A website is an integral part of any business and/or organizations success. A business without a website is really unimaginable in today’s world. Various organizations have their own websites to enhance their online identity and presence. Now they are available to anyone that has an internet connection. Usually, if a business/organization doesn’t possess their own webpage, they are often deemed as unreliable and not trustworthy. To avoid adjectives like that and maintain high viewer traffic, it is a great idea to create a website for your company and your clients.
Fellow Chicagoan and pay-per-click expert Perry Marshall wrote a neat article on a litmus test for a new online business. He articulates why it’s important to use a niche market if you are an entrepreneur creating an online business. Looking back at the number of online businesses people created using iScripts business software solutions, it appears to be true.
I hear it every time I talk to potential customers requesting our software products. When I ask customers that are already using, iScripts SocialWare sometimes they say, “I want to create a website similar to Facebook or LinkedIn. My question is why? When you are trying to create a Facebook clone or an Amazon clone, it should be targeted for a niche market if you really want success.
We are not supposed to count the chickens before they hatch. But still, I think we have a pretty cool application in the making. Its almost ready to hit the limelight. As you know we have a multi-vendor shopping cart and an online site builder software. We have been getting a number of requests from clients on modifying either of it to an online store builder – so that they can offer it as a service similar to Yahoo stores, volusion.com or ProStores to their clients. So this would allow them to be an ASP / or SaaS provider easily. This would a great addition for hosting companies, design houses and marketplace communities.
We have a new online store builder software in the making. Its independent of both iScripts Multicart and iScripts EasyCreate. The current plan is to allow the end user to select a domain or subdomain, select a payment plan and create a store. The store would be saved on your server. Your customer can customize the look and feel of the store, add edit categories, products, shipping etc. from the management panel with few clicks. I am not sure about the name yet. But we have been kicking around the name iScripts GoStores for now internally. I will update you once we finalize. If you want to be kept posted about this application or you want participate in the beta trial let me know. If you want to take look at our beta demo contact me at Abraham(@)iscripts.com Aji Abraham
Every business owner has faced this fear at least once. A system crash. Lost files. Customer data gone in seconds. For individuals and small businesses, data loss is not just stressful. It can be damaging and expensive. This growing concern is why online data backup services are in high demand today. Seeing this need clearly, iScripts is introducing a powerful new opportunity for entrepreneurs and service providers.
iScripts has already been offering online data backup for consumers under the BackupToNet brand. Over time, customer feedback helped shape a stronger and more flexible solution. That experience has now led to the creation of a private label online data backup product that iScripts customers can fully brand and sell as their own service.
This new product is tentatively named iScripts Backuper. It allows you to start your own online data backup service similar to popular platforms like Carbonite or Xdrive. The service is designed for individuals and small businesses looking for safe and reliable data storage.
With iScripts Backuper, you receive a white-labeled desktop client application. This is the software your customers will use to schedule and manage their backups. You also receive the server-side software that handles billing, user accounts, and backup management. Right out of the box, the system can run as a complete standalone backup service.
If you already run another business, such as web hosting or an online community, this solution can be added as an extra service. This helps increase revenue and customer value. Some customization may be required, and the iScripts team will take care of that for you.
The product is currently in the final stage of beta testing. Both the desktop client and server software are being tested for stability and performance. The official launch is expected within the next two to three weeks, along with full licensing details.
Here is a simple overview of the pricing plan:
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The white-labeled client software will be free and allow unlimited users
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Private labeling will be available at a small additional cost
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The server software will be licensed at $99.95 per month for the first server
Since the system is complex, iScripts will install and configure the software for you. You will need a dedicated server or at least a virtual private server. All backed-up data will be stored on your own server, giving you full control. This means you can start a data backup service with almost no startup cost and a monthly expense of around $200.
Most iScripts products are released as open source or source available software. However, due to growing software piracy, this product may use encryption. While this was not the original plan, it helps protect the software and ensure long-term product quality.
If you have questions or feedback, you can contact iScripts at (312) 423-6728 or sales@iscripts.com. A working demo of both the desktop client and server software is available here:
To learn more about building and scaling online services, you may also find these iScripts blogs helpful:
Many of our visitors have been inquiring about version 2.0 for the last few months. I am happy to announce iScripts Socialware 2.0 is finally out of beta and is released. You will find the new version at http://www.iScripts.com/socialware. Some of the main improvements for iScripts Socialware 2.0 over the previous release are the payment gateway support and audio/video sharing.
Initially, when social networking was introduced it was a free community. Over the last couple of years, new business models for social networking communities have emerged to make paid membership community a viable option. So if you have an idea where you think members will pay you to join, iScripts Socialware is for you. Your job is to create value for your members so that they will pay you. Of course, if you prefer the advertising-supported model for revenue generation, Google Adwords and regular banners are natively supported. Another revenue generation avenue is the gift store. You can have either virtual gifts or physical gifts in the store and your members can purchase them with virtual money or real money. If you are making the community portal for your friends and family, you can make it completely free and without any ads. No problem.
Audio/Video sharing support is a natural extension that many of our existing users have been requesting. Your members can upload their audio/video content or link it from other sources like Youtube. The admin can decide if you want to host the videos on the server or you just want to let the users link to other sites or if you do not want anything to do with videos. Most audio/video formats are supported.
Another important improvement is increased flexibility for the administrator to create a unique community experience. The administrator can enable or disable around fifteen different features for the community. You can pick and choose the features to create a unique community for your members. We have also added a number of different layouts for the users to select for the site based on the core theme of your community. Overall security of the product is also significantly improved from previous versions. For existing customers, there is an upgrade script for upgrading from previous releases to 2.0 version. The new version is a free cost for all those who purchased iScripts Socialware in the last one year.
The price of this social networking software platform is still unchanged and is $99.95 for a limited time. As usual, this is the total fees, no monthly/yearly fees. The product is a completely open source, nothing is encrypted. So you can make any customizable. We are also available to make any changes to the product. If you require any type of customizing please let us know we will be happy to provide a firm quote.
We created iScripts MultiCart almost 18 months back after 6 months in development. Initially, the idea started out as a website for handicraft products.
There are a lot of people who make these cute little things with clay, clothes and anything you can imagine. Most of them do this as a hobby or side business. They are good at crafts. Well… most are. They never strike me as good marketing folks. So the idea of them managing their own e-commerce store selling these crafts did not make much sense.
As a one man/woman show they can either spend time on creating new beautiful crafts items or doing web marketing. It is a crime to ask them to do the marketing by themselves. If they hire they need to fork over most of the money from the sales to the so-called experts (including us) for any meaningful results.
It did not make much sense. So we thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if we create a co-op web store for handcrafters? All they need to do is list the products and ship out to the buyers.
We would, in turn, take care of the marketing, technical aspects, payment processing, tech support for the handcrafters. In turn, we would charge them a small fee based on the cost. as its a narrow vertical, we can market things well.
After talking to a bunch of handcrafters in the summer fairs we created handcraftweb.com. Initially, it was working out very well. but it turned out, we are very good at creating web software. Not very good for promoting a website.
It meant going to all those craft fairs and selling this idea to hard crafters. Then visiting a bunch of forums and magazines for crafters and advertising. It sounded too much work, in an area where we have not much interest or experience. So the site kind of slowed down.
Then we got a call from somebody looking for a multi-vendor site for baseball cards. He asked if we willing to sell the software and customize it for his site. sure, why not? We did it and their business was doing pretty good.
Then we realized this is a good software for small industry niches, where it does not make sense for individual players to create their own stores. So this offers entrepreneurs an opportunity for creating a one-stop shop for that niche. The niche could be handcrafts or baseball cards.
Finally, we decided to make the software more customizable and make it an official iScripts product. so we created iScripts Multicart as a multi-vendor shopping cart.
I looked around and did not see many products competing with it directly. So I was happy we came up with something very unique and new. Explaining this to customers who call to find out exactly what this software can do for them. Most of them had some business model in mind and wanted to find out if this can meet their need off the shelf or can we customize to make it meet their model.
I used to explain it as a multi-vendor system with a single storefront. Then folks were confused about who handles fulfillment, who takes care of payment etc.. So to make things clearer we used to explain it as a virtual mall software. So as a mall, you would have a number of vendors selling their own things.
But it would be under the umbrella of a single entity(mall). Most of the potential customers called during the time was looking for a business model where individual shops need to manage their payment processing as well as fulfillment. So I was looking for better ways to explain what exactly iScripts MultiCart do?
Last week when I was explaining the software to a potential customer for this script, she asked if it works like the new Amazon.com. Well, it is. It was an interesting realization that Jeff Bezos settled on the same business model for Amazon, as we did for handcrafters.
The only business model which made any money for Amazon after all these years. If you notice lately(2006-07) Amazon is not just selling products under their brand. They push customers to other vendors, even competitors, who do the fulfillment.
The only difference is Amazon used their super weight brand to attract customers and then push to other vendors for almost everything under the sun. In the case of handcrafters, we were focusing on a very small niche.