Which is better for selling goods online?  Clickbank or eJunkie? You’ve probably heard of Clickbank, so why go with Ejunkie?

There are three ways to make money online. Products. Services. Advertising. The real money is in selling products. You own the product, make 100% of the sale, and can setup affiliate programs if you want. You can also create upsell opportunities with your newsletter. Sounds good?

So, how do you do it? I started with Clickbank. It’s very good, not perfect, for selling digital goods. I’ve used it for nine years and seen it improve dramatically. E-junkie is another site that lets you buy and sell digital goods online. Let’s compare them and see which is best.

Why I like E-junkie to sell digital goods

E-junkie is less well-known than Clickbank but has some powerful tools for upselling, digital delivery and secure downloads. It’s not free but at 5 USD per month for 10 goods, it won’t break the bank.

• Cost – It costs $5 dollars a month to sell 10 goods. The pricing structure is staggered depending on the number of products you sell and/or bandwidth you want.

• Quality – The quality of the information products and digital goods is high. The marketplace is smaller than Clickbank, I think. I stand corrected on this.
• Delivery – Downloads are sent by email. With Clickbank, you have to create a web page where the customer goes to buy the product. Some customers don’t get it and expect an email with the digital good. Customer support can take time and time is money.
  
• Affiliate – You can setup affiliate programs in a snap. Couldn’t be much easier.
• Product Listing – you can add multiple digital products to its online marketplace. With Clickbank, you need to apply/create a master account and then link different accounts to each product. Takes time.
• Guarantee – no guarantee. It’s up to you to resolve with the affiliate manager.
• PayPal – integrates with PayPal, which also allows you to upsell digital productsl.
• Upsell – it has a built-in tool that lets you create a shopping cart and upsell other products. Possibly the one reason to choose E-junkie over Clickbank.

Why I like Clickbank to sell digital goods

• Cost – Clickbank is free!
• Quality – The quality of the digital goods may not be as high. However, the range of products is larger.
• Guarantee – you get a minimum 60 day guarantee on all products.
• Affiliate – You can setup affiliate programs, add commissions and get tips in the affiliate newsletter.
• Product Listing – you can add one core product to its marketplace. However, you can create a Master account and add different products. It’s doable but a little cumbersome.
  Clickbank Analytics Page
• Delivery – you have to create a web page where the customer goes to buy the product. Some customers don’t understand this and expect an email with the digital goods. Customer support can take time and time is money. Also, some close the download page and don’t receive the product, then request a refund. With E-junkie, they get an email with a link to the product. There is also a limit on the number of times/days they can attempt to download the product.
• Upsell – Clickbank has a manual system that lets you upsell digital products. I got the PDF with instructions but never actually tried. Too much coding and testing involved. I want something that’s automated.
• PayPal – integrates with PayPal and 2Checkout.
• Shopping Cart - built-in shopping cart that helps upsell products and increase sales. You can do this manually on Clickbank (e.g. hardcode HTML pages) but if you change the prices, then you need to go back and manually change the web pages.

Which is best for selling digital goods?

• While Clickbank is free, the five dollars for EJ shouldn’t stop you. Not if you’re serious about selling goods online.
• Quality is hard to tell until you buy. Clickbank’s reputation is better than it was and they are trying to give extra support to power users. I have a dedicated Relationship Manager, for example.
• Clickbank gives you a 60 day guarantee.
• E-junkie is a little easier for setting up affiliate programs, especially as you can separate out different products. How sure how to do this with Clickbank, tbh.
• Clickbank lets you add one core product to its Marketplace. You can apply for a Master account and add different products. With E-junkie the process is much simpler.
• Delivery – Clickbank makes you create a web page for every product, which must be open 24*7. Security issues here. The link can also be passed around. Not ideal! Many customers expect email delivery. After the purchase, some close the browser and don’t receive the product – request refunds. E-junkie sends them an email with a link to the product. Limit on the number of times/days they can attempt to download it. You can update this.
• E-junkie has a nice tool for creating a shopping cart and upselling.
• Both integrate with PayPal.
• E-junkie has a built-in shopping cart that links to PayPal. Great for upselling information products and long-tail products. You have to do this manually on Clickbank and if you change prices etc, then you need to locate, change and ftp the web pages.

Which do I use to sell digital products?

Both. I have so many products that moving them to E-junkie (mostly for the shopping cart feature) takes time. Some friends suggested that I use 1Shopping Cart to sell my digital products instead!

What do you suggest? Looking forward to hearing from you.

About the Author: Ivan Walsh is a recovering technical writer who develops internet business plans for savvy clients .He also shares business tips for smart people at Klariti.

PayPal offers Personal and Business accounts. Both are free but one offers better rates, better tools and lower fees. Want to know more?

photo credit: valdeklaur

As a small business owner you’re looking for ways to cut costs and stay competitive. I run several web businesses and PayPal has been a godsend. While I still use Clickbank and eJunkie, I’ve switched to the Business account and started to see the benefits already.

Getting a PayPal Business Account

It takes about 20 minutes.

• Create a new account on PayPal.
• Select Business (far right of the screen). This is for Merchants (i.e. business owners) who use a company name.
• Click Get Started.
• Enter in the Business Account details. Remember to have your company name and VAT details ready.

Why Choose a PayPal Business Account?

In addition to accepting and receiving payments, you get:

• Accept Credit and Debit cards. Personal accounts can’t accept Debit cards.
• Multi-user access. Your team can all access the same account.
• Lower Fees For Receiving Payments
• Standard rate for receiving payments for goods and services is 3.4% + €0.35 EUR.

If you receive more than €2,500.00 EUR per month, you’re eligible to apply for PayPal’s Merchant Rate – which lowers your fees as your sales volume increases. Your fees can be as low as 1.9% + €0.35 EUR, based on your previous month’s sales volume.

Merchant Rate Fees

Once you start to use PayPal more frequently – and the amount of sales increase – the fees per transactions goes down. This is one argument for centralizing your ecommerce activities through PayPal rather than eJunkie or Clickbank, neither of which offer sliding scales for payments, i.e. lower fees for higher transaction fees.

Criteria for Merchant Accounts

The Merchant rate criteria is as follows:

• Merchant rate pricing approval is reserved for members in good standing (whose accounts are not currently under investigation) who meet the following criteria:
• Received more than €2,500.00 EUR in PayPal payments in the previous calendar month.
• Maintaining your merchant rate: After qualifying for merchant rate pricing, all members are expected to keep their PayPal account in good standing. Members may be downgraded to the Standard rate if a payment volume of more than €2,500.00 EUR is not maintained in the previous calendar month, or if they have unresolved chargebacks.

Note: You do not need to reapply for merchant rate pricing if payment volume drops below €2,500.00 EUR, unless your account is downgraded or if there are unresolved chargebacks.

Other Advantages To a Business Account

I have two accounts with PayPal: one Personal and one Business. I keep the Personal account for buying things on Ebay and/or paying for small items online.

Business account I use for business-related transactions has a few benefits:

• Trust – Showing that this is a Verified account increases trust with buyers. Next week I‘ll show you how to get your account verified.
• Customer Service – When things go wrong with transactions, for example, I have a query with a payment, the Customer Service from PayPal is very fast, usually within a few hours.
• Tax Records – having a dedicated account makes it easier to me to track payments and calculate the amount of tax to pay every year. In the past, it took forever to separate personal and business related transactions, especially small payments. Now, I use the reports functions and print out all the transaction or simply paste them into Excel.
• eBay Tools – the Business account (and Premier accounts) offer more advanced tools for integrating your epayments to eBay. In later tutorials, I’ll show you how to do this.
• Merchant Services – as with the eBay tools this offers more sophisticated tools for sending, receiving and integrating payments.

Transaction Fees for Cross-Border Currencies

There are fees for Cross-border transactions, for example, payments made by a Spanish customer to an American website. Likewise, there may be cross-border fees between two countries in the same continent, such as between Iceland and Spain as they use different currencies.

Fees for receiving eCheck payments will not exceed $5.00 USD per transaction.

Next Steps

If you plan to sell goods online, take a good look at what PayPal, eJunkie and Clickbank offer. These are the three big players in the market. There is no cost to sign-up with each, so your only investment is your time.

I’d suggest that you give special attention to PayPal, for a few reasons:

• It’s a trusted brand name. There was issues in the past but these have been ironed out. This will increase transactions and sales over
  lesser known products. People are more comfortable with brands they know, even if the price is slightly higher.
• It integrates with eJunkie, Clickbank and other web merchants.
• From 2011 eBay will only accept payment through PayPal. We’ll look at how you can use eBay to sell goods in the coming weeks, so don’t close the door or think it’s not for you.
• The Invoice tools let you send out invoices to customers as orders come in.
• The Reporting tools let you break out sales figures and see which products are performing best.
• The Reminder tool let you send out an email to customer reminding them the payments are past due.

Ok, you get the idea, I guess. There are other features that, for me, put it head and shoulders above the competitions.

But what are the negatives about PayPal?

It does have drawbacks.

For example, you can setup a script to let customers download a digital product, such as an ebook. By setting up these scripts is not for
everyone. Again, I will show you how to do this. It’s not that hard and we’ll walk you thru the process.

This article outlined some of the reasons I use PayPal for my web businesses. I also use Clickbank and eJunkie. They all have their respective strengths and weaknesses.

What’s the main reason you use or DONT use PayPal?

Let us know below and we’ll discuss it in next week’s tutorial.

A PayPal survey this week shows that 50% of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times in the past three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and lack of convenience. The average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109.

Note: High Shipping Costs Top the List.

While nothing could have prevented one-third of shoppers from abandoning purchases, the survey found that providing shipping costs upfront might have caused 40 percent to complete the purchase.

To help merchants encourage shoppers to purchase, PayPal released a new Express Checkout feature – the PayPal Instant Update API.

By integrating the new API, merchants can show order details earlier in the process including shipping options, insurance choices and tax totals.

“To get shoppers to buy, it’s critical merchants make costs transparent,” said Eddie Davis, senior director of SMB merchant services, PayPal.

The survey also uncovered signs that the economy still has shoppers wary about clicking the “purchase” button.

• 33% of respondents abandoned checkout because they didn’t plan for all of the expenses
• 25% left the site to search for a coupon.
• 33% later returned to the same site to buy.
• 20% purchased the items at a brick and mortar store or competitor’s Web site.

“Merchants who don’t welcome back abandoners with open arms are leaving hundreds of dollars per shopper on the table,” added Davis.

“Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is also a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”

Breakdown on Why Shoppers Abandon

At least a fifth of all U.S. survey respondents cited the following as very important reasons for cart abandonment:

• High shipping charges: 46 percent
• Wanted to comparison shop: 37 percent
• Lack of money: 36 percent
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 percent
• Wanted to shop offline: 26 percent
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 percent
• Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 percent
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22 percent
• Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 percent

About the survey
The PayPal Checkout Abandonment Study was conducted by comScore among active shoppers who had recently abandoned a shopping cart. In the United States 553 people participated between May 12-15, 2009.

Ivan Walsh is a technology writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

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I got this error message when I clicked on the Help button when logged in the PayPal Button Designer.

‘You have requested an outdated version of PayPal. This error often results from the use of bookmarks.
Who wrote this I wonder?

You have requested an outdated version of PayPal.

What versions of PayPal are there?

This error often results from the use of bookmarks.

Maybe.

Or maybe the PayPal content management system hasn’t synced the different releases, which is probably the real reason.

Even so, I’m surprised these error messages blame the user (me!) rather than just saying ‘we messed up’ and are now looking into it.

Is that too difficult?