Single item sales questions

[Erica C.]

I have a client who is interested in selling a booklet from her web site and she'd like me to find out what options she has. I searched the forums but other than looking up "third party processors" I'm not sure what terms apply. I came across Kagi when searching the forums but the first thing I saw there had to do with stores that sell $5000 of merchandise a month! That's not the scale we're talking about.

Are there third party processors that work better for someone who is only selling a single item?

Are there ecommerce options other than third party processors for someone like my client? Paypal?

Thanks.

Erica

[Matt]

Erica, PayPal is certainly an option and the fees they charge are considerably less than many 3rd party processors. The advantage with some of the PayPal competitors is that they handle electronic order fulfillment for you, whereas with PayPal you will need your own solution.

If this is a "real" booklet, you could always use CafePress, which would handle printing, billing, and order fulfillment.

-Matt

[Andilinks]

I don't sell anything on my site but I do spend my days surfing ecommerce sites and yes PayPal seems to be the default merchant service for small volume sales.

I have some others listed here (http://www.andilinks.com/epay.htm) if you want to do some comparisons.

[Erica C.]

Thanks, Matt.

I hadn't thought of Cafe Press. I'll look into it.

I had heard Paypal's fees had gone up but it's still worth investigating. Though I thought that buyers would need a Paypal account to pay that way, and that seemed limiting.

Thanks again.

Erica

[Erica C.]

Thank you, Andi! I'll definitely be looking through that list.

Erica C.

[Andilinks]

I'll definitely be looking through that list.Cool. I ran a link check just now for you and removed six dead ones--the rest should all be live (at least).

I haven't added any new entries to that page in several months, but I suppose this is one category where I'd want to stay with the more established firms anyway. :)

[JMT]

I recently implemented donations and a simple shopping cart with Paypal and it was pretty easy. Paypal does not require an account which was a big deal for my client.

I have never been a real fan of Paypal but it does work. Given some of the history around Paypal I would make sure to pull the money out on a regular basis.

[tamy]

I think you could also go for merchant account especially if you are expecting $1000 plus transaction PM, check out with some of the processor those provide merchant account/3PP such as 2checkout, worldpay, chronopay, multicards, authorize.net ect depending on your location.

[DogAndPony]

I hadn't thought of Cafe Press. I'll look into it.Also take a look at http://www.lulu.com/ . They have a wider variety of options. Don't know how their prices compare, but printing a book at CP is pretty expensive per-unit, since it's on-demand printing (as LuLu may be). Margins can be pretty low.

Have fun!

[Erica C.]

I think you could also go for merchant account especially if you are expecting $1000

I think my client will be operating at a smaller scale for now but it's good to keep in mind for the future. Thank you.

I hadn't heard of LuLu. (Great name.) :smile: I will definitely take a look. Thank you.

Erica (the people here are so great)

[Randall]

I'd heard of Lulu before but didn't check it out until now. Looks very interesting. :smile:

I can see how you might combine Lulu with Project Gutenberg to publish your own special limited edition of War and Peace or what have you. If you know someone who's a fan of classic literature, it'd be a great gift idea.

Randall