Guest blogger: Lisa Call
I recently replaced PayPal “Buy It Now” buttons with an E-junkie shopping cart for selling artwork on my art website: lisacall.com.
Eight reasons I selected E-junkie over PayPal
- E-junkie is a shopping cart (ie multiple items can be purchased at once) vs. buttons for single item purchases. Collectors wanting to purchase multiple artworks are encouraged vs. discouraged, shipping charges can be combined, etc.
- With E-junkie my collectors have multiple options for payment: either PayPal or Google checkout. E-junkie has the ability to interface with Authorize.net so in the future I will be able to process credit cards directly also. (There are fees involved with Authorize.net so I’ve not yet looked into it).
- The standard buttons with E-junkie are gray so they look and feel more professional to me. No more big yellow PayPal buttons competing with my artwork.
- The E-junkie shopping experience is fully integrated into my website without pop-up windows. The cart appears inside my website.
- The E-junkie website, where I create buttons and manage my inventory, is simple and quick. I was able to create buttons for 75 pieces of art and add them to my website in less than 3 hours. This would have taken at least 3 times as long with PayPal, as I found creating buttons to be a slow and longer process with their interface.
- E-junkie offers discount codes on single items or on the entire store. I held a very successful end-of-the-year sale and found it simple to set up, manage, and then return back to normal prices.
- You can create and manage affiliate programs with E-junkie — a good way to reward online friends that help you sell your art.
- E-junkie is excellent for digital file delivery for artists that have this type of content to sell.
E-junkie is not the only shopping cart available (others have the same advantages I’ve listed here for E-junkie), but it is the only one I considered based on recommendations and I have not been disappointed.
E-junkie does have a small monthly fee (as will most shopping carts), while the simplest of PayPal “But It Now” buttons are free. As I step my art career forward to bigger and better things, I find that paying for quality services is money well spent.
Lisa Call is an award-winning artist who creates abstract contemporary textile paintings composed of her richly colored hand dyed fabric. Her artwork is exhibited internationally and included in numerous private and public collections.
Lisa has a reputation for being productive and focused and writes about those topics at MakeBigArt.com — her website devoted to empowering artists to think big about their art, their marketing and their lives.
16 thoughts on “Eight Reasons to Use an E-junkie Shopping Cart”
Lisa, your website looks really neat with the e-junkie buttons. I have seen these buttons used in emails too for mailing lists, so if you’re trying to market something to your audience, they can buy straight away.
I especially like the use of e-junkie for affiliates. It makes it so easy for people to sign up to your affiliate program, which means your work is marketed to a wider audience.
I am using Shopp, a fully-integrated e-commerce system, but I would only recommend it if you know more about web coding (it gets tricky!), or if you get a web designer to do it for you.
Thank you Peter.
And you are right – I should have listed that as another reason. I put the buttons in newsletters and they look great. I don’t have to link off to another site for the button.
I’m also a software engineer, but after fighting with PHPlist for my mailing list (I’m bailing on it soon) I decided I want easier solutions for my software. I want to focus on making art vs. install and maintaining software. Hence my decision to pay for a shopping cart.
Thank you so much for this informative and timely post. I have been trying to decide whether or not to sell from my site, and want to be as professional as possible if I do. As a do-it-yourselfer, I am glad to learn about e-junkie.
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https://www.ccnow.com/ We are using CCNow …It gives buyers the choice upfront of using Visa or MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, JCB or PayPal…But this option is more for people who are trying to sell one big work at a time at a higher price…(doesn’t have the maximum limits)…
Hi,
What we’re pointing out is really not the difference between Paypal and e-junkie, but rather the difference between using a button on your website to access a payment system and using a shopping cart system. Paypal is really a payment system; they try to make using their system as easy as possible, but they’re not a shopping cart. There are plenty of shopping cart systems out there, some of them free, that will give you plenty of payment options. If you’re looking for something that will look good and give you a variety of options, what you want is a shopping cart system. Just like with anything else, there’s a bit of a learning curve to use a shopping cart, but really no harder than learning how to build your webpages and put paypal buttons on them.
You guys have to help me out here…in reading the info on E-Junkie site, they seem to say that you also have to have a PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, etc., accounts. So I am more confused than before.
Tell me if I have this anything close to right…I have to have my business bank account, connect it to PayPal (or similar), then use something like E-Junkie???
I think I’m seeing the attraction of having a gallery or someone to manage all the business and selling represent me the artist so that I can paint…which I haven’t done in a while trying to understand how to set all this up *q*
Let me read more about acquiring gallery representation…..
Susan: You’re kidding, right? A gallery doesn’t manage your business. They will make the sales, but only YOU manage your business.
Susan,
That is correct, the “collecting money” part of running an online business requires research and a lot of time and work to pull it all together.
Fortunately we have wonderful folks like Alyson to give us tips to make it easier.
I also believe in hiring people to help whenever needed. If you want to sell your art online, you can hire people to help you set this all up.
Using only galleries is certainly an option, although finding those galleries and maintaining a good relationship with them isn’t easy either.
Artists that sell their art are also business owners. The more efficient we are at running our business & hiring out when needed, the more time we have to create art.
I guess it would also depend on whether yo want to be boggled down by monthly payment fees or prefer to have a payment button on your website. Also, if you are not selling a lot of items, having a payment button would be sufficient. For merchants who have a tonne of stuff to sell, it would be better that they use a proper shopping cart.
Lauren
Lauren, because I am a complete novice in this matter, tell me which is which: is it paypal or shopping carts that bog you down with monthly payment fees? Thanks everyone for the awesome advice/suggestions/personal experiences!
I pay $16 a month for ejunkie at the moment as I have a lot of art for sale on my website (if you have fewer items it is quite a bit less). Either way – it’s a trivial amount. I’m not sure I’d consider that “bogged down”.
I believe in making decisions based on where I want to be not where I am. If you want to remain someone selling a small amount – you probably will remain there. I like to THINK BIG!
Thanks so much for sharing about E-junkie! I have wanted an easy way to sell items on my own web site that I don’t necessarily want to sell in my Etsy shop, and have it feel professional and business-like from the customer’s perspective. The PayPal buttons just didn’t seem to do it. I will be looking into this!
Yes, E-junkie is great! We’ve used them for selling various ebooks in the past and are moving into selling artwork using them. With all the regular hassles of running a website, it’s nice to use their intuitive and user-friendly interface. Especially good for “non-techies!”
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Thanks Lisa. I use e-junkie and you have highlighted some features that I was not aware they existed.