Ask HN: How much money am I losing by sticking with Google Checkout?

5 points

16 years ago

On my web site the only payment option is Google Checkout. I know that it's better to give users more payment options, but of course it would require additional development effort if I do proper integration. That time could be spent on developing features relevant to the core business (for example "search alerts"). So I'm trying to figure out how high the priority of smooth payment integration should be?

Payment alternative should probably be on-site payment with something like PayPal Payments Pro as a backend. If you have better idea -- please let me know.

I also considered Chargify.com and Recurly.com, but it does not look like they add much value and their services do not address the most painful part of Credit Card processing: dealing with credit card fraud. Besides, it looks they do not support Google Checkout.

To put my question in context: 1) Web site: www.postjobfree.com 2) Paid service: access to resume contact information (+ some other features that are not as important at this moment). 3) Subscription: $20/month. Google Checkout supports recurrent payments, and as far as I know PayPal Payments Pro supports it as well. 4) Current number of subscriptions ~100 and slowly growing. 5) Current monthly traffic ~165700 visitors/month http://www.quantcast.com/postjobfree.com These are free visitors. Only very few of them are paid users.

So, the question is -- is it appropriate time to work on adding another payment option or is it better to focus on other things for now?

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