Archive for February 18th, 2009

Since the time I bought my first item online (was it from Amazon or ebay?? hmm) I have always wanted to have my very own online store. Opening an online store does sound complicated for someone like me who doesn’t have much knowledge on website designing and such.

There is ebay or Amazon where you can open a small store with. But it comes with a small price of course. I have checked on how to start selling on ebay and also opening a store - special procedure and fees to open one - both requires a small fee to insert your product or items for sales on the market. You even have to pay for hard-disk space to store your products’ images. It is all rather complicated.

So I did a little research and search on how to open an online store. Lo and behold, I have found somewhat a jewel of a wordpress plugin. Yes, you can open an online store with a wordpress blog. All you need is to upload a plugin for you wordpress blog - Wordpress E-commerce plugin at Instinct.co.nz. Apparently the plugin has been around for sometime now, just didn’t find it months ago when I was looking for something like it.

I did a little experiment and I like it a lot! You can choose various form of payment method. Paypal and google checkout included. You can track your sales, and orders on the ’sales’ tab on your wordpress dashboard.

So far, I’ve only found one free wordpress theme that is compatible with the wp e-commerce plugin. Crafty cart theme. Here is what wp e-commerce store would look like with a ‘crafty cart’ theme - demo site.

I’m still learning and researching. Perhaps I will sell stuff on my own online store soon, or perhaps I will check out ebay first to get the feel of selling online then move on to own online store. Will see. Nevertheless it is still a good thing to learn about the cool plugin.

“Prevention is the best medicine”. Simple saying, yet so true. It applies to our health which includes our vision too. It is better to take care of your vision while they are sharp because if you don’t, a poor vision will cost you time and a lot of money to correct it.

An average cost of a pair of eyeglass frames is around $100. My pair of eyeglasses that I paid for many years ago was about $200. I have read on many blogs and even websites about a particular eyeglass manufacturer/retailer called Zenni Optical. For only $8 you can get a a pair of glasses - frames with anti-scratch coated lenses.

Over the years prices of many items had gone up. It feels good to know that you can still find something of quality at a reasonable price. According to Zenni Optical, the reason they can offer a pair of glasses starting from as little as $8, is because they manufacture and sell the eyeglasses themselves through their online store. Thus, they practically have no overheads to pay nor do they have costs to have middle-men to sell for them.

Even though the eyeglasses come cheap, but the quality is commendable as per those who have tried Zenni Optical glasses. They were even recommended through articles from online newspapers and magazines. Recently I’ve read an article on “The New York Times” that mentioned Zenni Opticals - Seeing Straight Without Breaking The Bank.

No wonder why they are rather popular. They are cheap yet the designs and quality is rather excellent. I saw a blogger who posted her picture wearing this Lime coloured eyeglasses from Zenni Optical and she looked so cool.

I really like the design. It looks nearly the same as my $200 worth of eyeglasses. For $8 it is really not bad at all I say.