How to sell my own products in a Wordpress blog?
Before we start this there are a few business decisions you have to make.
1. Which Payment service are you going to use?
2. How are you going to deliver the product?
3. How are you going to support the sales.
Which Payment service are you going to use?
Electronic commerce on the internet is a very interesting subject when you actually come to set up your own. I spent a great deal of time investigating all the options. This was especially so here in Australia because of the banking laws.
The solutions we are looking at are mainly based in the USA but work globally. For solutions in your area you will have to do some personal research however what we have here will work in most places around the world.
Some companies only deal in digital products. Others only deal in tangible products like CD’s books etc. The only advise I can give is that you do your own homework and really search one out that you feel meets your requirements. Ok I know you want some advise so I will tell you what I use.
As this section is about business I noticed as I was doing my research that most successful businesses whether online or off utilized some sort of system. This meant that what ever products were added they simply plugged them into the system. You can either get a full blown merchant facility or use third party ones which I discuss below. These are great if you are just starting and many of the top marketers still use these type of programs over a personal merchant facility.
2. How are you going to deliver the product?
I link 2checkout, Paypal and Clickbank accounts together with a system called DLGuard and this handles all my day to day work. Its my virtual secretary and is a stand alone product that delivers my products and is only a once of payment instead of monthly like many others.
On the ecommerce page I also talk about a free shopping cart software used by thousands called Mals Ecommerce and of course there are some great plugins availabe for Wordpress .
3. How are you going to support the sales.
I use a great free program called Main Support and also a plugin on this site called WP Contact. The Main Support program is an installed program that is a full blown ticketing system and means that every request and reply is recorded which can hel a lot as things get bigger and more complex. At present has no plugin.
The other great thing about putting everything through a ticketing system is that it is secure and reduces spam.
Summary
Setting up systems for you business is very important and should be given some thought before you just go slapping payment links everywhere. Work out a system that will take your customers from one sale to the next etc.
