Zero to (free) shopping cart in sixty minutes

This cycle can feasibly be completed in under an hour; most of the time is spent filling out forms over and over again.  PayPal account verification steps may take up to 5 business days, though, but that shouldn't prevent purchases from taking place.

 
1. Using Blogger, get a blog (and configure it to use your FTP server, if so desired).
 
2. Using Picasa, create a new Hello account and configure it for the blog.
 
3. Using PayPal, get a merchant account.
 
4. Using Picasa and Hello, send a merchandise photo with a short description to BloggerBot.
 
5. Using PayPal's merchant tools, generate an "add to cart" button for the item.
 
6. Using Blogger, edit the new post to include a title, a description, and "add to cart" and "view cart" buttons.

Feedback welcomed as to how this performs for y'all out there..  One interesting side effect of this process is that, without any advertising on the site whatsoever, it's a new way to (theoretically, at least) make weblogs profitable.

Note: Many people distinguish weblogs from websites by looking for the series of timestamps that are commonly associated with a series of "posts".  If you remove the dates from the main page, others may then choose to say that it is not a weblog.  This is up for debate, I suppose; at what level of post-processing and customization does a weblog stop being a weblog?

Comments

[Po]

That's awesome.

You hit this right on the nose! I really enjoy your weblog and I was so fascinated to find you discussing this exact issue after having had a conversation with a friend on the topic last night. I'll be visiting here often, do you mind if I add you to my blog list?

[Brian]

We used the same technique for my wife's jewelry store, www.uberhottie.com. I am surprised that more people haven't caught on yet. Nice post!

[David]

This guy is posting his nervous breakdown as he tries to run an online store http://safelykept.blogspot.com

Maybe it will help sales. :)

[Josh Koenig]

First of all, nice hacking.

Secondly: This is up for debate, I suppose; at what level of post-processing and customization does a weblog stop being a weblog?

This is a real interesting question, and one that has semantic vectors as well as functional. You can take a weblog without much customization and make it a lot of things. While a lot of people key off timestamps, product releases have timestamps. Press releases have datelines. Yet there are some honest-to-god weblogs that organize by category before diving into chronologically-ordered lists.

This here internet thing is still getting itself together, it would seem. Long way to go yet.

[Alex de Carvalho]

Great post! I haven't tried this yet, but I suppose you could do the same using Flickr + Typepad + PayPal ...

[kate]

Si is a friend of mine, who apparently shares your birthday (happy birthday!) - so here I am, and lo and behold, you have *great* instructions for selling things via one's blog!

So I sent your blog address to my friend at www.livejournal.com/pheret1. She's wonderful.

Just wanted to let you know - and thank you!

[pinktags]

Good question to muse over... my blog, for instance is certainly a chronologically organized site but with only one date per page, it's not what you might call a blog. Hmm...

[Jerome]

Oregonians, always facilitating things! There I was trying to figure out how add a shopping cart and there you were smackdab center with the right answer. Thanks for the info, and don't let the rain in Eugene get you down.