Web Dev Notes

If you haven’t been paying attention, the internet is an incredibly huge place these days. Millions of people browse the net every day and more and more people are becoming comfortable with shopping online. With the vast amount of customers at your finger tips world-wide, running an internet shop is a good way to make some extra money!

The first thing you need to consider before you jump right into setting up a shopping cart is first deciding if you will be renting a shopping cart system hosted by another company or if you will be purchasing software to set-up your shop yourself.

What are the advantages to renting a shopping cart system with a hosting company? The first obvious advantage is that it is much simpler for those who are not as tech-savvy but who still have a product they think they can sell successfully online. Also, by going with a hosted solution, you will often already have a payment gateway available to you so that you can immediately accept credit card payments on your site.

So why host your shopping cart yourself if the rented solution seems to offer a very easy to use solution? Because hosting the shopping cart yourself is less expensive! Since many shopping cart software systems are available absolutely free, the only cost you will need to worry about is the cost of having your own website! Below are three shopping cart systems recommended by the Web Development Blog as well as two hosted solutions that I like that are actually free!

Three Free Shopping Cart Systems Recommended by Web Development Blog

Zen-Cart
Zen Cart is a well-known provider of a free shopping cart system. While the administration back-end can be confusing because of the amount of options available, once you get the hang of things, Zen Cart can be an asset to your company because of its feature rich interface.

OsCommerce
Much like Zen Cart, Os Commerce is a feature rich shopping cart that also happens to be free. Released as Open Source software, Os Commerce has a solid community of supporters that help with the creation of plugins and modules, making this a feature rich shopping cart solution as well.

Cube Cart
Cube Cart is another free, yet versatile shopping cart system. Requiring only PHP and access to one MySQL database, the minimal requirements for this shopping cart solution are easily met by most paid web hosting accounts online today.

Two Free Hosted Shopping Cart Systems

Amazon Store
Amazon is a great way to setup an online shop at absolutely no cost. Of course, this option has one important restriction that you need to be aware of. By setting up an Amazon store you will be able to sell any of the products on Amazon.com and earn a commission on sales. If you want to sell your own products, this option is not for you. Even if your products are listed in Amazon, you could make more selling them directly than by doing so through Amazon. However, for those who’d just like to sell products related to the topic of their website, an Amazon store is an excellent option.

Paypal
Paypal is another great way to set up a free shopping cart. With Paypal you will be able to sell the products you like securely at no initial up front cost. You will be charged a fee for each transaction, but you do not have to invest any money up front. With Paypal’s shopping cart, you can define items and their prices then simply add an “Add to cart” button on your website. You can see an example at the BattleCity Classic website.

Once you’ve setup your shopping cart, you’ll need to market it! The best way to get free advertising is to take advantage of article directories like Writer Database where you can submit an article about your cart and the products available. This will help send visitors to your site at not cost whom will hopefully be interested in purchasing your product!