Sell Items Online Quick and Easy


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So you came up the next big thing and are in dire need to sell it online? It doesn’t matter what it is, whether its a software title, eBook, or physical product you are going to need a ecommerce solution. The biggest problem with selling online is that it can be very difficult. Hopefully we can break it down over a few articles simply enough and take out the fear in jumping in and selling whatever product you want to sell. Don’t have a product yet? Thats easy enough. There are many different online products that are sold with resellers rights. Meaning if you pay extra you can sell it as your own. Be sure to read the license agreement though. Try this site if you are looking for something to sell.

So first off you could sell things online via eBay. This is a easy solution as eBay’s tools make listing items very easy to put items up online. You can sell anything from bread that looks like Jesus to the old hot rod you have in your backyard. There is even the ability to put up houses on eBay. The great thing about eBay is that your customers are already visiting eBay so you don’t need to find ways to generate traffic, you don’t have to find a audience. Your purchases are usually paid with using PayPal which is easy to use and painless, which can be direct deposited or accessed immediately with their ATM Card. The problem is that eBay and Paypal (owned by the same company) can cost you coming and going. You pay to put your auction or buy it now item up on eBay. You then pay PayPal when you get paid. They basically get you coming and going. This can really dig into your profits if you don’t have a big margin.

There are other alternatives. One such alternative is by creating a webpage through WordPress or other blogging tool and then finding a ecommerce cart to link up to. Chances are you are already familiar with Google’s Blogger or WordPress, and its super easy to set up a site with either of them. You do have a few choices here, you can go to WordPress or Blogger.com and sign up for an account, (this is free). Or if you want more control you can get a hosting package (we recommend LiquidWeb). Usually it will cost you a few bucks but it will pay off in the end because you’ll have a web page with your own domain name. TIP: Visit www.GoDaddy.com to buy a domain name before you go to them which saves money. If you do get a hosting package you can use their CPanel to install Wordpress. Its a matter of a couple of clicks and their support can walk even the most novice - novice to get up and running.

So you have a site to call home and now you need to hook up some sort of payment mechanism. There are many options here. One of the easier is a solution called 1ShoppingCart.com, their great support and super easy (newly freshened) back end is very easy to navigate and to add your products. They also give you 30 days for free. This can be great when you are first starting out so you can get familiar with their product. Essentially though its copy and paste to bring in the code their cart creates. You either pay for a gateway or you simply use PayPal charges apply. Incidentally 1ShoppingCart.com is what I use professionally when setting up eCommerce solutions.  Its very easy to customize to the look and feel of your ecart to your site.  Their cart’s layout is one of the cleanest for purchasing and I wish others would adopt the one screen checkout instead of wading through pages to find the end of the checkout process.  Their backend meshs up with nearly every shipping software that exists, we use Ascent.   They can help you manage your opt in lists, keep in contact with your customers, and let them know when their item ships.  1ShoppingCart.com also has a cost saving digital download function built in, that allows them to host your digital download on the cart as apposed to your web server.  This is great when you are on a bare bones server and cannot get hit with high bandwidth costs that can occur when you are selling digital media.  The great thing about their cart is you don’t have to manage the headaches of figuring out how to deliver and account for your product.  1ShoppingCart.com makes it easy for you.  Accountants will love the Quickbooks export.

There are a couple other options, like using the link code directly from PayPal or Google CheckOut but those options although less expensive don’t really assist the customer or you with a database to market and fulfill from.  Next week we’ll look into the benifits of Google CheckOut so stay tuned.

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Read more posts by Christopher Carey

August 24, 2007 | Filed Under General 

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