Chris Garrett of Performancing has an article about monetizing blogs by selling products on them. I’ve done that since day one, and have made a considerable sum selling my e-books like Press Releases From Hell and How to Fix Them and reports like What Could Your Company Do With a Blog?” But the e-commerce options for blogs, and I have tried several, suck.
Says Garrett: “There are many advantages to building a hybrid of a blog and ecommerce. First advantage is the natural search results you gain by blogging. Ecommerce website are notoriously difficult to get search rankings because they often have wacky URLs with numbers in and people are reluctant to link to you voluntarily whereas blogs gain links naturally and are usually search friendly out of the box. By seperating your blog and your store you weaken the effect, if the blog IS the store you get the full benefit.”
Are you listening Santa?
He’s right about the advantages of combining blogs and e-commerce. Unfortunately, there is not a single affordable, off-the-shelf e-commerce package that’s even halfway decent. Here come a rant.
Without starting from scratch for custom programming, I need a shopping cart for Moveable Type that:
– isn’t plug-ugly and lets me decide the layout and graphics of the product page, sales page, receipt, instructions and emails
– doesn’t force my customers to register to buy from me (such an incredibly stupid practice)
– tell shoppers that people who bought this, also bought that (relational database)
– lets me create a unique password for each purchaser of an e-book or report on the fly, void after a certain period of time
– is intuitive enough for a non-geek and doesn’t require me to be a programmer, or to pay one gazillions of dollars just to teach me to use the software.
– provides live customer support from actual humans via telephone instead of forcing me to write 4 emails to solve a simple problem.
Programs that have one of these features invariably don’t have the others, or do them in an amateurish, mind-bendingly complex or incredibly ugly way.
Says Komra Moriko of Design4Results, “Most e-commerce programs are stuck in 1996, married to a legacy that no longer is relevant.”
Can’t someone come up with an e-commerce plug-in for Moveable Type that is totally customizable please?
Hi B.L.,
I use a private lable of 1ShoppingCart (http://snipurl.com/Ecomincs) that I feel answers all your wants except for the relational database that tells buyers who bought other similar products. It’s web based, customizable, extremely robust as a database marketing system (adtrackers, unlimited autoresponders, affiliate program, digital product delivery, broadcasting, shopping cart, of course, tell-a-friend, create custom forms, etc.). I think it’s the best on the market and can be integrated on any site/blog. I sell from my blog using this system.
Hope that helps.
Denise
Hey, B.L., your blog rejected my ping for “questionable content.” I’m hurt. ;-)
Do you mean a trackback or a comment?
Moveable Type’s spam/blacklist feature is quirky as hell.
Sorry!
Thanks Denise. I’m familiar with 1Shoppingcart. Better than most, but far from great IMO.
It is expensive and I consider the relational database to be extremely important. Without it, you leave a lot of money on the table.
And I didn’t find it customizable enough.
One of these days someone will do this right. I hope.
BL
I suppose that, for every version of blogging 101 for us, there was going to be an e-commerce 101 for bloggers. And I’m not going to complain about stuff that swells the ranks of the nation’s online microbusinesses even further.
(And a cheery shout-out to B.L. Ochman, who provided a heads up on the article in the midst of a rant at Santa’s programming elves.)
It’s here: http://www.microenterprisejournal.com/JournalBlog/archives/2005/12/ecommerce_for_b.html
Editor/Publisher
The MicroEnterprise Journal
It;s not just a blog problem. I’ve been trying to figure out an e-commerce solution for my three websites for two years! I’m not asking for the moon–just the ability to track affiliate coIt’s not just a blog problem. I’ve been trying to figure out an e-commerce solution for my three websites for two years! I’m not asking for the moon–just the ability to track affiliate commissions at different rates for different products/quantities, handle both digital and hard goods (and ideally, ship the digital ones automatically), and cost no more than $20 per month. And allow the choice of shipping rate for digital, Media Mail, Priority Mail, and overseas. Oh yes, and ask how the customer learned about me.
We’ve started to implement and had to abandon a whole bunch of systems, among them 2CO and Payloadz. At the moment, we’re about to try two different copies of Mal’s cart–one for ebooks, and one for pbooks–but if someone chooses to order a mix of e- and p-books, it means filling out the order form twice (for those rare individuals, I throw in a free report to make up for the inconvenience). And the other problem is it mens manually sending the download instructions.
I can’t believe I’m the first person who ever wanted this particular set of features!
mmissions at different rates for different products/quantities, handle both digital and hard goods (and ideally, ship the digital ones automatically), and cost no more than $20 per month. And allow the choice of shipping rate for digital, Media Mail, Priority Mail, and overseas. Oh yes, and ask how the customer learned about me.
We’ve started to implement and had to abandon a whole bunch of systems, among them 2CO and Payloadz. At the moment, we’re trying two different copies of Mal’s cart–one for ebooks, and one for pbooks–but if someone chooses to order a mix of e- and p-boks, it means filling out the order form twice (for those rare individuals, I throw in a free report to make up for the inconvenience). And manually sending the downloand instructions.
So, B.L., that begs the big question. What e-commerce system do you use?
someone let me know when this happens because I have been sitting in front of my computer all day trying to find an easy to use storefront/shopping cart for my blog!!!!
I think that would be overwhelming. Why sell on blogs if you have so many e-commerce sites that are specialized on selling?