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Old 07-20-2014, 11:23 AM
  #30  
Bree123
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Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: Illinois
Posts: 2,140
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I agree with the others that have said you need to build a following before you can hope to have a successful on-line business. You can always set up a basic website for free with DrupalGardens. Anyone with just a little bit of computer savvy can do it. Once you have your site set-up, buy your domain name from GoDaddy ($0.99 for first year, no commitment) and switch to the Basic service with Drupal Gardens (approx $12/month). They have a super easy option where you can do a re-direct. A re-direct means that someone would type in something like "59Quilts.com" and it would bring them to the low-cost, WYSIWYG designed website you set-up that might be called something like "59quilts.drupalgardens.com". DrupalGardens hosts your site & has all the software you need online and if you can add bold, underline, color & photos on this site, you can design a website with DrupalGardens. On that site, you can either link up with etsy or post a phone number for clients to call you directly.

Then, once you have made some profits from etsy & built up a reputation that is driving at least 20x the number of customers you need (be sure to select Google Analytics when picking what to include on your site so you can get daily/weekly/monthly counts of visitors), go talk to that fancy web designer. Before that, I would say it's not really worth it. There's only so much a web designer can do & anyone that focuses their spiel on "SEO maximization", "driving customers to your site", or the like probably isn't worth a dime. YouTube can teach you basic tricks to get you listed and after that, it's all about how many people are actually linking to your site, clicking through to your site, etc. So PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE. Get yourself a FaceBook page, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn that is for your business (you can connect to your personal page if you'd like, but have one set of accounts that focuses on your business, not vacations, pets & grandkids) and send invites to every person you know. Have business cards or mini-flyers ready to hand out to every person you meet & get your 1-minute elevator spiel memorized until you feel confident telling it to complete strangers. Post links to other people's blogs & consider starting a blog about out-of-print fabrics yourself (what to look for in older fabrics, how to find a reputable seller, how to care for the fabrics, etc). If I recall correctly, DrupalGardens has a WordPress app for adding a blog to your site. One bit of advice on that: make sure you update it regularly or your site will develop tons of issues (learned that one the hard way!).

Keep in mind that most businesses don't turn a profit their first year, so it's wise to sell what you can to build up some savings now that will carry you through to when you need to hire a lawyer, accountant, web manager, and other professionals. Best wishes with everything!
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