Getting Help Selling Online

Last week I wrote about full-scale online offerings for small businesses from Yahoo and Microsoft. These hosted services promise to launch you online and get you collaborating, selling and marketing as well. What if you don't need such a comprehensive solution and just want to sell your product into cyberspace? Then have a look at the options available from Flying Cart.

With Flying Cart you can be up and selling in two minutes (or so they claim). The Madison, WI company's free offering lets you launch up to 5 products, but prices range up to $30/month for unlimited products and transactions. The offering set includes:

• Web hosting
• PayPal integrator
• Email promotion
• and most importantly Store Networking

As described by Justin Petrocelli at Entrepreneur.com;

"Flying Cart helps retailers bring traffic to their sites by promoting their stores on search engines like Google and on local classified ad sites like Craigslist. The company's philosophy is unorthodox but refreshingly simple--time spent creating too many bells and whistles for an online store is time taken away from making sales. Flying Cart encourages its clients to get their businesses online quickly and make up the rest as they go. Shah (Flying Cart's founder) says the result is an online store that promotes itself."

In addition to Google and Craigslist promotion, cross-selling with similar stores online promises to be the big bang - the long held promise of the so called "network effect" where everyone links to raise the tide for everyone. A great try if it works.

Small business retailers would be wise to consider this option pronto.

Doing it All Online

Microsoft recently joined Yahoo in another battle for control. It has stepped up its online solutions platform for small business. Microsoft recently upgraded Office Live Small Business "OLSB" (poorly named, it has little to do with the MS Office product set) to give small businesses online solutions they can put up without needing outside technical help.

According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, only 35% of small businesses have a website, half have a high speed connection, and only 57% use the internet for business purposes. Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to bridge this gap. Microsoft's OLSB provides the following:

• A private domain website with 100 email accounts and 5G storage (free for the first year)
• A contact manager with Outlook synchronization
  
• A document manager for version control, sharing, and rights management.
• Online workspaces and a Project Manager solution.
• It even works with the Firefox browser (so even Mac users can apply)!!
  

While all the above is free, modules for e-commerce (selling your products online) and email marketing are available for a fee. A more detailed review is provided by Stuart Johnson of Small Business Computing.

This offering is a 2.0 version, much better than the original, and presumably it will keep getting better. Yahoo's services are similar, and I would be surprised if we don't see a few more entrants (Google, etc.).

If you've been waiting to go, market, or sell online, because of cost or complexity, these solutions make it much easier and cost efficient. The minimum hurdle has been lowered significantly.