As we mentioned in the business idea description (Starting a Certification Training Website), you will need an ecommerce site to sell your certification training. The easiest way to provide the training is through an ebook download (a PDF) and there are many ecommerce providers who can help you setup a hosted ecommerce store. The hosted ecommerce store handles order processing, credit card processing, and delivery of your content to the customer. For all of these features, you pay a monthly fee, a per order fixed charge, and a per order percentage processing fee.

Selling Digital Downloads

At ExploreStartups.com, we do not have a preferred digital download hosted store solution, so we will provide a couple ideas from companies we are familiar with. We recommend thoroughly vetting each store to determine if it's the right solution for you.

PayLoadz (https://www.payloadz.com/)

PayLoadz offers a service to sell downloadable items with PayPal or Google Checkout. These are two of the easier services to integrate into your own applications yourself, but this service can do it for you.

Payment for this service is through a monthly hosting fee or a percentage of sales. They have several different plans ranging from free to $5,000 per month, depending on the sales volume you attain. Their percentage of sales fee of 15% is much higher than setting up a PayPal or Google Checkout account yourself - but, if you do not have the capability to setup your own store, this is an option.

Volusion (http://www.volusion.com/)

Volusion is a hosted shopping cart solution which also hosts your ecommerce website. It has a monthly fee ranging from $29.95 to $99.95 with a $99-$129 one-time setup fee. The different plans are differentiated by the number of products your store can host. Volusion has a nice admin control panel and great reporting.

Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com/)

Clickbank is one of the oldest ecommerce solutions on the web for digital downloads. It has a strong affiliate program, allowing your products to be promoted through other websites. Clickbank effectively takes $1 plus 7.5% of the retail price of item. They require products to have their pricing approved through them. Additionally, there is a $49.95 activation fee and $2.50 fee for every check they send you. They have a price cap of $50, but are willing to raise that to up to $200 on occasion.

There are many solutions available for your certification training website to sell the certification training. We recommend reviewing each one, the features they offer, and comparing what it will actually cost you to operate the store.