Are there any plug-ins that are good for this?

There are quite a few plugins available for this:

WordPress › Search for ecommerce « WordPress Plugins

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You can also link the worpress site directly to a hosted shopping cart like the one godaddy offers. I know many hear don't like godaddy, but I like that they offer reliable 24-hour a day customer service and their shopping cart is extremely easy to set up and use for both digitally delivered products as well as physical product. In addition, the GoDaddy shopping cart integrates with Paypal very easily and the reports that the cart produces for your business are excellent and really helpful.

Some of the wordpress e-commerce plug-ins don't produce the tracking reports and have limited features when it comes to entering your products into the shopping part.
I have yet to find one that's easy to use with lots of features, with easy payment processing integration.

Hopefully some of the more experienced people hear can suggest one.

This is a good one. It allows you to use Paypal or Authorize.net

Adelie Design » RSECommerce

Thanks everyone. I don't think they want it primarily to be an e-commerce store. its mainly to build his personal brand and try to book speaking engagements. I think selling the books and tapes is secondary. So I was thinking either a wordpress plug-in, or having a completely separate e-commerce store that would be linked to from his main website. Any thoughts on which would be the best way to set this up?

That depends on how you want the shopping purchase to flow. I've seen people do it via "Mailing List Style" where people sign-up for something, are offered a product every now and then. There are some who go all-out shopping cart - display products on their website and put in a shopping cart so people can buy directly. And then there are others who go for upsells.

It really depends on how you want to begin with it - landing page, full-blown website, sales page, etc. and then work your way from there.

I would simply use the Store plugin which we have been using for years.

It fully integrates into your wordpress site. No need for separate stores or what everyone else is suggestion.

Add an affiliate program for even better sales.

http://webmarketingforprofit.com/wor...ship-software/

Quentin

I've actually built some wordpress eCommerce websites using the WooCommerce platform. It's really user friendly, requires no technical knowledge of code, and has most of the features that you'd need.

If you ever want to switch off wordpress, go for Magento.

I think the best advice is to just hire a designer who already knows everything. He might be the right person to ask unless you're thinking of building it yourself. Plus, it'll save you a lot more time and you can focus more on the marketing (getting clients) side.

Btw, I love working with churches. You get so many testimonials since the pastor is a trusted "authority" figure in their church. =)

Shopp is a good plugin for ecommerce capability on Wordpress. I've put together a number of sites successfully using the plugin. Version 1.2 was just released and is still a little buggy, but get 1.1.9, and you'll be good to go.