Rural Community Emalls and Innovations - A Webtour
http://lone-eagles.com/emalls.htm

Dillon, Montana Links

Dillon's Business Web Sites
http://lone-eagles.com/dillonbusdirectory.htm

A History of Dillon's Online Innovations
http://lone-eagles.com/dillon.htm

A Story of Grassroots Champions from Dillon and Jackson, MT
Chapter Two - Making a Difference http://lone-eagles.com/chap2.htm

Community Networking:
Leveraging the Public Good Electronically!
http://lone-eagles.com/articles/networking.htm

An example of Community Network features Dillon might consider
http://lone-eagles.com/betasite.htm

A Community Networking Clearinghouse
http://lone-eagles.com/community.html

Northwest National Country Connection (Rule Realty)
http://northwest-national.com  A Dillon Success Story!
http://northwest-national.com/advantage.htm
(See the chart on site usage!) Within six months of creating their web site their business quadrupled! Steady growth has been enjoyed since then. Business is growing dramatically every month. They now receive over 5000 hits a day viewing over 18,000 pages. They maintain 700 listings with a total of 11,000 images. They maintain 29 offices nationally from Dillon. Business is booming!
Chip Rule taught himself how to create and maintain web pages and says "This is the most cost-effective form of advertising available. It allows rural businesses an equal footing with Fortune 500 companies. We posted a home for one client and in seven days they had 2100 people view the site. We posted a listing for another client and they had 26 inquiries in three days." "The web will rival the printing press, if local businesses take up the challenge they'll find the web can be one hellofa business!"

Beefalo Business is Booming
http://www.beefalobeef.com
Paul Rebich of Dillon, MT doing business Internationally.

Cattle Sales
http://www.cattlesale.com

Angus Bulls
http://www.angusbulls.com

 

Explore these sites, many taken from the
Ecommerce Webtour at http://lone-eagles.com/entrelinks.htm

Women's Rural Economic Network
http://www.wrencommunity.org
http://www.shopthewrens.com
Collectively Making the Ordinary Extraordinary.
A wonderful model involving over 500 rural women entrepreneurs! Note how effectively they provide online support services and links to collected resources.

Women's Economic Self-sufficiency Team (WESST) Artisans, Taos, NM
http://www.wesstartisans.com/   Rural women artists' web sites. Recently featured as a case study of success.

Montpelier, Idaho's Story of Ecommerce Successes
http://lone-eagles.com/montpelier-story.htm

Montpelier, Idaho's New Emall
http://www.clovercreekmall.com Just getting started!

Mystateusa.com
http://www.mystateusa.com
Based in Boise, Idaho, this company helps communities create web sites showcasing local Ecommerce businesses and much more. Visit the sites for Blackfoot, Burley, and Twin Falls.

YourTown.net
http://www.yourtown.net
Here's another business to help communities generate multiple web sites based on templates. Many such services exist. Compare prices and features to learn which are best. Another would be http://www.mediaspangroup.com.

Bigstep.com
http://bigstep.com
Free Ecommerce sites for 30 days, plus many services for creating your own
E-business! They work hard to make their services easy for beginners.

Food Ventures Web Site
http://www.acenetworks.org
A successful food products rural cooperative from Appalachia. Note their wide range of support services, collected resources, and grant-funded programs.

Central Oregon Regional Network
http://www.centraloregon.org
This is an example of a regional community economic development web site. Note the wide range of collected resources. Look to see if this site reflects widespread citizen involvement.

La Plaza Telecommunity
http://www.laplaza.org
The first web-based rural community network and home of many outstanding innovations. Their main source of revenue is their role as Internet Service Provider. Note their wireless Internet services. Located in Taos, New Mexico.

Native American Artist's Web Sites
http://www.indianvillage.com 
Free Ecommerce sites for Native American artists. A great example of how easy it can be to get an Ecommerce site up and going. This would be a model to consider replicating in your community! The Indian Arts and Crafts Association is a co-sponsor. http://www.iaca.com 

Americans Communicating Electronically
http://www.ace.org
A USDA Economic and Development Systems initiative. Links to federal programs, funding, 4H youth programs, and related diverse resources from USDA. Note the link to the E-team entrepreneurship curriculum and the link to http://www.workers.gov

YoungBiz.com
http://youngbiz.com
Free Ebusiness sites and training for youth!

EBusiness for Teens
http://library.advanced.org/28188
A Thinkquest entry from Jamaica with lots of Ebusiness resources for teens!

Idaho Virtual Incubator
http://www.idahovi.org
Select the link to businesses to see Ecommerce examples. Other Idaho Economic Development resources and more are on their "Additional Resources" listing at http://www.idahovirtualincubator.org/links/ Follow the links to the Idaho Small Business Development Center, and their other links listing. Additional Idaho resources are provided by the State Department of Commerce and others.

Wisconsin virtual incubator
http://virtualincubate.com
Take the tour to see what you can learn.

Eastern Idaho Economic Development
http://eastidaho.org
This regional economic development initiative primarily serves to promote the region by attracting new businesses. Select "Technology Corridor" to see Entrepreneurial awards article.

Freemerchant
http://freemerchant.com
Seems a bit more advanced. Free Ecommerce merchant accounts and much more for Ebusiness startups!

Amazon.com's zshops
http://amazon.com
The largest e-mall which you can join. Explore to see how others are selling online. Free trial Ecommerce sites and a Merchant's Resource Center! Select zstores from the left hand menu. Auctions also available. An example of web mall where your Ecommerce page will be listed with many others. A great place to see the newest trends in online stores and Ecommerce.

Yahoo.com
http://yahoo.com
Free Ecommerce sites for two weeks, at http://store.yahoo.com/ and then you pay. Compare with the above offerings. An example of web mall where your Ecommerce page will be listed with many others. Review their resources on Ecommerce. Auctions available here, too. A great place to see the newest trends in online stores and Ecommerce.

 

A Hands-on Play Activity to Create Topical Hotlists

Go to http://google.com and enter the phrases below - including quotes. Use cut-and-paste to collect the best sites and information in a word-processing document. Then select "Save As Web Page or HTML" and you'll have created your own hotlist ready to "Open" and use in any web browser.

Putting phrases in quotes will return only those sites with these exact phrases. Combining terms with the word AND (in capital letters) returns only sites with both terms. Experiment and "play" to discover how easily you can find specific resources to benefit your community. The "*" is a wildcard character, for example edu* will return all sites with words beginning with edu. Using "OR" to combine keywords will result in MORE, not fewer sites. OR is MORE.

Search for:

rural AND emall*

"free ecommerce sites"

"ecommerce incubators"

"virtual incubators"

Idaho AND entrepreneurship

ETC.

An advanced tip to try out for finding tutorials, lessons, and online courses on ANY topic, such as Ecommerce would be

ecommerce AND (tutorial* OR lesson* OR course*)
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Four Essential Skills for Ecommerce Readiness

From the Ecommerce lessons at http://lone-eagles.com/ecommerce.htm

Level One - Searching and Browsing Skills
(The Power of a Self-Directed Learner)
http://lone-eagles.com/ecommerce-search.htm  
Successive hands-on experiences are presented to build the basic Self-Directed Internet Learning Skills for web browsing, cut-and-paste, and using search engines to learn anything from anywhere at any time.

Level Two - Creating Your Own Web Pages
(The Power of Self-Publishing Globally)
http://lone-eagles.com/ecommerce-web.htm
Learn the basics of Web Self-Publishing Skills, creating and posting web pages with text, images, and hyperlinks.

Level Three - Communicating and Working Together
(The Power of Building Learning Communities Through Internet Collaboration)
http://lone-eagles.com/ecommerce-email.htm
Learn about efficient uses of Online Collaboration Skills. Includes many related resources for advanced learning.

Level Four - Learning-to-Earn for Sustainable Communities
(The Power of Building Online Communities)
http://lone-eagles.com/ecommerce-mentor.htm  
Learn about using Internet collaborative tools for Teaching, Mentoring, Groupwork, Relationship-building, and Customer Support. 

          Los Gatos Community Multimedia
          http://www.losgatosx.com

          Ely, Nevada
          www.elynevada.com

          Dan Parchman's Family Scrapbook
          www.erockingranch.com  Dan offers web authoring services

Panoramas - Take a look!
Spring comes to Swan Peak: http://www.rockingeranch.com/bear_lake/roundup/april-02/swanpeak.html
Take a look at the kitchen and great room: http://www.rockingeranch.com/bear_lake/roundup/october-02/index.html
Free tools for panoramas at http://stone.newton.cam.ac.uk/mirrors/PanoTools/20010626/