Are you wondering what’s the best way to sell ebooks from your blog? If so, this Payhip review is going to reveal everything you need to know about selling digital downloads online for free. (well, not completely free, but less than you think)
What Is Payhip?
Payhip makes it easy for anyone to upload and sell digital products from their website. I actually set up a new account to sell an ebook from my blog. They claim that they are the easiest ways to sell digital downloads and memberships.
While I personally haven’t used the membership part of it, so I can’t say if it’s easy. I can tell you that setting up my first product was so easy. In fact, I had everything set up in about 10 minutes.
Payhip Makes It Easy to Sell Digital Products
I always see people asking how they can sell an ebook from their blog without paying a monthly subscription. No one wants to pay a monthly subscription to sell an ebook for their blog.
Especially, if they don’t even know if it will sell. This is the main reason that I decided to test it out, I was tired of paying a monthly fee just to sell my ebooks.
After doing some research, I discovered Payhip and realized that it was free to use. You get charged a 5% transaction fee whenever someone buys from you. Of course, you also get charged the 3% PayPal fee and Stripe Fees (I’m not sure what those are).
I know what you’re thinking, that’s too expensive? Well, It can be depending on how many products you sell on a monthly basis. It might be cheaper to use something like Sendowl.
But if you’re a brand new blogger and not making a lot of sales yet, it’s a great way to test out a product before using a Payhip alternative that costs a monthly fee.
Why I Chose it Over The Alternatives?
Last week, I decided it was time to stop paying a monthly subscription to sell ebooks on my blog. Plus, I received an email from someone that said they had some issues with my current payment system.
So, I went to work looking for another system that cost less (preferably free). I looked at SendOwl, e-Junkie, Selz, Gumroad and etc.
You name it I looked at several of them. I even considered using WooCommerce, but I really didn’t want to install an e-commerce plugin on my WordPress site.
After reading about Payhip in a Facebook group, I decided it was worth testing it out. So I signed up for free and based on my experience, I thought it was worth recommending it to you.
Why?
I was able to get the sales button and product added on Payhip in about 10 minutes. It took a little longer to connect my PayPal (you’ll need a business account) and Stripe account.
After setting it, I canceled my current subscription that I was using. So yay, I was able to save some money just by moving to Payhip.
I had such a pleasant Payhip experience, I thought that I’d share the process of signing up and adding your first product.
Hopefully, it will help you out if you’re looking for a way to sell ebooks from your blog. You can check out how my payment button looks like here.
Now let me show you how to sign up and set up your first product.
Payhip Review How to Sign Up And Sell On Your Blog for Free
As I mentioned, I just made the move to this platform, so I haven’t made any sales yet, so I can’t share my sales experience with you yet. But I can show you everything else.
How to Sign Up and add Your First Product
If you’re ready to sell your ebooks and don’t want to pay a monthly fee, then let me show you how to sign up and add your first product.
Sign up here to get started for free.
As soon as you create your account, you’ll be taken to the dashboard that allows you to add your first product.
The process is so easy, all you have to do is follow the step-by-step process.
Select Product Type
If you’re selling an ebook or any type of digital download that costs a one-time fee, you’ll want to choose Standard Product.
The subscription billing is for products that cost a monthly fee. For instance, monthly memberships would fall into this category.
This is where you’ll upload your product file, which is the PDF you’ll deliver whenever someone makes a purchase.
- Title: Name of the product you’re selling
- Price: Choose a price for the cost of your digital download
- Cover: Upload your ebook cover, you can upload up to 9 images
- Description: Create a description for your product using the WYSIWYG text editor
- Category: Select a category that your product fits into
- Subcategory: Choose a subcategory
Once you’ve set up everything, click on Add product at the bottom.
Your product is now set up, you need to add the payment button on your sales page. However before you can start receiving payments, you need to connect your payment details.
The one thing that I really liked about this platform, is that you can connect both PayPal and Stripe to collect payments. I know that not everyone has PayPal, so this makes it easy to accept payments with any type of credit cards.
Setting Up Payment Settings on Payhip
Log into your account and go to Account >> Settings >> Payment Details
This is where you’ll see the step-by-step tutorials on how to link both Paypal and Strip to your Paypal account.
To link your PayPal account, you will need to upgrade to a business account. (don’t worry, it’s not hard)
Click on the button and add your PayPal email you want to link with your Payhip account. Then log into your account and it will ask you to authorize Payhip and just click yes, and that you accept.
That’s it, you have no linked your Payhip with your PayPal account and can start receiving payments.
Repeat the process for your Stripe account if you want to set it up. Once you have your payment settings set up, it’s time to add the payment buttons to your sales page, so you can start selling.
How to Add Payhip Payment Buttons to WordPress
The last thing you need to do to start accepting payments is to add the buttons to your sales page.
You can find your share/embed code in your Payhip dashboard.
When you click the embed button tab, you’ll have the option to customize the way you want it to look. You can do the following:
- Change the button text
- Choose button theme color
- Select button type which is Direct purchase or Add to cart
Once it’s customized, you can then proceed to embed it on your sales page. If you want to use the button, you’ll need to add the Javascript element inside the <head> tag of your WordPress blog.
I am using Thrive Content Builder for my sales page, so I just grabbed the product page link and linked it with the button on my page.
Once it’s added to your sales page, you can start promoting it on social media, your email list, your blog posts or anywhere you want.
What Are the Benefits of Using Payhip?
It’s easy for anyone to get started selling digital products without worrying about a monthly fee. This makes it perfect for new bloggers or anyone who wants to test a new product.
For me, I love how easy the setup process was. As I mentioned, I was able to set up my first product in about 10 minutes.
Other features you’ll love:
- Analytics that shows you how many sales you have made.
- Ability to add up to 100 products with the free account.
- EU Vat is taken care of, which is a huge plus for anyone.
- Affordable, you only pay 5% per transaction when you make a sale, there are zero monthly fees (you will have to pay Paypal and Stripe fees).
- Access to several marketing tools such as; coupons and social discounts.
- Ability to sign up and manage and reward your own affiliates.
- Access to product sharing tools. Easy to use embed buttons you can use to sell digital downloads on your website or blog.
- The ability to set up mailing lists so your customers subscribe and stay updated on your product changes and new product releases.
- Instant digital product delivery via email to your buyers.
Advanced Options
When you create a product in Payhip, you also get access to some advanced options you can choose from such as:
- Make the product private on a profile page.
- Add an ISBN number to your ebook.
- Upload one or more pages to allow people to preview it.
- Limit the number of copies to be sold.
- Automatically subscribe buyers to your email list.
- Generate unique license keys for each sale.
How to Set Up The Mail List Feature
One of the most important things you need to do when building a profitable blogging business is to make sure that you focus on growing your email list. It’s extremely easy to do and I’ll show you how to do shit.
To automatically add your subscribers to your email list, you’ll want to check number 5 in the advanced features.
This platform connects with some of the most popular email autoresponder service providers. Since I am using ConvertKit, I’ll show you how to connect your product with this provider.
The process would be similar for any other provider you are using.
Grab your API key and paste it in the box and click save details.
Go Back to Your Product Page
Next, you want to go back to your product and click edit. Scroll down until you see automatically subscribe to the email list and make sure you choose the list you want people to be added to.
Now whenever someone purchases your product, you can add them to your email list automatically.
How Much Does It Cost
There are three pricing options you can choose from:
- Basic: $0
- Standard: $29 per month
- Professional: $99 per month
I personally use the Basic option to test out whether or not a product will sell. Once you know it sells, you can decide if you want to upgrade or not.
The Basic plan does not come with a monthly fee and you’ll be charged a 5% transaction fee whenever you make a sale.
If you end up making a lot of sales every month, it may be cheaper to upgrade to a paid plan.
The Things I Love and Hate About Payhip
- Quick and easy to set up and forget about.
- Easy to update files whenever I need to.
- My customers will be emailed an email link to download their digital product/ebook instantly after purchase.
- Earnings are paid instantly in Paypal and Stripe.
- Access to marketing tools to help you market your products.
- EU VAT is handled for me, which is huge.
- Ability to send my buyers’ update to product updates if they choose to sign up.
So what do I dislike?
Well, I don’t really like the 5% transaction fee, but I guess that’s the pay off for not paying a monthly subscription.
How to Sign Up
If you’re ready to sign up and start selling your own digital products, you can do so by hitting the button below. It’s completely free to sign up and you can literally be selling your ebooks and digital downloads in minutes.
Final Take Away
As you know, I love affiliate marketing, but I am a huge fan of diversifying my income. Currently, I don’t have a ton of ebooks to sell, but after trying several different platforms, I am very happy with this one.
If you’re trying to build a business with your blog, you need to write an eBook. There’s no better way to create passive income and share your expertise than writing an eBook.
You can bet that I’ll be writing more eBooks and when I do, I’ll be adding them to Payhip to sell online from my blog.
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Are you considering selling digital products on your blog? If so, do you think that you’ll give Payhip a chance? Let me know, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
