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Properly Titled, this should read: Running a Store or a
Non-Profit with PayPal...
PayPal is an online payment transfer system which
allows individuals to exchange cash through secure servers.
Depending on how you establish your account it allows
another PayPal customer to directly deposit payment from their
checking account or credit card into your PayPal account.
For this, you, as the payee, are charged a percentage of the
sale.
Lets take a look at this in real time. Go ahead and
hit the button. If you decide to send us $5, you'll be brought
back to this page. If you decide not to send us $5, you'll
also be brought back to this page. (or click the "back"
button to return)
PayPal allows you to set up buttons for individual products
which include the shipping charges, to accept donations, even
to sell subscriptions. For a non-profit, these little buttons
are terribly handy. RagTag Golden Retriever Rescue uses a
button on a page of an injured old dog to raise funds for
vet bills. A local club sells membership subscriptions through
PayPal. Artists can offer one of a kind pieces with a single
PayPal button, rotating the page when the piece sells.
These buttons have a myriad of possible uses. You
can use them to sell one or two products off of your site,
to take a deposit for a custom product, or to take membership
dues online, you can even put a button from another person's
account on your site. So, for example, you have a friend who
makes gift baskets. You don't want the responsibility for
making or shipping those baskets, but you'd like to offer
them on your site. With the PayPal button she builds, you
can. Simply put the button on your site, and any sales will
automatically be routed to her. PayPal will generate a receipt
for the customer and email her the details of the transaction
so she can fill the order. Since the buttons are fully customizable
the transaction can read "My Bed and Breakfast's Wish
I Were In Vermont Gift Basket," so your friend knows
she owes you a commission on the sale.
The advantage of PayPal over a full ecommerce
store is its modest size. It works well for a site with 1-5
items, and sites that don't do a large volume in sales. Remember:
PayPal takes a percentage of each sale. So if you're doing
a volume business, this is going to add up, and at some point
you will be better off with a monthly fixed rate ecommerce
site. PayPal offers an opportunity for businesses to test
the waters of ecommerce without making a large commitment
in time and resources to the project. If ecommerce works...
the site can quickly transfer to an ecommerce suite. If it
doesn't appear to be as profitable as hoped, they can remain
with the PayPal system.
PayPal also works well for non-profits who are soliciting
donations, largely because most small non-profits don't expect
to take significant contributions off their web site, but
every little bit helps.
The disadvantage of a PayPal "store" lies
in that percentage of each transaction drawn off the top of
every sale. If you're only selling a couple units a month,
it isn't particularly noticeable. But it is an overhead cost
that will add up. And when it starts adding up to around $40/month,
it is time to shift over to a full ecommerce store like Powerful
Hosting's service. A PayPal store will not relieve inventory
for you, it won't print shipping labels, and it won't track
your sales as effectively as a full ecommerce suite. PayPal
is purely for small sites that want to add a micro-store to
their pages. But the primary disadvantage of a PayPal button
is that for the customer to purchase from you... they have
to be a PayPal customer. This isn't as large an issue as it
used to be, since ebay had purchased PayPal more and more
people have PayPal accounts, but it is an issue, and the page
with the PayPal button should also include contact information
so your customer can purchase the item over the phone or through
the mails.
If you're looking to scale up beyond PayPal
you have a couple of options. You can sell via auction or
a store on ebay. Or you can move up
to a full ecommerce suite, which means you'll have a fully
customizable store you can manage through your web browser.
We have a marked preference for the ecommerce suite over ebay
when we're talking about an ongoing concern because the overhead
costs are fixed, and thus easily accounted for. We have a
preference for ebay when we're talking about a short term
solution to excess inventory... we simply want to blow merchandise
(be it excess lodging or excess whiggits) out the door. Ebay
allows you to be "in business" for a week to ten
days, then it's over. No ongoing maintenance, no ongoing overhead.
Open
a full service PayPal account and get $5 for
your time and trouble. To open a full service account you'll
need to transfer $250 to your PayPal account to claim your
$5, but your "seed" money is just that, yours. You
can use it to pay bills, buy merchandise, pay for ebay auctions...
or deposit it into their money market account. Or open a verified
account, which doesn't require a deposit (but limits whether
or not you can accept credit cards, or large payments).
Additional Articles:
Just Make it Go Away! Buying, Selling,
and Saving the ebay way
Let Someone Else Do the Work!
Affiliate Marketing for fun and profit
Ecommerce: The Powerful Hosting Retail Store: full ecommerce
at a bargain price (soon!)
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