Choosing The Best Online Store Software

If you’ve been online for some time you’ve no doubt heard of the free osCommerce (the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is powered by a dedicated, strong, and ever growing community) and like other popular open source solutions they have a thriving community of developers/businesses that take the open source software and build superior solutions from it and try to profit from that effort.

One such solution is CRE Loaded. CRE Loaded offers an open source version tht you can use to build small stores and then when you need a more robust solution they steer you into their “Pro” version. That’s the version I chose to use for my first online store, Big City Pet, an online pet store. I chose this solution after soliciting feedback from some online retail pros and the fact that you pay them one time for the solution and never any monthly fees or transaction fees like some of the other options available out there.

After getting started on building out my first online store it became apparent that I was going to need their Store Manager for CRE Loaded to speed up and simplify the process of starting and later maintaining Big City Pet.

Store Manager for CRELoaded is a Windows application that allows you to manage your CRE Loaded-based online store much more efficiently. You can add, delete and update products, categories and manufacturers, automatically upload your product images while editing products, categories, manufacturers, view reports, orders and keep the track of your online sales. All this from your computer. CRE Loaded Manager was made for ordinary entrepreneurs not geeks, and after only a few settings required for the program to start and it just works.

I’ll report back when my store is live, but so far it seems to be working great! They offer a free 30-day trial period if you want to check it out yourself. Free Store Manager trial

ICANN Opens the Doors to New Domain Names

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, voted on Thursday to relax rules for naming websites. The ruling announced earlier this week allows public and private organizations to use their brand or name as the suffix of the domain name. So Coke could have .coke and launch a domain like drink.coke for example. The city of Las Vegas could have domains like trump.vegas or southbeach.miami could be a hot one for that popular travel destination.

It’s not clear what the ramifications are going to be, but it is clear that they’re trying to keep these news domain names out of the hands of small entrepreneurs and cybersquatters by setting price tags at $50,000 and up.

The new names should begin appearing sometime in 2009.

For more information:

ICANN

VNU Net

ICANN Watch

ProBlogger

Darren Rowse’ story is worth knowing about if you dream of one day leaving the daily grind of working for someone else and instead start your day by simply logging onto your blogging machine.

At the start of 2002 Darren didn’t know much of anything about blogs or blogging, but an article he had read about blogging changed the trajectory of his life. Within 24 hours of reading that potent article he had started his first Blog - a personal blog where issues of Pop Culture, Spirituality and Blogging are explored. He has since started many other blogs including the one that caught my attention, ProBlogger.

Today Darren blogs for a living. That’s right, he doesn’t commute to work. He writes for a living and doesn’t have to mess around with publishers, printing, book signings (yet), and all the other garbage that used to be associated with writing for a living.

I’m new to his ProBlogger site, but I plan on picking his brain and learning from his experiences as much as possible. His mission with ProBlogger is to: help bloggers add income streams to their blogs.

Way to go Darren! Blog on!

Excellent Advice on Creating a Hot Blog

I ran across an excellent guide to building a successful blog on eLance and thought I’d pass it along. Of course, I fall into that category of not “practicing what I preach”. Blog on.

Tips for Successful Blogging

Some of the best tips include:

• Determine why you’re blogging and who you want to read your blog.
• Schedule the days you’re going to post to your blog and stick to it.
• Be personal. Let people know who you are and what you’re about. Be real.
• Pay attention to what other bloggers are saying and feel free to elaborate or argue a different point of view and link to the post and blog you’re writing about.

The above tips were written with the help of a post on eLance by  Chris Bennett, a Search Engine Optimization expert and owner of 97th Floor.

A Webmasters Dream Come True

A nose spray that eliminates the need for sleep. Now that’s something I could use! Of course, it would have been great to have way back in college days (so I could procrastinate just a wee bit longer before cramming for an exam), or during the diaper changing era, but it’s never too late to find good use for a nose spray that replaces sleep. Check out the article in Wired magazine:

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep

I say ‘heck with the testing! sell it now!’. Life’s too short for sleep!