Which digital media publishers have added ecommerce successfully on their sites?

Question

As content producers experiment with additional sources of revenue, a few of them are starting to sell various products online... here's a short list:

• xkcd.com
• toothpastefordinner.com
• despair.com

What ecommerce tools are out there for various kinds of artists?

Answer 1

I experimented with a gateway system from Wells Fargo some yeas back, but it was more trouble than it was worth for my small operation. Today, I just use PayPal -- there are overhead costs, but there always are, and people are familiar with it. If I started actually selling something, I would go with one of the packaged "store front" options (I know of Yahoo and Amazon. I'm sure there are others).

Kickstarter can also be viewed as an e-commerce system when it is used for "pre-sale" campaigns in which the "rewards" are basically just copies of the product to be produced. They actually get their money through an Amazon system.

Not sure about the "social consciousness" of these choices. The way I see it, though, is that if you're taking money online, you're dealing with bankers, and that's unavoidable.

Am interested in hearing about better options if they exist, though.

Comments

@terryhancock -- Hmm. I'm not sure how anyone would measure the "social consciousness" of an ecommerce platform. The bigger ones from eBay, Yahoo, Google, Amazon would probably use datacenters that are trying to be as energy efficient and have as small a carbon footprint as possible -- but that doesn't necessarily mean they're socially good. And I think you're right that ultimately you'll be dealing with bankers if you're accepting money online -- and you just can't avoid that (unless you want to deal with Bitcoins).