Thinking of changing things up- businesswise

>> Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I am debating closing my current dot com store (www.scarboroughseashells.com) and utilizing a shopping cart feature here on my blog in addition to my Etsy shop to sell from. The company I currently use is Prostores, and while I don't have any real problems with Prostores, I just can't justify the monthly cost when there are so many other options out there for less money.

I own my domain name for another year and could easily direct it here to my blog (before I opened my current website, I used to direct it to an eBay store). I am thinking that I'll use a PayPal shopping cart or something similar- does anyone out there in blog land have any experience with this?

My main question is- if I just create and "add to cart" button each time I put up a blog post with a new item, what do I do once the item sells? Am I going to have to go back into all my old posts and remove buttons so one-of-a-kind items don't get double purchased?

Also- is there a simple way to create a unique page in my blog just for shopping? I know I can add a specific tag to each post and then make a link that goes to those posts (like the current "recipes" link at the top of my blog now)- but am I missing something, is there another way to do this?

Finally- my other big issue is my email addresses- I currently have two that I use, but they are generated through Prostores. I can create email addresses using the company I bought my domain name through (GoDaddy) but I don't know if I can create them while the current ones are still active and I'm afraid if I shut them down at Prostores, there will be a lag time before the GoDaddy ones get activated and I'll lose some correspondence into the cyberspace abyss! Aaack, the dilemnas!

Any and all advice appreciated!

3 comments:

Anonymous,  May 19, 2011 at 7:50 AM  

What an awesome idea! I would love to do that one day!

However, I don't think I would bother with shopping cart buttons on each post...what a pain that sounds like.

Shabby Blogs has a tutorial on how to add up to 10 pages to your blog. I think it would be smarter to go this route - have all your wares on separate pages! Learn how here: http://shabbyblogsblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-add-pages-to-your-blog.html

Tara Beaulieu May 19, 2011 at 9:15 AM  

Thanks, Lisa, this is just what I need I think! I am messing around with it now- added it to my side column. I think I'll replace it with the other "shop scarborough seashells" link under my header, but I'll have to create some new pages for my recipes and all that first...

Thanks again! :)

Unknown May 19, 2011 at 6:44 PM  

Wow, Lots of stuff huh? Blogger came out with pages at the top, look at my blog. They arent as good as other types of blogs. They also amount to one loooooong page.

That said, they might be fine for what your talking about. You would have to set them up in dashboard.
Its not hard but they dont come up automatically.... And you can link blog posts to them as they have a whole other url - that said, it would be the same url

Say one page is necklaces. You could do one page per necklace - all of them would be the same page.

So it would pay to have a page per type of thing.

It wouldnt be as store like as you have now but its for real, free.

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