Recently I put my new e-book Intelligent Productivity For Freelance Writers: Manage Your Time, Make More Money, and Get More Enjoyment From Life for sale using the E-junkie shopping cart.
(Note: Intelligent Productivity For Freelance Writers is currently off the market. I’m revamping it into a time management course that will be available soon.)
In this post I describe my experience with e-junkie and other shopping carts. Please note that I am not an expert at this. I’m just a reasonably intelligent guy trying to figure out what the best option is and then making that option work.
What Is E-junkie?
E-junkie is a shopping cart service with a stunningly horrid name. A name so bad that I refrained from using the service for a long time.
Junkie: heroin addict?
Junkie: crap you don’t want?
Clickbank is E-Junkie’s Main Competitor
I initially put my first information product, Writing College Textbook Supplements, for sale on Clickbank, the largest of the digital product shopping carts, after initially deciding not to use e-junkie in large part because I hated the name.
There are many things that bothered me about Clickbank. I admit I have only limited experience with the company, and that some people think Clickbank is great.
I did not like this about Clickbank:
- Being associated with some of the sleazy products for sale there (although there are some reputable products).
- Had one customer who e-mailed and said that, after visiting Clickbank’s site, she would not deal with Clickbank under any circumstances. This is a highly educated woman who is computer savvy, has a website, and publishes books.
- Great difficulty in finding affiliate links for my product.
- Couldn’t find my product on Clickbank at all, even when I typed in the exact title. It kept giving me the best selling products, not mine.
- Need to pay $50 for a new account each time you want a new product to have its own page.
They did pay on time (after an initial waiting period), and some websites did link to my sales page with their affiliate id’s. However, no affiliate sales, which is not surprising because WCTS targets a small niche.
I eventually put Writing College Textbook Supplements for sale with Paypal. I’m still doing this, and I’m happy with Paypal, but I might soon switch WCTS to e-junkie so other freelance writers can sell it as affiliates.
Why I Chose E-Junkie to Sell My E-Book
For Intelligent Productivity For Freelance Writers I definitely need a shopping cart that can handle affiliates.
I also want a shopping cart that already has a lot of affiliates associated with it, and the kind of affiliates that might be interested in my information products. E-junkie is used by many information marketers I respect, folks that are not uber-hype Internet marketers that push-push-push with a long and loud sales page.
My Experience with E-Junkie So Far
Opening the account was a cinch. I opted for the $18 per month plan that lets me sell up to 60 products, with 500 mb on their server, and allows me to download from my own websites. I figured I could grow with that, and would also have the room for selling audio products with their large file sizes.
I was approved immediately. (As opposed to Clickbank, which takes a day or more to view your site and approve you, and may ask for changes.)
I uploaded the e-book and audiobook with no significant problems, and all sales transactions have gone smoothly.
So far, so good!
Your Take
What is your opinion of E-junkie, Clickbank, Paypal, and the other methods for selling downloadable information products? Do you prefer one over the other? Why?
Hey John,
I used e-junkie too and I do really like it, although both times I’ve launched there have been tiny glitches as some of the set up is fiddly. However, after a couple of goes I’m a lot more confident on discounts, product expiry etc, you just have to make sure you’ve got your check list..well, checked off I guess! 😉
Amy, there’s an old Jethro Tull song called “Nothing is Easy” from one of their first albums, and it’s one of my favorites.
E-junkie is definitely not perfect, and I also had to do a bit of fiddling.
Hey John,
Good article. I’m actually the founder of Digital Delivery App (www.digitaldeliveryapp.com) which I founded to address some of the shortcomings and frustrations I’ve had with e-junkie and clickbank. Although we haven’t got an affiliate section yet (we do offer integration with clickbank, but would like to provide own much improved solution in the future), we are getting a lot of frustrated e-junkie users convert over already. We’ve made the service simple & easy to use which seems to please people a lot, and also tailored it for those who don’t like to do daily management tasks (to the extent the service will email your accountant your sales figures at the end of each month)! It might be something you’d like to check out now or for the future.
Best of luck with the book launch!
George
George, your site looks interesting. I think a key aspect for your success will be how well you handle affiliates. Many sellers who don’t use affiliates can just use Paypal.
I don’t specifically do Google searches on e-junkie, but I do know that many of the people I interact with online use it and seem to like it.
Hi John
Will be interested to hear how you get on longer term with e-junkie. Eventually will have an e-book for sale and will offer affiliate program too.
Thanks for sharing with us John and I know what you mean about Clickbank! Not the easiest place to navigate and some of the products on sale….!!!
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia, I’ve seen way too many over-hyped, get-rich-quick products on Clickbank, all with over-the-top sales pages. I felt a bit dirty being there.
Come back and let us know which company you use for your forthcoming e-book, and how it goes.
John,
I hesitated because of the name too, but I’ve downloaded stuff there that I bought from some important marketers! I’ve been using them for a couple of years and I’m satisfied …
Fran
Fran, I don’t buy many information products these days, but the few that I do get usually come through e-junkie.
Case in point: I bought Kristi Hines’s The Ultimate Blog Post Promotion Guide earlier this week. Kristi is very bright, and she chose to use e-junkie. (There’s a lot of good info in her e-book; I’m already using advice about promoting posts with Twitter.)
Hi John,
This review helps me alot, thanks.
Since I planned to sell an ebook with e-junkie, but not yet making decission, but definitely not clickbank.
I am impressed with 5$ monthly payment and I can see about 10 ebooks.
What worries me so much is that I am afraid the ebook i sell is distributed illegally in warez forum, since one of my blogger friend complained to me he got ZERO sales after his book was spread all over warez forum..
This makes me thinking giving my ebook for free but fill in with tons affiliate links and build email lists LOL..
Thanks
Kimi, there’s always a chance someone will buy your e-book and then distribute it for free. However, most potential buyers will find out about your e-book through your site and from other reputable sites. They likely won’t be searching the file sharing places.
I also put a copyright notice and my URL in the footer of every page of my e-books.
Kimi, just count on being ripped off by warez sites, and you will be good to go.
In truth, most of the people using those sites would never pay anyway. They get their kicks from the theft. Most everyone else is happy to pay.
What you can do with ejunkie is tie your sale to a email list, and that’s got some real value.
But there is no stopping the thieves and scrapers. Not even the big boys can stop them.
Dave, and John,
I absolutely agree with you.
Not even Microsoft can avoid them.
I do truly believe there are some people who want to buy a quality thing.
Thank you guys
E-Junkie is a terrible name. I too have been hesitant to use it just because of it’s name. It suggests that the products there are junk. I don’t want my brand associated with junk or crack cocaine. But, it is a pretty good service.
Fred, it’s amazing they created such a good service considering how badly they failed when choosing a name. I think the name e-junkie should be used in marketing classes across the globe as an example of one of the worst brand names ever.
E-Junkie is a bad name but everyone remembers it. That’s good marketing. I haven’t used it, but shall check into it.
Thanks
Eric, you’re right. E-junkie is memorable, and most people who are truly interested in selling digital products will remember it, hyphen and all.
I think they could have found an easy-to-remember name that people liked. They have lost a lot of business from people like me who did not want to be associated with such an awful name.
Hi John,
When I went to sell “Bloggers Market WordPress Secrets” I went with E-Junkie. I find the service somewhat difficult to navigate. I actually have an opt-in in the making that explains the easiest way to deal with this service.
It is truly amazing that with so much on the line, they still have a somewhat confusing system.
Jeffrey, I agree that it takes a bit of work to get products for sale on e-junkie, and I think the user interface could be improved. But regardless of what shopping cart system one uses, there will always be a certain amount of info that needs to be added and processes that need to be done. E-junkie was far easier to set up than Clickbank was.
Hi John, thanks for putting this forward. It is always good to have options w.r.t service providers in any given market. Healthy competition stimulates good customer service (hopefully!)
Hi John,
Haven’t used E-Junkie yet, but I will be soon! I’ve only heard good things about it and although still a VERY busy marketplace, slightly less competitive than Clickbank.
They both have their pros and cons I think. I like the fact that with Clickback you pay a one time activation fee. Although with Ejunkie, you can open an account for a little as $5/month which is pretty inexpensive, so if you get better results with this service than it’s worth the added expense.
Decisions, decisions. 😉 Thanks for sharing your views on this. Really does help!
Michele, one of the issues with Clickbank, from my fuzzy memory, was that it was advisable to pay $50 for each product you list there; otherwise it would be more difficult for affiliates to find you, or something like that.
And Clickbank also takes a percentage of every sale you make, whereas e-junkie doesn’t — you only pay your monthly fee. (Paypal will, however, take its fee from credit card transactions.)
That makes a lot of difference! Thanks for the clarification John. 🙂
I am considering e-Junkie for some of our products, so will be interested to see how you go over time. But, truly, someone should have thought that name through before launching.
Good luck with your e-book.
Cheers,
Andrew
And good luck with your e-books too Andrew.
I think you can get the same e-junkie service through fatfreecart.com. It’s a slightly better name….
Agreed — fatfreecart.com is a much better name, and it’s a part of e-junkie. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
John, first of all a correction… the $50 for clickbank is a ONE TIME fee – I’ve got a dozen or so products there and have only paid that once.
I started with cb before ejunkie existed and have stayed there, although sometimes I wonder. Since they were the only game at the time I can say it’s worked well over time. And they’ve improved themselves pretty regularly.
I added easyclickmate.com for my actual affiliate program – again before ejunkie. Considering making the switch. Learning a new tech slows me down.
Thanks for the post – A
Anne, you’re correct about the one-time fee of $50. However, there was something about adding new products under the same account: perhaps it had to do with only being able to have a single affiliate page that you have to use with all your products?
I remember thinking that if I wanted to sell another product, it would be to my advantage to pay another $50.
Can anyone set me straight here?
Thanks for subscribing Rob!
Everything is still smooth sailing with e-junkie. It’s still very affordable and easy to set up for affiliates.
I haven’t used E-junkie to sell anything, since I don’t yet have an ebook completed. However I have been promoting one of the products listed there on one of my sites. It hasn’t been up there that long and I’ve already made two sales.
I have a couple of similar Clickbank products listed there also and haven’t made any sales as yet. I think the E-Junkie one stands out more, looking like a better and classier product.
Having gone through the marketplace this seems to be the case with a lot of the products. It just seems to attract a generally higher standard of ebook from what I can see.
I agree that e-junkie overall has higher-quality products than Clickbank. And it’s also much easier to use.
I’m interested about E-junkie and I was enlightened about what you said what’s in the E-junkie. Most of the comments here used E-junkie and they all have a positive testimony in using it, I might check this out soon. Thanks for this wonderful information that you have shared.