It’s a fairly easy process to be able to accept credit card payments to sell your books, products, or services.

There are a number of steps to go through, and I’ll walk you through them here. First, there’s a bit of prep work necessary.

Order a Supply of Books – at Reduced Cost

If you self-publish through Amazon’s CreateSpace, or any other print-on-demand platform, you can order a quantity of books from your own account at a reduced rate, so you can sell your books at a profit.

Ordering from your own account is surprisingly affordable.

For example, my latest self-published book is a coloring book, sized 8.5 x 11, with 104 pages.I have it retail priced at $9.95. I purchase unlimited copies, as I need them, at $2.15 each, plus shipping.

Once you have a supply on hand, carry your books with you and get ready to sell them at your next:

• book fair
• church gathering
• art festival
• business networking event
• town hall meeting
• family reunion
• bowling tournament
• PTA meeting
• live event

You’ll be able to sell your books anywhere there are people who have credit cards.

Accepting Credit Card Payments to Sell Your Books

You’ll always be able to accept cash or check, at your choice.

But it’ll be even better if you can accept a credit card payment.

Here are the five simple steps to setting up your PayPal account.

 Step 1 – Secure Your DBA Business Identity

In most communities in the United States, establishing a DBA is a matter of going to your local courthouse and requesting use of a “doing-business-as,” or DBA name for your new book business.

Select a name that makes sense for a publisher of the kind of books you plan to publish.

Some speaker-consultant-authors may use their own name as a DBA, but they may be making it difficult to sell their business at some point.

Choose a name that’s best for you and your plans.

See more about what “DBA” means in business.

 Step 2 – Open a Business Bank Account

This step is self-explanatory. The bank will ask for your DBA information so don’t do your steps out of order.

Step 3 – Open a Business PayPal Account Online

You’ll need your business bank account to complete setting up your PayPal account. Here’s why:

Once you start collecting funds in your PayPal account, they’ll just accumulate there until you move them.

You must make a “transfer funds” request inside of PayPal in order for monies to be moved into your bank account.

Your business DBA and your PayPal business account names must be set up exactly the same for the transfers to operate smoothly.

Click here to download a PDF copy of this article.

Step 4 – Request Your Free Credit Card Reader

The PayPal credit card reader works with your smartphone to enable you to swipe credit cards. Request one from PayPal and they’ll mail it to you at no charge.

I’ve had a PayPal card reader for almost 2 years.

I got mine before there were such things as credit cards with “chips.”

Now PayPal offers a chip reader also. It is a stand alone unit about the size of a Blackberry.

There is a cost for the chip reader. Find out more about the card and chip readers on Paypal’s website:

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader

Step 5 – Add the PayPal App to Your Smartphone

The PayPal App is called, “PayPal Here” and it is available for smartphones and some tablets. The program is super-simple to use.  Swipe someone’s credit card and the app knows what to do. It allows you to type in the amount you want to charge.

Let your customer approve the charge and the transaction is completed! You receive notice of the deposit to your PayPal account and your buyer receives a receipt.

This is only one of several ways to process a payment with PayPal.  If you have a website, you can add a PayPal “buy button” to your site.

Stay tuned for more ways to offer your books, products and services, accepting credit cards along the way. For more information on how to ensure safe and secure maintenance of your new PayPal account, check out Payment Defender.