Accepting Payments Online: An ECommerce Web Site Overview

Written by Bobette Kyle


There are a seemingly infinite number of choices and configurations to accepting payments online. Choices range from almost total "do it yourself" programming to turnkey packages.

You can accept online payments from an ECommerce Web site in two general ways:

1)Through your own online merchant account and/or 2)Through a third party online payment processor.

Accepting Payments Online through your own Internet Merchant Account

Accepting payments online via a merchant account puts you in control and limits your reliability on outside payment acceptance services. This approach can also seem like a jigsaw puzzle. Besides an Internet merchant account, you will need shopping cart software, a store or site host, a processor, and a secure payment gateway.

You may fit these pieces together in several different ways. On one end ofrepparttar spectrum, you can chooserepparttar 108837 provider for each piece individually. Onrepparttar 108838 other end, you may choose a turnkey solution, where a single provider has completedrepparttar 108839 puzzle for you.

There is no single best solution. Your choice will depend on your particular needs and experience. Among other considerations, you should factor in your own comfort withrepparttar 108840 technologies, customer convenience, providers' service levels, available technical support, reliability, costs, and time commitment involved.

Fees

There are a myriad of potential costs and fees involved in accepting payments online, making it difficult to compare different options.

Potentially, you could be charged fees by each provider involved in helping you accept payments online - application fees, set-up fees, yearly memberships, monthly statement charges, monthly minimums, gateway access fees, statement fees, fixed transaction fees, variable transaction discount rates (processing fee for each transaction), and cancellation penalties are all common.

Often, it is easy to misinterpretrepparttar 108841 fees you will owe. Rarely are all costs revealed in one place. If you are reading about a merchant account, for example,repparttar 108842 quoted costs may not include gateway access, hosting, and/or shopping cart. Because you may be comparing "apples to oranges", options that at first appear low-cost can - upon implementation - turn out to be pricey. Similarly, expensive-sounding solutions may actually be reasonably priced.

How to Approach Business Relationships in Affiliate Marketing

Written by Clay Mabbitt


The size ofrepparttar audience that can be reached withrepparttar 108836 Internet makes affiliate marketing not only possible, but profitable. Because you can reach such a large number of people with so little effort, it’s easy to neglect building relationships withrepparttar 108837 people you interact with in your business. This is a common mistake for novices and veterans torepparttar 108838 affiliate industry alike.

Successful public speakers know that just because you are talking to a large group of people does not mean that you cannot connect with them as individuals. Any audience has common fears, hopes, or circumstances. Focusing on these common threads allows you to addressrepparttar 108839 entire group, but make each of them feel understood as a single person.

The Affiliate Manager Relating to Affiliates. It’s vital that a manager utilize tools that allow him or her to quickly ascertain how affiliates are performing and what guidance they might need. A generic guide explaining ho to get started with an affiliate program is a good start, but affiliates will also need someone to step in and offer coaching and encouragement that relates directly to their strengths and weaknesses. Without a relationship such as this, there is nothing to stoprepparttar 108840 successful affiliates from jumping ship when a competing program decides to start a bidding war on affiliate commissions. Affiliates who are only moderately successful are likely to simply give up and tell their friends affiliate marketing is a scam.

The relationship is vital to affiliates, whether they realize it or not. The manager has a great deal of knowledge aboutrepparttar 108841 product and what makes it sell. No one is in a better position to show an affiliate what people are currently doing to be successful withrepparttar 108842 program and what specific changes could be made to improve profitability thanrepparttar 108843 affiliate manager.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use