How to Make Setting up an Ecommerce Store as Easy as Logging into Flickr.
Here's an outline for a website idea (that we shall call WebsiteX) that could make setting up an ecommerce store as easy as logging into Flickr.
What Shopkeepers Do
(Steps 1+2 aren't necessary for people with Flickr accounts.)
- Setup a Flickr account
- Upload product images (including the price somewhere in the description)
- Give WebsiteX your Flickr details
WebsiteX accepts payments crediting the shopkeeper's account. When a shopkeeper's account reaches a certain value, say £20, they're issued a cheque. This would be a paid service (a percentage of the turnover) which users could opt out of by providing details of a PayPal or merchant account.
What WebsiteX Does
WebsiteX uses the Flickr API to access your pictures and retrieves all the ones with a cash value (this could be records including £, $, or € symbols followed by numbers in the description field).
The products are then presented to users in a really easy to use shop (something like: http://demo.script.aculo.us/shop).
Flickr's title field would be used for the product title, the description field for the product description.
The shop could have categories - an aggregate of product image tags.