In order to sell your services online, you need a reliable way to take payments. For it to be scaleable it has to be automated so it can happen while you sleep.
Sending invoices in the mail is so oldhat. And unreliable, who needs the hassle of unpaid invoices, and chasing payments, no thanks!
Most people when starting out will get a fancy website and don’t even consider this part of the marketing technology stack but it is critical.
I have PayPal or Stripe that’s enough isn't it? ✋ NO.
The secret to growing your business online is to never make your customers have to think. Make it as easy as possible for them to give you money. Don’t put barriers in the way.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling your services as a coach or consultant or digital products and courses, the process has to be slick.
Some examples:
Onetime purchases for your workshops, ebooks, coaching, and courses
Subscriptions and monthly retainer fees
Split payments
Free trial periods
All of this and more is possible when you invest in a proper checkout process for your clients.
But that’s not all…
You can add to this the ability to increase your average order value essentially deliver more value and earn more money from every single client by employing:
Bump offers
Upsells
Downsells
And more...
You can also use Cart Abandonment automation so if someone leaves the checkout without completing it a good checkout software can send an email reminder ‘Hey, what’s wrong? Click here to complete your purchase!’
All of this links perfectly with you delivering the best service you can to your clients.
So how does it work?
You still need Stripe and or PayPal These are called Payment Processors. The payment processor essentially takes care of the transaction part of the process taking the money from the client and putting it into your account minus their processing fee.
What we are talking about here is referred to as a Checkout or Shopping Cart Platform. These sit in between your website and your payment processor.
The best Cart Platforms don’t charge any fees for processing but they do carry a cost to use. At the time of creating this the best options for coaches, thought leaders, and online course creators are SamCart and ThriveCart.
SamCart is wonderful software that will cost you around $99 per month to do everything I described above.
ThriveCart is very similar to SamCart and it is currently available on a lifetime deal, meaning you pay once for it with no recurring fees.
ThriveCart is my personal favorite because you also get access to the ThriveCart Learn Platform. This is what is called a Learning Management System (LMS for short). There are many options out there, Teachable, Kajabi, and Thinkific being the main ones, but again, with ThriveCart Learn you get the same features without the burden of monthly recurring fees. On top of the checkout functionality Win, win, win!
Having a checkout platform is an essential part of your marketing technology stack.
SamCart [https://www.samcart.com/](https://www.samcart.com/)
My affiliate link to ThriveCart [https://thrivecart.com/privatepilotp...](https://thrivecart.com/privatepilotp...)