just wondering what software you are using and which is the best/cheapest?

Have a look at some Opensource software.

Search google for open source ecommerce software

Something like oscommerce

First - what language are you wanting - ASP, .NET or PHP? And then what features do you require and what would be your druthers?

you'll never end up a billionaire looking for something for nothing. But, there is hope.

I'm a moderator on a forum of over 10,000 members, many of them new to the internet and new to business of any sort. Other than questions about sales taxes, the next trwo most asked things are merchant accounts and shopping carts. So, I did some investigating.

You can go back through the old threads here and see that for some time I recommended Sam's Club or Costco for merchant accounts. No longer. I've found one that has a lot more to offer - including a FREE, hosted shopping cart.

You can use one of their templates on the cart,on their server, or have your own site with the cart tied to your site. Frankly, it is not as feature rich as OSC or Zen, or even Agora, but it is certainly servicable for many products and businesses.

And I don't know how they do it, but from the start they promote getting good listings in the Search Engines. And the amazing thing is that they do!

I built a site mainly as a demo site to sell some wholesale items to other members of that forum and for some local wholesale accounts I already have. The only place I've even mentioned the site is on that forum and now here. I have not spent 1 second on SEO, simply put up the site. Sort of "right out of the box", nothing sepcial.

It's been up a couple of weeks, really brand new. BUT, and this is my point - for the last 4 or 5 days I've gotten at least 1 sale a day from ordinary folks who were browsing the net. Not retailers I directed there, but people who found the site through search engines! Again, with no activity on my part.

So, whatever this outfit does to drive sales, it works. A couple of responses from How did you hear of us? were - Google & serachinhg online. From consumers, who I never dreamed of selling.

The merchant account itself has great rates - $ 19.95 per month is the only set fee. No statement fee, no minimum, no anything, just $ 19.95. That includes the online store and hosting. AND - if you sell nothing in any month, there is no fee at all for that month. Up to 4 free chargebacks per month. A real merchant oriented operation.

Here's a link to my free online store - http://www.pleasant-living-gifts.com

And here is a link to more information on the merchant account / shopping cart. I suggest emailing me with your name and phone number, so I can pass it on to the lady who signed me up. I've had a couple of people I sent to them that they ended up talking to some hard sell types and got turned off by the way they were treated. The lady I've done business with is pleasant and helpful and not the least bit hard sell, so I've been forwarding the emails to her.

Here's the link - http://forummembersservices.com/processing.html

We have used OS Commerce. It seems to require a bit of programming experience to deal with it. It seems to be a good shopping cart system, though.

We also use Miva Merchant, which is easy to use.

ZenCart is another free shopping cart. It's based on OS Commerce so will be similar, but may have additional features you prefer.

I'd look at OSCommerce. Its a great solution.

OSCommerce is free and pretty good however if you want to get your store up and running quickly with some support and minimal startup cost try www.cs-cart.com

Whichever you choose be sure to look at your future needs and not just what you need today. You don't want to keep changing to new systems, that can be more expensive than paying for the right one the first time.

cs-cart.com is awesome and oh soo free. try it out, once u get used to using that u can find something more pro.