I have a handful of friends that are interested in selling a collection of items online. They want me to aid them (web dev-wise) but I simply don't have the time to learn and implement such a thing. I'm willing to do a small amount of PHP work, so I'm looking at a Paypal shopping cart, a yahoo small business setup or perhaps even a RentACoder job. I don't know much about any of these. Does anyone have any recommendations for this sort of non-technical (if possible), business development? Any recommendations on technologies for me to look into should I have to code this myself?

Don't code it yourself. I'd recommend Yahoo.

I've used yahoo shopping carts before...relatively painless! You will have to do the frontend stuff in html and add tags to your markup that links to your Yahoo store. Here is an example of a website where I set this up...it took about a month(spare time): Knockout Clothing


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Ramotek Media

Ok, I've been looking at that Yahoo small business site. As the starter is $40US a month (or is there a cart-only option with processing fees?), I may end up recommending a paypal shopping cart as it appears to be free (aside from the expected processing fee). I'll have to discuss it more thoroughly with them but that seems the best step for a fledgling business with not too many items (they're probably looking at listing on a single page).

Has anyone any experience or recommendations for/against this?

Thanks for the help so far, I really appreciate your time.