Getting Paid

There are several ways of getting paid when selling on the internet without going to the effort of obtaining a merchant account with your bank – which can be an exasperating experience.

Paypal at www.paypal.com is pretty well everywhere and is now owned by eBay.  Through Paypal you can now accept most reputable credit cards as well as online cheques.  Even better, the money is available immediately and with a Mastercard debit card you can withdraw the money immediately from an ATM.

Clickbank at www.clickbank.com is very popular with digital products because of its automated affiliate system.  Anyone can sign in and sign up to sell your product at whatever commission rates you specify and it is all handled and processed by Clickbank.   You can set the level of sales at which you want to receive your cheque and when your revenue hits that figure they will send you a physical cheque.  This is a bit annoying if you are a not a US resident because you then incur substantial bank charges having the US dollar physical cheque cleared at rather greater cost than electronic methods.  But you can’t have everything.

2Checkout at www.2checkout.com is similar service to Clickbank for digital products but they do not offer an affiliate program.  Payment is by direct deposit into your bank account weekly.

The more conventional method of having a merchant account with your bank has the advantage that the charges are usually lower but the effort of arranging one tends to mitigate against it.  If you are only going to sell digital products to begin with then I suggest you stay with the convenient online services.