Log in with your password, if you aren’t logged in already, and click Sign In. Read the statement that says you are subject to the same user Agreement that governs your auction sales. Then click Continue to connect to the Store Content page, where you begin to create your store. The Store Content page presents you with a form that you fill out to locate your store and describe it to potential customers.

1. First, you select one of 14 main categories for your store. Pick the category you use most for your auctions or choose Everything Else.

2. Enter your store’s “brand name” in the Store name box

3. Type your address in the Seller’s payment information section.

4. Write an agonizingly short (250 characters or less) description of your store in the Store description area. (You add more information in Step 9 if you run out of space.) You don’t get much room to sell your store each field in the Store Content page is limited to a small number of characters. If you really want as many words as you need to create your own store, opt for your own Web site instead. Otherwise, type your content in any text editor and count the number of characters using the program’s Word Count feature (it’s under the Tools menu).

5. Fill out some additional information about what makes your store unique in the Store specialties box (you only get 200 words this time).

6. In the Custom store categories area, enter the types of sales categories under which your merchandise will be sold. Supposedly, these choices are optional. However, when you want to sell an item, you have to list it under one of the categories you have already defined here. Do yourself a favor and come up with some categories under which your merchandise will be listed.

7. Specify your payment methods and ship-to locations, and your sales tax specifications (see Article 17).

8. In the “Store customer service & return policy” box, type in any moneyback guarantee, customer service numbers, return policies, or Square Trade memberships you can boast. You have to enter 90 characters or less here; the field is required.

9. Be sure to take advantage of the opportunity to sell yourself and your store even more in the “Additional store information” box. You get 200 more characters to tell people how long you’ve been selling on eBay, how long you’ve been in business, and so on.

10. Optionally, if you haven’t created an About Me page, you get the chance to do so after the “Additional store information” box. The advantage of creating an About Me store here is that, when users click on your About Me logo, they’ll be taken to your eBay Store, just as they would if they clicked on your Stores logo.

11. Next, you get to choose colors for your eBay Store. Be sure to pick an accent color of some sort black and white just looks too stark and uninviting for an online store.

12. Finally, you choose graphics for your store. If you already have an About Me page or aWeb page, you can simply choose one of your existing image files for your store. Otherwise, you have two choices: create a logo for your store, or use a predesigned eBay graphic. The predesigned images are overused and don’t distinguish your store in any way. I strongly suggest that you create a logo as described later in this article. Give yourself a pat on the back: you’ve created your store and now you can start selling on it.

Auction Sales from the Top of the World Selling on eBay and other online venues gives you freedom. You can work where your interest or your merchandise lies. That’s true for Steve Brothers and his father Jon, who collect and sell South Asian art and ethnographic items from Kathmandu, Nepal, high in the Himalayan mountains.Most of their items are spiritual or religious in nature, with the emphasis on Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu art and jewelry. eBay is only one of several sales venues for Jon and Steve. They sell new items through Silk Road Trading Concern (http://www.silkroads.com ) and old and ethnographic items through HimalayanMercantile (http://www.himalayanmercantile. com). They also sell to wholesale clients around the United States and around the world all without a conventional brick-and-mortar storefront. The Brothers family has sold more than 3,500 items on eBay since 1998, and in that time, they’ve met some wonderful people who have become their close friends, as well as other sellers who’ve caused problems. “eBay is indeed a community, and like all communities it has its saints and its miscreants,” says Steve. “Competition is stiff in our genre, but generally speaking, our competitors seem to be very decent folks. I would not describe it as cutthroat, but I would not characterize it as a particularly altruistic, either. In the early days of eBay we used to have a lot of trouble with people ‘stealing’ text from our auction descriptions, and in several instances our photos as well. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery than we were being paid very high compliments, but frankly it was more annoying than anything else.

We work hard to present an informative and attractive presentation in the auction context, so it was always a bit disheartening to have someone take what we had gone to considerable effort to create, and use it to compete against us.” All of the Silk Road images that appear on eBay include an identifying logo that serves as a “branding logo,” which makes it more difficult for other sellers to reuse. Silk Road Trading Concern, the eBay sales using the User ID silkroad, and Himalayan Mercantile are all family operations. Steve and his wife, who is a native of Nepal, travel throughout the region, collecting sale items and researching the traditions behind them. Steve writes the text and creates and manages most of the auctions using eBay Seller’s Assistant, while Jon Brothers handles transaction fulfillment and shipping. Even from the mountains of Nepal, Steve can monitor auctions on eBay with immediacy. “There have been innumerable items that have exceeded our expectations in terms of the type of price they might fetch. On the other hand there have also been great offerings that have flopped from a sales perspective. It’s always exciting to watch bidders “fight it out” in the last minutes of an auction, but the frequency of that has fallen off in the past year and a half or two partly due to the economy, perhaps, but also due to ‘sniping software.’” Steve advises eBay sellers not to follow his example in selling specialty items, however. “My advice for anyone who really wants to make a living on eBay is to sell some mainstream items something that a good percentage of the general population wants or, better yet, needs. Fringe items that appeal to a subculture like Tibetan Buddhist practitioners are not all that lucrative.

There are a lot of sellers but a relatively finite number of buyers. For prospective eBay sellers, I’d say choose some categories of items you are interested in. Research the market and try to gauge demand. If there is a demand, try to determine if the market in question needs or can support another seller of that type of item. If so, try to determine what ways you can set yourself apart from the pack, whether with attractive pricing, customer service, etc. Essentially, try to determine what will make you as a seller into a desirable source for a given item.”

Publish Your Own Web Site About Me and eBay Stores are easy ways to promote your business. But the really effective way to promote trust is to create your own set of interconnected Web pages in other words, a Web site. On your site, you can talk about yourself and your qualifications in as much detail as you wish. You can also promote your business if you have one. An eBay Store or About Me page can be the glue that links an online business and an auction listing. You don’t have to provide a Web site if you plan to sell at auction. For the most part, it makes sense to take this additional step if one of the following applies to you:

- You’re in a business related to the items you’re selling.

- You plan to make auction sales a significant part of your income.

- You plan to sell not only through eBay but through a catalog you present on your Web site, so all the income from the sale (less sales tax) comes to you and not to your Web host. The first step in creating your auction Web page is to decide where your page is going to live online. Your site needs to be hosted on a Web server (a computer that is connected to the Internet all the time, and whose primary purpose is to make Web pages available to anyone with a Web browser) so others can view it. In other words, you need to find a hosting service a company that functions like a virtual landlord, giving you space on a computer where you can set up shop. This is only the first step of a three-step process:

1. You pick your Web host.

2. You create your Web pages. You either use a user-friendly online tool such as a form you fill out to create a page, much the same as eBay’s About Me or Stores features, or, you purchase and install Web page creation software and design your pages on your own computer.

3. You get your pages online. If you create your site using your host’s online tool, you’ll use another tool provided by that same host to move your files to the Web server where they can be seen by everyone. If you create your Web pages yourself, you need to move the files from your computer to the Web server. Sophisticated Web page tools like Dreamweaver and FrontPage can do the file transfer for you. Otherwise, you have to use a special File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program to do the moving. It’s worth taking some time to pick the right host because where your page is located can affect how you create it and how it looks. When it comes to finding a home for your Web pages, you have several options:

- A free hosting service There aren’t too many free Web hosts left, but you can use Yahoo! GeoCities.

- Your own ISP If you have an account with a company such as America Online (AOL) or Earthlink, they’ll usually give you space to create a simple Web site as part of your monthly Internet access fee.

- A company that doesn’t function as an ISP, but only hostsWeb sites This is a business that hostsWeb sites, and that provides lots of handy tools and help for creating sites. Your choice of host also has an impact on how you create your Web pages. If you aren’t technically minded and have no interest in the technical aspects of designing Web sites, you’ll enjoy using the simple forms-based Web site creators provided by AOL, Yahoo! GeoCities, and Tripod: You fill out a form, and your Web pages are created and automatically placed online. If you want to be in control and make everything look just the way you want, you’ll probably prefer using a Web page creation tool like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage and publishing your page yourself with your ISP or a Web hosting service. These basic options are described in the following sections.

Use a Free Web Hosting Service If you want to create your own full-fledgedWeb site (and possibly get a second e-mail address if you need one), sign up with one of the organizations that give anyone space on a Web server where they can publish their own set of interconnected Web pages. One advantage of signing up for an account with one of these organizations is that they are targeted at users who have little or no experience setting up Web pages. You’ll find Help pages and other instructions to lead you through the steps in becoming aWeb publisher. Another advantage is that you become part of another community ofWeb surfers. You can join clubs and interact with other users who also publish their pages on the site, just as you can with eBay community members. On the downside, you usually have to display ads on your site. Here are some sites to consider.

Yahoo! GeoCities Yahoo! GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com/home) is one of the oldest and most successful of the free online services. It not only provides users with a place on the Web for their personal home pages, but also supplies easy-to-use Web page forms that format theWeb pages for you, as well as programs that transfer (or, in technospeak, upload) the files from your home computer to GeoCities. Like eBay, GeoCities tends to be a world unto itself. Members identify themselves as being part of a “neighborhood” of individuals with similar interests. You can sign up for a free account with GeoCities, but you’ll have to show ads on your Web pages. Plus, your URL (your Web address) will have to take the form http://geocities.yahoo.com/[your Yahoo! userid]. To move up to an easy-toremember URL like http://www.mysiteorbusiness.com, you’d have to pay $8.95 per month for the GeoCities Pro hosting package. (GeoCities also offers a $4.95 per month hosting option.)

Tripod Tripod (http://www.tripod.com ), which is owned by the Internet search service Lycos, also has an active site that hosts lots of individual Web surfer home pages. Members can chat and post messages on message boards. Like Yahoo! GeoCities, Tripod offers users a freeWeb site hosting service that is ad-supported. Other ad-free hosting options are available, ranging from $49.5 to $19.95 per month. Tripod is distinguished from Yahoo! GeoCities in that its free service includes 20MB of space (compared with 12MB for GeoCities), and its monthly fee packages include software that lets you create those popular running diaries called Weblogs. Users of all packages (including the free one) also gain access to a library of clip art images they can use to spice up their Web pages. If you’re looking for Web space for nothing and you don’t mind displaying ads on your Web pages, consider free hosting packages offered by companies such as Netfirms (http://www.netfirms.com ), which gives you a whopping 25MB of server space plus the ability to create Web page forms that are backed up by CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts. Freeservers (http://www.freeservers.com ) gives you 12MB of space and a choice of Web page creation tools as well.

Host With Your Own ISP An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company that gives individuals or businesses access to the Internet. For the most part, ISPs give customers dialup accounts or cable modem or DSL lines that let them connect to the Internet. Along with Internet access, most ISPs also let users create personal home pages and publish them on a Web server. The advantage of using an ISP as your host is that it’s convenient and free, and you get the service anyway. Most ISP Web servers are fast and reliable. On the downside, you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to obtaining software to create yourWeb pages, and with publishing those pages by moving them from your computer to the ISP’s Web server.

America Online America Online (AOL) is a wildly popular site for Internet access and, if you already have an account with AOL, you should certainly consider setting up a Web page with them. If you have an account with AOL, you automatically gain 2MB of Web server space where you can store your own Web pages. This might seem like only a small amount of room, but it’s more than enough for a moderately-sized Web site, given that the typical Web page only consumes 5K to 30K of disk space, not including images. Not only that, but each of the seven separate usernames you can create on AOL is entitled to 2MB of space, giving you a total of 14MB to work with.

- My FTP Space This is AOL’s catch-all term for a number of Web page resources. One of those resources, 1-2-3 Publish, works like Yahoo!’s Page Wizard and eBay’s own About Me feature: you create aWeb page by filling out a form with your Web browser. You can use another Web page design if you want to. You can only reach My FTP Space from within AOL’s software, using the keyword My FTP Space.

- AOL Hometown (http://hometown.aol.com) This is America Online’s site on the Web where individuals can create Web pages. You create the page using 1-2-3 Publish, and you locate it on AOL Hometown so anyone on the Web can find it, not just AOL users. One difference between this and the preceding services is an orientation toward business-oriented Web sites. If you sell antiques on eBay, for instance, you might want to create a Web site in the “neighborhood” called Furniture & Antiques.

Other ISPs America Online isn’t the only ISP in town, of course. Virtually all ISPs give their customers some Web hosting space along with Internet access. I have some friends who have set up their Web sites with Earthlink (http://www.earthlink.com ), and I have created a couple of Web sites with my own ISP, XO Communications (http://www.xo.com ), as well. Earthlink gives you a pretty good deal: at this writing, they offer unlimited dialup access for $10.97 for the first six months and $21.95 per month thereafter. Users get 10MB of free Web space and a Web page creation tool called Click-n-Build, too. When you use an ISP for Web hosting, you save money. And you don’t need to necessarily go with the ISP’s free Web editor, either. You can easily download and install the editor of your choice. By Web page editor, I mean software that lets you formatWeb pages and then publish them on yourWeb site. The advantage of creating your own ISP-hostedWeb site is control: you can design your page by selecting your own colors and page layouts, and adding as many images as you want. In contrast, a simple Web page feature such as that offered by eBay lets you select a basic page layout that may or may not look the way you want. On the other hand, creating your ownWeb page and hosting it with an ISP is complex: you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to selecting Web page software and learning how to publish your documents with the ISP. It’s not all that difficult to learn some HTML, of course, as you can see in the examples in Article 5. Some ISPs discourage individual users setting up commercial Web sites with the Web space that comes with a personal account. If you want to set up a business site to supplement your auction sales, they want you to pay extra for a business Web site account. Check with your own ISP to see what options are available. It’s not hard to find ISPs. You can also peruse some lengthy and detailed lists of ISPs such as The List (http://thelist.internet.com) or Providers of Commercial Internet Access (http://celestin.com/pocia).

Use a Dedicated Web Host If you are planning on running a full-fledged online business, I recommend that you pay a monthly fee and sign up for a full-featured account with a company that is primarily concerned with makingWeb sites like yours available online. A dedicated Web hosting service (one that does only hosting, and not Internet access) gives you more disk storage space, more services (such as statistics that report on the number of visits to all of the pages in your site, where your visitors are coming from, and so on), and customer service that is (or at least, should be) a cut above that provided by ISPs or free Web hosts. Typically, your account with a Web host should enable you to get a “vanity” domain name (in the form http://www.mysite.com ), anywhere from 50MB to multiple gigabytes of Web space (depending on how much you want to spend each month), as well as multiple e-mail addresses. You may want to look for a hosting package that gives you the ability to processWeb page forms by means of computer programs called CGI scripts. You might even get shopping cart software that enables you to set up an online sales catalog from which people can make selections. Your Web host may be able to help you obtain a credit card merchant account as well (see Article 9). Each of these types of e-commerce features is a significant step up from a simpleWeb hosting account, and each carries with it an additional degree of technical complexity. If you are interested in creating an e-commerceWeb site, be sure to find a hosting service that will lead you through the process in a user-friendly way without making you set up CGI scripts or other technical features completely on your own.