Post date: Sep 04, 2010 4:15:11 PM
Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform out there
today. There are many benefits to using this platform, it
is open source, or free, it is very flexible, it is easy to
set up, there are a lot of plug-ins available which add a
lot of features to this program, and you don't need to be a
programmer to be able to maintain your blog. Some of the
benefits that make this platform so popular are also some of
it'd drawbacks. It is open source, so hackers can get the
code and look for exploits, and it is popular so it makes it
a worthwhile target to hack and break into. That being said,
the support is fantastic so the code is constantly being
updated to fix these major security holes.
One of the newer ways that this blogging platform is beingused is as an ecommerce site. There are many ecommerceplug-ins that give website owners the chance to sell theirproducts and services easily from their blog. One benefitis that at a minimal cost, the blog owner can easily have astore up and running within the day, instead of waitingseveral months to get the same kind of features available.Ecommerce plug-ins come in both free and paid versions. Thejury is still out on whether or not the paid plug-ins arebetter. The best way to understand which solution is bestfor the blog owner is do a feature/product comparison tableand determine which plug-in best fits those needs. Theseare 3 free ecommerce plug-in that will allow your wordpressblog to sell it's products and services.Yak Shopping Cart - This plug-in provides simple ecommerce
capability to the blogging platform. Some of the features
of this plug-in include the ability to create products from
posts or pages, configurable shipping, checkout widget,
downloadable products multiple payment options, and ability
to set promotions, among other features.
eShop - eShop offers customizable checkout, product
options, downloadable products, multiple payment gateways,
shipping options, automatic emails for purchasing and it's
compatible with WP affiliate for affiliate marketing. You
are even given some inventory control as well.
Are Paypal - This plug-in is more of a paid content type of
plug-in. Users of this plug-in would use it to manage the
payments of paid content on their blog. This plug-in allows
for subscription payments, bonus add-ons as well as standard
one-time access payments. What is nice is that Google can
search the hidden content so it can be indexed in the search
engines and that content can still draw more people to the
site.
It is easy to add an ecommerce solution to a Wordpress blog,
as there are many free options available. The plug-ins
listed in this article give the blog owner the ability to
add a very low cost solution to their web site. If the blog
owner has a few products and isn't in need of more
sophisticated options like affiliate programs and add
tracking, then these solutions will do very well. More
sophisticated and complicated solutions will probably
require another higher end solution that will more than
likely require a paid solution.
About the Author:
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