Build your online business (UPDATED) (bizland.com)

Member Name: campb3ll

Product:	bizland.com
Date:	23/02/01 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free membership and business information, Free email forwarding, Free web page (one page only)

Disadvantages: Many services are premium-rate only, Web space for premium-rate members

Build and host your own small business website at Bizland.com. Chose from four membership schemes: Basic, Charter, Value and Pro.

The Value Membership is the premium rate membership option. You don't have to chose this but if you do, you'll obviously get some extra perks. For $14.95 a month (plus an initial $14.95 one-off set up fee) you get 65 Mb webspace, 5 POP email accounts and unlimited email forwarding (tailored to your website/business name), priority customer service, special discounts, search engine submission and weekly traffic reports. You also get a free domain name for one year.

The Charter Membership gives you 35 Mb of webspace to build your site at www.username.bizland.com. You can access Bizland's free and premium website tools and receive a free weekly email newsletter. You can pose questions to the Bizland "experts" via the online forums. You can submit your site to the Bizland directory (easy) or Member Spotlight directory (hard).

Once you're a member, there are a wide range of website tools available. Some of these are free e.g. Guestbook, Counter, Spell Checker, Email2Friend, Fax2Friend, Poll Taker. Others are premium (paid for) tools e.g. Bizland Plus (essentially an upgrade to Value Membership), SiteGauge (tracks visitors). Most of the tools are free.

As Bizland.com is designed for businesses, it has a number of services to help you sell your products. The ShopSite Lite program gives you a free twelve product catalogue. You must upgrade to ShopSite Manager ($25/month plus $25 set up fee) or ShopSite Pro ($50/month plus $50 set up fee) to process credit cards and to increase your catalogue space; this will send credit card information to Payment Gateway, which sends the money to your Internet Merchant Account.

Bizland.com offers its own affiliate program. If someone becomes a member through your unique referral URL, then you get paid for it. You get $1 if they sign up for fr
ee membership; this does not have to include the free business email. You get $0.25 if they just sign up for the business email. This program is available in the US and rest of world, although they only pay in US dollars.

The site has many more resources and tools which I don't have space to list here. These are split across ten different headings: marketing, telecommunications, operations, shippings, web services, human resources, legal, e-commerce, finance and insurance.

This site could be very useful if you are a small business owner e.g. someone operating from home selling homemade products or an IT contractor utilising a limited company to work self-employed. Even if you are not selling a product, this site could be useful. For example, you could use the free webspace and tools to create a personal site. Although Bizland.com is geared towards businesses, this does seem feasible. Most free webspace sites include ad banners on your pages anyway. If you are not interested in setting up a website (you can use a free template if you are not used to HTML) then you may find it interesting to browse the various forums and information pages because the site is full of business information e.g. funding your business, tax obligations, legal information, essential software, how to increase sales.

These are only suggestions, above. I think Bizland.com has a lot of potential and interest to offer. I suggest you check it out cautiously and see if the Freedom Membership (free) works for you before upgrading to any premium services. Although, I have seen no counterindications to affect non-US members, bear in mind that all prices are US. (Note that to use Bizland.com you must have cookies enabled on your browser.)

UPDATE

Two new premium levels of membership have been introduced: Charter and Pro. Also, the Freedom membership has been re-branded as Basic. Almost all the benefits of Basic (nee Freedom) membership have been shunted
to Charter (detailed above) which costs $7.95/month plus a one off set up fee of $7.95. Pro membership costs $24.95/month plus a one off fee of $14.95 and includes 100 Mb of web space. The other prices have not been changed.

So, what does this mean for the "free" benefits? Well, essentially Basic gives you a single web page (in the design of a business card) and email forwarding and that is all. You still have access to the Affiliate program and many of the Bizland member resources. If you don't require much of a web presence and you are interested in business information then Bizland is still a good option. On the other hand, if you don't want to pay for any of the premium services and need a web presence then you are better off signing up with a free ISP. It is important to note that the main reason for using Bizland should be the excellent sales facilities. Yes, it costs you money but if you are a small business then it is worth it in order to process credit cards online.

Overall, I would still recommend Bizland as a possible cost-effective solution to small businesses selling products online. Just don't expect to find many freebies!

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