I am looking for website owners that currently accept ‘paypal only‘ for a case study comparing paypal acceptance to credit card acceptance through a merchant account, on a website.

I need a total of five, US based businesses that only accept paypal, and have $1,000 - $5,000 in non-ebay monthly processing, and are willing to add credit card acceptance to their accepted payment methods.

The Case Study:
I would like to see how much a website can increase their sales when they start to accept credit cards, and I would like to know the sales difference between Paypal and a merchant account on an average website. I have seen a ton of theories and speculation on this subject but I have never seen any hard facts, so I am going to get a better understanding myself. This study will be conducted to determine how much a website’s sales increase by adding a credit card acceptance if they already accept paypal, and will determine the sales difference between Paypal and a merchant account if both are offered to shoppers.

What you get out of this if you choose to take part in this study:

• A free merchant account for two months (You pay nothing)
• Authorize.net, also free for two months
• A godaddy SSL (if needed, one year)

The reason that the Paypal acceptance is required, is that I need to start with businesses that already have an expected amount of sales so that there is a baseline for this comparison. Also, you can keep paypal as an accepted method of payment on your website. This isn’t a replacement test.

Requirements to participate:

• US based business / website
• Must have use general website tracking / analytic software
• Must be selling tangible goods (I may try non-tangible / service oriented at a later time)
• Must be eligible for a US based merchant account
• Must have $1,000 - $5,000 in non-ebay processing per month
• If you sell more than $5,000 per month and would like to participate, I will cover fees from the first $5,000 in sales.
• Must be willing to integrate authorize.net into your website using the AIM / API method
• Must be willing to allow result statistics to be published once the case study is complete (Nothing overly specific about your business will be published)

At the end of the two months you can either take over paying for the merchant account and authorize.net, or you can close the merchant account down, your choice. There will be no fees or repercussions if you decide to close the account, nor will there be any pressure to keep the account open.

Once complete, I will publish the results here on this blog, on my business website and possibly a few other publications. You will receive credit for the case study and a link to your website (if you want).

The results will compare total sales before having the merchant account, to total sales after having the merchant account, and will compare Paypal orders to Merchant Account orders with both being offered as a payment method. The results will also take total traffic into consideration so that we can eliminate any additional sales due to traffic increases.

I’m still working out the formal details, but if you are interested in participating or have any questions please contact me.

The study will take place after the holiday season, probably starting in mid-January.