Someone who learned how to make a blog from us recently asked whether it would be possible to sell some of their crafts on their blog.

Sure!

Now, don’t go expecting a booming business unless you’re willing to put a lot of time and effort into promotions (just like any other business.) But, if you just want a place to showcase your stuff, and a way for people to pay you for it online, a Blog and a PayPal account will do quite nicely. You can put pictures of your stuff on a blog post, and add a ‘Buy Now’ button from PayPal.

PayPal is an online financial transaction processing company. It was acquired by eBay in 2002, and it is highly respected by millions of both buyers and sellers. It’s pretty easy to set up an account and create those ‘Buy Now’ buttons. Probably a lot easier than you think. All you need is an email address and a bank account. You set up a PayPal business account with a verified email address (PayPal sends an email to the address you provide – if you answer, it’s verified!), then you link it to a bank account. PayPal verifies that it is actually your bank account by sending 2 tiny deposits to the account electronically. If you can tell them the exact amounts of those deposits then you’ve verified that it’s your account.

Now all you have to do is create the ‘Buy Now’ buttons. PayPal makes that easy too. Just click on the link to make a button, fill in the item’s name and price. Then PayPal creates the HTML code for you (read previous article You simply copy that code and paste into your blog, either in a post or in the sidebar html widget.

No, I don’t work for PayPal nor do I have an affiliate program with them. I just use PayPal and love how easy they have made it to accept credit cards online. Before PayPal I had a merchant account. It was much more difficult to set up than PayPal, *and* it cost more. With the merchant account, I paid $18/month whether I used it or not. Plus I paid 3% on every sale. With PayPal I just pay the 3% and sometimes it’s even less depending on the amount of the sale.

Does that give you any ideas?!

Related posts:

1. Make money with your Blog
2. Online Banking
3. Why we like Gmail for Travelers
4. About HTML and Blogger
5. Email Choices on the Road