Building A Web-based Business: Advice From Someone Living Through It Right Now! Mail Options

Im building a business on a miniscule budget

Im building a business on a miniscule budget. Im learning and problem solving as I go along, floundering at times, but emerging somewhat wiser (almost) every day. In this blog, Id like to communicate some of the things Ive learned, to try to help others who are starting or thinking of starting their business. First piece of advice: If youre starting a coupon site, dont! There are easier ways to make money.

Part I: Mail Options

If you dont have a physical address, you have two options in addition to having everything go to your residence: P.O. boxes and FedEx store boxes. Youll pay about $50 a year for a basic box at the post office, and youll experience the occasional annoyance of FedEx and UPS packages requiring delivery at a different location (they cannot deliver to their competitors facility). This is what I did for Couponfield.com. Conventional wisdom may have suggested something else.

With FedEx store boxes, you can actually get a physical address, and the cost is around $250 a year. At first glance, this will make you look bigger than you are. For example, your address may be, 123 Smith Avenue, Suite 300. Sounds like a street, but actually its 123 Smith Avenue (the FedEx store location) and mail box 300 (you have mail box 300, of potentially hundreds of other boxes, inside the building). In addition to giving a false sense of largeness, theres a big benefit to doing this: Google Local and Yahoo Local require a street address, not a P.O. Box. Apparently, they havent cross-referenced against the list of FedEx locations, because these boxes count. You can get an instant local presence on the web.

I didnt select this option for Couponfield.com, for two reasons:

1) It may seem a little deceptive, if someone realizes what the address really is. For example, a polling firm called Strategic Vision has been charged with very credible claims of extreme dishonesty (making up their survey results from scratch, to fit political objectives) and they use a FedEx box for their address. When people learnt that they werent located at whatever number, whatever street, but simply had a mailbox, it added to their overall essence of deceptiveness. I didnt want to take this risk with Couponfield; remaining credible is absolutely necessary.

2) With a FedEx box, you now have a local presence for Yahoo and Google. This is wonderful, if youre not trying to be a national website. If you are trying to be national, the reinforcement of a local presence will make you look better to your neighbors and more alien to everyone else. Couponfield.com is trying to build something national, and therefore, the location is downplayed as much as possible. The P.O. Box is listed at the bottom of the About Us page, where I hope its hard to find.

To see how the project is going, please visit http://www.couponfield.com

by: Rebecca Tyler

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