? About Websites/Business Plan

**SOG35** · 03-03-2005, 04:26 PM

great info guys! bookmarking for latter reference.

**googledude** · 03-04-2005, 08:14 AM

I just hosted my website. Domain registration 5 years @$25 through yahoo. Webhosting $3.95/mo for 5gb space, 50gb monthly traffic, email, mysql, unlimited subdomains...quite a bit actually, great tech support. www.ace-host.net . They give a offer a pretty good service so far. Now I just need to LEARN how to set up the site and make it look good. Frontpage sucks, or so I suck at frontpage possibly (but i really dont like it

) Hope this helps!

edit: by the way if your looking to see the site you can find my under construction page, as well as a very BIG copy of my business card at www.tspdetail.com

Edit again!: FYI I also paid 3 years up front to get that price, which was like $142.xx.

**scrub** · 03-04-2005, 08:47 AM

Your card/site looks good.

Two things.

1. For your email you can use your domain as the email account. For example, your email is tspdetail@gmail.xxx. You could make that mark@tspdetail.xxx and loose the gmail free advertising and really push your web presence and email. I picked this up from some pros at another forum. Seemed like a good idea to me.

2. One of the books I`m reading about web design says to minimize "site under construction". To get potential clients to go to your site takes some advertising. If you don`t have the site ready when the potential client visits you might not get them back for a visit when the site is ready. Most people will judge your site and whether to stay usually within 30 seconds. I used the template method to have a full site rolled out when I put out my advertising (flyer). Its cookie cutter with some customization. This allows me the time to study and build a better site. I`m not raggin here just passing on info from other pros that I learned from about using the web.

Good luck

**Jngrbrdman** · 03-04-2005, 10:10 AM

I don`t see anything wrong with the gmail accounts. I could have 500 @ocdetails.com accounts, but I use gmail on my card because it is a better email service than my OCDetails.com email is. its a lot more reliable than my ocdetails email is. It doesn`t say anything to me that someone is using a free email service instead of their domain email. I certianly wouldn`t make a determination on if their services were any good.

6000+ hits on OCDetails since I put that counter in and not one cent spent on advertising.

Likely people aren`t going to stumble onto his site yet anyway. There isn`t anything for search engines to pick up on. The only way people are going to find it is if they click the link like we did. Having it say `UNDER CONSTRUCTION` isn`t going to hurt anything until there is more content on there and the search engines crawl the site.

**googledude** · 03-04-2005, 12:12 PM

I do use my domain email as well and will. I like the fact that gmail is easy to check anywhere, as I cannot always log into my control panel from work to check domain email. I use info@tspdetail.com as my secondary address. I already have a decent amount of clients that contact me through gmail so it`s not a huge issue to me. I`m working hard on getting something up quick for my site.I havn`t done a hole lot of massive advertising so there arnt too many people looking for the site yet. As well as my only form of advertising is my business card (and well the web site from people who see the card). I have 2000 of those cards printed full color front and back so I think the gmail will stick for now. This is all besides the fact that I am still the ONLY detailer in the area that uses email let alone a web site. So I`ve got the competitive advantage over my 3 competitors (one who may be out of business, not sure, lol havnt been able to contact him in a while after his phone was disconnected.)

Thanks alot for the input though, any criticism is good criticism to me and always greatly appreciated.

**scrub** · 03-04-2005, 01:19 PM

I understand nothing is wrong with gmail. Just a suggestion from folks like you that know more about this sort of thing. I`m really very new to the web side of detailing. I thought it was a good idea and I felt I should share the knowledge passed on to me. Hopefully no offense was taken. :angel

**googledude** · 03-04-2005, 01:41 PM

No offense what so ever! Like I said any criticism is good in my book, gives you a much broader perspective on things. I was just explaining my reasoning. On my next round of cards I more than likely will put a `x.tspdetail.com` address on them, but for now what I have works just fine as well, as I have LOTS of cards left. Most of my business is simple here anyhow, almost all through references. I like it that way, I don`t intend on doing advertising besides the cars any time soon as of now. I get alot of my business from the marina I detail at during boating season. These are all people who have their mobile homes (trailers) at the marina campground as second houses, party all weekend every weekend, and have power boats that they cruise around on, so you can imagine the cars that they also drive and the money they are willing to pay to detail them. I like to get thier friends and peers (other stay at home wifes with rich husbands, lol) as customers through references.

But anyhow enough rambling, I thank you again for your input as I always enjoy feedback.

Mark

**ndnguy** · 03-09-2005, 02:49 PM

Why not just have Gmail grab the emails from your site addy? I do this with my hotmail account and my website.

Person emails somename@mywebsite.com and then it gets sent to my hotmail email. POP and STMP or something like that... you should have similar options. I converge all my emails into one, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to have multible emails this way.

**Jngrbrdman** · 03-09-2005, 03:03 PM

That`s a good idea, but in my case my domain host has a really sucky email system. Sometimes it will be a few days before the email arrives. Gmail is a little flaky sometimes too, but it is more stable than my domain email or even Hotmail has been. Plus Gmail isn`t on everybody`s corproate spam lists yet, so emails tend to actually arrive more often than not. I`m not in the business where my email address is going to make or break the deal. I don`t think many of us are. I have never once gotten an email generated from my business card. Most of the time they call me or visit the website and email me from there. ...or maybe they are emailing me off the card and I`m just not getting them. hmmmm... lol

I`m not posting this picture for advertising purposes, but rather to give you an idea of how I laid out my business card.