Today in the Academy forums, Maren Kate asked an excellent question. It looks like she’s run into one of our biggest frustrations with 1ShoppingCart — they don’t handle Paypal recurring payments.
For those reading this and getting concerned about 1SC as a solution, don’t worry. We still recommend 1SC. In most cases it works awesome. Maren just happened to run into the case (as we did) where it breaks down. You only need to worry if you plan to accept recurring payments with both credit card and Paypal. Otherwise, all the confusion outlined below doesn’t apply to you.
You may never run into it, but if you do…here’s the rundown.
Question
oh my goodness! I am so frustrated! I have been going back and forth trying to find a decent shopping cart solution, merchant account & gateway service… who knew taking subscription payments online would be so hard!?
So here’s my issue: 1shoppingcart allows me to take credit cards & paypal one time payments… but NOT paypal subscriptions. Does anyone out there in the IBMA community have a membership site where you take both CCs & Paypal subscriptions? Please… throw me a rope or something!
I know on IBMA there was that option for either paypal or Credit card re-occuring payments…
Any pointers or suggestions would help! I’m so frazzled!
-Maren Kate
Answer
Believe me, Maren. We feel your pain. That’s one of my biggest frustrations with 1SC — that they don’t support recurring Paypal purchases.
For processing recurring memberships and payments, we use Amember. If the buyer selects Paypal, we send the straight to Paypal. If the buyer selects CC, they are sent through 1SC.
This is not a perfect solution, but it does the job. It does creates more admin for us on the back end. 1SC buyers are added automatically to our Academy newsletter, but Paypal buyers we have to give an opt-in form once Paypal sends them back to the thank you page. We later manually add them if they don’t add themselves (they opted in by buying).
The other big pain is if you want to have an affiliate program that pays recurring commissions. Tracking those becomes a headache that I won’t go into too much here. The problem is that 1SC doesn’t count the Paypal sales in the referring affiliates stats since it doesn’t “see” the sale at all. This is why we manually add new buyers to Academy newsletter. When we do this, 1SC at least counts them as a lead.
In the end, our affiliate payout process is probably tripled in complexity. For now we deal with it, but we’re in search of a better solution for accepting subscription payments or at least for managing the affiliate program.
Voicemail Line: 877-877-7507
Thanks Jay! Yeah I actually figured out a similar path for my site… What I did was have my VA create our own button.. in the pill shape that says Credit Card on the left side and paypal on the right.. it looks like a fluid button but one side goes through 1ShoppingCart & one goes through Paypal’s Standard membership that also accepts re-occurring Paypal payments.
Thanks for the help!
Reply
Hey Maren
I am the guy who programmed and founded 1Shoppingcart.com.
I’ve created a new membership software system that’s extremely easy to use you might want to try out. Check out:
http://www.socialsam.com.
It’s extremely affordable starting at just $7.95/m.
Sincerely
George Tran
Founder of 1SC
CEO of SocialSAM.com
http://www.socialmarketingman.com
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Again great advice. Just setting up my 1shopping cart so thanks for the heads up…
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Gee what a frustration.
Does this apply to 1SC and Paypal Website Payments Pro too? I am having some issues with it.
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can you tell us how you deal with the affiliate payout for payments that go through paypal? The restriction of 1SC is causing me a BIG headache.
I’m using wishllist member for WP and 1SC. 1SC with see the sales for the e-book on the iste but obviously not the direct recurring paypal payments. Help!
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Cornelis Boertjens Reply:
Hi Jean,
We are using exactly the same setup; 1SC, WishList Member and Website Payments Pro and after a lot of frustration we are now looking for a different shopping cart system as it is crucial the integration between Website Payments Pro and recurring payments in the shopping cart system work properly. The issue is of course we now need to find a solution that is a hosted shoppingcart system with an affiliate system that can also be integrated with WishList Member. Not ideal, but I don’t get why 1SC doesn’t simply get this sorted and make sure they integrate recurring payments with any PayPal solution. This must cost them a lot of business.
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Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) Reply:
Seems like we asked them that and they said it was Paypal’s fault, then we called Paypal and they said it was 1SC’s fault…
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@Jeremy,
I believe it applies to all Paypal recurring payments. You’ll have to check with 1SC to be sure.
@jean,
We make sure that we put everyone on to a 1SC-based email list when they sign up for our Academy. That way they at least get counted as a lead in the system. We just know that leads are basically also sales at that point (since we only use 1SC email lists for buyers and have just the one recurring level right now.
On top of that we do a bunch of manual tracking in spreadsheets. It’s a very non-ideal solution and hard to explain in a blog comment.
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I plan on using Wishlist Member, PayPal (Website Payments Standard) for recurring payments. It seems to me I only need an affiliate tracking service that integrates with PayPal.
So I have 2 questions for you guys…
1. Do you know what affiliate software works best for PayPal recurring payments
2. Why would I need a shopping cart?
Thanks a lot! :)
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Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) Reply:
Our affiliate software is attached to our shopping cart.
Well, our paypal payments are about 30% of our income, so we would lose possibly 70% of our income if we didn’t use a shopping cart and except mastercard/visa. I just got a chill thinking about losing that much business!
NOW, to be honest, maybe some of those people would sign up for paypal, just for us, but I would never want to risk making someone hot and ready to buy have to take the step of signing up with paypal just to get my product!
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Cortney Wanca Reply:
@Sterling – I was confused why you would be risking 70% of your income by not have the shopping cart that excepts mastercard/visa. Doesn’t PayPal accept credit cards also? Or is it that the recurring billing at PayPal requires them to create a PayPal account, which then they choose to pay with paypal funds or on a credit card?
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
Some people just don’t like to use Paypal.
I’m sure a number of those 70% that use CC would still use Paypal, so it’s hard to know what they exact number would be.
Ideally you offer both if you can.
Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) Reply:
Also, if someone is wanting to buy your product, then they have to go sign up for Paypal FIRST, you could easily lose the sale. I want to make it incredibly easy for them to pay. I want the least barriers to payment as possible.
After much research we just went
the merchant account route. As so
many have pointed out, the recurring
on the customer side and the affiliate
side.
We looked at it from every angle and
we made the decision to get a merchant
account. Best decision because it really
alleviates a lot of extra administrative
tasks. Plus we want to make sure all of
our partner referrals are counted for.
Have a great week!
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Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) Reply:
Yeah, that was a similar decision for us!
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Paypal says it will work, 1sc says it won’t. I’ve literally spent all day on the phone with both.
Paypal says if you pay for webpayments pro then pay $30 more for recurring billing it will work.
They tol dme anyone with api access (which 1sc has) can do recurring billing. There is nothing special or magic about it.
1sc says they have it in their system so if you even try to set up a recurring product and have webpayments pro as your payment solution it will remove the recurring part automatically.
oh and on top of this 1sc won’t give you a straight answer as to why it won’t work….
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I feel your pain. I’ve had Paypal tell me the same things only to have it totally contradicted by someone else. It’s aggravating to no end. I don’t understand why it has to be so hard.
We signed up for Paypal Pro at one point and still couldn’t get it to work.
We finally found someone that has a plugin that works with Infusionsoft and InfusionWP which now runs our Academy.
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Jason,
I went through the back and forth with Paypal and 1 Shopping Cart and you’re right, they both send you back to the other one, back and forth with no solution.
Plan to use DAP (Digital Access Pass)to run Membership Site and Paypal’s Website Payments Pro (ie bypass my 1 Shopping Cart for these recurring transactions.) Will this work, ie will members be able to choose to pay by credit card without having a paypal account.
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
Our latest solution, which seems to be working, is using Infusionsoft (shopping cart) + InfusionWP (membership plug-in) + InfusionPP (plugin for Paypal processing). So far so good. The problem is that when teaching beginners to start an internet business, Infusionsoft is overkill for them. So we don’t teach this solution in our courses right now even though it has worked best for us to date.
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