# Who do you use for selling online?



## PulpFaction (Jul 23, 2009)

The lady I work for is wanting to be able to offer items she sells to her shop to a wider geographic customer base. Most of the items are what I would call "Athletic gear for dogs" such as packs, harnesses, boots, et cetera, though she does offer some handmade items such as reversible fleece dog coats and booties.

We do not want to sell on eBay and obviously most of the stuff doesn't work for Etsy, just interested in getting some kind of storefront set-up on her existing Web site.

Does anyone here do that? What did you use? I've been shopping around so much at this point that my mind is frankly boggled with the possibilities and input from those who have been there, done that would be helpful.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

I don't have any ideas...maybe lharvey that posts here can point you in the right direction. I will be interested in hearing what others have to say because I have items of my own that I would like to sell.

Just out of curiosity, why not ebay? With the right ad, it might sell well as a Buy It Now.


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2009)

PulpFaction said:


> We do not want to sell on eBay and obviously most of the stuff doesn't work for Etsy, just interested in getting some kind of storefront set-up on her existing Web site.


There are a lot of free shopping cart softwares out there, she could install one on her site and have an instant store front. Or she could just embed paypal buttons by each product description.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

There are several free carts out there. However, if she's a rank amateur, she might want to seriously consider just doing PayPal buttons on an HTML page. _Much_ easier that way. 
Also, before casting off eBay, she might want to seriously explore that option. For all their faults and foibles, eBay is still the _best_ exposure you're going to have. Worldwide.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

It's hard to say what you may want to use for online store.

It really depends on your abilities and time you want to invest.

If you are able and have the time then I suggect OSCommerce. It is a free store front shopping cart solution http://www.oscommerce.com/ This solution depends on your hosting account as it requires an SQL database and configuring it can be some what of a bear if you are not familiar with PHP language.

I'd start out smaller with e-bay and paypal stores to get your feet wet and see how things go before going full speed into big application.

Naturally there are other CGI script based free shopping carts out there that may serve your purpose.

Lee


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## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

I have sent you a pm.

featherbottoms


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## Prickle (May 9, 2009)

We sold books over the internet for a while. We used a combination of things to sell. We had a website where we used the PayPal buttons and it worked very well. We also sold on eBay. 

You can do your main selling via website and put a few things up on eBay, then include an email or a card with the website address when you send the packages out. This helps drive some traffic to the website.

There are also some classifieds websites that can be used similar to eBay's "buy it now" program. They allow you to set up an ad and accept PayPal payments. The ads themselves are local or regional but you can place multiple ads for different cities. Some of them also allow you to link to your website.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

PS: eCrater is a good site (free!) for general listing of "stuff." There's not much so far as design control, and really no exposure, but it's a way to get started, I suppose.


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## bergere (May 11, 2002)

Handmade items can be sold at Etsy. They are cheap and easy to use. 

She can also use a Blog or web site to sell her items too but she will have to "Target Market" to get her items sold.

Then there is always Amazon and Craigs List.


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## PulpFaction (Jul 23, 2009)

We ended up going with Weebly which is a super easy free site that makes it a breeze to link up with paypal.

The results can be seen at grrdpets.com. My boss, who has very minimal computer skills, was able to set it up and create the site by herself and is very basic, but I was pleased with the potential for more creative design, too.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

Thanks for the update!!!!!


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