eCommerce with Zen Cart!
My Origin Story
All superheroes have an origin story,
and That Software Guy is no different.
In early 2006, a friend I used to work with decided to start a small business. He wanted to build an online shopping cart on his business's website. I agreed to take on the job of developing his ecommerce business. At that time, not many shopping carts were available, but I found an open-source cart (Zen Cart) that I liked, and helped him set it up.
In short order, this became a passion for me. I spent a lot of time fixing bugs and answering questions on the public forum. I even started developing my own extensions. Then one day, out of the blue, a guy sent me $100 via PayPal with a note saying, "I built my entire business around your Quantity Discounts plugin." That was the convincer I needed.
Several years before this, I started an S Corporation called That Software Guy, with the intention of doing 1099 contract work for local firms (rather than being hired as a W2 employee). But when I began working on Zen Cart in 2006, I was working a full time job and not running the business, so I decided to give it a new life by pivoting it to part-time freelancing, with a focus on ecommerce.
That was in late 2006. Since then, every month I have produced some new modification, plugin, or new piece of software.
Even though my business was shopping cart development, I sold my software by email. In April 2014, I decided it was about time for me to eat my own dogfood, so I switched over to use a Zen Cart-based shopping cart to sell my software and services.
Fast forward to 2017, and after over 10 years of running the business as a side project while working a full time job, I decided to run That Software Guy as a full time venture. And it has been busy!
Thanks for reading my origin story. If you're looking for someone to help you with your cart, please contact me. Otherwise, if you just want to follow my work, you can watch my blog, check my home page or use one of the other ways of following me that suits you best. Cheers!