We’ve just integrated Paypal into our system, so you can now purchase domains, hosting plans and soon, even renew your existing plan with your Paypal account! There were a couple of reasons that we didn’t integrate it sooner, but in retrospect, they were all bad. I wish I had gotten this project rolling sooner.
Did you ever think about using Paypal to get paid on your site? It’s strikingly simple and if you’re interested in learning how to do it, keep reading.
When I started IX Web Hosting, Paypal didn’t even exist. It’s a really good time to be a business (forget the economy!). The integration of Paypal has already coincided with a sharp increase in sales (let me also give credit to the bustle of the Fall season for that, though) and a warm welcoming from a couple of you who were hoping for this change. It was easy to integrate and had a big impact.
Being able to accept online payment from your customers is for sure the most essential part of operating your business online. You lose a lot of business every time you ask a customer to call in or come into the store to make a sale in almost every single business case. The audience we can reach is bigger now than ever before. Don’t think people weren’t trying to sell web hosting in stores[1] at one point. They were… and they became really irrelevant really fast.
So many of our clients have what is called a “brochure website,” or a website that tells you a bit about the nature of their business or what they do, the history behind it and what kind of services are offered, but isn’t actually selling anything via the site itself.
I personally don’t understand this. If you have something to sell, why not put your site to work for you? That’s like going through the trouble of having kids and not making them do housework (just kidding Department of Labor!!). It doesn’t cost much or anything, depending on how you do it. The payoff is great if you’re willing to put a little effort in… and there’s no reason not to put that effort in especially in today’s economy (which we should have forgotten by now).
Imagine the convenience for your customers and the growth potential for you if you were to start accepting payments online… or even just start making gift certificates for your products or services available on your site! People who were once only visitors to your site are now potentially paying customers and your best salesman is now working 24/7… for free.
The "Good Part"
It’s sad, but I’ve noticed that over the last decade, the power of a website is so seldom harnessed by their owners and instead, business owners dredge through more “traditional” paths that don’t make them much money and more often than not, lead them to giving up before they even get to the good part.
Hopefully, you’re reading this and ready to start getting paid. Paypal is probably the best, easiest, most painless way to get started accepting payments online. There’s a free plan that allows your visitors to use their credit/debit cards or their Paypal account to purchase your stuff and it’s actually easy to set up.
So how easy is it?
Well, a quick summary would tell you that depending on how you’d like to integrate Paypal, it will either be very simple (about a 15-minute commitment): using Paypal’s shopping cart and easy HTML integration, or semi-simple: installing and integrating into your own shopping cart from our Easy Apps. You’ll also find that it can either be free or cheap ($ 30/month).
The free solution, “Website Payment Standard,” can be popped right into your existing shopping cart or installed using Paypal’s easy setup. You don’t have to go through any kind of credit check to get paid and your customer will follow these simple steps to purchase things on your site:
- Your customer clicks on the “Buy Now!/Subscribe” button that is available on your site via either your shopping cart or an HTML integration of Paypal (“HTML Integration” is literally just using their “Buy Now!” buttons to link to their shopping cart).
- Your customer is then sent to Paypal’s shopping cart on the Paypal website (with your site’s header and footer still in tact — the process will be seamless to the buyer, but there’s not much you can do with the shopping cart look and design. This is why many people choose to use their own shopping cart).
- Your customer is sent back to your site to complete the process (usually to a “thank you for ordering!” page that you’ve created).
- The cash from the sale goes into a Paypal account that you’ve created at the beginning of this process. Paypal will issue you a debit card if you want one and you can transfer funds online from your Paypal account to your own bank account.
Paypal has a great in-depth tutorial here, but you can also watch their demo -which is pretty cool- to make sure it’s the right kind of thing for your business.
Also, let me know in the comments if you’re not at the Paypal / “Get Paid” phase with your business. If you’ve read up to here and you’re not selling something now, you’re motivated enough as far as I’m concerned to start making money with your site. I need to get you to that point because the more successful you are, the closer you are to your goals, the happier you are… and if I can have anything to do with that, well, you know the rest. 
Talk soon,
Fathi Said, CEO
IX Web Hosting
[1] Mostly telephone and internet service providers. Look around, you can still find a few!