Realize Your Business

Author: Geri Schneider Winters

In the last few tips I have discussed tools you use to bring visitors to your site and maintain a relationship with them – blogs and autoresponders. At some point in time you will want to sell products to those visitors. This tip discusses several methods you can use to offer your products for sale and collect payments.

You should have a payment service as one way to collect payments. Two such services are PayPal and Google Checkout. They are free to set up the account. You are charged a fee for each sale, which is about the same or a bit less than the fee charged by credit card companies. (Until 2008, Google is not charging a sales fee.) Set up a business account which is separate from any personal account you might have at PayPal or Google.

http://www.paypal.com
http://bizsolutions.google.com/services

If you do not have your own website, you can still sell products on the internet using existing online marketplaces.

For example, many people sell personalized products and artwork through Cafe Press. You can get a free online shop and sell customized apparel, housewares, buttons, prints and cards, hats and bags, books, and audio and data CD’s. And you can sign people up to be affiliates of your site. You are charged a small fee whenever you sell a product.

You can get a free account here:

http://www.cafepress.com

You could get a store at Yahoo. That has a monthly fee, but you sell whatever kind of product you want.

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com

Ebay has stores as well :

http://stores.ebay.com/

You could offer your product for sale in an email, and provide a telephone number for people to call to order the product. That requires no website at all. Or perhaps you have a brick and morter shop and your email directs people to come into your store to buy.

Another way to sell products without a website is to sell other people’s products. You sign up with a marketplace, then promote other people’s products by (for example) sending an email promoting the product to your prospects, with your affliate link in the email. Or you could get a free blog at MySpace, promote the product in your blog, and put in the blog a link to an affiliate product.

Over time, you can add your own products to the marketplace, but then you have to have a place to put a sales page for your products.

One such marketplace is PayDotCom.com. You can sell any kind of products through PayDotCom. You can sign up for free here (which is my affiliate link):

http://paydotcom.net/?affiliate=24644

Another service, for only digital products, is Clickbank.com. This has a one time fee for new members.

http://www.clickbank.com

When you have your own website, you can start selling products by just creating a sales page with a Buy Now button that goes to PayPal or Google for the payment processing.

Over time, you may want to invest in a shopping cart service and a merchant account. One place to look is 1shoppingcart. This service has a shopping cart and autoresponder. They can also help you set up a merchant account. There is a monthly service charge for an account, which varies based on the level of service you select. You can sign up here (which is my affliate link):

http://www.autopilotriches.com/app/?pr=7&id=103162

You do want to have more than one way to process payments. This is in case you cannot use a particular payment processor for some period of time. For example, what if a power failure takes PayPal offline? If all you have is PayPal, how can you process those orders? But if you have PayPal and Google Checkout, you could quickly edit your order page to change the BUY NOW button to transfer the sale to Google Checkout.

The best thing I can suggest is to start simple and add more options over time. I started out with just a PayPal button. PayPal allows people to purchase using a PayPal account or credit card, so this worked fine for quite a while. I have since added 1shoppingcart to provide another means of payment.
================================================

Now it is your turn.

How will you sell your products? Will you have your own website, or get an online shop with Yahoo or Cafe Press?

Will you sell other people’s products and collect affiliate commissions?

Will you have a sales page with a BUY NOW button to either PayPal or Google Checkout?

Will you have a shopping cart service with a merchant account?

Will you participate in a marketplace, such as PayDotCom or ClickBank?

================================================

You are invited to re-publish articles from this blog, in your publication or website, as long as the article is intact and you include the following Byline paragraph (with live links) after each article you use…

START BYLINE

* Article used with permission from Wyyzzk, Inc.’s Realize Your Business website at http://www.realizeyourbusiness.com This website of reports and tips contains information to help you succeed as the Owner/Manager of a small business.

END BYLINE