Ignore Paypal at Your Peril!

Altogether now with the whinges:

"I can't afford to have Paypal in my store, it costs too much money"

"Poor little me I work so hard and everyone should love me and not criticise me".

Oh sorry, the general all-purpose whinge from silly designers slipped in there. We should probably take that as read.

What matters is not what your expenses are but your profit - the bottom line:

Do you want 100 sales without Paypal charges? Do you want more sales from those 100 customers and their friends? OR...

Do you want 1000 sales from around the world where the net receipts are a (small) percentage less due to Paypal charges? Do you want more sales from those 1000 customers and their friends?

If you can't see it in abstract terms - and most people can visualise the concept of "more sales" - try it out with some actual figures. If your maths isn't so good get a friend to help you.

Here's another common whinge: "The store is taking commission. It's not fair" Well, of course it's fair. Why would someone who has spent time and money building up a store sell your stuff free of charge? It's the same maths exercise:

Do you want to sell to the 100 people who might look at your website and Facebook page or do you want to sell to the tens of thousands of people who are customers of the store?


We have a whole series of articles in progress on running a digital scrapbooking business. What prompted me to write this now is a big paper scrapping company who have branched into digital. This has its own challenges as paper designs don't always transfer well to digital and digi scrappers don't necessarily make their pocket pages the way paper scrappers do. They also have a gazillion stores vying for their business. No Paypal. Lost sales.

You can't assume you will have a lot of sales so why lose sales through not offering Paypal? I can use a credit card for any purchases but the bank charges an overseas transaction free of £2.00 (about $3.00). I have another card that doesn't do that but you lose out on the exchange rate - so still a fee. Don't kid yourself it isn't! And why, pray, should I entrust my credit card details to a company I don't even know?

I fix the stupid "No Paypal" mistake on a regular basis as I'm an accountant. A British one, hence maths not math. When I prepare a business plan or bank loan application for a client Paypal has to be in there or there's no deal. It's standard business practice even for the smallest business. I offer it myself so clients can pay their fees easily. It's a courtesy to clients. The total fees just go in my own accounts along with bank charges. It brings in the fees earlier and I can move the money to my business account in seconds.

Your business will have expenses - phone, stationery, web hosting, Paypal charges. Suck it up. do the maths.  Look at the bottom line. Don't be one of the whingeing idiots. Be professional, be courteous to your customers, make more money!