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3rd party services such as Shopify also provide a selling platform for a monthly fee. However, these services do have limits on the amount of customization you can make to your site, and then what you set up on Shopify stays on Shopify. You can’t take it with you.

A WordPress website is portable and can have almost limitless customization as long as it is hosted on a server with FTP access. WordPress.COM free websites don’t allow FTP access, while almost ALL self-hosted WordPress websites do have FTP access. All our hosted sites allow this type of access.

The WordPress world offers several well-regarded ecommerce solutions.

The current leader in WordPress shopping carts is WooCommerce. Setting up WooCommerce is an advanced user task, but in our projects, we support site owner involvement in continuing tasks as soon as possible. If you know how to make a Post, there are just a few more steps involved in adding a product.

Gravity Forms is excellent for situations where a cart is not really needed. Gravity is ideal if you wanted to collect information from users as they register for a seminar and a down payment at the same time. Gravity allows setup of forms that can accept PayPal or credit card payment via Stripe or .

Another variant are membership or subscription WordPress sites, where customers pay for access to site content.

Some of our customers use Square to accept credit card payments for transactions at outdoor markets or other events. We are eagerly awaiting WordPress integration for this payment method.

These solutions do have setup costs, but then give you a revenue stream very well integrated with the editorial and blogging aspect of your WordPress website.

With WordPress you have the tools needed to make sure the world knows you have good content as well as a fabulous product or service.

I have another recent post with some tips on getting the world’s attention.

The post I Want To Sell Stuff on My WordPress Website appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.