YAHOO PAY DIRECT: http://www.paydirect.yahoo.com

Free to register and use, Yahoo allows you to accept payments with American Express, Discover, Mastercard, or bank transactions from your existing offline account. They do have a monthly transaction limit of $1,000.00 for all transactions.

EMONEY MAIL: http://www.emoneymail.com

Boosting over 20,000 users Emoney Mail's service is not free to use. They charge $1.00 to send money and transactions are limited to $500.00 a day. The only way to send money is using your Visa. No Visa, no money for you....that reminds me of an old Seinfeld episode, but that's another story.

PROPAY: http://www.propay.com

This service charges 3.5% of total, plus .35 to move funds to your bank account. Transactions are limited to $250.00 a day. Only two ways to send money with this one; Mastercard or Visa. One nice perk of this service is they'll pay you $10.00 for every person you send to them who registers. Not a bad referral program, if I do say so myself.

BILLPOINT: http://www.billpoint.com

This is E-Bay's service and is preferred method to use if buying or selling on their auction site. No registration is needed for auction buyers to use this service, but sellers must register and pay .35 per transaction for amounts up to $10.00, and .35 and 3.5% for transactions over $10.00.

Transactions can be paid using Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or online check.

As you can see, buying and selling online no longer requires you to have a merchant account, which levels playing field for home based businesses to accept online payments. Many electronic shopping carts are starting to implement PayPal as a payment option when checking out of online stores.

Now there's no excuse for not paying your debts on time. You may not be able to touch it, but believe me, "virtual money" is just as good as real thing. Being paid electronically might not feel same as someone placing "cold hard cash" in palm of your hand, but it's still there: you just won't have to wash your hands as often.

You can also read about how to better promote your website here: http://www.r66cci.com/Promoting.htm

We have some e-commerce read-me's also: http://virtualis.com/vr/lschlump/ecommerce.html

You can also read an article about Computer Crime here: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber ech/cth589.htm

SOME NOTES ABOUT SECURITY ON YOUR SYSTEM:

Here are some other useful utilities to help your business succeed: Black Ice by Network Ice. This great utility protects your computer while you are online. If you are connected with cable modem, (and even by modem) it is especially crucial that you protect your system against some of following types of attacks: TCP port probes FTP port probes Trojan horse port probes Orifice port probes Subseven port probes

What are these? Many hackers set their computers to constantly scan thousands of computers on Internet and automatically look for systems that do not have protection on their different ports. These are areas of vulnerability that can leave your system open to viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and all types of illegal activity. Black Ice tells you who has been scanning your system by IP address and even by host name in many cases. It protects all ports, as long as you set level of protection to Paranoid. You can find a lite version of this software at their website. We highly recommend that you consider purchase of full version. It allows you to log for proof if you need it, and it allows you to block certain IP addresses. In blocked addresses section, you can set it to Autoblock any illegal activity IP addresses. You would be amazed how many times a day your system is scanned by hackers to see if they can find a vulnerability there. This was best investment our company ever made, after switching to cable modem! http://www.networkice.com

One other very useful utility if you use Microsoft Outlook is called ScanMail. It scans your mailbox for any attached viruses on any email you receive. You can find this great utility here: http://www.trendmicro.com

If you follow these guidelines, you'll have almost zero percent loss in your online store. If you have a success story, we'd like to hear about it. You'll receive a free case of delicious Penguin Caffeinated Mints if we choose your testimonial to feature.