PayPal as only payment option, would it put you off making a purchase?

that's a good point... and one i tested alot in the past with my own
products as well as with clients.

my results?

clickbank as payment processor outsold and outconverted paypal.

probably the biggest reason, with clickbank, you can use paypal.

i personally know many marketers who swear by, and use, paypal only.

so if it's a choice of paypal or nothing, then go with paypal.

but if you plan on using affiliates for sales, go with clickbank.

if you plan on doing huge volume, i'd go with a merchant account or
1shoppingcart.com

when you use paypal, you DO have to jump through a few more hoops than you would... because initially you do come to a page where it asks you to sign in, etc...

but again, paypal is almost as well known as google... and the name recognition helps.

so, again... the only true way to tell is to test out paypal and then use another and see if your conversion rate goes down.

i know in the past, it used to hamper my results, but these days... many marketers are using it as their only choice.

Shawn makes some very good points, especially when it comes to larger volume.

Personally, I deal with paypal every day and have no inklings about it what so ever -- Especially since they usually take the buyers side when it comes to disputes.

I use PayPal as my only payment option. Most people are very familiar with it and understand how it works. Another reason I like PayPal is that I use Quickbooks and I can create invoices in Quickbooks and send an email from there that gives them a PayPal button to click to pay along with the invoice right in the body of the email. It's a PayPal plugin that has been very useful.

I am in the same boat as you frambles but I will probably test both click bank and Paypal direct.

I have seen marketers use a product page with a button that links strait to Paypal but am not sure if there has got to be any legal stuff connected to the page with the paypal button on it. The last one I looked at didn't have anything on it except a sales vid and a paypal button.

I'll have a go at both Paypal and Clickbank maybe and see how it goes?

cheers Carl

No it would not turn me off. We have PayPal as our "middleman" for our online biz and people arent freaked out about using it. Only one guy has ever said he'd send a cheque rather than use PayPal.

No paypal won't put you off. Just make sure your products are worthy because you dont want alot of refunds, angrt customers, and disputes that you have to deal with.

When asking my customers at my PLR shop this same question I was actually surprised by how many wanted another option! The main reason is that if you have been banned by PayPal for any reason you cannot use any credit card you may have used with your PayPal account to purchase through PayPal.

I added Google Checkout/Wallet to my shop and a lot of people are using it.

Doesn't put me off at all. What I will say, is that I have a product which uses Paypal Standard and another that uses Website Payments Pro, with a standard credit card form. PP Standard is converting at around 48% and the credit card form converts at around 29%...that's from Add To Cart button CTR.

I have an online store and only use PayPal. I really got tired of Wells Fargo adding charges to my account every month that they could not explain. A bank wil nickle and dime you to death.

There are no monthly fees with PayPal, and the transaction fees are very reasonable.

I assume that I lose a few sales each month from people who do not like PayPal, but I sell hard goods. I don't think you will see the same problems with downloadable products.

PayPal is one of the easiest way to process payments. It's quite popular too. Never had any major concerns with them that haven't been resolved.

Personally, no it would not...not in the least. Might it some? Perhaps. I think, as you can tell from the answers provided above, that this is a personal preference and in large part is simply based on what niche you're involved in. PayPal is though becoming more and more "mainstream" and therefore less and less necessary to have multiple options.

Derek

I wouldn't be put off by paypal as the only option. In fact, I'm always happy when I can use it. I think it's been around long enough that most people are pretty comfortable.

Thanks for posts! Looks good for PayPal and maybe Google Checkout as a second option!

PayPal does not put me off at all as a BUYER, in fact I prefer to buy things from there, rather than transfer the money to a bank account and use a credit or debit card.

As a SELLER I am much more wary of PayPal, after hearing all the horror stories, and having had some minor problems with them which were not justified at all.

Chris

i made this post the other day on the copywriting forum because,
well, i'm a copywriter ;-)

but i also thought it was relevant here and could help some
folks out.

if you offer products and/or services in person, or you sell services
over the phone and don't want to use paypal, considering
using square.com

I still offer paypal as a payment alternative because almost everyone and their dog uses paypal.

But recently, I've been accepting mostly credit cards with Square,
which I LOVE

If you go to Square.com, you can sign up for a free account and
they will actually send you a free card reader. but you don't even need
that if you have an iphone, ipad, or itouch...

you can download the square app and actually take credit cards that way, without needing a merchant account or needing to have the client put in the info.

it's awesome... paypal has a similar feature where you can take payments over the phone... but square has smaller fees.

and the real cool thing about using square is, they deposit funds into your bank account the next day. with paypal, they hold funds for days, if not weeks.

i once had a client pay me $10,000 for a project, and i used paypal's $19.95 a month program where you can take credit cards over the phone.

well, they proceeded to hold that $10,000 for weeks because of the amount. so now i use paypal as little as possible and use square a lot more.

i used square again this weekend, it's amazingly easy. you just get the credit card info, enter it into your iphone, ipad, or itouch... and presto... money is in your bank account a day later. love it.

i've been using square more and more to accept credit cards.when the fees are in the $5,000 and $10,000 range, you tend to get a lot of American Express, or at least I do.

so square is a great way to receive credit card payments and they go right into your bank account the next day.

I use PayPal as my only payment option. It's quite popular too.

Hi Frambles, 4 years ago, when I started with internet marketing, the first thing I created was just an Ebook Store with paypal payments. There were around 2,000 ebooks to buy.
Well, after one month I've closed everything.

Why?
Because all purchases got refunded by Paypal to the buyers because they said their credit card was stolen and things like this. So, after I got my account up and down for the first month, I shut the door of that Ebook store forever, using the domain name to open a blog.

I don't say everything will be bad by your side, this is just my single experience.
But if I have to choose now, I will choose Clickbank where things are more easy and well made, and especially after you ask a tot refunds your credit card is banned.

So my advice is to use Clickbank, Payspree, PayDotCom, JVZoo or any of this portals who use the same method by Clickbank.
Paypal could be used for everything, not for small ebook sales.

See you soon,
Alessandro

It doesn't put me off. I used to be skeptical about it when I first made my purchase online since that site only allowed paypal. payments so I had to sign up for an account. Then I realize how easy it was and how simple the transactions were. So far I haven't much problems using it. Plus, most online mechants uses paypal anyway and if that's the only way to buy/pay, then you don't have much choice unless you go somewhere else..

No because I know you don't have to get a Paypal account. In the past, I would've gone elsewhere because I thought you needed a Paypal account to buy. It's just not worth it. If you make it clear that you don't need an account then it should be fine.

PayPal is great.

Using paypal, does not meant that those who purchase have to have a paypal account.

If they have a C.C. they can still purchase from you, without even having a PayPal account, they give that option on the main purchase page, you just have to look for it.