What service do you use to sell your digital products? Leadpages? shopify?

[ffp504]

Hi,

I am almost finished with my ebook and I plan on selling it via a long form sales page.

I have all of my copy done and layout in my head, ready to throw it all together.

I am unsure of what way to go:

1. Hire a designer to build a wordpress page.

2. Use a service like leadpages but I am unsure if I can add a cart to it.

3. Shopify. I have used them before for actual products but never for a digital product.

I would love to know what solutions you all have used to sell your digital products. (no amazon)

Thanks for all of your advice in advance,

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Ettan Bazil]

Hi,

I am almost finished with my ebook and I plan on selling it via a long form sales page.

I have all of my copy done and layout in my head, ready to throw it all together.

I am unsure of what way to go:

1. Hire a designer to build a wordpress page.

2. Use a service like leadpages but I am unsure if I can add a cart to it.

3. Shopify. I have used them before for actual products but never for a digital product.

I would love to know what solutions you all have used to sell your digital products. (no amazon)

Thanks for all of your advice in advance,

There are benefits in both a hosted cart solution and building your own self-hosted site. Here is what I've learnt, and I'll also tell you why I decided to go with the self-hosted wordpress site:

Hosted Carts

Pros

• Hardly any learning curve
• Up and running in a day
• Integrated payment gateway
• Good reporting and sales support
• Customer support when things go wrong
• Nice templates
• Lots of Apps

Cons

• Cost

Although Shopify seems cheap at first with the low transactions fees etc, you are penalised with the themes, apps and features. It turns out to be very expensive in the long run.

• Lack of Flexibility

Editing templates is not as simple as with Wordpress. You cannot tweak the app code and are restricted with design etc.

• Dependability

You are relying on someone else's business to run so that your business can run. If Shopify go bust, you go bust.


Self Hosted Wordpress Site

Pros

• Flexibility in structure in design
• Cheaper in the long run
• Thousands of templates
• Wider diversity of free and paid apps
• Choice over hosting provider
• You own your own site (If your host goes bust, you just upload your backup to a new host)

Cons

• Startup costs (unless you build it yourself)
• Steep Learning curve
• Limited support
• You will need to learn PHP (or at least a small amount) to make it a viable choice

What I chose?

I went with the self-hosted Wordpress choice. I originally built my site with Amazon Webstore and spent days customising it. Now they are closing down in the UK which means my site is closed down too.

I decided that in the long run, control over my business was more important than a quick fix and am in the process of building my WooCommerce site. Shopify is a great service and may suit you more than a self-hosted option, this is just my personal experience.

Hope this helps

 

[ffp504]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Ettan,

You made some very good points. After some thinking I have decided Speed is a big factor, so is short term cost until I start to turn a profit with this idea.

Because of this I am looking more into the hosted solution. So now I am thinking about leadpages and using fetch app to accept payment. Shopify is out of the equation because of the limited template design interface.

Do you are anyone on here know of the best hosted cart solution that will let me build a website from scratch, accept payment, and deliver my ebook?

 

[The-J]

Do you are anyone on here know of the best hosted cart solution that will let me build a website from scratch, accept payment, and deliver my ebook?

You can do all of this with Wordpress. It's not a hosted cart per se, just a content management system as Ettan pointed out before. However, there are many good e-commerce plugins for Wordpress.

The main drawback with Wordpress is that you need some technical chops (or hire someone that does).

BigCommerce allows you to make things 'from scratch' around their system, but it's not cheap. I don't know about Magento, hopefully someone can speak up about them too.

Honestly, if you're not looking to hire someone, go with Shopify. The designs aren't bad and you can create a converting shop with them.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Ettan Bazil]

To be honest I only looked at Shopify and BigCommerce. Netsuite is the best out there, but a bit prohibitive cost-wise. Amazon Webstore in the US, but they're deprecating the service in the UK, so US might eventually follow suit

 

[happybhoy]

I found you can quite easily build a cheap store using woocommerce/wordpress. I'm in the process of starting to test an idea and was going to use woocommerce but I might look into shopify, as it seems like I could get a functional site up quicker.

 

[piesandak47]

no don't use shopify for ebooks.

Use something like ejunkie, zaxxa, or samcart, or even gumroad. Or if you have a lot of affiliates, clickbank is good.

But not shopify.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AndrewNC]

This can be setup in less than 30 minutes

1) create a sales page on Leadpages if you don't know how to code.
2) Have the links on the page go to paypal.
3) Have paypal redirect to the download page of the ebook.

http://www.e-junkie.com/ is a third party company that works with paypal to protect teh download page.

 

[AllenCrawley]

For my digital product I use Wordpress and optimizepress.

 

[ffp504]

This can be setup in less than 30 minutes

1) create a sales page on Leadpages if you don't know how to code.
2) Have the links on the page go to paypal.
3) Have paypal redirect to the download page of the ebook.

http://www.e-junkie.com/ is a third party company that works with paypal to protect teh download page.

Thanks.

I was looking into doing this work around but using fetchapp. I read good things about E-junkie though. More to research once I find the right platform.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ffp504]

This can be setup in less than 30 minutes

1) create a sales page on Leadpages if you don't know how to code.
2) Have the links on the page go to paypal.
3) Have paypal redirect to the download page of the ebook.

http://www.e-junkie.com/ is a third party company that works with paypal to protect teh download page.

For my digital product I use Wordpress and optimizepress.

I have narrowed down my choices:

1. wordpress + optimizepress
- It seems simple to just setup wordpress and all else is handled on the optimizepress website. Lots of customization options and tracking. Con: Damn expensive @ $97 per month

2. Leadpages + shopping cart work around (e-junkie or fetchapp)
- Cheap @ $30 per month. Unsure about level of customization feature. I am planing a long form sales page with multiple cta buttons though out my page.

3. Wix.com
- cheap $17 per month, build website from scratch. Unsure if they have the right quality apps to deliver and process dig products.

Focusing on cost and effectiveness. I am leaning towards Leadpages.

Can anyone else offer some more pros and cons to any of these?

Thank you all for the feedback.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Con: Damn expensive @ $97 per month

I believe it's just a $97 one time charge.

 

[ffp504]

Yes, Sorry. It is a one time charge. This may be the winner. I need to see how indepth the set up is.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Grinning-Jack]

(no amazon)

Why not?

 

[ffp504]

UPDATE:

I went ahead and bought a subscription to leedpages. I am now requesting a refund lol

Nothing against the service, it just wont work for me. The themes are not fully customizable.

I am going to get instapage or Optimizepress at this point.