! ensure you have a good marketing plan included in your business plan and you'll be good to go.

[RedEvo]

Your question is simply too broad for people here to be of much help.

d

[WHUK]

You need to hire a web developer who will code your site properly for most browsers and you need to market your site so as to get most out of it.
Try to attract visitors for your site by offering them good high earning affiliate programs.

[sysops]

You need to hire a web developer who will code your site properly for most browsers and you need to market your site so as to get most out of it.
Try to attract visitors for your site by offering them good high earning affiliate programs.

More importantly, you need to stop and do some research first, before developing your site. You're entering a very crowded market. What will your site offer that will make people use it and not one of the many pre-existing, well established sites?

[billhilton]

Agreed with the rest of the guys. Stop, take a deep breath, and do a ton of research. That means:

1. Read a lot of the old posts on these forums - especially Mattk's sticky in the internet marketing forum.

2. Ditto for www.sitepoint.com/forums

3. Ditto for forums.digitalpoint.com

4. Do a lot of Googling for information on SEO (search engine optimisation) and affiliate marketing.

5. Learn a bit about the basics of how a website actually works: you don't necessarily need to know tons about html, css and all the rest, but just how the whole thing fits together.

6. Think about your target market/niche and how you're going to drive traffic to your site. Think very carefully before buying clicks for a site that makes its money from affiliate sales. Remember that good, solid traffic builds naturally over time if you add good content to your site on a regular basis.

7. Read a load of the free information on a site like www.businessclub365.com (there's no need to sign up just to read the articles) to get an overview of the basics of running a UK small business.

8. Watch out for scams and get-rich-quick schemes. If a business proposal or marketing method seems to offer great rewards for not much hard work or little investment, be very sceptical. The web is full of scams and dodgy schemes that are hyped to the nines. The rule is, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is!

I'd spend at least a couple of weeks, solid, doing all that before you dive in. You need that kind of foundational knowledge before you can start work on your business. When you've got it, come back here and ask us for advice on specific stuff. Like RedEvo says, the questions you're asking at the moment would take thousands of words to answer. All the information is already out there - all you have to do is search for it.

Finally, when you post questions on forums, send emails or add content to your site, try to write plain English. You don't need to be perfect at spelling and grammar - just simple and easy to read. Your original post on this forum was very hard to read. Posts like that don't get many useful responses. Good communication skills are vital for working online, so work on yours.

Good luck, and never give up! :)