Building A Free Website at Vstore.Ca

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020807 - Yahoo! Small Business

Go Daddy $1.99 Domains 120x240

Get a 100% Free, fully customizable, professional online storefront where you sell your own products and keep 100% of the profits. Unlike many other web store creation, management and ecommerce web hosting services, this is not a trial or limited time offer. You can have your own free ecommerce solution, including a free sub-domain, free shopping cart, free ecommerce web hosting and free advanced ecommerce website design and creation tools.  To get started... Read on!

Signing Up

1.  First go to www.Vstore.Ca to register.  Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the text that says "Please tell me how I can get my very own online store >>> ".  Then at the bottom of the middle box, click on "Sign Up".  On this page, you will be asked to also sign up for PayPal.   If you do not have a PayPal account, you can sign up HERE for free.  PayPal is the way you will receive your money as the free web store accepts credit cards!  Then under Step 2, click on "Sign Up"  Here you can read the "Terms Of Service", and fill in your personal information.  Click the "Create new account" button when you are done.  You can now close the window and wait for your email confirmation.  It took about 5 minutes to get mine.

Customizing Your Online Store

2.  Go to your email and click on the confirmation link.  You can now log into your account with your user name and password and start working on your website.  At "Meta Keywords" make sure to enter 10 or so words separated by commas naming the items you will be selling.  At "Meta Description" enter a complete sentence that describes the services your site offers.  At "Directory Description" enter a few complete sentences that describe the main products and services your site offers. This description will be shown along with your store name and address in the VSTORE.ca online store directory.  (All the above information will help your site get found by search engines.
     You can also change your website's template and checkout button.  You can preview the other templates and buttons by clicking the arrow on the drop-down boxes.  When you are happy with a combination, click the "Customize my store" button.  (If your changes do not appear on your final web page try refresh or Ctrl  + F5)

Administration

3. Now in the left menu under Control Panel, click "Admin"  This page contains all the links you need whenever you work on your site.

Adding Products

4.  Click on "Catalog", then the "new product" button.  You can set the date your product will sell, add a description and price.  The Products Description box at the bottom is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web page editor, so it is just like building a web page at any free site.  You can add text and pictures.  Add all tour text first, then insert your images from the very bottom next to Product Image.  Browse your photo for your images there then click preview.  This will upload your images to the server.  Click "Insert" even if you are not happy with the page, you can edit it easier than rebuilding the page.  Now to put your image within the Product Image box, click the "Edit" button the top right.  To get your image on the page, click where you want the image to appear, and then click the (photo) icon.   You should see your image.  Double click your image and it should appear on your page.  Click "Preview", then "Update".
     You can now view your site and the product thumbnail should appear on your page. When you click on your product, you will go to the page you just built.

Other Tools

5.  This is a very extensive site, and there is no way I could explain every single feature.  This is a great deal I have seen no where else on the internet for free.  Now that you have started your store and you see how much money you could make, I am going to refer you to the professionals:

Step by Step Guide:  http://www.vstore.ca/guide.php 

Frequently Asked Questions:  http://www.vstore.ca/faq/ 

Help Desk:  http://www.vstore.ca/helpdesk/web.php 

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