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Do you take credit cards?
I do. I take ‘em all and yet I don’t have a POS system. Thanks to Paypal I don’t need one. Gone are the days of having to manually take down a person’s credit card number and key it into the system. Those days are long gone because now anyone can accept credit cards using Paypal.
As a blogger I use my Paypal account for all things blog related. When I write a paid review piece I am paid using Paypal and when I purchase anything on the web I use Paypal because I know it’s secure. I can accept any credit cards, including Green Dot credit card and I don’t have to worry about fees. (This is not to say that Paypal doesn’t charge a fee, it does. I’m talking about the fees the credit card companies charge their merchants. I don’t have to pay those fees. Users may have separate fees such as Green Dot cards which have a loading fee around $5 but no interest charged because they aren’t really a credit card.Green Dot doesn’t charge interest.)
I bet you’re wondering why I take credit cards. Most bloggers don’t sell anything and if they do it’s usually through an affiliate program so the blogger doesn’t have to worry about merchant services. However, if you plan to sell your own book you might want to consider using a service such as Paypal. If you provide services to people on the internet you would also want to accept credit cards. Checks are questionable and they take too long to arrive from all over the country. Using Paypal is really a smart way to do business online. Even nicer, they will do all the work when it comes to issues regarding non payment and that sort of thing.
As great as Paypal is it isn’t the whole enchilada when it comes to delivering a book on demand. For that you will need a third party solution such as E-Junkie to deliver the book (PDF). You can sell a book online without using a third party delivery service but then you won’t be able to do things like sleep or leave the house. With E-Junkie you don’t have to worry about delivery of the product. You simply upload the PDF or other digital information to E-Junkie and then tie your Paypal account to it. When someone purchases your product Paypal notifies E-Junkie and they deliver the digital information by email or link for the purchaser to download. It’s sounds complicated if you haven’t used it before but really it’s rather seamless. Of course if you write a book using Amazon’s self publishing service you won’t need a third party for selling and delivering your book as Amazon has that piece built in.
Related articles
- Best Ecommerce Options for Credit Card Processing (vendio.com)
- Do you need a credit card to use PayPal (wiki.answers.com)
