"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
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                  June 1998
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   "The Desktop Global Marketer" is free, and may be 
   re-published freely with permission. We encourage 
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   	jamie(at)siderealdesigns.com
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   	http://siderealdesigns.com
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So you're convinced; everyone is getting rich fast on the Web and you
want part of the action! Well, it's probably not going to make it rain
money immediately, but it's not a bad idea to position your enterprise
on the Internet, and better sooner than later. That said, what do you
do next?  The first necessity is an on-line account. You probably
already have an account with an ISP (Internet Service Provider) with a
dial-up number that lets you connect your home computer to the
Internet through his machine. This costs you around $20/month, and you
definitely need it if you can't afford thousands of dollars a month to
connect your computer directly and permanently to the Internet. (If
you don't have an ISP, there are sites that will help you find one in
your area, such as http://www.currents.net/resources/ispsearch.)

Your ISP may let you mount web pages on his machine as part of your
basic account, or for an additional fee, and that's fine for personal
pages, but not what you need for a serious business presence. For that
you'll need a virtual domain host. Let's define some terms. A domain,
or domain name, is the name that lets people find your site on the
Internet. If you had your own computer hooked to the Internet it would
have a domain name associated with it, like "www.yourfirm.com," and
the Internet gremlins would connect people's browsers to it when they
entered that name. But pages hosted on someone else's computer would
normally have domain names like "www.hiscomputer.com/yourpage.html" or
worse, "www.hiscomputer.com/~yourname/yourpage.html," which would be
his domain name with you as a sub-domain.  This is a giveaway that you
are a low-budget operation, and is very declasse' for anything more
commercial than your family photos.

Fortunately, there are people who buy big computers, hire expensive
people to run them, pay a lot to have them hooked directly to the
Internet, and then sell you accounts with virtual domain names on them
for not very much money. This virtual domain name looks and works like
a regular domain name, "www.yourfirm.com," but it points the Internet
gremlins to his machine, which then translates it to point them to
your pages. You'll also get an online account on this machine with a
lot of other things you'll need that we'll cover in future
columns. The people who provide this are called "Virtual Hosting
Services" (VHS.) A small-business virtual hosting account will run you
between $20 and $50 per month.

This is a real bargain, but be sure you find one with the features you
need. Unlike your ISP, your VHS can be located far from you; you don't
have to phone it up. You can connect to it for free from your ISP
account no matter where it is, so you have the whole world to choose
from. (Some ISPs also offer VHS, but many VHSs won't offer ISP service
because they specialize in serving web pages efficiently.) You can
find ratings of many VHS providers at
"www.webhostlist.com/screens/toplists/main.asp," but my advice would
be to let your Webmaster pick yours. He or she will be the one that
has to live with its more annoying shortcomings.

A Webmaster is the final item you need. This is the person who codes
your pages, produces your graphics, configures your mailing lists,
your newsletter, your online-ordering system, your email
autoresponders, IRC communication channels, and other arcane
things. (Some people enjoy being their own Webmasters. Whether you
should do this for your business is something we'll examine in future
discussions, but the short answer is probably not.) Some Webmasters
freelance, others work for Web-site design companies. They're not hard
to find; pay attention to qualifications, but especially to your gut
feel that you can communicate with this person and get what you
want. Full-time Webmasters at major corporations command six-figure
salaries, but you won't need a lot of their time. You can get a web
page designed for a hundred dollars or less, but my rule of thumb
would be that a good, basic site for a small business should run
around a thousand dollars if it's well-done. You can get it cheaper if
you're willing to let the design be done from cookie-cutter templates,
and often you can mix and match from a catalog of pre-designed page
elements in this case.  Finally figure site-maintenance, which should
either be available on an hourly basis or on retainer, depending on
how often your material changes or your needs increase.

Be sure to figure out the real, long-term costs. Some design houses
will charge a very low up-front fee to get you in the door and then
make it up in high monthly costs after setting you up on their own
hosting service. Ask if you have a choice of hosting services, and run
the other way if you don't. In general, you should be able to choose
the three basic elements, ISP, VHS, and web-designer independently. If
you can't, you're giving away your leverage and are likely to pay for
it.

Excluding your own computer, you should be able to get your business
operating on the Internet forwell under $2000, and it can be done in
about a week. Then you're on your way to fame and fortune as a desktop
global marketer!



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"Sidereal" is pronounced sy-DEER-ee-all, and means "of
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