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| I am going out on a limb a little here but thought it may be fun.
I strongly urge all Wyoming businesses to have a web site/at least a web page with hours of information map, and a couple pictures of you and your product. Now days, the internet is a great way for isolated Wyoming shoppers to find you by google searching up businesses like yours. It used to be a free service of Microsoft but alas, things have changed. Yes, it is free but at the end of the year, you will need to pay domain fee so, not so free. Still, a great deal and a great program.
Some addition here, the free part is gone,now it's about $15 for the domain name and hosting at the end of a calendar year. It used to be FREE back when. Microsoft has to make money too. It is still a much better over all deal than Godaddy or other web domain registration services. Once signed in, the online software is on the site and not a disk to load, etc.
Click the microsoft link below:
Microsoft office live
All it takes is a computer, I recommend using firefox as your browser as it works tons better than Internet Explorer for loading pictures. Also, resizing your digital pictures has been made MUCH easier as it is done by just clicking the OPTIMIZE button once. no need for photobucket if you don't need to. You can pull photos right out of your documents or pictures files just by clicking them. I have used about 1/5 of my free storage on this site and I have 960+ pictures loaded into it. The first 500 megabites is free. I have used 106 mb for ALL of my photos on this web site.
PHOTOBUCKET for the art program
Firefox
The software microsoft supplies for creating the web pages is highly acclaimed by PC magazine. From my experience, Internet Explorer is not very friendly to microsoft like firefox browser is.
I recommend using a yahoo.com email address rather than the ones that come free with your free web site as you get much better spam filters with the yahoo.com email address, less spider highjacking as well.
An amature person like yourself can have a nice web site and you work it yourself so there is no need to pay some computer geek to build and maintain something for you.
No waiting for someone else to update your web site information as your business changes.
Google search "microsoft office live" and sign up. It will search for your domain name for you to be sure it isn't used by someone else. Such as let's look up Bertnernies.com to see if Bert and Ernie have a web page....
It will take a credit card to prove you are you but if you don't want to associate your current credit card with a web site, go to your bank or convience store and purchase a $25 prepaid visa card. This will provide the credit card numbers you will need to prove you are you to sign up. Use a domain name that is user friendly, preferably a user friendly business name like freemansfossilsales. It states we are Freeman, and we sell fossils. I see a local guy who's business is jajo. What is that? I don't recommend corrupting two peoples names for a business title. Aren't I schemart?
I have built four web sites of my own with the new microsoft programs and am learning more all of the time. I have helped a dozen folks get a web site started.
Be sure to optimize your pages by searching out and using good meta tags and meta tag phrases. I have for this site used my fossil fish names, Wyoming, Sweetwater County, my business name spelled wrong three different ways, all the words a fifth grader would use to hunt down what I am about. For fun, google up mjwy, my ebay user ID to see how meta tags will pull in searches to your pages. Also try a search of Asineops, my favorite fossil fish. Using unique meta tag words will narrow your appeal but those searching for YOU, will find You first!
Use lots of links with permission as it will get you more visits and more visits means higher ratings in the search engines. If you sell on ebay, be sure to add as much meta tag connection to ebay as you legally can as ebay and google work well together and this will lift you up in the google searches dramatically faster.
Hoping this will get all of you started in building a successful web page for your private or small business. You do not need to be a rocket scientist, nor an html wizard to do this! The software is so easy to use, font, inserting photos, adding links is pretty slick once you do it once.
The small business website program is amazing for what it can do for your home owned or start up business enterprize.
Dave F.
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