For years, Yahoo! has taken a special interest in helping women start and grow their businesses. For example, in 2008, Yahoo! Launched "Seeds for Success," a competition for business women and awarded more than $20,000 in seed money to winners. And, much of Yahoo's marketing campaigns feature women, and resources for women.
Yahoo! seems to understand that women are a powerful business force, and while they have not really come up with any special tools just for women, they do offer a number of services to help budding entrepreneurs. The following are three services Yahoo! offers to help you start an online business:
Website Development: Yahoo! Small Business provides free online tools to develop a professional website or online store. Development tools include video galleries, interactive tools to engage your visitors, customizable contact forms, and driving directions and maps. Web hosting services start at about $7.46 per month.
Yahoo! ECommerce: Yahoo! also offers a variety of packages and services to help you build and online store. You can use their development tools, or edit using Third-Party software like Adobe Dreamweaver®, Adobe GoLive®, or any HTML editing tool to build your online store. Other features include inventory management, payment processing and order processing. Plans start at about $40 per month (the first three months some plans come with a discounted rate.)
Yahoo! Business Email: Yahoo! Email services are pretty standard and cost about $9.95 per month - plus a one-time set-up fee (in 2011, set-up fee was $25.00). Included in their montly fee is unlimited storage and a domain name (so you can have email@yourbizname.com.)
There are other more affordable options than Yahoo! but two benefits in chosing Yahoo! Small Business are: they company has been around a long time and is not likely to go down (and take your website with it) and their tools are designed to be simple enough that the average Jane can set up her business online without having to pay a developer.
