E-Business Alternatives to Creating a Website

When the Internet first became a daily tool for the public, in order to get started with marketing your business online you were forced to launch your own website. This included choosing a domain and host, designing the entire layout of your website, putting it live on the web, and optimizing your website.

But maybe you want to test the waters before actually committing to an e-business and getting serious about marketing your products or services online. Or you're putting the feelers out to tap into an online niche. Why spend all that effort (and money) building an online presence until you've had a chance to experiment? Fortunately, these days there are more options for starting an e-commerce business, and not all of them include creating your own website.

Ebay is a very popular choice at the moment. The hottest e-commerce site on the web today, more than 2.5 million people visit there every day, the vast majority of whom have incomes between $50,000-$75,000. More than that, nearly every single Ebay member is either a small business like yourself or individuals looking to buy from small businesses. Ebay has worked hard over the years to become newbie-friendly, and you can set up shop and get started selling in under an hour. The listing fees are very reasonable, and in return you gain access to literally millions of buyers who are looking for products-your products.

Don't feel up to an online marketplace? Nowadays you can create a website in mere seconds by starting a "blog". Short for "weblog", business blogs have become a popular method for marketing on the web. Some companies use them to promote their products in addition to their main websites, but you don't even need to have a website (or a business) to start a blog. Anyone in the world can create a free blog instantly and have a web presence online in under five minutes. The process to set one up is usually very simple, consisting of registering on the site and choosing a name for your blog. No knowledge of web design or other computer languages is necessary, and you don't have to pay for the domain name.

Once your blog is up and going, you can start making money before you even advertise your products. With Google AdSense you can generate advertising revenue; it's easy to set up, and Google's targeted ads are largely unobtrusive. This can offer a good revenue source, but the amount you'll get depends on your blog's traffic. Another option is by joining an affiliate program (or several) and promoting their products on your blog. With an affiliate program you can place ads for their products on your blog or write articles and reviews with your affiliate link. This way you receive a percentage of each sale that's made when readers purchase the product after they "click-through" your links. Or, if you already have a product to sell, you can write various articles on your blog to inform the readers about the benefits and features of your product. A link to your PayPal account will help them when they've made the decision to buy what you're offering. If you think a blog is the direction you want to go, check out free blogs like Blogger.com, MSN Spaces or Yahoo 360.

A new option available to you is Google Page Creator. This is a new program that lets anyone who has a Google ID (and chances are, if you've been on the Internet longer than five minutes you already have one) to set up a website. Thanks to Google's search engine spiders, your pages will be indexed very quickly. A major factor in the e-business world is the effort to use keywords to show up in search engine results, but if you start with Google immediately, you circumvent much of the process. Like Ebay, you can have a website up and running within minutes that you can use to start making money online instantaneously. The Google Page Creator works very much like a blog in the way you promote your products and send customers to Paypal through a link, or join an affiliate program and promote another company's products.

Google's web page setup is fairly simple and intuitive, with a WYSIWYG (or What You See Is What You Get) editor. Add text by typing or by cutting and pasting from a word processor. You're also able to upload pictures, make hyperlinks, and edit the HTML code-though if you aren't familiar with HTML, I wouldn't recommend messing with the code.

If you know absolutely that you plan to create an e-business from the get-go, then obviously you're going to want your web presence in the form of an actual website. But if you aren't sure it's the way you want to go (or you don't feel web-savvy enough to make it on your own yet) then any of these options will help you accomplish your goal. With today's online tools building an e-commerce business can easily be child's play. Each one of the alternatives mentioned here extend the opportunity to test your business model, establish yourself in the search engines, gain credibility, and that most important issue when starting a business, make money.