Yes this is the right place.
Paypal Shopping Cart
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p...c-intro-outside
If you are only accepting Paypal then the Paypal cart is a good solution. I have never played with it myself but it shouldn't be very hard to set up. I think after you sign up for the service all you do is put the Paypal "buy now" buttons on your pages and the Paypal will keep track of the items in the cart.
Shopping cart options that I have tried:
Mal's shopping cart.
http://www.mals-e.com/
Mal's offers a nice
free hosted shopping cart and secure storage of confidential information. It is "hosted" which means the cart software is not on your server. You put buttons on your pages (like the Paypal cart) and when the buyer goes to checkout they are forwarded to the mals site.
The cart is easy to customize to match your site and I find the whole thing to be pretty easy to use. With Mal's you can even accept credit cards (you have to have your own merchant account of course) if you don't mind processing them manually. Mal's emails you when you have a sale and credit card information is stored securely on their server where you may access it via a secure (https) connection.
Miva
http://www.miva.com/
Miva is a full-featured professional shopping cart but it is expensive. One Miva license is included with my hosting package at no additional charge. Miva is an excellent cart but it is coded in it's own programming language and it isn't so easy to customize. There are third-party modules available to do almost anything that you want to do but they all cost. I abandoned Miva primarily because I couldn't skin it the way I wanted and I didn't want to pay for additional modules.
osCommerce
http://www.oscommerce.com/
osCommerce is a
free open-source full-featured shopping cart. It's the one I am using at
http://www.visiblesoul.com/catalog/
I like this solution because it offers just about any feature you could want and I was able to skin it the way I wanted. It is written in php which is more hack-friendly than Miva code. There is an active community and there are many add-on modules available for free. There is a lot of manual configuration of files necessary and I found it a bit labor intensive to set up initially but I think it was worth it. I have linked it to Paypal so that all cart information is passed to the paypal.com checkout forms if a buyer uses that option.
Honestly I haven't promoted my online store at all. But when I eventually get it stocked with inventory this is what I will do.
1) Optimize all cart pages for search engines. Lots of keywords in my item descriptions.
2) Contact other website owners (with related sites) about doing a "link exchange" so that there are more possible ways for potential customers to find my store. More links will also have the effect of boosting my google rank.
3) Put the website URL on business cards and hand them out to potential customers. (I don't like to give away cards to people unless I believe they are sincerely interested in my products or services. I can't afford to "nickel & dime" myself to death
)
4) Promote my website at every regional show or festival that I attend. I believe that this is probably the best way for an artist/craftsperson to drive traffic to their website. When I was working shows for a living I would have many people come up to my booth saying, "We're so happy we found you again. We bought one of your shirts last year at this festival and when we got home all of our family and friends wanted one too." Then they would buy multiple items for themselves and their family & friends. If I had attached a tag with my website address to each item I am certain that my festival customers would have used my store frequently. I may return to festival selling eventually primarily for the advertising/promotional value.
If I think of anything else I'll post it later.
If you want help setting up a Paypal cart I would be happy to help, Bride.
-=DKC=-
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