Since Openbazaar is no more, how do you sell stuff without relying on Shopify or a self-hosted Wordpress server?
121 sats \ 4 replies \ @kr 7 Feb 2022
the fact that there are 5 comments with 5 different answers tells me the winning solution here probably doesn't yet exist.
Big opportunity for someone to build self-hosted merchant tools for billions of people.
Could also see Square making some big moves in this arena soon.
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Or Stacker.news making some big moves into this arena;-)
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Slide #7 of SN Pitch deck:
Marketplace/commerce oriented substacks
But I've no idea if there's anything in progress. Do you? Or does @k00b have anything to add?
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Nothing in progress yet, but it's definitely something we'll be exploring.
My first crack at this will be when I start selling SN merch. We'll see.
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the winning solution here probably doesn't yet exist.
It exists. It's called Amazon, it's called Shopify, it's called eBay, and it's called Alibaba.
They just aren't onboard with bitcoin and LN yet. Shopify is the closest, as they allow some bitcoin payment processors. The others, don't hold your breath.
The problem with self-hosted is ... where are your customers coming from? The online cart and payments are pretty much the tiniest problem for e-commerce. Getting listed in the search results on Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, etc. are why merchants use them.
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Don't shopify and the other SaaS e-commerce sites have plugins for bitcoin/lightning payments? If so, why not use them?
You could use pleb pay? On the other side of the paywall you have a google form for the person to put their mailing address ... They'd have to trust you to actually deliver your product but it'd work.
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You can start with custodial LNBits.com (very easy to set up), and later switch to your own LNBits (ie on Umbrel), just by pointing it to a different url.
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To accept cryptocurrencies, enable one or more of the following alternative payment methods from the Payment providers page of your Shopify admin:
  • Coinbase Commerce
  • BitPay
  • CoinPayments.net
Shopify Help Center > Alternative payments > Cryptocurrency https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/alternative-payments/cryptocurrency
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None of those support LN. Coinbase and BitPay are anti-bitcoin, and LN cuts into Coinbase's business model (where they would rather have you trade your BTC into shitcoins than to spend it) so don't expect LN support from them anytime soon.
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No LN support (yet), but there is:
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Another e-commerce tool with LN support:
Demo of LightningStrike ⚡ -- the zero config, self-managed, bitcoin lightning marketplace | @CypherToad #12533 http://159.203.147.32
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Not the easiest, but it is Lightning
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One option is to create a private group with your friends to buy and sell stuff for bitcoin, e.g. like #7424
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I've never done it before, but I'd probably go with BTCPay Server on Voltage if I wanted to create a store. https://voltage.cloud/btcpay
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