There are other ways of selling your goods online without the hassle of running your own store.

Many people aim to sell things online, either as a side income or as a full time job. Most people setup their own online store, using one form of ecommerce website or another. While hosting one of these is the best solution, offering unparalleled customisation and control, it is also the most risky. You may not be willing to risk the startup required. Well there are other methods of selling things online. Here are a few of the best alternatives:

Clickbank

Clickbank offers possibly the best way of selling digital products (such as eBooks, software or anything else). For a one time setup fee you can host your product on their site, allowing you to sell it through their marketplace. Combined with the affiliate system (which has other people publicise your eBook for you) you can start selling very quickly. Clickbank takes all the hassle out of selling digital goods and is probably the best option on this list.

Trialpay

Read more in E-Commerce
« E-Payments: Which to Choose?
E-Commerce: The Future Business Strategy »

Trialpay is another avenue for selling goods, though they offer more range than Clickbank. Trialpay lets you sell physical goods as well as digital, and best of all offers the chance for your buyers to get them for FREE! By adding a product to their marketplace, you can set a minimum payout which selects a number of available offers on their system. When people come to buy your product, they complete one of the offers (a lot of which require no payment) and then get your product as well. You get paid, they get two products for free.

Cafepress

I don’t know if there’s anyone who hasn’t heard of Cafepress. Cafepress offers one of the best on-demand services online for hundreds of products. Clothing, books, CDs…they do all the work for you, you just have to create the product. The one downside to Cafepress is the steep base cost, which is the price cafepress charge before your markup. If you want to earn money you have to increase the selling price and you get the difference. This can make your products more expensive. However, the sheer number of possible products is a more than large enough counter to this problem.