Dennis J. Smith

Please note: Since this article was written Payvment was sold and the links below might no longer be valid. I have left the article up for reference. Are you the crafty type and thought about selling product on Facebook?  What if I told you all you need is a Facebook and PayPal account to get started?  There are over 500 million customers waiting for you to set-up shop on Facebook. We’ve all heard of EBay, Amazon.com and some maybe have even heard of ETSY as places to sell and purchase product online.  But with the explosive growth of social media the new player in town for e-commerce is Facebook.  Payvment is a Facebook application that is free and easy for anyone to set-up.  It connects to your PayPal personal or business account to process payments using PayPal and any major credit card.  Right now the application is free while in beta and Payvment says that any Payvment Facebook store will remain free even after the public beta ends. Okay, so it might take a little more than 15 minutes to roll out a store but most will be up in running in less than an hour.  I would say the most time consuming isn’t setting up the store, but taking photos of your product to display in the store.  But setting up the customizations and adding product is a pretty simple process. Here’s what a typical Payvment storefront on Facebook looks like.  Notice the shopping cart above the product as the customers adds product to the cart.  Payvment lets you add product from any store on Facebook that use the Payvment application.  Payments are processed via PayPal accordingly with all shipping and tax calculated at checkout. When a customer clicks on an item they get a more detailed description of the item.  Notice the Fan Discount for those who are a fan of the page.  You can give fans of your page an instant discount on your products.  You don’t have to offer a discount but this is a pretty effective way to get others to “Like” your business and hopefully purchase product.  Payvment reports that a Forbes study shows that Facebook Fans are 41% more likely to recommend a brand and 28% more likely to continue using them.  They also state that a Facebook Fan is worth $136.38 on average and spends $71.84 more each year compared to non fans.  Could you imagine what that might translate into if you had 1000 fans? Those who are fans of your page can also “Share” a product they like which will post that item to their wall.  That gives store owners even more potential for new fans and sells.  Here’s an item I posted to my wall by sharing it from the ELytes Facebook store. Here’s what the Payvment product page looks like showing the price, price after fan discount, quantity, size, color and product description depending on the product you sell. Real-world Use of Payvment for Facebook Motivational speaker and author Johnna Johnson is using Facebook and Payvment to promote and sell her books, e-Book and workbooks.  With Payvment you can designate specific product as Featured Items.  If you know HTML you can also control the look of your storefront homepage.  Check out the list of Payvment stores below and see what others are doing for ideas.   Small business owner and single mom Rachel Dobbs uses the application on her fan page Pioneer Soap Works to sell her homemade natural candles, soaps, bath bombs and more from the comforts of her home.  I first met Rachel through Facebook when I was doing research for my book.  She started out selling her product to friends and family and then a local gift shop and a Saturday Market.  Now a majority of her business comes right from her Facebook Fan page after adding the Payvment storefront.  I asked Rachel her thoughts on using Payvment as a shopping cart solution.  She told me that it was extremely easy to install and having a little html knowledge helped.  It was about $100 a month for a shopping cart on her website and she only had 2 sales for the entire year.  With Payvment it easy for her to add new product to her store.  Rachel also likes that there aren’t any fees, monthly charges or percentage of your sales with Payvment.  It’s 100 percent free!  Within the first week of using the application her sales increased 40 percent. See sample Payvment stores on Facebook This is only a sampling of the over 30,000 and growing small/medium size businesses, major brands, and retailers using Payvment to build user engagement and revenue on Facebook. Yes to Carrots (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Elytes (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Johnna Johnson & Co. (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Grayce by Molly Sims (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Orglamix Cosmetics (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Vanity Shoes (Selling in Euros) Game Intern (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Claire’s Bowtique (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Athehof (Taiwan) (Selling in Taiwan New Dollars) Payvment Administration Payvment has lots of features including the ability to put your store in suspend mode.  This is useful for those who take a vacation and need to suspend business while away.  Managing your store is done though backend administration which is shown below.  New products are added here, product images, product descriptions, store categories, shipping information and modification of current store product.  Tax rates can be set-up for both domestic and international customers.   Video tutorials to help you get started quickly How to Quickly Launch a Storefront on Facebook How to Add Products to Your Facebook Storefront How to Set Up Facebook “Fan” Discount Pricing How to Set Up Inventory Controls How to Set Up Dynamic Rate Shipping and Sales Tax Are you selling on Facebook or online?  What do you use for a shopping cart?  Feel free to leave a comment below along with a link to you Payvment store. Build Your Store – Launch a Payvment Store