Have the site, now what?!

In addition to the design being right I was most afraid of the cost. I have been quoted thousands just to design the site, never mind keep it up and running. With Artisans Accomplice I pay $20.00 per month for everything. I am going to go to the yearly plan of $192.00, I just wanted to make sure this was going to work first. The total expense to design, build, get the domain away from the other guys, and get the site up and running was $35.00 and included my first month. Now I don’t know about you but I can’t see paying thousands of dollars to someone to give me what I have for $20. The support I received is wonderful and they don’t make me feel like the computer idiot that I am! With those other guys I would ask a question or ask for help and IF I heard from them at all they would just repeat themselves over and over. My time is valuable to me and another thing I love about Artisans is that they value my time as well.
Now that I have been up and running for a couple of weeks, love what I have with these guys the next step is to figure out how to get people to my site.

Websites, Webhosting and Photography, Part 2

So now it was time to find someone to do it for me. When I started getting quotes on what the design would cost I was astonished! I am a (very) small business here in Waterville, Maine. My studio is in the refinished attic of my home. I don’t have thousands of dollars to put into a website.
My daughter lives in Massachusetts and I go down there fairly often. I have a favorite coffee shop down there, Bohemian Coffeehouse in Melrose. If you happen by there, tell Hillary I said hello! Anyway so I was in the coffee shop one day talking to Hillary and sipping a wonderful triple latte and she introduced me to a really nice guy that owns one of the biggest bead stores in New England. The Bead Gallery http://www.beadgalleryinc.com/
Come to find out he is also the owner of Artisans Accomplice, a designer of websites geared to the needs of artisans. I still looked around for another 6 months or so. What a waste of time and probably money! The folks at Artisans Accomplice ROCK. I told them what I wanted, simplicity, colors palette, etc and they put the whole thing together for me. They wrestled my domain away from a large company that I had it registered with. They handled setting up the shopping cart. The list goes on. Most importantly to me, someone who is computer inept, is that I can manage everything on my own! This would include photos, blog, coupons and sales, editing pages and I can even decipher the very detailed Reports page to see who is coming to shop from where! Amazing!! I tell you I am really a beginner when it comes to this stuff and I can do it. In the event I have questions they are just minutes away. Now really, I mean support is available free within minutes…not hours or days or how about never as was the case with 2 webhosting companies I tried. OK so enough about the wonders of Artisans Accomplice, Suffice to say to that if you are looking to open your own website you should check them out. Part 2 complete, I found someone to do it for me. Now, the cost…