Two weeks down and only 14 weeks until Christmas. Last week we talked about choosing a payment processor and getting a site online. If you still have not picked a product be sure to do so now as I am sure that for a few hours of work a week and putting $500 into your pocket would be worth it. This week it is time to move on and choose a shopping cart and affiliate programs.

Step 4 – Choosing a Shopping Cart

A shopping cart should be easy to use and flexible enough to fit your local needs. For me to sell a product online I would need a shopping cart that allows various shipping options, allows for taxation of people that live in Canada and makes it easy for affiliates to sign-up. There are 1000′s of shopping carts but I have put together a little summary below to help you choose…

Based on these choices I have picked E-Junikie. It was easy to setup, there is a built in affiliate program.

Step 5 - Using Affiliates

An easy way to get the word out is to pay out a small commission to those that recommend, suggest or review your product. Bloggers write reviews of products all the time. One way to get some immediate traffic to your site is to do a Google search for those blogs and sites that have written a review of your product and write them an email asking them to join your affiliate program.

Some of the shopping carts above do have a built in affiliate program but if you do not have one then you can use a software like iDevAffiliate. Also most affiliate programs work best with banners, you can get some excellent banners made at bannersmall.com.

Next steps?
Next week we will go over advertising and update on sales to date.

If you are interested in participating post a comment on what product you are choosing and we will contact you for updates as we go through to see how your doing. This will also allow me to customize the examples to help you with what your selling.