Newfarm.org has a free page for small farms to sign up on. I haven't had a chance to put up our info there, but I registered. We have a website but so far not really sales from the net. The main thing is to actually publicize your site, because it's unlikely people will find it at random, unless it's very unique. Another thing, which is much harder to do, is to have updated info and changing content...keep people coming back. This is hard for farmers to do (when to find the time?) but ultimately will lead to people checking back alot more.

GarlicLady,

I have enjoyed your informative posts, and I can finally reciprocate. Websites are easy. My 9 year old and I did ours together in two nights and it was fun for her. We used the space allocated by our Internet Service Provider and their site builder software.

I did it for a couple of reasons. I wanted to make sure our car truck was completely for farm use, so we have a small sign on it with the website. The other is to communicate with friends, neighbors and customers. In the market season, we will put up pages of plant cares instructions etc.

I hope this helps. If you want to check it out:

Here is a link that might be useful: ShadowsRunFarm

I personally feel that websites are essential for businesses. The web acts like a giant yellow pages/encyclopedia and more and more people are using it everyday instead of the phone book. But, building and maintaining a professional looking site is very time consuming. Your site could just be a brochure telling everything about you and not actively conducting business. If you plan on actually selling over the web it will quadruple the management time. Not that it isn't easy if you work on computers a lot. There are plenty of hosts that charge very little to rent you space on the web (less than $10 a month) and most of them have templates where it is easy to just type in your information. Before I would pay for all the insurances you'll need to conduct credit card transactions over the web I would build your site with a down-loadable order form that your customers could print off and mail in with their payment. Wait til your on-line business builds up before investing in a super complex site.

I went into business last year and begged co-workers with experience to build me a website (even paid them in advance), I spent lots of time dealing with a distant nephew to have a site built, I contacted (repeatedly) plenty of website building companies and not one of these "professionals" even called me back. I've checked books out of the library and I'm now learning how to build my own. It will take up precious time but at least it will get done and when there is a problem I will know how to fix it.

I also don't believe that the web-surfing public cares one bit for all the flashy graphics or animation. They want the core information, prices, and contact info. No need to get too fancy.

I agree about the flashy graphics. When I am searching for information, they just irritate me and slow down my search. I like text with the option to look at photos if I choose to spend the time. And I REALLY dislike black or dark pages with colored text! It is so difficult for me to read that I just don't bother trying.

bdodd444, Your yellow text on blue is easy to read!

I agree . I am taking a class on how to build a web site and the teacher keeps showing us the flashy stuff BUT I like the simple stuff. I don't like the music and moving graphics. I do want to show pictures of the farm so people can get a connection to the farm and the food they eat.
When we start selling over the web we have decided to use a downloadable form and take checks and wait for them to clear before mailing.
I have thought of going the way you did Shadow Run with site builder program- (the stuff in the class I am taking gets pretty confusing!!)
I am on http://www.newfarm.org/farmlocator/ site as well as http://www.localharvest.org/ and http://www.farmerswebmarket.com/
plus some state and local sites. Local Harvest has had more traffic and already have customers that found us through them . Now what I want is a web site that I can link us with them.

I have several websites.
http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/boulderbeltcsa is my main site but I also have a commercial storefront at localharvest.org (which has gotten more and more business each month) and I am listed on New Farm.

Over the past 5 years I have gotten a decent % of our business from our angelfire website. Though it is mainly there for informational purposes not commercial reasons (i.e. one cannot directly buy anything from that site)

We have thought about the commercial store front for our braids seed and Value added products. Do you get much business through them? How does it work??

GL,

we are currently selling seeds, garlic powder and catnip. The storefront is free but they charge a % on what you sell (I think it is 15%).

The way it works is you post items to sell as per LH instructions. people view your stuff, people put in an order. You are notified via email. You go to your store order center and see what they ordered, put together a package, mail it, and LH will send you a check for the item(s) postage and handling minus thier take. They are very good about getting the money to you and they allow customers to use credit cards.

O was suspicious of this at first but so far I have done about $75 in sales since November. Not a lot but I think and excellent start. I'm, happy.

The plan for next fall is to have many more easy to ship items on the storefront and perhaps I will start selling CSA subscriptions through them this season (but first I have to decide to do the CSA thing again)

I wondered how many of you have your own site ? Is it worth it? Do you sell from your web site? Which of the free web site have you found the most business on? For me is has been Local Harvest I have had lots of emails and call with new customers who found us through them, (does anyone do business on there store?). Let me know your views on web sites. ~ The Garlic Lady

BUMP!

I found this thread while searching for more posts about CSAs. I wanted to bump it up to see if there are any updates.

I do have my farm on the web. I felt that it was an important tool for my customers, be they CSA subscribers or shoppers at Farmer's market. I can hand anyone a business card with a web address, and if they want to know more or wish to contact us, they can easily do so.

I use Netfirms "free" web-hosting (actually costs about $13 per year) so, yes, it is worth it. I am also listed on LocalHarvest.org and like you, have found it to be worthwhile. We do not sell our subscriptions through Local Harvest, but get many contacts through there. We are also Certified Naturally Grown and can be found on their web site at: www.naturallygrown.org

For Farmer's, a web-site is one more way to close the gap between you and your customer. We like to be as transparent as possible.

Any updates from anyone?

Lisa

Here is a link that might be useful: Pennington Hollow Farm

Since I last posted I have updated my website a lot. For the past 8 or 9 years I had my site on a free server but that meant lots of ads on the site so about 2 weeks ago i kept the same server (angelfire/tripod) but upgraded to get more bandwidth/memory and lose the ads. I also got a domain name (www.boulderbeltfarm.com) for the site about 4 months ago from Yahoo for $2.99 a year and that has quadrupled my traffic and boosted my stading in the search engines.

I know this has been positive for sales as many people who come to our farm store say they found us by doing a search on the web.

So if you have a site even a free one seriously consider buying a doaine name for it-it will help dramatically. And it is cheap and easy to do.

In March I decided to use Bellsouth ofer for a free website . I did a website (multiple pages ) . It was easy and free . I have gotten a lot of new customers thru the new website. Having the website linked to local harvest newfarm and our state website and a garlic festival site has helped but our new site has lots more info than can go on those sites.
our farm has been featured in 2 newpaper articals and our farm on the local news because they found us on the website. I was also ask to be a part of a program "Homegrowm & handmade " because of our website.

Here is a link that might be useful: Farm website

Well myself I do not have the knowledge to build a web page,but what I'm going to try is using yahoo's 360 Id. You can tell about yourself like a yahoo profile,but you can add a blog about your farm and add pics.I'm just starting an urban veggie farm in Tulsa, Ok..It will take a couple years to get what I want so I'm going to blog its growth.I'm going to get my kids and friends who belong to local yahoo groups and chat in local rooms put the link on their profiles. I picked a name for my garden that would be locally noticed and create some intrest into checking it out. I also joined some groups locally which have to do with buying local and health.My profile is "tulsa_city.farm" at yahoo profiles and I have a link on the bottom to my yahoo 360 page! I'll let everone know if it works next year if interested.

We use a free hosting service. It does have ads at the top of the page but as soon as anyone scrolls down a bit to read, it isn't bothering you anymore.

Darby

Here is a link that might be useful: Darbys Garden

Yup,

Here is a link that might be useful: My website for Northern Tropics/online store