Whipping Together an Eccomerce Site - Concerns

I've already got traffic, so that is not an issue. Within the next week I plan to spend a day or two putting together a small eccomerce site using woocommerce.

For payment method I decided on 2checkout because it utilizes both paypal and CC.

Basically I am just wondering if I can create this website on my shared hostgator plan without using SSL because all payments will be going through 2 checkout? (I haven't looked into 2checkout or SSL, though I am assuming SSL is something to do with encrypting of personal details and likely using 2checkout would make it not needed?)

When I built my own eCommerce site I did it with mijirah and i forget the card processor but they charged per transaction. You can do it with no SSL but honestly your conversion rate on organic traffic without developing your website into a real brand is pretty bad usually. In the case of developing a brand the $75 for a SSL per year is cheap.

The site I did do the migirah I sold as a ecommerce site about $200 in sales, I turned it into an affiliate site to sell for a brand in the same niche and negotiated a 26% commission. It drives $5000+/- a month in sales for them and nets me an average of $1300.

Just some numbers to throw out there starting your own eCommerce site isn't usually the most cost effective for your time unless your planning to do some serious branding and offline promotion.