When considering setting up an online store, one possibility to research is setting up services with well established sites with large current customer bases in order to increase visibility and establish trust with your customers.  Amazon has 81 million active customers.  Here are some of the details on setting up a site with Amazon.

Amazon charges $39.99 per month plus an 8% – 20% per transaction fee.  These charges include:

• Website set up
• Pay-per-click marketing fees that a retailer will incur in order to promote and drive traffic to an individual retail site
• Commissions to referral partners
• Credit Card Processing Fees

There is an application approval process with Amazon.  There are some restricted (closed) categories such as apparel, gourmet, jewelry, watches, beauty and personal computers.   Amazon currently has numerous retailers in these categories and therefore, as a rule, will not accept additional retailers in these areas. 

If you would like to view the complete video detailing this information, click the link below.

Selling on Amazon Best Practices – Worldwide Brands and Amazon Services

I couldn’t resist sharing this one.  Enjoy!

Britain’s Got Talent – Susan Boyle

For those who are new to domain name selection, you can visit www.whois.com to check the availability and ownership status of your preferred domain name. You can try this domain name selection tool at www.domainsbot.com which gives you ideas for a domain name for your business.

Most of us can put a business name to “Have it your way”, “Where’s the Beef?”,, “My Bologna has a first name”, “Good to the Last Drop”, “Head On”, “Five. Five Dollar Footlongs”, etc. Just like a well written (and sometimes very annoying) jingle or catch phrase, a domain name should be extremely easy to recall. Keeping this priority in mind, here are some things to consider when selecting a domain name for your business.

Keep the name relatively short

1.  The domain name must be typed out and not all of us are rapid fire typists. www.laughingcatstudioswebdesign.com is too lengthy and somewhat irritating to type in, as opposed to www.laughingcatstudios.com. In addition, longer names are more difficult to recall. A one word domain name is ideal.

Do not use names that are difficult to spell

2. I have one of “those” last names. I would never use my last name as part of my business name or for an email address for that matter. Who would remember how to spell www.latawiecwebdesigns.com?

Stay with a dot com address

3. There are several options when it comes to web domain extensions. Your business can have a .com address, a .net address, a .biz address, a .info address, a .org address, etc. However, the large majority of people will not remember which dot “what” is on the end of your domain name. Although many businesses settle with .net or .biz in order to secure the domain name of their liking, I recommend sticking with .com, unless your business is a non-profit organization, then it is appropriate to consider .org. Most internet users will try .com first. You wouldn’t want your potential customer to end up on your competitor’s website.

Do not hyphenate your domain name

4. Do not hyphenate your domain name. Again, most people will not remember to insert the hyphen (or dash) or will not insert it in the appropriate place. Remember, domain names are not case sensitive and can include only letters, numbers and hyphens.

Use complete words with the correct spelling

5. If the domain name for my business was www.laughingkatstudios .com, most people would mistakenly type in “cat” rather than “kat” when typing in the URL address. Or if your business name was Mountain River Coffee and you abbreviated “Mountain”, many would not know how to abbreviate correctly. www.mtnrivercoffee.com or www.mntnrivercoffee.com or www.mtrivercoffee.com?

Use complete words rather than acronyms

6. Yes, www.lcs.com is not nearly as lengthy as www.laughingcatstudios.com. However, lcs does not give my business the name recognition it needs. People may not remember whether the site name was www.lcs.com or www.lsc.com. I may have a different view if my company name was IBM.

Purchase other versions of your domain name

7. If you are lucky enough to find the perfect domain name dot com for your business, purchase the dot net version as well. If you are unorganized and may not remember to renew your domain name annually, then purchase the domain name for several years in advance.

Consider buying your ideal domain name

8. Finally, if you are set on a particular domain name and someone else owns that domain name, you may be able to purchase the domain name from them. Buying and selling domain names has become big business. The following video is the first in a series of videos on buying and selling domain names:

Welcome to Laughing Cat Studios! We are enjoying this venture of designing and developing websites for small businesses in the Birmingham Alabama area. In addition, we are willing to work with small businesses across the United States, providing they will work with us by telephone, internet, email and fax. When we contract with your small business, we view the deal as becoming part of your team. We guarantee client satisfaction 100% of the time.

Laughing Cat Studios offers domain name registration, website design, website development, website hosting, search engine optimization, and monthly website maintenance to ensure your site remains fresh.

If you own a small business and would like to sell your products online, Laughing Cat Studios will partner with your company to make it as pain-free and affordable as possible. Depending on inventory turnover, we will develop a schedule to periodically add new inventory to your website ensuring your current products are always available online.

We look forward to joining you on your business journey. Thanks for stopping by!