PayPal vs. Merchant Account

What am I losing?

[ScottM]

I just set up a PayPal account for my website. (I was overwhelmed by the stuff for merchant accounts.)

My question is: Approx. what percentage of sales will I miss by not going fully merchant account?

My average sale price is $800.00

Anyone have any statistics on this?

[Marcia]

Scott, I don't know the figures you're asking for, but a lot of people who sell low ticket items have said that their sales volume increased when they went to using ProPay, which is a different process than PayPal. There might be a certain sales limit set per month, I haven't checked lately. Some keep both.

For a high ticket item like that I think I'd check into other options.

[ScottM]

Thanks, Marcia, I'll look into it.

[Crazy_Fool]

scott
the only true way to find out will be to set up alternative payment facilities.

i've posted this a couple of times - some time ago i took over running of a site that only accepted payments by paypal. i set up worldpay to replace paypal and sales doubled instantly - no extra work on the site, no additional promotion, just the worldpay facilities.

i recently had to use paypal to sign up for pubconference - it was a real pain in the butt system to use and i nearly gave up. i wasn't the only one to have trouble either.

[Shakil]

You really should try the merchant account route for your anticipated sales.

PayPal is good for low value items, but Merchant Account is the way to go.

Personally I will NOT touch PayPal, very bad experiences in the past.

Shak

[opulyst]

I have a subscription membership that I use which is $4.50 a month. I plan on using Paypal, and that way when I give out rewards (random acts of kindness) to my members I can just pay them back through Paypal.

Is this a wise way to go?