WordPress is by far the most popular platform for blogging and is starting to seriously pick up as a CMS for non-blogging websites. tripwire magazine have covered how WordPress can be used in a series of posts 13 Valuable Non-blogging Plugins for WordPress, 20 Plugins That Extend the Standard WordPress Feature Set, 20+ Awesome Non-Blogging Websites Using WordPress as CMS, 20 Remarkable Examples of Websites Powered by WordPress that you may want to check out. It is really amazing how flexible and userfriendly WordPress can be on the same time. In this post we explore another area where WordPress is growing in popularity – e-commerce. It may have started because some bloggers realized that making a living from blogging is hard if you just give a way everything. Blogs needs to be turned into businesses to really drive income and for selling products blogs turn out the be excellent sales funnels. Now while we are starting to have really great extensions for WordPress making it easier than ever to set up a simple shop it is not relevant for bloggers only. Anyone trying to sell stuff online need to consider WordPress – unless of cause you’re planning to build a huge webshop with thousands of products. In that case pure play e-commerce suites may be a better choice. Let take look at how you can turn WordPress into a shop.

WP-osCommerce

This shopping cart plugin for wordpress is a modified version of the popular ecommerce solution osCommerce. It allows you to integrate osCommerce with existing wordpress website. The plugin displays latest products, random products, top 10 best sellers and much more directly in your wordpress blog. It also adds a dynamic widget in your blogs sidebar to display the products.

eShop

This wordpress plugin gives you the ability to add a PayPal powered store to your wordpress site. You will use your pages or posts to create new products. Some other features include the ability to list multiple products and create an add-to-cart function. Also eShop offers a number of payments options that include- Authorize.net, Paypal, Payson, eProcessingNetwork, Webtopay and Cash/Cheque. It is compatible with WP Affiliate for affiliates

WP Auctions

WP Auctions is a revolutionary plugin which allows you to host auctions on your blog or website and to sell anything, completely fee free! It uses an attractive AJAX powered popup for optimum user experience and lets you run your very own personal auction site.

EasyDonation

EasyDonation allows WordPress users to easily embed a PayPal donation button with one tag.

Artpal

ArtPal is a free (GPL) WordPress plugin, originally written for Artists, to seemlessly integrate PayPal with their WordPress blogs so that they can sell their work online.

• Easy PayPal integration – all you need to supply is your PayPal email address!
• Real-time sales updates – as soon as your item sells, ArtPal will disable it from being sold. You’ll never worry about your item selling twice!
• Professionally supported – businesses mean business. Digital Sublimity provides commercial support, so you can be rest assured that your critical application will stay up and running when you need it.

Paypal Shortcodes

This plugin allow to insert Paypal buttons in your posts or pages, just using a shortcode. This plugin doesn’t have a management panel at this time, you will need to edit paypal-shortcodes.php and follow the comments.

FatFreeCart