I was wondering if any of you have had any experience selling on your website with PayPal’s shopping cart. It looks like it’s just a matter of copy/pasting some html on a webpage, which I assume can be done on a WordPress page. When I had lunch with Anya Kelleye and Virginia McKevitt last Saturday (lots of fun was had!), Virginia mentioned she used to have that on her site. I didn’t even realize PayPal had a shopping cart.
Another thing I need to consider is sales tax. Right now, I would have to charge sales tax to anyone in my state. But states are trying to crack down on internet sales now, so eventually I would have to pay sales tax to multiple states. Would it be worth it?
The upside to this would be that I would get to keep the whole sale (minus PayPal fees) instead of having to share royalties with retailers. The downside would be that this would be quite a bit of trouble to get set up for sales that probably wouldn’t amount to much. Most people would rather buy from a retailer who can send ebooks electronically. It might be better for print books, but my print book sales are almost nothing anyway. I can’t even offer a lower price for ebooks as an incentive to buy directly from me because I can’t price anything lower than Amazon or they will lower their price when they find out.
So would it be worth it? What do all of you think? Have any of you tried it? I would love to hear your thoughts.
lauralynnelliott.com 
I looked into this a while back, and I think you need to set up a WordPress.org site (i.e. create your domain, get a plan with a web host, install WordPress there); I don’t think you can do it here. There are plugins for building your catalog with what you want to sell and for tying it in with PayPal. There are some hosts that will install WordPress for you. We’re talking about what could be a considerable expense (hosting is roughly $20 a month, getting a domain can cost $35 a year, etc.) so maybe you want to hold off on it…
Hi John. I already have a domain, which I use on WordPress. That’s why it’s lauralynnelliott.com without the “wordpress” in there. I pay WordPress a fee to be able to use my domain. However, I know it’s different from wordpress.org. WordPress.com doesn’t allow plug-ins from what I can tell. But the way it was showing on PayPal, it looked like all you needed was a page that could accept html code. If it can’t be done on wordpress.com, it’s not worth the trouble and expense.
I’ve thought about doing the paypal button for signed print books – I just haven’t researched how to do it yet. It must be fairly easy, though, because I see many indie authors offering their books and author services and using paypal for transactions.
I think the PayPal button you can put on your site to collect money from people is a little different from the actual shopping cart option. There are several PayPal button options, so I’m not sure. I’ve thought about selling them on Etsy. When I had my Etsy shop with my best friend, I contacted Etsy to ask if selling books was allowed since Etsy is for either handmade items or vintage items. The answer I got was that a book is a created thing, so it falls within what’s allowed to be sold on Etsy. It’s a thought.
I’ve done some stuff on this because i had to set it up for my other business.
As far as I recall, the PayPal Add To Cart buttons are another example of code that doesn’t work on WordPress.com.
What I use is http://www.e-junkie.com/ . Their add to cart buttons work fine, it was easy to set up, delivery of the files to the customer is automated and instant, and I haven’t had any complaints since I switched over from…what the heck was I using? Payloadz. https://express.payloadz.com/
I’m trying to remember why I switched from Payloadz to e-junkie, and I think it was because I wanted to sell my books out of there, as well as my other products, but the books are priced lower. So…by the time I paid the site’s fees and the PayPal fees, there was no point in me selling a 99cent book (I’d get more in royalties from my current vendors, Amazon, etc.) With Payloadz I’d be taking a loss. I don’t remember how the 2.99 price point came out but it was either even money with the other vendors or I’d get slightly less, I totally don’t remember.
E-junkie allows you to set up a PayPal micropay account on which the fees are lower for those small-ticket sales.
I think that, for a while, I was having some delivery issues with Payloadz, but I don’t think I ever figured it out.
And…I had Payloadz set up on a regular website–I don’t remember if the code worked on WordPress.com or not.
I just really like e-junkie and I’m glad I moved there.
BUT
Payloadz offers a free service and you can sell up to $50 for just the transaction fees. More than $50 a month, you have to sign up for a premium account that starts at $14.95. That doesn’t work for me. E-junkie has pricing starting at $5 per month (with volume limits that work for me), but it has no free account. My other business makes more than $5 a month, so I’m fine with it, but I don’t make $5 a month selling books from my website, so if I were just doing that, it probably wouldn’t make sense, unless it was just really important to me to be able to offer my books myself.
The selling of digital goods gets more and more popular, and I’m sure there are new options available since the last time I reviewed one. I think even Paypal might be have a function or function in the works for delivering digital goods?
When people buy digital goods, they tend to expect them right away. I’m really clear on my Etsy listings that delivery is not instant and the customer should expect to wait until I check my email, find the transaction, and manually initiate delivery–which I do via e-junkie and it’s really easy–but there is that wait. People are fine with it and I haven’t had problems, but when you’re dealing in books, people might be more used to getting those right away. So in addition to just a shopping cart, you may want to be looking at a method for delivering the items, which is why I’ve suggested looking into the services above which are both shopping cart and delivery services. I’ve done the method where you just email file attachments to the customer, but can get a little dicey when they’re at work and the email system won’t let them receive attachments or the files are too big or whatever else goes wrong with email attachments.
The delivery services host the files and the emails to the customers include unique links for them to download the files. The links expire, so that access to your files is only granted for a certain period and/or a certain number of attempts.
I think this answer is kind of a mess, but I hope it’s helpful. I’ve had a really crazy week and I don’t have a lot of brain left for being sensible. But I’m happy to try to answer questions if I can.
You can add books to cart on my site and just not go through with the sale if you want to check it out.
I don’t know why I had to moderate your comment. It’s not like you haven’t commented before. Hmmm.
From what I could see from reading on PayPal, the service is free except for the transaction fees. And they would be less than what Amazon, etc. is taking. But if it can’t be used on wordpress.com, the point is moot. I need to look into what you’re using.
How did I not know you sold your books directly from your site??? *smacks head*
And, no, your answer wasn’t a mess. I understood every word. LOL
One thing you will want to look into–and won’t this just be awesome, is a PayPal Micropay account. These are for people who deal in “low-value” transactions–like 99c books. https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/
Unfortunately, you can’t have two different rates on one account. So if you processed a transaction for $50 on a micropay account, you’d lose money. So you’d want ANOTHER PayPal account just for these digital sales.
I rarely sell books this way. I think I sold 4 last year. I don’t even sell my other stuff from my own site well–I sell most of those from Etsy. I think not only are you more discoverable at Etsy, Amazon, etc, but people would rather shop those sites they know and trust than random websites.
Honestly, I hardly do any business outside those trusted markets and don’t think it’s worth it for the vast majority of people, myself included. I’m keeping it because i like the hosting and delivery (and also because I like to start as I mean to go on and dream about one day having a lot of products and getting repeat customers to buy directly from me), but I don’t think it’s worth it for most people to bother with.
Yeah, I’m thinking it’s not really worth it. And, soon, http://www.romancenovelcenter.com/ will be selling books from their site, and that will be an extra venue. Jimmy’s been so busy with the RNConvention, I think the ebook catalog got pushed to the backburner. Book sales are sucking right now, so I need to do SOMETHING.
I can’t even remember my password for when I use paypal to buy stuff, much less set set something up on my website. I still can’t a picture of me up in the gravatar box. I’m amazed i still have a website.
So I guess the answer is, I have no clue but thanks for asking
You are so funny, Chris. I have to actually remember two passwords since I have two PayPal accounts. LOL
I think Rose Gordon sells through PayPal. I have no experience with this, but I’m going to ask her to stop by this blog post and leave a comment if she knows anything that can help you.
Actually, let me email her first and ask. I just thought about it and it’s not fair of me to volunteer her to stop by. Sorry I jumped the gun on that.
Oh, that’s no problem. She has my email if she wants to email me, or she might not even want to fool with it. Thanks for thinking of me. 🙂