Thinking of starting my own website

[Pat Pixley]

Josh, I was thinking of some thing like this only in a garage door way that all.

[Bob K]

I think "classiccoinop" is great. '>

[Kevin C]

Hello

Is the idea to sell your machines & parts and make money? If so I would think about taking over a section or renting a space on an existing website. This will help you get a feel for your success or failure of the business. If you crank it up on your own the website design, website hosting & editing will eat up any small profit margins that you are making on your machines. The other thing to think about is that your fun hobby is now a business that has to make money to cover the bills. If you are wealthy or have another job that can pay the bills when due it won't be a problem.

Now if you set this up & you could let your friend here sell their machines-parts on your website you could get a cut of the action to help pay the cost. This charge could be a flat listing charge or a percentage of the selling cost.

Get a business license, federal ID & some type of liability insurance. Not everyone you deal with will be your friend.

Just some ideas!

Kevin

[loman4ec]

I am looking into the legal parts of this but my father owns a small business on the side that I think I can merge with and operate under his license. I don't know if that is possible or not but that is what I am looking into. This is all still just an idea. I am just looking into what all of this will cost. I am not wanting to create a huge company like BITW or Funtronics. I am just getting tired of the ups and downs of ebay and would like to find another avenue to advertise my machines on. As long as I sell one machine a year I think that profit should cover the expense of the site. And I do think that the possibility of a page for Friends stuff for sale (all of you) would be a great idea.

[sodaworks]

Josh,
 Classiccoin-op.com sounds good to me. I to have thought about starting up a web page to advertise my soda machine restorations. The only thing that bothers me about that is I usually stay 3-6 months backlogged doing customer restorations and with the added exposure I think that my "hobby" would turn into a "business". I already gave a good full time job. I guess what I saying is I like the pace it is currently operating at, still enjoy what I doing. Something to think about. Terry

[BryanH]

Hey Josh, The restorers and collectors will find you (most likely by word of mouth) regardless of waht you call the company and/or site.

But IMHO - I think Classic Coin Op name is too vague for the average buyer.  When they want to buy a restored machine for their game room - how do they ask or describe it?  I think they're more likely to say "Old Coke machine", "antique soda machine", etc etc.  Personally, I'd try find something in this vein.

As a parting thought, a lot of this can be mitigated through the proper meta-data that you accocite with your website.  So you could go with ClassicCoinOp and make sure that the info the search engines read includes keys like "Coke Machine", "Soda Machine"... and so on.

[loman4ec]

Thanks everyone. So far this has been a big help. If you think of anything else please keep this going.

[dr galaga]

If you want to check a web domain you can go to http://www.whois.sc/ click on Domain Explorer and enter what you are looking for.  I go through v3.com for domain registration (I think they are consolidating with www.fortunecity.com)

[Creighton]

Great advice!!
We have one as a small business and I've got one that is just basically a quick start page for family. Domains are cheap get any that you think might be needed down the road. Just make sure you are the primary contact point, check every once in awhile to make sure you are still the registered owner.

Only other issue that I can think of is, do you want to write your own code? If not get ahold of Jim that will be the quickest way to success. HTML is not as tough as Fortan but still is code. Any questions just ask.
Creighton

I go through www.DirectNIC.com