I thought I was done ranting about the people offering cheap design services but I guess I’m not. I think out of all the things online this is probably the worst thing, I will go as far as saying these people and companies are scammers.

I did another Google search and I came up with some great stuff, here are just a few:

Web Design at $10/hr
Web Design/Programming NO Freelance
Satisfaction Guaranteed, Staff 80+

This is great! 80+ staff all working for $10 an hour, wait, has to be less than $10 an hour because I’m sure for a staff that large they have some overhead, right? Maybe it’s just me but don’t McDonald’s pay almost as much per hour?

Web Designers - $199
xxxxxxxxxxxx.com 100% Full “Custom” Web Design. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!

Really? $199 and it’s fully custom and 100% satisfaction? Oops, what about the 228 rip off and scam reports?

The bottom line is that cheap website designs that will do something for your business other than destroy it just don’t exist!

As a consumer please educate yourself and ask the following questions before you choose a designer:

• What research will you do?
• Will you research my competitors?
• Will you research my target market?
• Will it really be custom or are you using a pre-made template?
• Will you be able to assist me with updates and additions after the project is done?
• How will you help me market my website?

This list could go on for a while but the questions above will get you started.

I have done professional website design and owned Proimpulse for more than eight years but it seems we never stop getting calls and emails from unhappy people that went the cheap route to get started then had to get a professional to clean up the mess.

I will go on record saying that it takes a little money to get a professional website and it also takes money to market that website unless you are an internet marketing expert then you will still have your time involved.

Falling for the myth that you can go into business on the internet for a couple hundred dollars will get you nowhere fast. On the flip side if you work with a professional spend money for quality work and service I can promise you that your efforts will pay off seven fold.

Setting up an eBay Store is one of the easiest ways to kick start your online business and build your brand. Here is the formula:

Set up an eBay store (basic level at $15.95 per month).You can easily set up your store on eBay in a matter of minutes and be selling soon after. The beauty of eBay is that you have customers waiting to buy your products. We have seen clients start making sales as soon as a day after listing items in their eBay store.

As you set up your store pay close attention to what you name it, make sure you get some key words in your store name and separate them with hyphens. Also, you want to go buy a domain name at some place like GoDaddy and point it to your eBay Store. This will not only make it easier to market your store but will help get some age and use on your domain name for the sake of the search engines.

Once your store is set up you might want to add a custom eBay Store design to it. Having a custom designed eBay Store will build credibility and let your visitors know that you really do care about them and your business. It will also set you apart from your competitors that are using the generic templates that eBay provides for their stores.

Now you want to optimize your eBay Store, you are allowed to have custom pages and you should take advantage of them. Use these custom pages to talk about what you are selling, making sure you use good key words in your text. I have seen many eBay Stores show up very high on Google searches.

If you have a good product with a good price point you should start getting sales. Some people like to sell from their store for a while but then they see that they are paying a lot of fees to eBay so it’s time to add to the formula.

Set up or have a professional set up a custom ecommerce website for your business. Remember that domain name you pointed to your eBay Store? That is what you want to use for your website. Forget about using ProStores or Yahoo Stores, you don’t really have the flexibility or control to design, optimize or market these the way you need to.

Since you have started building your brand already with your eBay store you want to make sure your website matches the look of your eBay Store, same logo, same name, same colors, etc.

You want to get those people buying from you on eBay converted over to your website. eBay is very strict about linking directly from eBay so to be safe you need to a little old school. Let’s say you have someone purchase an item on eBay, you will be shipping it to them so here’s what you do. (You will need a shopping cart that will let you generate coupon codes.) Generate a coupon code for a dollar amount or a percentage off, take that code and add it to a “Thank You” note that you will drop in with the package you are shipping. Thank them for their purchase on eBay and tell them as a token of your appreciation you have included a coupon for a discount on their next purchase from your website. They can use it or give it to a family member or friend.

You will start converting people from your eBay store (Where you are a partner with eBay, they are owners of your customer too.) to your website, they will be your customers and yours alone. Now you are building a solid business that is an asset, you can keep it or sell it, it and the customers belong solely to you and you used your eBay Store to get you there.

This was too funny not to post and usually if I do post something about a spammer I don’t put a direct link back to their website but I feel so sorry for this guy I am going to make an exception this time.

I don’t know if anyone has ever seen the TV show “America’s dumbest criminals” but that was the first thing that came to mind with this.

Okay, here is the email we got today:

Hi,

I was curious so I went to his website and guess what? It has NO PAGE RANK! Wait, let me do a Google search on it… Nope, it’s not there either. He did spam me telling me he could get me top 10 rankings and high PR right?

I had to dig a little deeper to find out about Mr. Clarke and guess what? Can you guess? Uh huh, that name must be an alias… Here is the Whois info:

Registrant:

02227777322 Fax –

Seriously Robert, Bob or Bhawana (what ever your name is) nobody likes spammers or people that try to rip people off and you would not have ended up here if you had behaved yourself and done things the proper way like the rest of us.

I would suggest you stop spamming people, write a few articles of your own and post them to the article sites, set up a blog and join a few social networks. If you work hard and practice what you tell people to do and do it for yourself you might be okay.

Thanks for the good laugh though!