Selling Your Services on A Budget

Question from a reader about selling professional services on a budget:

I am trying to set up a system for my business where I ask clients to send me certain information as soon as they’ve booked a consultation. I also want to be able to promote multiple consultation options, such as different durations of time, or email versus phone consultations. I noticed that you sent out an automated PDF to me as soon as I booked my session with you explaining what information to submit to you for my reading.

I wanted to ask you how you accomplish this — is it a feature of your shopping cart or did you set that up with PayPal somehow?

I’m hoping it’s possible to do it without a high-priced shopping cart system. I did a free trial of 1shoppingcart for a while but it was so complicated and expensive!

Yes, there’s a very affordable alternative to expensive shopping cart systems
If you look in the footer of my blogs you’ll see my affiliate button/ link for

E-junkie Shopping Cart for selling digital downloads and tangible goods

But professional services such as phone consultations, readings, and coaching sessions are not downloadable digital products – such as ebooks and mp3s — nor tangible goods, so…

I simply adapt this system to “sell” the instructions for my readings, consultations. I also “sell” the details for teleseminars, teleconferences, and live workshops. E-junkie allows you to upload and deliver a digital file for each item that you sell, so I package instructions and details for the intangible professional services in a PDF document.

This greatly reduces the amount of correspondence that normally occurs in setting up a session with a client — I communicate all the repetitive, basic information that I tell everyone in the PDF. (A PDF is of course the most universal document file type that everyone can read across multiple computer operating systems.)

If your business is new and you’re trying to keep your online operating costs low, E-junkie is an amazingly affordable alternative to expensive shopping carts.

  • E-junkie integrates with your existing free PayPal account
  • it’s very user-friendly
  • the architecture and code is much more current than the older shopping cart systems
  • and a basic account (which I used for years) is only $5.00 USD per month!

(Since I started selling larger files, such as lecture mp3s, I’ve had to bump up the storage with a slightly more expensive monthly subscription — but, for a variety of readings/consultations, the basic package is all you need.)

E-junkie allows you to upload a file to sell, so what I do is create a PDF of my reading instructions and “sell” that document as the “product.” When someone purchases a reading, the money goes into my PayPal account and the client receives an email with a download link for the PDF that contains all the details for booking her reading — an email address to contact me at, the subject line I prefer, all the personal information I require from the client before I can do the reading, general scheduling guidelines, my private phone number, expected turn-around times, and suggestions for presenting her background information and/or questions, etc.

I must tell you, after years operating an online business and using a variety of frustrating, clunky, and expensive payment processors — and more years searching the Google haystack for something different, I jumped for joy when I finally discovered E-junkie.

I recommend E-junkie with the highest integrity; I do not promote a product or service that I don’t have a personal connection to. This link is an affiliate link, so I do indeed get a small kick-back when you use it. E-junkie’s affiliate program is one of the most successful I’ve ever participated in. Most months, a handful of affiliate commissions easily covers the cost of the service, making it better than free — it’s a small but consistent passive income stream.

Depending on what you charge for readings or consultations, just ONE client can pay for the E-junkie service for months.
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Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.

March 13, 2009 | by Slade Roberson | Filed Under Tools

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Comments

2 Responses to “Selling Your Services on A Budget”

  1. Adrianne on March 13th, 2009 5:30 pm

    Thank you for this Slade! I am going to check out E-junkie - I had the same question as your reader above. Thanks for sharing your insider tip on this :)

  2. Slade Roberson on March 13th, 2009 5:33 pm

    Yayyy!

    I knew there was somebody else who could use this little tip today.
    :-)

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