Mama has a project! (besides trying to convince Ella that Elmo is night-night as well)
My mountainMama (lives near Lake Tahoe) and I recently began to entertain the idea of starting a small business, an itty-bitty business really. A proposition that would be a creative outlet for both of us while bringing in a little dough. I have had a blast imagining, planning and collaborating with Mom. Anywho, my work experience has always been in LARGE companies which has been fine, but not excellent preparation for a project of this type. One of the many aspects that we are researching is establishing a presence on the web. Being that this group seems to be pretty tech-savvy, I wondered of anyone has any recommendations for a web hosting company geared toward serving a small business? We will be selling soft goods - some baby accessories, T's, some home things - stuff like that (We just got an order today for 20 aprons!!) Thanks in advance for any and all advise - Looking forward to Zaytoons!
Hey Monica, congrats on the new biz! I'd love for you to be a part of a mom entrepreneurs organization I am starting up in a few months...will post about that soon on uMamas. In the meantime, I love StartLogic and use them as the web host for both of my businesses. Super intuitive, easy to use (once you get used to it - I preferred their vdeck compared to others). GoDaddy sucks. I have a PR client that uses them and we had to create a new site for them using GoDaddy--it's so counterintuitive and annoying.
For shopping carts (assuming you'll be selling online), MyCart.net is awesome and super easy--plus their shopping cart doesn't look like ass as so many do these days, and they let you customize more than others.
Let me know if I can help in any way! I love supporting other mom businesses!
Posted by: Marlynn | February 24, 2006 at 10:06 PM
Hi Monica,
No tech expertise here, alas. But I hope it's not too forward of me to ask if you'd like to consider Miranda, my zine about motherhood and other adventures, for your business. You can check out my website (www.mirandazine.com) to see if you think it's a good fit for you. Miranda does well at Powell's, Polliwog and Children's Exchange, and I've been looking to find more mama businesses to carry it.
Good luck in your new venture!
Posted by: Kate | February 25, 2006 at 08:11 AM
Hi there, you might take a look at the web hosting that Costco offers - it's on their website. The price seems fairly reasonable to me, although I haven't done a great deal of comparisions. It comes with a nice piece of software for designing a site based on a template as well as other features for selling and tracking data.
Posted by: Rachel | February 25, 2006 at 06:53 PM