E-Junkie Review

Ok, so I admit my very first impression of E-Junkie was not good. My parents taught me to stay away from any person, place or thing with the name "junkie" in it.

Take a look at their logo over to the right. That doesn't help either; some sinister-looking character that could drain your bank account in under 3 seconds.

Well, the truth of the matter is that E-Junkie is a fabulous service. I discovered them when I was researching the strange and confusing world of merchant accounts. All I wanted was a simple shopping cart and the ability to integrate with payment processors like Google and PayPal. There are so many options out there that you can literally spend months trying to sort through all the information. And then I discovered E-Junkie.

Advantages of E-Junkie

Provides shopping cart and "Buy Now" buttons you simply paste into your web pages
Allows you to sell both tangible goods and downloadable products on your website
Integrates seamlessly with PayPal, Google Checkout and 2CheckOut
Automates and secures digital downloads - no need to worry about people obtaining your downloads without paying for them
Automates the shipping, tax, and inventory calculations for selling hard goods
Utilizes a pop-up cart window so people don't leave your website while shopping
Allows for creation and management of discount codes for promotions
No transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee, no transaction fee and no software to install

Creating Your Account

When you first create your account and log in, you are taken to the seller administration screen. This screen allows you to set up a new product, edit your shopping cart settings or account settings, create and manage affiliate programs, and a whole lot more.

Setting up a new product is a snap. You simply click on "Add a Product" from the administration screen and you are immediately taken to the product creation menu. There, you enter your product name, sell price, part number, and any other parameter that deals with your specific product. In the example below, I created a fake product and named it MP3 Download. Since this is just a sample product for demo purposes, I set the price to 5 cents.

After you have filled in all the details of your product, you are given HTML code for both an "Add to Cart" Button and a "View Cart" button. I've pasted the HTML code for both these buttons below so you can see them (and yes, you can substitute different cart graphics if you want.) And here's the nifty part - click on the "Add to Cart" button and you'll see how E-Junkie's pop-up cart will work in your site. Your customers will be able to shop and add/remove items from their cart without ever leaving your actual website. Pretty nice when you consider there is no software required to accomplish this little parlor trick. Click on one of the buttons below to see this pop-up cart in action.

E-junkie is designed to perfectly and seamlessly integrate with both PayPal and Google Checkout. I like to give my visitors a choice of both when they are purchasing from my site. You also have the choice of integrating with 2CheckOut. E-Junkie will also work with a true merchant account like Authorize.net.

Setting Up Affiliate Programs

The last thing you should know is how easy it is to set up an affiliate program. Let's say you have an ebook for sale and you want to allow others to sell it for you. E-junkie gives you an HTML affiliate link that you can paste into your webpage that will allow people to register as an affiliate for any of your products. These people sell your products and you set the commission for each sale. Then, at the end of each month, you can simply execute a mass commission payout (via PayPal) with a click of the mouse. E-Junkie also integrates with the well known affiliate website ClickBank.

While there is no transaction or setup fees, there is a monthly charge of $5 a month to use the service. This $5 monthly fee will allow you to sell up to 10 products and store up to 50MB of downloadable files such as MP3's or ebooks. There are various other pricing options if you need more than 50MB of storage space or if you don't require storage (e.g., hard goods.) Remember, E-Junkie needs to host your downloadable files on their servers. They will be emailing the secure download link to the customer after the purchase is made.

That's it. A simple elegance at a price that just can't be beat. I'm an E-Junkie customer and I can confidently and proudly recommend them for all your ecommerce needs!

Here's a nice little bonus for you. E-Junkie always offers a free 10-day trial. However, as of this writing, using the promotional code CRAFTBOOM will get you a free account for 104 days. Of course, at $5 a month, we're not talking huge savings by using this code but hey, give it a try when you register. After all, free is free.

Finally, I have written an 87-page guide titled Selling Online With E-Junkie. If you're new to shopping cart integration, I highly recommend this easy-to-follow guide.

Click the E-Junkie icon below to visit the E-Junkie website and learn more about what they can do to help jumpstart your ecommerce business.