For most every small business website, there will come a time when you want to sell something. When you get to this point, the problem becomes how to install shopping cart buttons and integrate them with the appropriate payment processors. This article gives a low-cost solution to installing shopping cart buttons on any website.

As the owner of a small business website, I came to the point where I needed an easy and inexpensive way to set up ecommerce capabilities. I did some research and realized that I needed a merchant account. I found a website that compared dozens of various merchant accounts. In order to access the info, I was required to enter my email and phone number.

I should have known this wasn't a bright idea and, sure enough, my phone was ringing off the hook with merchant account providers. Each one methodically described their services and payment plans. They might as well have been speaking in a foreign language. Not only were their terms and conditions almost undecipherable, but these people kept hounding me with emails and more phone calls.

And this was just the merchant account! I would also need to find a way to integrate payment processors like PayPal, and to find shopping cart software that would be easy to install on my site. All of a sudden, what seemed like a fairly simple process was fraught with additional expenses and confusing decisions.

Then I ran across an inexpensive service called E-Junkie. With E-Junkie, I wouldn't need a merchant account at all since their shopping cart buttons automatically integrate with both PayPal and Google Checkout.

So, here's what E-Junkie can do for you.

- Provides shopping cart and "Buy Now" buttons you simply paste into your web pages
- Allows you to sell both tangible goods and downloadable products on your website
- Integrates seamlessly with PayPal and Google Checkout
- Automates and secures digital downloads - no need to worry about people obtaining your downloads without paying for them
- Automates the shipping, tax, and inventory calculations for selling hard goods
- Utilizes a pop-up cart window so people don't leave your website while shopping
- Allows for creation and management of discount codes for promotions
- No transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee, no transaction fee and no software to install

Setting up a new product with E-Junkie is a snap. You simply click on "Add a Product" from the administration screen and you are immediately taken to the product creation menu. There, you enter your product name, sell price, part number, and any other parameter that deals with your specific product.

After you have filled in all the details of your product, you are given HTML code for both an "Add to Cart" Button and a "View Cart" button. You simply paste the button code into your HTML page and you're done. When you upload your page, you will have shopping cart buttons that can offer buyers the choice of checkout out with either PayPal or Google Checkout.

Just so you know, E-Junkie will also integrate with 2CheckOut, ClickBank and uthorize.net. So, if you prefer to use one of these services as your payment process, there won't be any problem.

Another nice touch with the E-Junkie system is that the shopping cart pops up within your own site. Your customers will be able to shop and add/remove items from their cart without ever leaving your actual website. Pretty nice when you consider there is no software required to accomplish this little parlor trick.

The last thing you should know about E-junkie is how easy it is to set up an affiliate program. Let's say you have an ebook for sale and you want to allow others to sell it for you. E-junkie gives you an HTML affiliate link that you can paste into your webpage that will allow people to register as an affiliate for any of your products.

These people sell your products and you set the commission for each sale. Then, at the end of each month, you can simply execute a mass commission payout with a click of the mouse.

While E-Junkie does not charge transaction or setup fees, there is a monthly charge of $5 a month to use the service. This $5 monthly fee will allow you to sell up to 10 products and store up to 50MB of downloadable files such as MP3's or ebooks. There are various other pricing options if you need more than 50MB of storage space or if you don't require storage (e.g., hard goods.)

That's it. E-Junkie provides a simple elegance at a price that just can't be beat. I'm an E-Junkie customer and I can confidently and proudly recommend them for all your ecommerce needs!