How To Set Up Instant Payment Checkouts For Services You Sell On Substack

You can also use it on your website, your Facebook, your IG, at your Grandma's house, at the dog park, etc....😁

This post was originally published a year ago. I’ve chosen to repost it because my subscriber list back then was only a quarter of what it is now. This is simple and VALUABLE info for anyone trying to figure out how to accept payments right here on Substack!

I’ve been excited to share this from the moment I discovered it. However, in true Kristi-fashion, I MUST test things first and make sure they’re awesome before recommending them to a community I value.

This post is a bit longer than my normal quickie tips because I want to explain clearly how this payment tool is beneficial for certain people.

Who is it best for?

This instant checkout method is best for people in the USA and Canada who provide services, such as coaches, trainers, solopreneurs, designers, Zoomers, etc.

I offer Zoom consults, Substack setup packages, custom graphics, and hourly assistance through Substack and my website on Squarespace.

When I first launched this business, I set up invoicing and payments directly through Squarespace and quickly discovered it was clunky at best. Squarespace didn’t offer the streamlined experience my clients deserve, and it didn’t even come close to the record-keeping I needed for my sanity.

It was a NO.

Then I found WAVE.

Please enjoy the infomercial portion of this post below 😂

Wave is accounting software for small businesses (borrrring!)

But WAIT! It doesn’t just keep your books; it lets you create instant checkouts for anything you want! And it’s soooo simple that tech-rookies can easily create as many custom “buy now” checkouts as they want.

What do these checkouts look like?

Go to this page on my Substack. Every one of those orange buttons is an instant payment checkout for individual services I offer.

Now, go check this page on my business website, and every one of those buttons leads to the same checkouts.

Feel free to click on any of those buttons to see what it looks like from the buyer’s point of view. Each button leads to a professional-looking, custom-branded invoice that pays you the moment your customer does.

You’re probably wondering, why use WAVE when we have PayPal, Stripe, and all the other well-known payment options?

For me, the answer is simple. I’m running a legitimate business, and Wave connects to my bank account, manages my books, and pays me immediately—NO wait time. Try getting that all with PayPal and Stripe.

The instant checkouts are just the cream cheese icing on my cake!

How does it work at the dog park and your Grandma’s house (like the subtitle says)?

I knew you’d ask.

Because Wave is fancy shmancy, it’ll generate a QR code for your checkouts, too. Save it on your phone and when someone at the dog park wants what you’re selling, whip it out and let them scan it to pay.

If you charge a fee for Zoom calls, you’ll want to hear this:

WAVE makes it super simple to get paid and have your clients schedule their own calls.

Here’s how…

Click on my link where people can book a call with me, and see what it looks like.

When they access that invoice, they enter their info, pay, and then receive a confirmation. You can customize the after-payment confirmation with a link to your Zoom scheduler (an add-on that connects to your Google calendar).

In short, clients can pay, receive confirmation, and self-schedule their Zoom call through your calendar. Then, tomorrow morning, you wake up to a delightful Wave email announcing, “Congratulations! You just got paid!”

It’s basically magic.

Ask ANYONE who has self-booked a Zoom call with me or purchased services and they’ll tell you…it’s flawless.

WAVE also allows me to create profiles for clients. This allows my repeat clients to save their payment info so they don’t have to pull out their card every two weeks when I invoice. We can even take it one step further. Some clients don’t want to be hassled at all, and they allow me to process the payment automatically every two weeks.

Another bonus…if you do hourly work, you can attach time reports (or any other docs) to send with their biweekly/monthly invoices. It saves me from having to send separate emails.

You could attach a client survey, a PDF, or whatever you like to your invoices.

So, how much does Wave cost?

It’s a pittance, really. I pay $21.00 CAD per month for Wave Pro. If you’re American, that converts to roughly eighteen cents. 😂

Speaking of Americans, Wave supports both CAD and USD interchangeably. I charge in Canadian dollars, and the majority of my clients are American and pay in USD.

Overall, I think it’s pretty fancy that we can add instant payment buttons right here on Substack with very little effort!

This concludes the infomercial portion of your Saturday morning. I hope all you service providers have found this useful!

NOTE: This was the express Kristi-version of the Wave experience. It’s best to go check it out yourself for more detailed info about how it can work for you. I’m happy to answer questions based on my experience with it.

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Here’s another BRILLIANT tool coaches on Substack can use to simplify their lives!