Wordpress E-Commerce Plugins
The main purpose of my post today is to tell you that I’ve found a way to increase my efficiency in terms of getting products up for sale quite a lot. Here’s the story.
I can set up products for resale quite easily, but it’s still a pain in the neck. I have to set up the sales page. I have to make sure my links for terms and conditions, privacy policy, etc, are present at the bottom of the page. I have to integrate the product into my e-commerce solution. I have to link to the product from my home page. I have to test the checkout process. I have to check the download links work. Add analytics to all pages. Yada, yada. You know the story. And I’m not even bothering to optimise for SEO.
I reasoned recently that there must be a better way, and there is. You can get just about anything for WordPress. I decided to take a look at e-commerce plugins that might be available for it.
I came across many, but there are two that are really popular.
WP e-Commerce has had 400k downloads at the time of writing. This is definitely the most popular plugin. You can see the details here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/
That product has a free, basic version, and a pro edition that you can purchase if you want it to do more. There’s many little modules that you can purchase to add functionality as well.
However, the product only has three out of five stars. I also saw on forums that there seem to be questions as to its reliability. Since I want WordPress to work for me and not the other way around, I decided to continue my search.
The second most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress is called eShop:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/
82k downloads at the time of writing. One of those downloads was me! I didn’t see anything bad written up for it, and although it’s simpler, it seems to do everything that I need from an e-commerce plugin. It can use PayPal, and that’s fine for me.
It will protect your downloads so that only purchasers can gain access to them. It will send an email to the customer telling them how to download if they forget to click on the Return to Merchant button. You can use it for physical products if you wish, as well.
And it’s free. There’s no “better” version for paying. There’s a donations button, and I might well be making use of that.
I was able to set up a new Wordpress site, add terms and conditions and other similar pages, Piwik analytics, get the eShop plugin installed along with ones to support analytics, SEO and comment spam blocking (although I may not enable comments on that blog), and get a resale rights product up and running on it within about four hours last night, I would say. I tested it through the PayPal sandbox and it’s working OK.
I don’t think that’s bad going. If you thought that you need a ton of money to get started as a product seller, those days are well and truly over.
So, what do you think? Why not get yourself set up quickly as a merchant, and start selling some resale rights products?
Why not make a game of it; see if you can get it done in four hours!
It’s a relatively simple process, but if there is any interest for it, I’m prepared to set up a webinar and show you how it’s done.
06 January 2010, 23:12
Hey David,
Great post… Lots of good info on getting a mini-site type sales system live and working for you with FREE software.
I’ve recently moved most of my marketing efforts to word press and have been looking at a better way to handle the sales and delivery process.
I’ll definitely check out the eShop plug-in and put it to the test.
You’ve saved me a bunch of time in looking for a solution.
Thanks for providing some great info, it’s much appreciated.
Derek
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06 January 2010, 23:50
David.
Thankyou!
I was not intending to use a shopping cart but if it is easy to do in Wordpress then I may reassess my plans. Could be very useful!
(I have installed the plugins now on my testing WP installation to check them out.)
Like you (I think) I love Wordpress and intend to use it for all my sites and pages – Salesletters, Squeezepages,membershipsites etc included.
I subscribe to your email list and enjoy your no-hype down-to-earth useful stuff.
Keep up the good work!
Wayne.
P.S. Sometime in the future (after I learn HTML and CSS!) I intend to learn PHP so I can write my own plugins. Then I will check out what you offer in the way of PHP tuition.
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06 January 2010, 23:57
Hi david
must say I had not thought of wordpress from the e-Commerce angle before, youv’e opened my eyes.
I shall give that a crack without a doubt.
Regards
Norman
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07 January 2010, 13:59
So Dave, in your opinion do either of these plugins replace e-junkie as a merchant site? While it is cool that you can sell products from your own site this way, it means that instead of paying a merchant/affiliate site like pay.com or e-junkie, or clickbank, it means now that you have to have a merchant account with credit card processors (unless you only want to use paypal) and it means you also need an affiliate software (or plugin if it exists), or not have affiliates.
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07 January 2010, 15:30
David,
While my interest lie more in affiliate marketing, I’m going to grab this “just in case”.
In your WP wanderings, have you come across any affiliate marketing plugins/themes that you would endorse?
I’ve seen some write-ups, but I place more reliance on unbiased reviewers like you.
Thanks,
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07 January 2010, 21:08
David, you’re right about the shortcomings of the solution. If you want to set up an affiliate programme, you need to do it in a different way.
If you would prefer to purchase a solution rather than use a fee-based service such as ClickBank or E-Junkie, the ones that I have used successfully are JV Manager 1 (still available from some resellers I would have thought) and the dime sale script. JVM 1 will allow you to make use of about five different payment processors; it’s a solid, reliable package with many features, but it is difficult to learn how to use.
In addition, merchant sites have the advantage that you get additional exposure for your product; this is especially the case for ClickBank with their marketplace.
So it depends really what you want it for. I’m using the eShop plugin to put up low-value products for download, the type that affiliates usually aren’t interested in promoting (because there’s not much money in it for them). I’m gonna try to rank for some keywords but not really hard, and I’ll see how it goes.
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07 January 2010, 21:17
Darrell,
PrettyLink is a good redirection plugin with statistics, so if you want to cloak your affiliate URLs, it’s not bad. I use the free version. It logs the number of hits and unique visitors. You get to choose the URL you want for your links (but I think it has to be from the blog root).
That’s the only one that I would personally endorse, although there may well be better plugins that do the same job. Of course, I use many plugins that are not related to affiliate marketing.
I’ll put together a list of the plugins I use in a future post.
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09 January 2010, 05:54
David,
I was looking for a way to have the ability to offer a coupon code to my visitors using the basic version of paypal – without using a third-party service like ejunkie. Haven’t found anything.
But, having the ability to at least have the shopping cart on my site isn’t bad… especially on wordpress. On your recommendation, I’m looking into trying out the eshop plugin. Thanx.
Would be sweet if I could offer a discount/coupon code using eshop or another plugin…
Did you come across one that had that ability, during your search?
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09 January 2010, 11:30
Hi Quincy.
eShop supports discount codes; you can set up percentages that may be limited by uses, date, or a combination of the both; you can also set free shipping discount codes if you ship physical products.
However, the discount codes apply across the board; you cannot just apply them to one single product from what I saw in the interface.
Hope this helps!
David
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14 January 2010, 23:11
David, I found out that there is a plugin for Wordpress that is compatible with eShop and that allows affiliate tracking. I looked at the demo and it looks pretty good. However, you need to view the following points:
1. I have not used the plugin personally, so I cannot vouch for it;
2. The plugin is commercial, although it is only $35, which is not a huge amount of money to spend on software;
3. They also sell eShop. DON’T buy that from them, unless you are buying it to get support from them (and I wouldn’t do that either). eShop, as with any other Wordpress plugin that is on Wordpress.org, is licensed under the terms of the GPL. This means that it is free software, but it also means that you are free to sell it, as long as (a) you distribute the source code and (b) you provide the same rights to others.
For more details on the affiliate plugin, here is the link:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-affiliate/
Also you said that you can only use eShop with PayPal. Actually eShop can also use PaySon, IDeal Lite, eProcessingNetwork (USD only) and Authorize.net. I don’t know whether you need SSL certificates or a merchant account to use any of those.
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19 January 2010, 16:55
A really nice and informative article, thanks.
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24 January 2010, 16:26
merci pour ces info, et tous cela poura m’aider .
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09 February 2010, 22:22
Hi David,
Nice post, I’ve always wanted to create ecommerce store and this info came at the right time. This would make a good video course on how to setup a ecommerce store with free plugins.
Best regards,
Spencer
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10 February 2010, 00:52
Hi Spencer,
Thanks!
I’m doing a webinar course right now on that very topic. If you’re interested, check it out here:
http://4hourecommercesite.dojotal.com/
At the time of writing, the first webinar has been done, but it has been recorded and it is in the members’ area.
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