The Ideas are Always Flowing...
Wife and I are continuing our quest for more funds. I'm looking into options for selling hard copy and ebooks. I think she should make her blog book suitable for sales - I think it could be really comforting for a lot of stay-at-home-moms. I love writing, have lots of ideas, but always seem short on time.

We've recently started his blogging for money thing. Between the two of us, I think we're getting close to the $100 per week mark, which for our family, really makes a difference. We both stick to topics we can write in a genuine manner about, or we don't do it. For me, it is really increasing my consistency of blogging, which I think is a good thing.

I've come across a couple other ideas I'm exploring. We used to have a pet gift basket site, back before kids. We had great information about pets, and sold gift baskets with items for both pets and their people. One major glitch for a lot of folks wanting to start an online business is figuring out how to set up a shopping cart, so customers can buy their products.

Fortunately, there are a lot of companies offering ecommerce software. One company is Ashop.com.au - it offers full hosting, shopping cart services, tech support, and so much more. When you first start researching how to start an online store, there is so much to consider, but a company like this one has thought through so much of it for you that it leaves you time to be creative and worry about other things besides store set-up. Even though there are free and low cost services out there, these are rarely easy or work well. It is worth paying to have ecommerce services done quickly, easily and correctly.

I like that Ashop is set up to accept coupons, do gift certificates,and has its own affiliate program built in. They also have online movie tutorials, which makes setting up your storefront, and all related features much easier than trying to read it in text format. Ashop has different price levels to meet basic to more advanced needs. Considering all the features and services they offer, I would definitely consider them if I was about to set up an online store again.