Many people have products they would like to sell. The big questions are....how do I do it and what will it cost.

For many people, the answer may lie in creating an online storefront to display and sell their products. Online stores are particularly well suited for selling digital or downloadable products. This includes ebooks, video tutorials, software, in other words, anything that can be downloaded by the customer as soon as they make their purchase.

Online stores can be built using many different applications and methods, and the cost of building these storefronts can vary widely. One can only imagine what a company such as Amazon pays to operate their store on the internet. They can, of course, afford to pay top dollar because they sell huge quantities of merchandise and take in huge amounts of money for their efforts and investment.

If you're not quite the size of Amazon yet, then you probably want a little more economical way to put your products up for sale on the internet. Let's look at a couple of ways that are fairly easy to do, and cost almost nothing to accomplish.

I'm talking about using two very popular and powerful applications that are entirely free to use, and both offer almost unlimited capabilities to accomplish your desired outcome.

First up is Wordpress, one of the best and most popular blogging platforms available. Wordpress is free to download and use, and there are literally thousands of plugins and themes available to customize it to suit your needs. Some themes and plugins are free, and some must be purchased.

The second option is to use Joomla, which is a very popular and powerful content management system. Joomla is also free to download and use, and also has thousands of add-on components and themes that allow users to build custom sites. Joomla themes and components are also available free or for purchase.

Both of these options allow the user to custom build and configure their site to meet a wide range of needs, including, but not limited to, membership sites, blogs, store fronts, training sites, content management sites, and on and on.

You can install Joomla on your web hosting server and choose from hundreds and hundreds of free theme templates that are available to make your site look and feel just as you want it. For an even more professional looking site, you can purchase templates that will put your sites look and feel right up there with the pros.

There are all kinds of components, which is the name used for Joomla add-ons, available to accomplish almost every task imaginable, and most are free with a few costing a very nominal fee.

You can add forums, newsletters, social and group related options, membership site options, store front options, and just about anything else you can think of.

If your site will need to handle and manage large quantities of content, then Joomla is probably the "king of the hill".

If you choose to use Wordpress, which is probably the most popular blogging platform available, then the options are also unlimited in what you can do.

Wordpress is also free to download and install, and has hundreds and hundreds of plugins (Wordpress add-ons) available, and most of them are free or can be purchased at very low cost. There are also hundreds of free themes available, and you can also purchase professional quality themes for Wordpress at very reasonable prices.

Wordpress also allows the addition of forums, membership site options, store front options, social and group relations, and content management.

Wordpress, of course, is "king of the hill" for blogging according to a lot of people, so if you want great blogging capabilities you won't go wrong with Wordpress.

If you are wondering what one of these storefronts might look like using Wordpress or Joomla, then here are a couple of sites I built, one with Wordpress and one with Joomla. Both sites are fully operational.

Here is an actual store front built using Wordpress. This Wordpress site also uses a membership plugin to allow paid access to content.

Here is an actual store front built using Joomla.

UPDATE.....Since creating this hub, I decided to try building a web site using a commercial shopping cart solution.  After looking around and doing some research, I decided to give Cs-Cart a try.

Here is the storefront I created using cs-cart shopping cart.

You can, of course, make your site look entirely different, and have different or additional features, all depending on the theme you choose and the plugins or components you choose to install.

So.....the bottom line here is.....

• You Can Sell Your Products Online
• You Can Do It For Almost No Cost
• You Can Do It Easily Yourself
• You Can Look Professional Doing It