LiveJournal Announces LJ Checkout, Makes Blogshops More Professional

LiveJournal Singapore announced yesterday that all 50,000 blogshops in Singapore will now be able to enjoy more e-commerce features through its brand new ‘LJ Checkout’ platform.

LJ Checkout will provide blogshop owners a seamless suite of features which include product catalogue creation, a shopping cart system, and an online payment gateway. LiveJournal made this possible by partnering with MOLPay as its payment partner. Folks can still use bank transfer or cash-on-delivery to make payments if they prefer.

For the product catalogue and shopping cart system, LiveJournal has exclusively partnered with Singapore-based startup, PayWhere, which is also the creator of TackThis which we looked at last year. That’s the startup that allows users to create an e-commerce store and embed it on their Facebook pages, blogs, or any website. Now LiveJournal blogshop owners will be able to try this service at no cost for the next 30 days.

We contacted the LiveJournal crew in Singapore who clarified that the exclusive partnership with Paywhere is only for the starting period. Aarti Doshi explained further:

During this period, PayWhere will be our exclusive shopping cart provider. LiveJournal users will also be given a preferential rate which is not offered anywhere else. […] Blogshop owners will have four package options to choose from depending on their business needs. The basic package with 10 products is sufficient to upgrade the blogshop to a premium e-commerce store and is free of charge.

When last we checked in, we learned that LiveJournal’s 50,000 blogshops in Singapore generated US$72 million in 2011. With LJ Checkout now in place, that figure should rise as blogshops mature and get easier to setup and use.

How PayWhere system would look like on a blog. Image provided by LiveJournal Singapore.