Creating a Business Blog and Accepting Online Payments
4I often read in forums and ‘question and answer’ type sites requests for information on how to create and release a business blog that can be used to support a particular product or products that are going to be sold to the public. It is easy to forget that for the uninitiated, there is no such thing as straight forward and a need for a clear and concise explanation of the process.
The question I saw that prompted me to write this article was placed on the WordPress forum from one of it’s members. He was simply asking about a book promotion he wanted to do. The scenario being he had just written a book and wanted to sell it directly to the public at a fixed price straight from a WordPress blog. There were lots of helpful suggestions on exactly how he could do that using his free WordPress platform in a way that he would not fall foul of the WordPress terms and conditions.
The one point that occurred to me was, why on earth use a free WordPress blog anyway, from a commerce perspective there are way too many constraints. Dare I say it even a Blogspot blog would be preferable, although I hasten to add this would not be my recommendation.
If you want to take this route i.e. use a blog to sell a specific product, especially a single product for a fixed price. Wouldn’t it be better to just register a domain name, ideally that describes the product in question, purchase some cheap hosting, and create your own blog where you are in sole control of the terms and conditions of its use.
The clear favourite for allowing people to purchase on line is to use Paypal (Google Checkout is another alternative), there are many options available (providing you have a business account) for the type of purchase that can be made. For the scenario described you would choose the ‘Buy Now’ button and a fixed price per quantity. Paypal will give you some code that you simply copy and paste into your blog (in the html screen) where you want the button to show up.
OK so you want to create a business blog to sell a product and accept online payments, these are the steps:
- Register a domain name
- Buy some cheap hosting
- Create your wordpress blog
- Create a sales page and a **thankyou page
- Open a business account with PayPal and create a buy now button
- Add the button code to your sales page
The **thankyou page is where PayPal will direct the customer after they have made the payment. Just make sure that you thank them for the purchase, let them know that they will see the purchase on their credit card statement, provide some contact information so they can get in touch if they need to and finally tell them how and when they are going to receive the product (for digital products provide detailed instructions on how to download the product).
That is it, but for detailed instructions on how you do all these things refer to the links provided and you should be fine.
That’s a very basic and easy way to accept payments with a blog. It’s amazing how easy selling online has become compared to 10 years ago.
Hi Jeffrey, everything about blogging has become easier compared to 10 years ago. Using WordPress with the multitude of plugins available, providing you select the right ones of course, means there is usually a way to do nearly everything you would possibly want to with a blog, and all you have to do is install it. Pretty much anyone can blog now for pretty much any reason and for the most part, never even have to think about coding.
HI,
there is one thing i want to ask you that why you have said “cheap hosting”. Is it a wise idea to buy cheap hosting for your business blog? You would be competing big names with dedicated servers and google also awards some credits for a faster server.
Keeping above in view, can you please further elaborate the idea of hosting such sort of blogs on cheap hosting.
I will be grateful.
Regards
Well first of all cheap hosting does not necessarily mean bad hosting. For example I use Hostgator for all my hosting requirements and they are extremely reliable, have an excellent support network available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 99.9% uptime and are very affordable. They also provide all the services any webmaster or blogger is ever likely to need. I call that great service and can’t believe all that comes for only a few dollars a month. If you are a serious blogger I would say look no further, I haven’t and I have never been disappointed.