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I blame Jeremy for the fact that I’ve been hooked on the soundtrack to Legally Blonde: the Musical for a couple of weeks now. He described it as being pink music, and he was completely correct – even the poignant songs are pink, just a more muted shade of it.

Looking around my house, my personal space, I find pink encroaching more and more. I’ve gone from being the girl who detested pink to the woman who has embraced it enough to own a pink laptop and a pink iPod shuffle, as well as a pink tote bag and a pink wristwatch.

More recently, there are the sneakers I “designed” at the converse website – you can see them here – that are not only pink, but also sport fingerprints. I need to go to a store and actually try some on before I order these because I’m not certain of how their shoes will fit my foot, but I do plan to actually get them at some point.

I guess I can blame Jeremy for the music, but the rest of the pink-ocity, is all me.

There are always reasons not to write. They appear as wantonly as toadstools after the rain. Entertaining those reasons even for a split second is the path to uncreativity. Write, even if you have a twinge, a doubt, a fear, a block, a noisy neighbor, a sick cat, thirteen unpublished stories, and a painful boil. Write, even if you aren’t sure. Come to Paris, even if you don’t speak French.

— Eric Maisel, A Writer’s Paris: a guided journey for the creative soul

If you’re going to market goods or services on the web, especially as an individual, you either have to join an existing webmall or marketplace, use an auction site, or install shopping cart software. The last option isn’t always the easiest, but it definitely gives you the most control.

I was looking for ecommerce software recently, when my mother asked me to help her market an ebook. She ultimately never finished the book, but in my search for a solution, I came across Ashop Commerce, an Australian company that does business in the US and UK as well. Even better, their software is completely integrated with PayPal and WorldPay, so if you want your buyers to be able to use plastic, you don’t need to get a merchant account with Visa or Mastercard.

What I like about Ashop is that the shopping cart supports digital products (like my mother’s unfinished ebook) as well as physical goods, but other great features are that it’s pretty simple to install, and there are no contracts to sign, just a setup fee and a monthly user fee. The template is customizable, so it can meld with your existing website, and while Ashop does offer hosting, no shopping carts are on their domain – you have to have your own.

Ashop’s pricing varies from region to region, and depends upon how many products you plan to sell, but the base price for folks in the USA is $39.95/month, which is pretty reasonable, when you look at what they offer – they even have special B2B and SEO packages.

My recommendation? If you’re planning to become an etailer, consider Ashop.