Adding a shopping cart to a blog

[chickenista]

It just cannot be this hard!
I would like to have a widget/gadget where I could offer a few of my things for sale on my blog.
You know.. on the right side of the page where all of the other widget/gadgets are.
But I cannot find what I am looking for or even see an example of one.
This is driving me crazy.
All of the ones I see are for full page 'stores' or something.
Does anyone know?
Please...
I will keep googling onward!!

[baconexplosion]

I use a wordpress on a self hosted website. I found a simple plug-in that was free that added all of the shopping cart functionality. I have not used blogspot to host a webpage so I don't know if there would be something similar for your situation. The wordpress plug-in is called WP e-commerce.

Good luck!

[PaulNKS]

I think the problem you will run into on a free hosted blogsite is the ecommerce. I would worry about the security. Also, what payment options will you have?

You are better off self-hosting your blog and adding the shopping cart. It's not difficult to do. You also have control over your customers' payment options as well as security. If you use your own merchant account, your site must have an SSL certificate. I seriously doubt you can get that with a free blog site.

Even using a free blogsite, you should be able to install a shopping cart that uses PayPal. With that option, the customer is redirected to PayPal to make the actual payment and then redirected back to the blog.

You can have them "call for pricing" or call you to make payment, but you still need a way to process their payment. If the customers are not able to make immediate payment online, they will most likely go somewhere else. Today, people want to be able to pay online at the time. They don't want to wait. If they have to wait, they will almost always abandon your site and find it somewhere else so they can make immediate payment.

I have my own merchant account which is not expensive. I also use PayPal. However, my sales almost doubled when I added my merchant account. Some people refuse to use PayPal and some will only use PayPal.

I can help to answer questions here, or you can PM me and I will answer questions.

P.S. I have used the same hosting service for 9 years. All 9 years with my blog. The last 5 years included my retail website. My total website costs, including hosting, SSL Certificate, Privacy, etc... is just under $200 for the year. For my merchant account gateway, I pay roughly $24.60 per month. Then I pay processing fees. Yes, I make a profit every month.. a nice profit.