Selling Products  Online

• PayPal or Alternatives like Google Checkout
• Using a third party hosted store like 2checkout, Roman cart.
• Using an ecommerce Package/eShop

PayPal or Alternatives

PayPal offer all elements of the selling process. Therefore the only thing you need to start selling your products online is to open a free PayPal account. The traditional method of selling products via PayPal was using Buy now buttons, however PayPal also offer a shopping cart facility.

Whether or not PayPal is the only option you need for your site depends on the requirements you have. PayPal and its alternatives tend mainly to be used when you are only selling a small number of items.

Paypal also fits directly into an existing website as the buy now buttons are just snippets of HTML code.

 Even if you don't use the PayPal buy now buttons/cart but opt instead for a commercial cart/store then  because of its popularity and universal acceptance PayPal should almost always offered as one of the payment options.

 PayPal  is the ideal choice for ecommerce newbies who are just starting with online selling and only selling a small number of products.

Using a Third Party Store

There are actually two types of third party store that you will come across.

1. Externally hosted product database but with HTML code snippet embedded into won site.- 2checkout or Roman cart
2. Website and store are both hosted on external third party server

Using a third party store  like 2checkout or Roman cart is very similar to using Paypal as the end result is that you will be pasting html code supplied by 2checkout (for example).

Third Party stores offer many more features than simple paypal buttons but they usually have an initial small cost (around $50).

They are ideal if you already have a existing website and want to sell products on it as you simply keep your existing design and embed the product buttons into the site at the desired locations.

The problem with this solution is that you will have to go to one system (third party provider) to enter the product details and generate the code and then go back to your own server and enter the code into the appropriate pages. This is OK for a small number of products but time consuming and cumbersome for a large number of products.

With a third party hosted store and website you use the templates and a store design provided by the third part host ( you can customise) and all you need to do is register a domain name and point it to the store.

This is an ideal solution for new store owners that don't have an existing site and is much easier to manage when you have lots of products than the other method as you don't have to generate the html code on one server and then copy and paste it to a a web page on your site.

Self Hosted Shopping Carts/Ecommerce Packages/eShops

Most people are familiar with shopping carts as they are used by all the major online retailers like Amazon etc. There main use is for selling multiple products.

 You display details of your products, and with each product you add a button that says ‘add to basket’ (or similar). If your customer wants to buy the product all they need to do is press the ‘add to basket’ button.
 What this does is create a list of things being purchased. The customer can view the list at any time to see what they are purchasing and how much they have spent.

They can also add/remove items at any time. When finished they click another button to actually make the purchase (often labelled ‘go to checkout’).

Shopping carts are used when you have a large number of products to sell. See How to Build Ecommerce/Shopping Websites

• The Easy Way to Start Selling Online/a>