There are two major WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors available for beginners. These are: Microsoft FrontPage and Netscape Composer. So question is which one is better?

They both have similar features and ease of operation. They can be used easily by beginners with only “in program help” features and you can design exquisite websites. The limit is your imagination.

In my mind, having used both of these programs, major difference between them is cost. Yes, Microsoft “charges you big bucks” for FrontPage while Composer comes as a part of Netscape program and it’s FREE. Just go to http://www.netscape.com, find and download their browser and install it and you have their Internet Browser, Netscape E-mail and a website Composer.

To check out some of simple work you can do with this FREE program (I get nothing for this, btw), check out my efforts at:

http://www.windydawn.com (an 7-year ongoing "work in progress") http://www.windydawn.com/wines (still being re-constructed and soon relocated) http://www.santaclaus-ca.com (added to every year) http://www.windydawn.com/phulam (pretty complete unless I add another chapter or two?)

My idea is that MS FrontPage and Netscape Composer are ideal for beginners as they provide so much help. Then you should move to Maccromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive when you feel yourself more comfortable with html code and finally, if you are serious about web design, you should reach hand coding level as it is still best way to code pages.

In final analysis, regardless of “program” you may use to help you design and build your website – or if you program it from HTML code – it is ultimately only as good as your imagination and your check-back validation of base code and overall site. Writing your own HTML code gives you freedom of using tags and styles as you want them to be used.

Do not forget, however, that ultimately invaluable final step: to validate your code, whether generated by hand coding or by one of WISYWIG programs. You would be surprised at number of errors actually created and overlooked during creative process. These can range from simple misspellings and run in code from broken links to invalid tag attributes.

Even if you are able to purchase goods from a distributor, minimum order sizes are generally large enough that a significant investment is required to get your initial inventories. In short, a home-based business intending to sell products online can easily spend thousands of dollars purchasing items that may be very difficult to sell online for a variety of reasons.

That said, there is a certain class of distributors that will allow a home-based business to sell products on their websites, and then drop ship them from distributor’s location. There is no need to purchase pallets of goods, and no need to worry over warehousing and fulfilling orders. You sign up for an account with distributor, list their products on your website, and when you get an order, they ship it to customer. No inventories, no muss, no fuss.

You can market products on your website, via online auction sites like eBay, or through prefabricated online stores like Yahoo! Shopping. Basically, anywhere you can find to promote products is generally ok, however all providers I’ve seen have very strict rules against spam e-mail.

Purchasing products from drop shippers is generally quite a bit less expensive than purchasing same items retail. That said, you will not be able to buy items for same “wholesale prices” that traditional retail outlets are able to purchase them for. That’s because you are not purchasing in same quantities as more established firms, and most of drop shippers charge a “Drop Ship Fee” which is tagged on to cost of every order and can easily increase cost of items you are selling by a significant percentage.