We live in a time of tremendous opportunity: if you have the skills to build a piece of software, write a book or devise a business strategy, then you have all the tools you need to sell it and make a living. Gone are the days when you absolutely had to form a big corporation, grub for investment money and dedicate yourself to 20 hours a week of win-or-go-home-broke.
Every day, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs just like you are making a very comfortable living doing what you do as a hobby: building software, books or strategies that they sell online. Some of them grow and become full companies, going through all the growing pains that that entails. Others, however, simply focus on what they're good at, and at living their lives without the stress and demands of building the next Microsoft.
But the actual selling bit can be a bit harder than it looks. Sure, we all know that 'anyone' can accept credit cards over the Web - heck, haven't we learned that the easiest way is simply to hook into PayPal and get money sent via email?
The answer is no. Everybody can't take credit cards, PayPal won't let you sell whatever you like to whoever you like, and it's not necessarily as easy as it looks.
As a small firm - potentially consisting of you and your spouse and a potted plant in the garage - you don't have time to be building, maintaining and updating an e-commerce engine that gives you the best shot at staying independent. And every customer who can't, or won't, buy from you owing to your e-commerce setup is another step closer to going back to the corporate workplace.
The simplest way to make e-commerce work for you - rather than the other way around - is to employ an e-commerce service provider, like Plimus, Inc. You take care of developing the products to sell; Plimus takes care of putting a robust e-commerce platform in place that makes it nearly impossible for a shopper to object to buying from you. Plimus makes sure the shopper can
* Use whatever payment method they like
* Transact business in their local language
* Get online support 24/7/365
* See that they are protected against hackers and fraudsters
* Always get the information they need to feel good about closing the deal
You simply upload copies of your product, set the price and have Plimus design the look-and-feel for your order pages. If you want to change the prices, add coupons or cross-promote products, you can do so any time of the day or night through a web-based portal. Then you add a URL to your website and you're ready to go - you can sell, with all the bells and whistles large corporations spend millions of dollars a year to build and maintain.
