My Travels on the Net

I’ve been looking for an inexpensive online shopping cart for clients who want to sell ebooks and accept payment for workshops and seminars via their websites. Sure, you can install a shopping cart on a website but that costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars and just isn’t a practical solution for most small businesses. Additionally, you have to have a merchant account which is complicated and time consuming to set up. So what options do you have if you’re just testing the waters of selling informational products online?

Paypal looked promising at first because you don’t need to have a merchant account to use it. However, it’s got a major drawback. You can’t customize the message the purchaser receives once they’ve completed their order which means you can’t automatically deliver the ebook. You have to do it manually order-by-order. Web based shopping carts such as 1Shoppingcart.com enable you to automatically deliver ebooks but it starts at $50 a month and you have to have a merchant account to use it.

I mentioned my dilemma to Franz Mura, the owner of Concrete CMS, and he suggested I check out the Google shopping cart. My first reaction was “What?! Google has a shopping cart?”

I’d heard about Google Checkout but I hadn’t heard that Google had a shopping cart. Google Checkout is geared toward shoppers. It enables them to store their purchasing info and have one-click check out capabilities.

Alas, it was too good to be true. Google shopping cart doesn’t appear to be coming any time soon. There was a flurry of blog posts about Google trying to take a bite out of Paypal’s business in June of 2006 but there hasn’t been any news since.

See these blogs posts for the full story:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060612-100806
http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/06/google_adds_a_s.html

I sure hope Google launches Gbuy because Paypal doesn’t get what an opportunity they’re missing in going after the information products line of business.

Got a suggestion? I’m all ears! If I wind up using it, I’ll donate $50 to your favorite charity.

Labels: Gbuy, google, shopping cart