Considering Other Shopping Cart Options
E-junkie isn’t your only option for selling e-books. Dozens of other good shopping carts are available. If you’re planning to operate an e-book empire, or if you want to sell more complex digital products, look into the three popular options described in this section (from lowest to highest price).
WP e-Commerce
If you’re using self-hosted WordPress, you can install the free WP e-Commerce plug-in on your website. If your site runs on WordPress.com (described in Chapter 9), however, you can’t use WP e-Commerce.
WP e-Commerce works with PayPal and other common payment processors, such as Google Checkout. It has all the features you need in order to sell e-books and more — in fact, some people find it too technical and overwhelming to use.
If you don’t know how to install a plug-in or if you’re unsure how they work, you can find out all about them at http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins
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1ShoppingCart
As with E-junkie, you can use 1ShoppingCart on any website. You can test-drive it for $3.95, but the Starter package costs $34 per month (billed every four weeks, if you’re on a monthly plan). A popular shopping cart system for small businesses, it offers more features than E-junkie. To gain access to all of them, you have to pay for a more expensive package.
You might choose to use 1ShoppingCart if you want extra features, such as recurring billing, that E-junkie doesn’t support. (You wouldn’t use recurring billing for a single e-book, but you might do so if you were producing a short e-book every month or two for your customers.)
1ShoppingCart also has an integrated autoresponder, which lets you easily send customers automatic e-mail. For example, you can choose to send an e-mail to every customer two weeks after they purchase an e-book, asking whether they want to provide a brief testimonial.
Infusionsoft
If you’re running a full-fledged online business, consider using Infusionsoft. It integrates sales, marketing, and customer relationship management (CRM). The monthly package price ranges from $199 to $999.
Though Infusionsoft has a powerful set of tools and is widely used in the online business community, some people see it as too expensive and packed with features unnecessary for small businesses.