Advice For Bitcoin Online Store? \ stacker news ~AGORA

1848 sats \ 19 comments \ @siggy47 9h 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 6h

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 6h

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 5h

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 6h

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 6h

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

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 34m

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 2h

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

43 sats \ 2 replies \ @tuma 5h

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

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Jon_Hodl 33m

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

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @tuma 31m

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.

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @0371279ce5 8h

Shielding location: maybe an anonymous LLC or business trust?

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @hasherstacker 8h

Do they have any knowledge of Plebeian Market?

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 8h

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

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 9h

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 \ 2 replies \ @AG 9h

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 \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 OP 9h

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

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @AG 9h

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

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 9h

When you explained it to them, did they understand?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 9h

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?