This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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When you set up an e-commerce site, some way to take payment or something that you're going to deliver in some form, you have to make a number of decisions. And it's easier to do this than it ever has been. You've got companies such as Squarespace, Shopify, many others that provide turnkey solutions. You can sign up, you can have your website ready in an hour, but you still need to set up your inventory, you need to adjust various settings, and you have to decide how you will accept payment. So even though it's very simple, you have to make a series of decisions.
And that brings us to today's question. Welcome to "Side Hustle School." My name is Chris Guillebeau. Today's caller is wondering about adding new options for accepting payment, including checking debits and cryptocurrency. She's wondering, is more always better? So let's talk it through, what are the best payment options to offer?
Should you offer a whole suite of them? Or should you say, you know, here's one simple way to take payment? What is the best solution? That's what we're going to talk about after this quick message from our sponsor. Thank you, sponsor.
And thank you, listeners. [Music]
Hi, Chris, it's Emily from Seattle. And I've been listening to the show since episode one. Still, still enjoying the puns. Anyway, my sister and I are about to launch our online store soon, and we were going to use a combination of Stripe and PayPal.
So with Stripe, you can choose which credit cards you want to accept. In addition, I see that some websites have lots of other ways to process payments, including direct checking account withdrawals, cryptocurrency, and more. So part of me thinks that this is overkill, but another part wonders, like, might it be better to have more options to pay? Like, I don't want to turn anyone away. So yeah, can't wait to hear your thoughts on this.
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Emily, what's good? Thank you so much for listening, and congratulations on your soon-to-be-launched online store. Definitely let us know the website when you have one. We can share it out. So let's talk about how to accept payments or different ways of accepting payments.
So it sounds like, let's see, just from the notes here, Emily's on track with Stripe and PayPal, which is great. You're gonna have a lot of options there. And overall, like the options you offer, whether it's for accepting payment or anything else, it really should relate to your customers. Like, what are your customer's preferences? And so for most e-commerce stores, unless it's something specialized, which I'll come to in a moment, simply having an option to pay by major credit card is really all you need.
It doesn't have to be every major credit card in the world, you know, just the three or four most common ones. That's a general consumer expectation. Like, people don't expect that, you know, all sorts of other methods are automatically going to be accepted. So speaking of those methods, as for unconventional methods of payment like crypto or something else, unless you have like a lot of people just banging down your door asking for it, or maybe if you're in a field like the security industry or something where those kinds of payments are more common, like I think you'll probably find it to be more complicated than it's worth. Maybe in the future, you know, it will be very easy for everybody to accept, you know, crypto and all sorts of other options.
But I think for the most part now, most e-commerce stores are gonna be just fine with those basic defaults. So keep it simple. I don't think more is always better. And in this case in particular, I think just keep it simple, focus on your product, focus on building relationships with your customers. That's the most important thing to think about.
All right, good luck, Emily and listeners. If you have a question or comment or wanna share your website, whatever you're doing, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Now we're gonna continue to feature them along with updates from other listeners. I so enjoy bringing you these episodes every single day. I'm so glad you're out there.
Be sure you're subscribed because much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
