Getting ready to put your ebook or digital information product online for sale is one of the most exciting, yet nerve racking things you will do on your way to becoming a profitable information marketer.
Though the process of putting your ebook online and making money can seem confusing, the reality is that today’s environment makes it easier than ever to offer your ebook to a wide range of online customers and partners.
Let’s start by looking at the key pieces you will need to offer your ebook for sale online and then we will list the leading payment processors that give you choices in how to accept payment for your ebook
The key parts of offering your ebook online include:
1. Your sales page…in order to sell your ebook, you need to have a page that not only informs people of your ebook offering, but emotionally grabs your visitor, quickly communicates the challenge or desire your ebook targets, gives them the promise of what you will deliver and offer them an order button linking to your payment processor
2. Payment processor. In order to allow a user to click on an “Order Now” button and submit payment for your ebook, you need to have an account with a payment processor who acts as the agent who securely processes your buyers credit card information, processes the sale and then can forward that user to a site you specify (typically either a site notifying your buyer what will happen next) or directly to a download page where they can download their ebook.
3. ShoppingCart. If you have multiple ebooks or products to offer from your sales page or if you want to offer your own partner/affiliate program OR want to take advantage of other functionality at the time of pre-sale and post-sale, you may choose to use a shopping cart like 1ShoppingCart or something similar. These services are not necessary to sell a single product but offer various advantages in terms of managing partners who can act as affiliates for your product (keeping track of their referral sales), built-in autoresponders, ad-trackers, etc… If you don’t start with a ShoppingCart out of the gate, then once your sales start to ramp up you will want to look at them to help boost your business.
4. Autoresponder...these email management services help you collect information from visitors who don’t buy on the first visit to your website AND allow you to collect the addresses of your buyers so you can upsell or cross-sell to them in the future.
What About Payment Processors To Sell My Ebook?
You have several choices in payment processors that will allow you to accept payments, track sales, handle any refund requests and, in some cases, manage affiliates – here are 6 you can use:
1. Paypal
By far the most popular, and simplest, payment processor you can use is Paypal. Signing up is very straightforward and there is no up-front fee. Fees are per transaction as follows (for most products): 2.9% + .30 per transaction. I use Paypal as an option, if not the primary method of taking payment for my ebooks and infoproducts. Given its popularity, customers will typically ask to use this method eventually.
2. Clickbank
Clickbank is a little different given that they offer payment processing (as Paypal does), but they also offer a marketplace (which lists your product after the first few sales) and has a built-in affiliate/partner management capability that allows others to promote your product online (to their email lists, blog readers and website visitors) handling all partner commissions, payouts and management. With this added overhead, Clickbank charges a one-time $49.95 activation fee on new accounts, with transaction fees of 7.9% + $1 per transaction. In addition, Clickbank charges a $2.50 service charge for each payment to you (you can adjust the payment thresholds to hold back payments until they reach a certain value to limit a large # of smaller payouts.) For many, the exposure Clickbank provides to the marketplace of potential partners makes the extra fees well worth the expenditure.
3. 2Checkout.com (2CO)
2 Checkout was one of the early payment processors alongside Clickbank and Paypal and still garner their share of business. We have used 2Checkout for nearly 10-years now and have found them a very reliable, secure payment system. 2 Checkout.com fees fall between Paypal and Clickbank, they do not have a signup fee, their transaction fees start at 3.99% +.45 per transaction making them a good alternative to Clickbank and Paypal if you operate your own affiliate program through an affiliate service (like Commission Junction for example) or in-house using a ShoppingCart such as 1SC
4. Google Wallet
Another relative newcomer to the payment processing sphere is Google Wallet. With competitive transaction rates of 2.9%, you may want to give them a try as an alternative to Paypal
5. WePay Payment Gateway
Wepay is another relative newcomer that comes in competitively with Google Wallet and Paypal at 2.9% per transaction, another alternative for those of you who are looking for something to augment or replace Paypal
6. Amazon
With Amazon, you have two options, you can accept payments through the Kindle Store if you decide to turn your ebook into a Kindle-format ebook or you can use Amazon’s Payment Web Gateway to process payments with transaction fees that are reduced depending on monthly volume starting at 2.9% +.30 for sales of $10 or more per month.
Finally, you also have the option of sourcing your own merchant account and using a web payment gateway such as Authorize.Net where your transaction fees will end up being about 1/2 of the fees listed above. This choice is good in cases where you are pushing tremendously large volumes (where the transaction fees add up quickly) or where you have more flexibility around customized recurring membership services where your visitor does not have to be taken to an external payment processor at checkout.
You have many choices when accepting payment for ebooks, each one of these does require 24-48 hours to get setup and some are more rigorous than others in reviewing and accepting your ebooks prior to having them listed. We use (or have used) most of these, so let us know if you have any questions.
