Using Payhip for Digital Products

One of the biggest decisions when setting up a digital based business is what e-commerce platform to use – there are so many different options to choose from. Over the years I’ve tried WooCommerce, Shopify and am now with Payhip so I thought it would be good to chat through what to consider when selling PDF patterns/ebooks, what to look for when choosing your e-shop platform and then dive in to why Payhip is such a great platform to use!

NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. You can read my full disclosure privacy policy here. Thank you

Choosing a digital shop platform

Deciding on a digital platform to use can feel scary, especially if you are at the beginning of your business journey, and there are a number of different elements to consider when choosing which one is best for you. Top of the list are normally;

• Cost
  • All e-shops will have a cost associated to the them: this can include listing fees, transaction fees and platform fees.
    
• E-Shop Features
  • Some digital shopping platforms are plug-ins to an existing website (eg. WooCommerce) whilst others operate as stand-alone websites and are the full-package (eg. Shopify, Payhip) so it’s important to identify what you need from your e-shop.
  • How easy is it to customise so that you can personalise and brand?
    • Ideally, you want to be able to make your shop front look appealing, safe and like an extension of your brand so that your (potential) customers feel safe buying from you.
    • Does the platform offer any templates to get you started?
      
• Customer Experience
  • What will your customer experience of the platform be? The easier it is to use, the more likely they are to spend money with you: check out any demo’s that are available or have a look at what platforms other people are using
    
• Ease of use
  • If you are new to the online world or are not familiar with e-shops, you want to find a platform which you find intuitive to use so that you can easily maintain and update your site (this will be different for everyone!)
  • Does the platform have good customer service if you do get stuck?
    
• Tax Reporting
  • Depending on where you are based, tax collection can be an important variable: different platforms will collect and report tax information differently, so it’s a good idea to get familiar with the tax regulations in your country and what information you need to be able to access.

What is Payhip?

Payhip is an all in one e-commerce platform. It includes a website/blog function alongside e-shop functions of digital products (eg. ebooks, sewing/quilt/knitting/crochet patterns), physical products, courses and memberships – so it really is an all-in-one platform.

So let’s dive in to the pros and cons of Payhip……..

Why use Payhip?

There are lots of reasons for choosing Payhip, but here are some of my favourites (in order!)

Things to be aware of (but aren’t deal breakers for me)……..

Payhip fees & getting paid

One of the things’ that I love about Payhip, is that you can get started with no monthly price commitment whilst you get established! Although I would always recommend that you purchase a custom domain. There are a few different plans available to chose from;

	Free Forever	Plus	Pro
Monthly Cost	$0	$29	$99
Transaction Fee	5%	2%	0%
All features	✔️	✔️	✔️
Unlimited Products	✔️	✔️	✔️
Unlimited Revenue	✔️	✔️	✔️

The % of transaction fee that you pay depends on what plan you subscribe too, and don’t forget that you will also need to allow for the fees by your payment system eg. Paypal/Stripe.

Another way of thinking about this, is that the Free Forever plan is perfect for anyone selling up to $580 (c. £435) of products per month before it’s beneficial to upgrade to the Plus theme, when the cost of your transaction fees are equivalent of the monthly Payhip fee.

When it comes to getting paid, it’s as simple as connecting Payhip with your Paypal account and/or a Stripe account and once an order has been placed Paypal will immediately send the money you’ve made to your payment account.

How to optimise your Payhip store

With a little bit of time dedication, you can fully optimise your Payhip store to be all singing and dancing!

These first two tips are something that a lot of people don’t do and yet can have such a positive impact on how a customer views your site and it showing up in search engine results;

• Connect Payhip with your domain / subdomain***
  • I see a number of Payhip stores that have never been connected with a website address (or subdomain) and this is not good for a couple of reasons;
    • It has the potential of reducing legitimacy to your customers – if they have landed on a Payhip labelled site from your website, they might not trust if the site is safe or trustworthy (especially with the number of scam sites there are around now).
    • It’s poor Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practise – if people are searching for your brand name and your store’s website address is ‘Payhip’ and not ‘My Store’ then you are going to appear much lower down in search engine rankings meaning your chance of reaching ‘new’ customers is a lot lowers.
      
• Customise the product listing address***
  • Once you have set-up your Payhip account with a custom domain, you can personalise your product listing address which helps to boost your SEO.
  • When you have listed and published a product in your store, you can go back into the item listing and at the bottom of the page in ‘Advanced Options’ you can customise the URL ending to something that is more reflective of the item eg. Quilt Pattern Name.
    • Payhip automatically populates this with a randomly generated code
    • Customise with the product name so that if people are search specifically for that product it will show up.

*** Please be Aware ***
If you have an established shop/your products have been listed for a while (and especially if you have lots of referring links to your site) it’s REALLY important to set-up redirects before making any changes to the links.

This is not something you can currently do yourself within Payhip so you will need to co-ordinate with customer service and provide them with a list of the existing links and what you would like the new links to look like.

• Add branding
  • Go into store settings and make sure that you add your logo and use your brand colours for buttons etc
    
• Ways to increase basket spend
  • One way to increase sales is to encourage customers that are about to buy, to buy more. There are a couple of different ways that you can do this within the Marketing tab;
    • Cross-Selling: if you have products that are related/work well together, use the cross-sell feature to create a discount so that when someone lands on Product 1 page, Product 2 is featured with an exclusive discount when they are purchased together
    • Upgrade Discount (also known as upselling): upon completing purchase of a product, a customer is shown an exclusive discount for another product. This can be time restricted or left open for a longer time.
      
• Referrals
  • Also available under the Marketing tab, referrals give you the opportunity to reward customers for sharing your products with their friends and family
    • You can choose which discount to offer and a discount code is only offered once a referral code has been used successfully.
    • The referral codes are only valid for 24hours
      
• Ask for reviews
  • Under the products tab, click on reviews and ask customers for a review.
  • You can customise the message and choose how soon after purchase a review request is sent.

I hope you’ve found this helpful in deciding whether or not to get started with Payhip – come back soon for more tips!