Catlover

Oh, I do that all the time in my kitchen...it can be interesting! One candle each of six different scents. I just try to stay in the same fragrance family at least so they don't clash in a nauseating way! I love our barn too, but it sure isn't a place to make candles. It would be so nice to not have to lug everything back & forth from the kitchen, but that's life. Unless someone has a cheap and magical solution to a free-standing, climate-controlled facility a person could just put up in the backyard....the kitchen it will remain.

That's for sure! I've spent many late, bleary-eyed hours at the computer, and I finally decided on a cart from Auction Inc. I looked at Mal's and Zen and both seemed to require knowledge of code, which I lack, and I was SO TIRED of looking at so many options. I started with the PayPal free cart but it wouldn't do the shipping I wanted or allow me to even give options (it said it did, but it would default to the cheapest method every time). I still do payments through PayPal. Auction Inc is $9.95/mo, which I really balked at, but after I set it up (it gives you a 2 week free trial) and found that when I called support, I actually got a person who was actually very helpful and patient--I love it. I was able to generate the Add to Cart buttons (they give you lots of options to pick buttons that look good with your site) with my entire list of fragrances without having to mess with any code other than copy & paste. It lets me have real-time USPS shipping and also offer a Free Local Delivery option. I'm sure it has other groovy options that I haven't even discovered; I'm just happy that it does what I want for now! I feel your pain and have asked a million questions of the patient people of this wonderful community. This solution works for me; good luck with your search! Terri http://greenglowcandles.com

Wow, I'm also jealous of you lucky crafters with dedicated space! I'm all over our 1400 s.f. house; supplies stored in a closet in an office I share with DH and our other business, finished candles on shelves in our bedroom or wherever, I make the candles in the kitchen, where I cover the whole table with freshly-poured candles until they cool. I have to wag, wash & wipe the whole shebang every time. Which is why I'm procrastinating and looking at this forum instead of making candles right now.... I would love to turn our guest BR into my space; I'd have to get over the guilt of not having a room for any of our kids to stay in when they visit. (Yes, we have a blow-up mattress, but then their *stuff* would be slung all over the place instead of nicely hidden away in the guest room!) Nearest motel is about 20 minutes away....but that's what cars are for, right? I love the mobile home or split house idea. DH is going to make a potting shed area for me in the shed of our (dirt floor, open eaves) barn; maybe I could make him build me an entire insulated, climate-contolled shop instead. (This is his reaction at my suggesting this.)

Well, I wound up with a cart from Auction Inc, which seems to be working great. I'm on a 2 week trial, so I've gotta drum up some orders before I start paying! It's not free, which is the only boo-hoo thing about it, but: *their support is fantastic *integrates with PayPal, but lets you have a customized order page until the customer checks out *it allows many shipping options and gives the customer a drop-down menu to choose; it gave me my "Local Delivery" option (although I couldn't give the option only to certain zip codes, like I wanted) *it gives real-time USPS Priority Mail rates and, based on info you give them about the weight and the dimensions of your products, it will automatically give the customer the cheapest rate, i.e. regular Priority Mail or Flat Rate. It also allows you to add a "handling charge" if you want, which doesn't show to the customer--it just adds into the shipping charge. I didn't do that right now; just trying to get my product out there and build a customer base before I really stick it to people. (kidding. I've been told my sarcastic humor doesn't always translate well into print....) Anyway, after much sage advice from everyone, at this point: I'm happy! Terri http://greenglowcandles.com

Resurrecting this thread as I'm on a fruitless quest for a free shopping cart that will allow real-time USPS shipping and also allow me to have the option to offer free pickup in my local zip code. It's about 1:45 a.m. right now, so I'm cross-eyed with looking at so many websites, but thus far they all seem to require much more knowledge of HTML--code than I have (which is none). I'm set up with PayPal's free cart and it gets the job done, but I wish I could charge people the actual amount for shipping, not just have them stuck in whatever weight range their order happens to be in. Flat rate is great for larger orders, but seems a rip if someone only wants a few candles (i.e. college students who are friends of our daughters'--some Daddy's credit cards do have limits).

BTW, can a buyer choose to be invoiced as an option on your website? (I just got kicked out of PP again--"timed out" even though I'd only been logged in for maybe two minutes.) Deep breath, think zen thoughts....

Well, I'm getting really irritated with the PayPal site--it keeps telling me whatever link I've clicked on is "out of date", as if I just made it up in my head. Grrrr. I had my daughter buy something with the PP cart I have set up, and it worked fine, so it's functional, but I would really like those two things that are missing. I, too, don't feel like spending more time trying to figure out the tangled web of free carts (but I probably will). I don't know why they can't be made more simple and user-friendly for non-programmer types who just want to get their s*$t together and have good options for selling online, without paying through the nose. I'm tired and cranky right now. I'm hoping next weekend I may do my first little craft fair (if they still have a booth) and get outside to enjoy the beautiful fall weather away from this computer screen! I will look into the invoice thing~~I'm ready to get back to making candles and be done with this selling set-up stuff.

Oh guru Jeana....in YHO, is sending an invoice to the locals worth the hassle, or maybe I'd be better served investigating another free cart that has : (1) real-time USPS Priority shipping based on weight and (2) option for pickup/delivery with no shipping fee based on my local zip codes. If there is such an animal.

http://puffystufftn.com/contact.html They're in my town (Lebanon, TN) and they make the biodegradable peanuts instead of those obnoxious ones that get staticky and stick to your fingers and sit around landfills for who knows how long!

Hot D**m!! It's all working! PayPal Website Payments Standard w/shopping cart and it is using the product weights I put in with the shipping charges I put in. Thank you for all your help. Jeana, all my fragrances are on the drop-down list, all thanks to you! I did have the same problem with the "pickup" shipping--I put in Priority Mail and Pickup options, and it defaulted to the no charge for shipping. So barring finding a solution to this problem, I will probably just do the note on the website for the local yokels to sidestep the whole PayPal thing. It is time for a celebratory cocktail!:whoohoo:

I also use GB464, and about half of mine look that way when they burn--typically the ones with heavier fo's are the worst culprits. It gets better as the candle burns down the jar a little, but, as previously noted, that's the nature of soy. I even mention it on my website in case someone who's never burned soy before freaks out with the pockmarks.

OK, so it allows you to do as many drop-down boxes as you want, just limited to 10 per box? One thing: how can someone select just one fragrance, since there has to be a choice in each box?

Do you? Great. I haven't looked at their sites yet as supper is waiting to be cooked.... As long as it's some cut & paste HTML, I can put in onto my site; if I have to know what on earth to type, forget it. Just as when I was trying to figure out where to start with building a website, I'm sure I'm making it more complicated than it has to be. As long as I can allow customers to choose which fragrance in which size, and they can pay for the dang things, I'll be happy. I don't think the PayPal cart will allow me to have a drop-down menu for 30 fragrances, but maybe I can have a place where, after they order however many candles, they can just type in which scents they want? Seems like that would work, if PP has a place for notes, etc. Maybe?

I meant, PayPal....I keep typing PayPay instead.

That's a good idea, to note on the website about the local options. Did you just accept cash or checks with those orders, since they didn't go through the PayPal account? And let them pay when they got their order, rather than at the time of order? I'd hope the risk would be minimal, since most "local" people would not be likely to float you a bad check! Especially since a lot of the ones I know work at a bank, where I used to work and my husband now works... I know I need to look at the Mal's & Zen carts--it just seems that the risk of things not working well together goes up when you have different components from different places, you know? PayPay should always work with PayPal, but if I have a website done with Weebly, hosted by Fat Cow, a PayPal account, and a Mal's or Zen shopping cart....wonder if they will all play nicely together? I have zero programming skills or HTML knowledge, so the Shopping Cart for Dummies is what I need. Oh, with lots of options too. Where's Santa when I need him??

I don't mind limited...my knowledge of setting this stuff up is less than limited! If the will-call or free delivery thing doesn't work, I'm not going to worry about it. I don't have a shop or do shows (yet), but if someone is ordering from my local area, they can just call or email me and go about it that way. (Although I have no other way to accept cc's, so they'll have to pay me with cash or check. Hmm.) I realize that I'm never "done" with any of this! Once I trudged through the candle testing, packaging, building a website......now it's the "how & where to sell" phase and all it entails! Of course, I've only sold a few to friends at this point, so it will be nice when things begin to pay off to at least cover what we've spent thus far. :rolleyes2 Thanks again~~ Terri

Thanks! I just printed out a USPS rate sheet and am about to weigh my candles, so I can go on from there just putting the info in...I assume. I want to offer free delivery in my LOCAL area (my idea of local, not someone 20 miles away's idea of local) too, so hopefully I can stick that in there somewhere. For some reason, I keep hesitating to pull the trigger and just sign up for something already! Jeana, do you have the $30/month paypal merchant account? It looked as if I could do the business acct. and the "Website Pymts Standard" thing and only pay the transaction fee? Thanks again everyone for the info!

Everyone in my camp seems to love Cedarwood Vanilla and Dragon's Blood (I renamed it for my line) from CS. Warm and earthy! I cure for 7 days minimum to get a good throw. So far, so good.

True. I change some minor thing on my site at least every other day. Not that anyone notices! I haven't tried to really get it out there until I get this payment thing worked out. I wanted to try to do shipping by weight, so it's pretty accurate, and use the PayPal shipping labels. I assume sales tax only in my state, but wondered if PayPal can do either of these automatically. I'll keep looking!

Linda, thanks so much! I was just looking at the PayPal site and it seemed like this would work, so it was good to hear from you that it does...they have so much info on there I was afraid I might be missing something. So basically a PayPal business account and "Website Pymts Standard" does the job? I don't mind the per transaction fee...I just wasn't thrilled with $30/month for a merchant acct. I'm glad to know that's not a necessity. Do you have shipping and sales tax automatically calculated at checkout? Do you use the shipping label feature? That looked kind of cool~~ I'm all for one-stop-shopping! :smiley2:

Apologies for posting a question that has been answered before in various ways--I was trying to sort of "gel" everything into a one-stop answer shop, which really doesn't seem possible with all the alternatives. I'll just muddle around the PayPal site, the ShopSite site (!), etc. and try to find the cheapest and simplest option. If anyone has something enlightening on the topic, please shed your light!

Thanks~~ I'm also on the PayPal site right now. The thing I was trying to pin down was if I needed a shopping cart (apparently, yes) even with only two items (but multiple fragrances, so I get it), and a separate merchant account along with a payment processor like PayPal. The Big Three, to be able to sell online. Inexpensive websites start to add up quickly when you get into this stuff. :smiley2:

I have finally built my simple little website (yea!), and now am looking at the various ways of accepting payments. Daunting, to say the least. Bottom line--I'm asking all of you who have this down: Do I need to have ALL of the following: Store/Shopping Cart (i.e. ShopSite), PayPal (or other pymt processor) and a Merchant Account (i.e. iPayment)? My inexpensive website is getting pricier the more I look into all this! BTW, I only have 2 sizes of candles right now, in various fragrances--that's it. An online "store" seems like overkill. I have been all over the forum and have seen a lot of helpful info, but I'm trying to boil it down to what I actually HAVE to have (and I do want to accept cc's, which I thought I could do through PayPay, but.....no?...).

Oh, I've read some good stories on here about that--that's how I was able to immediately realize this was a deadbeat email! (Thanks everyone.) The thing is, I don't even have an online store, per se. All I have is an email contact because I'm mainly marketing in my local area right now. And this charming freebie-seeking person is in another state! The mysteries of Facebook... It is kind of entertaining to see what kind of things these people come up with.

Just got my first email related to the website I put up just last week. Oh, boy! So excited! Then I read it and it was some chick saying, "How about a sample?" Deflate. I looked on my FB page and she had "liked" it, so when I looked at her FB page, I saw she is a member of a group called "I Love Free Things". They spend hours and hours sending away for free samples of stuff. Oh well. Maybe the next one will be for real! Anyway, heads-up to everyone on that little freebie-searching group!