Advice For Bitcoin Online Store? \ stacker news ~AGORA

1875 sats \ 27 comments \ @siggy47 4 Oct AGORA

I'm advising a family member who is trying to get an online art, crafts, and jewelry business off the ground (think etsy). Of course my thoughts turned to bitcoin. This person is not bitcoin aware (yet), but I hope to change that. I may wind up doing all the bitcoin related setup, but really what I need advice on is keeping it simple. I'm thinking an LN online store?

This person isn't concerned about privacy yet, but hopefully that will change. So, how are things like shipping handled? Any way to shield location other than a P. O. Box? Drop shipping won't help much since almost all of the items are hand made. This will be a US based business.

Thanks for any and all advice.

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54 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby 4 Oct

It's difficult to separate the conversation about accepting bitcoin payments from a conversation about marketing your products to bitcoiners.

If your family member wants to try to market the product directly at bitcoiners, there is a much stronger incentive sort out accepting bitcoin payments.

Unless they are interested in being technical, they'll have to pay something like zaprite or voltage to help them run the infrastructure.

Btcpay has a great woocommerce plugin, but you still have run btcpayserver somewhere AND a lightning node if you want to accept lightning.

So, my point is that unless they want to try to tap bitcoiners as a market specifically (which may be a great idea), they may end up just frustrated by the trouble/expense of accepting lightning. Because I suspect they will receive very few bitcoin payments from the public at large.

17 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4 Oct

Thanks for your reply. It may turn out to be me doing some experimenting and learning with their product. Maybe now's a good time to try, since from what I understand the frustration level is pretty high on platforms like etsy using fiat right now in trying to make a profit.

60 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder 4 Oct

former etsy seller here, the problem isnt with the payments, they have it all integrated and whatnot, it's the increase in fees and increase in Chinese competition dropshipping and print on demand. it's just harder to make money for legit crafters. this goes back etsy's IPO

if you open up a separate ecom store, there are different options that make it easy to accept lightning and btc, like btc pay server.

you can have that alongside the usual stripe options

if it's btc related products, that would be different, but in each case, you'll need to do actual marketing and outreach and whatnot to build awareness

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 4 Oct

I would imagine your family member could find bitcoiners interested in any hand-made product. The only problem is that in the grand scheme of things, there aren't very many bitcoiners. But there might be enough to constitute a significant segment, depending on their product.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4 Oct

We'll see. It will be an interesting project. At worst I'll learn a few things.

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 4 Oct

I would start with Geyser (https://geyser.fund/) to get them familiar with how payments work but the real magic with Geyser is that its free to join, no monthly fees (you only pay 4% when you receive a payment), payments go directly to their wallet, and you can even market it with affiliate links.

I think a lot of people are sleeping on Geyser. It's truly one of the most powerful bitcoin tools out there.

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 4 Oct

This is great news. Even talking about it! Hope it works out look forward to an update

43 sats \ 4 replies \ @tuma 4 Oct

Maybe let’s start with a simple BTCPayServer instance? And use that type of sw to add bitcoin payments!

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 4 Oct

I would start with Geyser before a BTCPay instance. That's a lot of technical lifting for a brand new user.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @tuma 4 Oct

Not really. You can connect to someone’s instance and create a e-shop in a matter of minutes. Geyser does not seems the correct option for a e-shop imo.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Jon_Hodl 5 Oct

If you have a friend who is already running their own BTCPay instance, then I absolutely agree with you but I don't think that is the case for most new to bitcoin.

Geyser is a great place to learn with minimal fees and they can get plugged into the community of bitcoiners looking to help orange pill new users and launch new projects.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @tuma 5 Oct

Well he is new, but his friend helping him not! So he could help!

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @0371279ce5 4 Oct

Shielding location: maybe an anonymous LLC or business trust?

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @hasherstacker 4 Oct

Do they have any knowledge of Plebeian Market?

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4 Oct

I can definitively say no without asking. I'll check it out now. Thanks

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 4 Oct

I can't speak to the btc aspects, but as far as post boxes go, most of them these days require some form of KYC (though that at least prevents the customer from knowing the person's address). You also technically don't have to put your address as a return address (you could put anything reasonably in the same zip code or three), but if the items are undeliverable and returned, that could be a problem.

43 sats \ 5 replies \ @AG 4 Oct

Etsy unfortunately has no option to integrate bitcoin payments, better chances with shopify, but you need to also run your own BTCpay server. Probably worth to experiment with WP and Coinos.. open source, hassle free... you just pay for a web server.

You could try nostr instead! To publish products, I particularly like Coracle and Shopstr that would broadcast the items in multiple relays.

For the shipping/privacy, PO should work. Another option is to get a warehouse that also manage shipping on request. Otherwise, to start with, maybe just better handle orders and shipping manually until there's enough volume to scale.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4 Oct

Thanks. I like the idea of nostr. Of course, explaining nostr might be as difficult as explaining bitcoin, but maybe it's worth it.

229 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 9 Oct

fwiw, I gave the above WP / Coinos plugin a whirl and it works great. Pretty painless way to start accepting lightning. Coinos is custodial, but if your family member gets a big enough balance, they could always boltz swap to the chain (or sell the sats to you). Happy to go in to detail if it is helpful.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @AG 9 Oct

BTW, you don't need to use bolts swaps if you use @coinoswallet. They have a built-in functionality that allow you to cash out onchain when a certain amount is reached.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 9 Oct

Thanks for the tip!

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @AG 4 Oct

start from the easy part, nostr! At some stage, the question on how to get paid will rise 😁

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 4 Oct

When you explained it to them, did they understand?

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Sirkay 5 Oct

Nice initiative, go the Geyser's way, it will be much easier.

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @globalmerchant 18h

I run a Shopify store (for b2b wholesale NOT retail) and added opennode.com as an ADDITIONAL payment method. If anyone actually checks into this using Shopify is probably the easiest to do.

Sales/payments using Bitcoin are almost zero. This is a reality. 14-15 years and Bitcoin is not yet really being used for b2b wholesale merchants. I also use zaprite, why ? because actual b2b merchants, want flexibility maybe they want to pay with a credit or debit card, or ACH or a T/T (wire transfer).

Very, very, very, very few (read almost zero) actually use Bitcoin for a payment method. I am a long term Bitcoin but for daily actual use the adoption is not here (YET), it will be. Sure it's a good conversation piece on paying for a cup of coffee somewhere in the World with Lightning, but in my humble opinion, wholesale use, normal, regular b2b adoption will eventually come, but keep the door open to having conversations, communications with those b2b merchants that get requests for also using USDT.

IF ANY OF YOU READING THIS JUST CHECK OUT WHEN YOU WANT TO BUY A BITCOIN OR OTHER TYPE OF MINER, the companies selling miners use multiple methods of payment. Sad to say you will see more types of crypto for payment than Bitcoin.

I use to have a territory on SN hoping to get exposure to b2b merchants, but no real interest. Don't get me wrong I am indeed pro Bitcoin, but there is more need in other Countries for using Bitcoin for payments than in the USA.

https://globalmerchant.io/pages/payment

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 17h

Sad but true. You have first hand knowledge.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 4 Oct

Everything? No. In general right now bitcoin will probably be looked at as just another revenue stream. That's okay. It will change in time?