Very New

[mpossoff]

Hi all,

I want to start a Christian t-shirt business on line.

I am going to use Simple shopping cart for artists, designers, bands, record labels, jewelry, crafters - Big Cartel (http://www.bigcartel.com/) because from what I'm told it's easy to set up and effective. Also because it's within my budget currently. I am told it's not so open source. As I get bigger then I can invest in or upgrade to another means. But in the meantime I feel that I shouldn't wait, get started now with something.

Although it might be easy to set up I have asked for sent out inquiries to freelance designers to design my bigcartel site.

Since I have no idea what's really involved I am asking what I should be looking for, what I should be asking, etc.

As an example this is one 'quote' that I recently got from a freelancer;


BigCartel base design and coding: $200
Basic SEO package; 30 backlinks, $50 Google Adwords campaign, and HTML markup: $100

Blog; Tumblr blog integration and skinning: $100
MySpace; basic myspace layout: $150

Basic logo is included, 3 revisions.

Total: $550

I'm confused on what basic SEO is compared to non basic SEO as well.

Thanks,

Marc

[Tubby]

Rule number one. never buy 'confused'. .

If you ask for a quote and it confuses you
quote "I'm confused on what basic SEO is compared to non basic SEO as well."

Find someone to create the site that you can talk things over with. You should not be confused,

The last time you bought a car were you confused about whether it had brakes and lights?

[kettlewell]

Tubby is right - never buy confused.

Get yourself educated on the basics of SEO so that you can ask the right questions and understand the results.

I would recommend Dan Thies FastStart SEO guide... located here: Download SEO Fast Start 2009 - The Best SEO Book Is Free (http://www.seofaststart.com/download)

There are a few phases to SEO, research, onpage and offpage

research involves competition and keyword research.

OnPage are the HTML elements that you can modify for SEO

the OffPage is the backlinks to your site

It would appear that the basic SEO package he's referring to are just 30 backlinks (or 1 per day) ... is that useful?

It depends on what the research for your keyword and competition found. if it is a non competitive keyword with a local campaign, then maybe, but it all depends on what your competition has, and is doing.

I hope that helps you out a bit, and good luck on your t-shirt endeavor.

Matt

[Jeffwend]

Depending on your budget, it might be more worth your time to learn the basics of SEO yourself and to give it a try on your own. Tubby said it right, "never buy confused."

[Ace]

You can save here :-

Blog; Tumblr blog integration and skinning: $100
MySpace; basic myspace layout: $150

[xenmeng]

You been told "it's not so open source" ???

My opinion is NEVER under estimate the power of open sources.