Tools to ensure your online business brings in the money

Years ago, I had a vision while speaking to a Mac user group.

As I looked out over my audience I realised that each person had a hobby or craft in which they created wonderful and unique treasures, ranging from hand-carved birds to quilts and poetry. And many in the audience possessed specialised skills that would be invaluable to others if they could only get the word out.

In the vision, I saw them all conducting business over the internet with personalised and co-operative websites, from which they sold their services and art to the world. They were all fulfilled and lived happily ever after. The young folks had mentors and the seniors had plenty of money. It was a win-win situation.

Unfortunately, ever since I had this vision the path to that nirvana has got worse. Making a small business website is more difficult than ever. Ten years ago there were close to a dozen wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML editors that made creating simple business websites relatively easy. I don't know why, but they disappeared and until a few weeks ago there were only a couple left - and they were still a long way from being simple to use.

Of course, there are the .Mac sites that are pre-formatted and allow you to post photos and text easily, but

these sites are not useful for hosting a small business, club or non-profit enterprise.

This was brought home to me recently when the Web master for an association in which I am active retired. The membership wanted him to redesign the website so they could take in money and, of course, they wanted him to do it for free. He, of course, wanted his life back.