So, up until now, you’ve set up a blog and you’re writing your heart out about the next great stock for your portfolio. People are beginning to read your stuff on a regular basis and maybe even a few of them have given you their email addresses to sign up for a free newsletter you are sending out semi-regularly highlighting your research and writing capabilities.
Starting to sell your newsletter
As your free newsletter/blog content makes it way around the internet and you begin to attract staunch followers, your perception of free-content-as-a-hook should begin to mature. What I mean by this is that as readers become more and more comfortable with your content and begin to trust you, you now have an opportunity to begin trying to get these free subscribers to upgrade to a paid subscription (that’s why you’re doing all this, right? To get paid.) We’ll discuss in future pieces how this process plays out but it’s very important to balance valuing the trust your readers have placed in you with providing the right incentives and media to convince these same readers why it’s important to pay up for your premium newsletter.
PayPal vs. Google Checkout
To do this, you’re going to need to be able to receive credit card payments. There are a lot of shopping cart/credit card processing firms and software packages around but I’m going to focus on just two players, PayPal and Google Checkout. PayPal is really the de-facto standard for receiving payments online and Google has made a quick, small inroad into the space. Each one is relatively easy to deploy but there are some nuances between the two products.
Check out the chart below for the breakdown in functionality for the two online payment platforms:
| PayPal | Google Checkout | |
| Merchants | eBay, thousands of retailers | Hundreds of retailers, including Buy.com |
| How to make payments | Your credit card, debit card, or bank account | Your credit or debit card |
| Rate merchants | Yes, on eBay | Yes |
| International shopping | 55 countries, 6 currencies (EU, CA, pound, US, yen, Australian) | No; U.S. only |
| Hide your e-mail address from merchants | No | Yes |
| Peer-to-peer payments | Yes | No |
| Security | SSL, same used by banks | SSL, same used by banks |
| Fraud protection | 100 percent refund for fraudulent transactions of $50 or more | 100 percent refund (must report within 60 days) for fraudulent transactions |
| Fee for accepting payments on your own Web site | 1.9 to 2.9 percent of sales plus 30 cents per transaction | 2 percent of sales plus 20 cents per transaction (less for AdWords customers) |
| Items you can’t sell | Illegal items, weapons, adult goods, copyrighted media | Illegal items, weapons, adult goods, copyrighted media |
| Calculates shipping and tax | Yes | No |
| Users | More than 100 million | n/a |
From CNET
As your business scales, PayPal is probably the right solution to use. It’s certainly proven its ability to handle high-transaction businesses like eBay but because it’s powerful, it’s a bit harder to learn and implement on your site.
3 reasons why I chose to go with Google Checkout
Instead, I chose to go with the upstart Google Checkout on my site. I did so for 3 reasons:
- I use a lot of other Google Products (like Gmail, Google Reader) and it works with the same ease and light design that Google is renown for. I’m addicted to the Google interface and I found myself very comfortable navigating Google Checkout accordingly.
- If you are advertising your blog or newsletter via Google Adwords, there is some nifty integration that Google’s done as well. Combining Google Checkout, Adwords and Analytics, you’ll be able to easily tell what advertisements are monetizing the best and re-allocate your marketing funds accordingly. Being able to track revenues by exactly which ad the traffic entered your site through –this is the holy grail of advertising.
- Lastly, I found that integrating Google Checkout into my site was very easy for someone without a ton of technical expertise and managing payments and authorizations was a snap, as well.
Play around with both PayPal and Google Checkout. PayPal is truly a world-class platform that has the ability to do so much for online merchants. With this power comes a steeper learning curve. Google Checkout is a light and easy solution to quickly begin accepting online payments from your customers.
Let me know what’s worked for you and any advice you have for other newsletter publishers. Let me know in the comments below.
Don’t forget to check out our page of all the newsletter resources you’ll need to get your newsletter off the ground and making some dough and subscribe to receive free, value-added updates from us.
