Whereas a $20 product such as a physical book sold in a store may only make the author a dollar or even less in profit, selling the same prodyct online in a digital format will give you $18 or more of profit. It's pretty simple math why so many people are choosing to market their ebooks online, isn't it?!

The question of course from aspiring ebook authors is how to accept credit cards on their website so they can process orders smoothly and then allow their customers to effortlessly download the book they have just purchased.

In this artiel then we're going to look at 3 popular merchant account providers used by ebook sellers so we can compare the various options and so, I hope, enable you to make an informed decision about the best provider for you.

Clickbank

Clickbank is currently the most popular processor used by ebook publishers. This is for a number of reasons though us helped by the fact that Clickbank focuses purely on sellers of digital products so understands the market and the needs of ebook sellers well.

One of the most popular features of Clickbank is that they run your affiliate program for you. Clickbank's software records who sends each sale to you, then credits the respective affiliate with their commission, depositing the remainder into your account. Every two weeks, so long as you reach Clickbank's payment threshold, Clickbank sends everyone out a check for the balance of their account without you having to lift a finger. This is incredibly powerful and helps you to recruit an army of affiliates to promote your ebook for you in exhcange for a commission.

Finally, Clickbank also has a massive marketplace where you can list your ebook for sale thus increasing the number of potential affiliates and direct customers who visit your site.

Paypal

Paypal is another popular option with ebook sellers. Unfortunately in contrast to Clickbank, Paypal won't run your affiliate program for you, though this can be got around using a variety of third-party software designed specially for the task.

However Paypal does have two benefits over Clickbank that are enough for some people to use them instead.

Firstly the transaction fees that Paypal charges you to accept credit cards are considerably lower meaning more profit for you.

Seciondly, whilst Clickbank pays you your earnings every two weeks, you can request payment from Paypal straight into your bank account at any time allowing you to access your money faster.

Your Own Merchant Account

The final option I'd like to investigate here is that of having your own merchant account.

Arguably the least popular of the 3 options for ebook sellers there are a few things you need to be aware of.

Paypal and Clickbank are both third party processors which means essentially that you're using someone else's merchant account. The result of this is that you hve less control over your business. As an example, stories are rife on the Internet about Paypal "locking" people's accounts for no obvious reason meaning that they are then unable to access the funds that are legitimately theirs. To me, if someone prevented me from accessing hundreds, even thousands of dollars that are rightfully mine, I'd be pretty angry.

As well as giving your business more control, your own proper merchant account may well work out more cost effective over the long term. They may charge a small monthly fee, but the per-transaction fees can be so much cheaper that you can actually make a considerable saving in lot of cases.

In the end, the decision really is yours. Clickbank for simplicity, Paypal for speed of payment or your own merchant account for flexibility and cost effectiveness.