Mechanics of Charging and Delivering Digital Products – Part II
If you haven’t read Part I yet, go to Setting up Google Checkout to Sell EBooks first.
How to Use E-Junkie to Sell EBooks
Have you noticed how hard it is to find information on How to Sell EBooks online? By that, I mean, how do you physically collect the money and provide the product? That’s what this two-part blog post is trying to shed some light upon.
When you sell an EBook online, you need to do two things to sell the book.
- Process a credit card to receive payment and verify the buyer is legitimate (Part I – Google Checkout)
- Have some service that automatically sends the product to the recipient (Part II -E-Junkie)
The goal is to not be involved in this process at all!!!
This is part 2 of the simple, must-have mechanics of how to sell EBooks online. Part One is about Setting up Google Checkout to Sell EBooks. You should read that first, and then come back to How to Use E-Junkie to Sell EBooks.
Setting up E-Junkie with Google Checkout to Sell EBooks
Let’s get this done so we can have an operating ‘EBook store’ running in no time.
Why E-Junkie for online EBooks?
It’s pretty simple really, E-Junkie works the best, is the most intuitive, and doesn’t charge much at all for its services. It only costs $5 a month to have up to 10 digital products for sale on E-Junkie. What does Clickbank charge for its (much inferior service) service? $50, just to start! That’s before they even do anything for you. Ok, enough trashing of Clickbank. Let’s move on…
I’ve used a few different digital download content providers, and E-Junkie is by far the best solution. In fact, the others weren’t solutions, they didn’t do everything I wanted them to do and I kept looking around until I found E-Junkie.
Step One: How to Set Up E-Junkie to Sell EBooks
- Sign up for their free 1-week trial at http://www.e-junkie.com
- In the Seller Admin screen, click on “Manage your Seller Account” and “Edit Profile”
- Under the Edit Profile, we need to fill in a few values.
Login Email : This should be filled in as the email you used to log into the account.- Display Name : This should match the “Credit Card Statement Name” you chose for your Google Checkout account.
- Display Email : This will be the email address that everyone sees and uses. So try and make it an account you actually check! ( I say this only cause I’ve done that before… )
- Password: Try something that’s not “passw0rd” or “1234″ please!
Good news, we’re done with E-Junkie for now! Well done (a good time to take a drink if you got one!)
Step Two: How to Set Up E-Junkie to Work with Google Checkout
- Ok, first, you need a Google Checkout account. If you don’t have one, go sign up for your own Google Checkout account.
- Then , once that account is set up, log in and go to Settings > Integration.
- Once there, copy your Merchant ID and Merchant Key onto a scratchpad, as you’re going to need them for E-junkie’s site.
- Enter https://www.e-junkie.com/gc/ResponseHandler.php in the “API callback URL” field
- Select “XML” as your “call Back Method”.
- Make sure you Save these settings!
See below for a properly filled out screen: 
- Now go to Settings -> Preferences in your Google Checkout account.
- Check “Automatically authorize the buyer’s credit card for the full amount of the order” under Order Processing Preferences. This will…well, automatically charge the customers credit card AFTER Google verifies that it’s a legit card. This way, we know we’re getting paid BEFORE we have E-Junkie create a download link and deliver our materials.
Step Three: Now go back to your E-Junkie Account…
1. Enter your Google Checkout Merchant ID and Merchant Key (from above) in your E-junkie profile. (Remember, you can find it under “Edit Profile” on the main screen, Step One #3)
2. Sweet, we’re all set to add Buy Now buttons and/or Shopping Carts to our webpage!
3. Go back to the Seller Admin, and click on “Get Buy Now / Carts”
4. This is pretty easy, just pick the type of code you want. Paste it right where you want it in your web page.
- You may want to center the Buy Now buttons or adjust the placement of them in your site. One of mine looks like this:
Guess what, you’re integrated! I suggest really testing the Buy Now buttons, or even get a friend to buy a product through your system. (E-Junkie and Google won’t let you buy from yourself…grrr!) And when they ask if you’ll pay them back, say “Heck no! You’re getting a good quality product and I gave you a beer last Friday, so we’re even now!”
That’s a ton of work we just did. I’m thinkin’ 24-pack and blocking out the next 24 hours of my life to celebrate our success!
Congratulations!
Mechanics of Charging and Delivering Digital Products – Part I
If you have read Part I, please proceed to Part II on How to Use E-Junkie to Sell EBooks.
How To Use Google Checkout To Sell EBooks
Have you noticed that it’s a little confusing to learn just exactly how you sell an EBook online?
When you sell an EBook online, you want to do a few things really, if you ask me.
- Process a credit card to receive payment and verify the buyer is legitimate (Google Checkout)
- Have some service that automatically sends the product to the recipient (E-Junkie)
The goal is to not be involved in this process at all!!!
That shouldn’t really be too hard. And it isn’t, but I haven’t found anyone that’s outlined how to do this so far, so that’s what I’m going to do here.
By the way, I’ve seen some people recommend getting a business Merchant account, possibly with Paypal, to process credit cards. Well, if you’re incorporating that’s a possibility, but even if you incorporate, you can use your EIN to open a Google Checkout account to take advantage of the benefits. Merchant accounts are a hassle, expensive, and complete overkill for selling digital products, if you ask me.
The Two Step Process to Selling Ebooks Online
In this article I’m going to take care of Step Number 1, the processing of the Credit Card order. Step two, delivering the EBook to the buyer will be covered in How to Use E-Junkie to Sell Ebooks.
I have used the three credit card processing options that are the most popular, Clickbank, Paypal, and Google. I settled on using Google Checkout for five reasons:
- Ease of Use, as in, it’s incredibly easy. It’s all they do, compared to Paypal and Clickbank who spend 90% of their time trying to upsell you for unnecessary services.
- Lowest Transaction Cost (.20 + 2%, verses Clickbank at $1 +7% and Paypal at 2.9% + $0.30 US. (Note : These fees change slightly in May 2009, see Google Fees)
- Money hits my bank account usually within 48-72 hours automagically!
- Simple refunds with no fines.
- Tight integration with E-Junkie, my preferred EBook delivery system.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time convincing you to use Google Checkout, you may want to experiment with other services to see if they possibly do work better for what you want. However, for me, since I want to sell books without any extra hassle, get as much money from my sale as possible, and receive the money as soon as possible, Google Checkout is my preferred credit card processing vendor.
How to use Google Checkout to Sell Ebooks
Here’s the steps to get this running with Google Checkout.
1. Open a Google Checkout account. You will need your SSN/EIN number and credit card information. If you already have a Gmail account, you could link this Merchanat account to your existing Gmail account.
Note: I created a completely new Google account for my EBook sales. This way I have a dedicated email address foro my hobby and can keep my business and personal finances separate, which is helpful around tax time because Google Checkout does not provide you much in the way of tax filing assistance.
In essence, you are creating a buyers account that you can purchase things on the web by using Google. However, we’re actually going to use the ‘selling’ aspect of the service, not the ‘buying’. So don’t be spooked because it looks like you’re setting up a buyers account and adding credit card information. They’re both under the same Google Checkout roof and I’ve never used my credit card once since I opened this account.
2. Once your account is created, log in and click on My Sales. It’s the link you see here in the upper right hand corner of your home page.
3. Click on Settings - This is where we tell Google Checkout how we want it to process our orders.
Let’s walk down the left side links and deal with each one to set ourselves up to accept credit card payments from buyers.
Profile Page – This page has basic information, like Contact Information, Business Name, Returns Policy Information, Shipping Information, etc.
Credit card statement name : Even if you aren’t incorporated, choose a name to put here that’s not your real name. Since it will show up on their credit card statement, you probably don’t want your name there…
Public business website : You don’t need one, so I put the same page as my EBook Sales letter. Don’t worry, you can sell multiple products from multiple webpages, it doesn’t have to only be this page.
Customer support email : I make this the same as my Google Checkout email address. Another good reason not to have this linked to any other Google or Gmail accounts. Don’t worry, people will send you the dumbest questions, but at least it’ll go to this address.
I have nothing for the Customer Service Page, Frequently Asked Questions, or Returns Policy links. Not that they aren’t a good idea, but I just haven’t done it yet.
Shipping Policy : I add a quick blurb about how you can download the product immediately from E-Junkie (a link will be provided to the buyer) and to email if something gets screwed up. This has worked for me for a couple years and I’ve never had any shipping issues that were my fault. (Many times people put the wrong email address and then can’t understand why nobody contacts them with resolutions to their problems.)
Financials – This page has our Checking Account information and Credit Card information. Since I like getting direct deposits to my account, I have my checking account information listed here. Add yours, go through the verification process (which takes a few days) and you’ll be set to receive direct deposits after your first sale. Compare that to Clickbank where you may wait 3-4 months for a paper check…
Adwords - This is a bit advanced for a simple set up. But the point here is that Google Checkout will lower or eliminate your transaction costs if you also advertise your product with them. Pretty sweet. I don’t use it as I don’t directly advertise my books (Although I have in the past), so I leave this blank.
Preferences - Select “Automatically authorize and charge the buyer’s credit card” and select to receive an email each time the order is processed. Oh how good does it feel to hear that ‘ping’ when you make a sale!
E-Junkie needs this to be done so they don’t provide a product that you didn’t charge for in the first place.
Tax Setup – Skip it. Unless you live in a state the requires you to tax electronic orders. I have no idea what those states are.
Integration - This page we will use to integrate with E-Junkie, so finish this section first, then read How to Use E-Junkie to Sell Ebooks to set this up correctly.
Until then, what’s important to know is the Google Merchant ID and Key are used by E-Junkie to process the sending of your book to your buyer. So Google approves, charges, and confirms the payment. Then E-Junkie takes the confirmation (using your ID and key) and says “Ok, it’s paid for, let’s provide a download link for the customer”.
Users - Up to you, I’m the only user on my account so I haven’t added a person.
That’s basically it for Google Checkout Setup!
What do we NOT need to do?
I know you’re looking at the Tools/”Buy Now” button and ready to put it on your web page to make a sale. But since Google Checkout doesn’t ‘hold’ the content for us or provide a way to send the Ebook to a new customer, having someone click on the Google Checkout “Buy Now” link means we’d be responsible for emailing the Ebook to the customer. Who wants that! I want this to work while I’m sleeping!
So hold your horses on adding a Buy Now button to your site, we’ll get there in just a bit. Why not celebrate by grabbing a beer before proceeding, it’s just as rewarding as adding HTML code to a website, don’t you think?
Now E-Junkie integration comes into play. As a reminder, we’re using Google Checkout to process the credit cards and E-Junkie to deliver the material. Processing Credit Cards is now set up!
Since Google Checkout appears to be up and running, let’s move on to Step 2, How to Use E-Junkie to Sell Ebooks.
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