In episode 53, we talk with Steve Dogiakos, Co-owner of Choteau Spice Company. Steve has been working on the web for several years and has his hands in eCommerce through several sites. Today we talk about his bootstrapped company, WooCommerce and some thoughts on what it takes to sell spices online.

Steve also proudly runs his site on Bluehost.com.

We chatted about:

* Why Steve chose to use WordPress and what plugin he decided on

* The  biggest challenge he has faced selling online

* How he found the learning curve was for WooCommerce and whether there was any part that was harder to learn

* What it’s like to sell spices online

* What has worked the best in helping him promote Choteau Spice Co.

Thanks To Our Podcast Sponsor: Bluehost

Transcript

You can download the transcript of this show at:WordPress eCommerce Show Februrary 22 2017

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone and welcome back to the WP eCommerce show. Bob Dunn here, also known as BobWP on the web. As you know, we like to occasionally bring on shop owners to share their stories about some of the challenges and successes they’ve had online. Today, we are going to be chatting with Steve Dogiakos from Choteau Spice Company. Hey Steve, welcome to the show and did I butcher your name or your company name?

Meet Steve Dogiakos, Co-owner of Choteau Spice Company

Steve Dogiakos: No, you got it spot on. Well done. Yeah, so I am co-owner of Choteau Spice Company. I have been doing web development and mostly website maintenance for about ten years. Choteau Spice has been open for, probably, eight months now.

Bob Dunn: I just have to bring this up because I was looking at your Facebook page. Are you also involved with your local Chamber of Commerce?

Steve Dogiakos: Yeah, absolutely. Both my business partner and I.  So, in addition to Choteau Spice,  I own another company that does Amazon and Ebay retail kind of stuff. My business partner also has an Etsy shop where she does artsy kind of stuff and through one of our three businesses, we are both on our Chamber of Commerce’s board, actually.

Bob Dunn: Oh, very cool so wow, sounds like you have your hands in a lot of different things.

Steve Dogiakos: Yeah, always.

Bob Dunn: Always, yeah, I know the feeling. Well, I’m intrigued with this whole thing of selling spices online because well, one thing is I love spices, I mean, who doesn’t like spices? I’m anxious to really hear about what you do. I had somebody on a little while back and they sell tea online.

Steve Dogiakos: Okay.

WordPress and WooCommerce working hand in hand

Bob Dunn: Sometimes, they have their special little challenges, so tell us a little bit about your online store. Why did you choose WordPress and what eCommerce plugin did you end up using and was there a reason behind that as well?

Steve Dogiakos: Sure. I use WordPress. I’ve been using it to build websites, nothing phenomenal or anything like that. I’ve been doing it for about ten years now, though. I bought hosting back in 2007 and was just playing around with the concept of building websites. It’s just what I’ve become most familiar with. I’ve looked at Drupal. I’ve looked at a couple of other different content management systems and I just like WordPress the best. It’s easiest to use, it’s what I’m most familiar with now. We ended up going with WooCommerce for our eCommerce platform,