It seems obvious that most domain owners get carried away by what a potential hosting outfit is willing to give free and freely without bothering about the specifics of those freebies. Well, of course it is said that the best things in life are those we get as gift(s) which is life itself; like you and I; the gift of God. But can we say the same holds true of a company at the minimum, that on the average pays $1200.00 per month on T1 connection, a conservative $475.00 per month to the phone company for the local loop, possibly $300.00 for regular/business telephone service and whatever the space (rent) costs; plus the equipment and service that makes your domain stay alive would host it for free? Let's be real!

The purpose of this first part of series of articles devoted to Managing Domains is expected to be a basic document without much of any technical information but simple things that we easily overlook in an attempt to get the most for our money. A process which most of the time leaves us with nothing to manage and then give up on this e-commerce spree. So where do we start or what is the entry point into e-ecommerce!

Arguably, the entry point should be having presence on the World Wide Web or WWW as is commonly known. This is exactly the problem phase for beginners because what goes into having presence on the WWW can have number of hurdles most of which are not immediately apparent. Most beginners rely on the judgment of the hosting outfit for advice but the hosting outfit itself maybe another beginner in that area and may probably just be relying on the skill use of software to create impressive advertisement literature with the potential of luring customers in.

So in actual fact, the way you enter the e-commerce get-rich spree may be conditioned by what you already know about the technology or the hosting facility you link up with for advice, and the working capital you have to start with. When there is very little capital, the tendency is to look for the freebies that by their nature, have the potential of creating woes for us. Don't get me wrong. I have been there!

Freebies are not necessarily bad. We just need to appraise the service offering them. When I see a service that offers everything free including the naked hosting itself, I will be cautious and ask myself how the service is funded and what am I getting. If you are completely ignorant of the technology that drives e-commerce, you should be concerned about support side of the equation to do the right thing to make your effort meaningful and not just to waste money and time.

Up to this point, we have not touched base with what is needed to show our presence on the net or WWW but rather, walking our way into the kinds of considerations we should make with full understanding of what we want to do on the net - the kind of business we want to push on the net. We need to have clear understanding of ourselves and the potentials in us so as to make our entry less turbulent. 

That being out of the way, we will look at specific knowledge we need to shop with for the entry point into e-commerce in our next installment. At that time, we will actually look at our options in terms of whether we need to start with just a Home page on our ISP's Internet Server, a sub-domain or a fully registered domain hosted by some hosting outfit, or even our own network in-house.