Selling an ebook with paypal
There
are several ways to sell an ebook, some easier and cheaper than
others. Unfortunately, the cheap ways tend to require a bit more
effort. Since I'm a firm believer in keeping costs extremely low
so that we can sell our ebooks for just a few dollars apiece, I'm
working out the kinks in our ebook delivery system.
The cheapest way to sell
an ebook online is to add Paypal "buy it now" buttons to your website,
the way we have with our work from home ebook page. Paypal takes payment
information from your customers, then deposits them on a page where
they can download your ebook. Of course, Paypal does take their
typical cut of the action, but you don't have to pay an additional
service to send the ebook to your customers, and your customers also
don't have to wait on you to email them a copy of the book.
Unfortunately, the link
back to the download page after customers make their payment on Paypal
is not as obvious as it could be. I've added the screenshot shown
here to our store page in hopes it'll help our customers figure out
where to click. If this doesn't do the trick, I may have to come
up with a more complicated solution --- customers (very rightly) get
cranky when they can't download their ebooks immediately.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed.
One of the easiest ways I've seen to sell digital products from a WordPress blog is the WordPress eStore plugin:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-estore-plugin-complete-solution-to-sell-digital-products-from-your-wordpress-blog-securely-1059
This guy had the exact same problems you've described with using PayPal, and developed a system to make it much easier. It takes care of leading the customer to the download page, and also emails them after the sale to make sure everything's OK. It has added security, like making each user's download link unique so you can limit how long it remains active and how many times it can be downloaded for each customer.
He also has an affiliate plugin that works with eStore, so you can get other people to promote your products and pay them commissions.
I don't want to sound like I'm spamming, but these plugins are very useful, and very reasonably priced for what they do. Plus the guy is himself a microbusiness! He provides fantastic customer support, too.