How To Accept Credit Cards Without A Merchant Account
How To Accept Credit Cards Without A Merchant Account
To increase sales on your website, you must accept credit cards. To process credit cards, you could apply for a merchant account through your bank or other financial institution. Sometimes, though, you would be further ahead to use the services of a credit card processor. This is especially true when you are first starting out and have more limited resources. In this way, you may process credit card transactions without the high front-end costs and requirements of a merchant account. Here, then, are just a few ways of accepting credit cards without a merchant account. I personally use all of these vendors and can recommend them wholeheartedly. 1. Clickbank If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or software), you might consider ClickBank.com . For a $49.95 initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales. You receive additional exposure through free listing on their website and through the search facilities of other websites, such as CBMall.com. As an added bonus, you have your own built-in affiliate program. You decide what commission (from 1% to 75%) you would like to pay your affiliates. 2. PayPal PayPal.com has no initial fees. For just 2.9% of sales and $ .30 per transaction (and sometimes less), you can receive money from anyone. Also, you can pay others by credit card or chequing account without supplying your personal credit information to the payee. PayPal can be used to collect money from your auctions, website sales, or even from friends or clients. 3. PaySystems In the original edition of this article, I recommended PaySystems.com (also known as MyPaySystems.com). This is what I wrote about them: “PaySystems.com can handle either intangible (downloadable) or tangible (shippable) products. For an initial fee of $49.00, you can accept all major credit cards as well as online checks. Fees are just 3.95% of sales and $1.00 per transaction. Alternatively, you may pay 5.5% of sales and $ .35 per transaction.” “For this, you receive shopping cart, integration with third-party affiliate programs (such as ClixGalore.com), fraud screening, multi-currency transactions, toll-free support, marketing tools, and more.” Unfortunately, PaySystems.com has discontinued their “Internet Billing Account” for those outside the United States. 4. 2CheckOut 2CheckOut.com can handle both intangible and tangible products. For an initial fee of $49.00, you can accept all major credit cards as well as online checks. Fees are just 5.5% of sales and $0.45 per transaction. For this, you receive shopping cart, fraud detection, integration with third-party affiliate programs, multi-currency transactions, free on-line support, and more. Incidentally, 2CheckOut.com has the same policy as ClickBank.com does with regard to sales taxes. Both companies take the position that you are selling your product to them and that they resell it to the final consumer. Thus, they claim that you are not subject to sales taxes on those sales. J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years. To learn more about accepting credit cards and other profitable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit <a href="http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/creditcards.html" target="_blank">http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/creditcards.html</a>
Source: www.ArticlePros.com
A few Tips on Buying on Ebay from http://www.ScamPain.com
Ebay gives good documentation on how to bid etc. but obviously it wants you to pay the maximum amount for the item since it’s charges (to the seller) relate directly to the final selling price. What I want to do here is to give you a few tips on buying that Ebay doesn’t tell you and that I have learnt the from my seven years of dealing on Ebay. Safety First. Always check the sellers feedback. Do not just go by the numerical rating for that user. Look at the dates when the feedback was entered. This is especially true if you are buying an expensive item since one scam used is to sell/buy many trivial items over a short period to build up a good feedback rating prior to selling a bogus expensive item. When checking the sellers feedback check to see if he has sold any like items and read what others have said. Also be wary if the buyer repeatedly bought lots of separate items but of course this could be a good thing so use your common sense. Paying. Never pay until you have received an invoice. Never send cash. Only send postal orders if that your only possible payment method. Credit cards do offer some protection but I am always hesitant about telling a stranger my card details. Although I do not like it probably the safest method is PayPal. It does offer protection but be sure you read the smallprint. Paypal have lots of getout causes such as ‘is the seller paypal verified?’, ‘how long has he been on Ebay?’. what is his feedback rating?’. Basically this means Paypal will only protect you against legitimate sellers and not bogus ones! So ensure you check Paypals terms and conditions if you have doubts. . Postage. Check those items that appear ridiculously cheap. You see a lot of things from Hong Kong for 99p. Yet when you check the postage it’s 12.99. If you wish to buy antiques be careful with the sites from China; I have seen items with a bid price of 3.99 but with postage of 199! If you are buying from the UK always check with the seller regarding other methods of postage he may offer, even if they are not in his listing. For example the ‘Next Day’ delivery offered. Do you really want the item that urgently that it needs to be with you next day or could you wait till the day after and half your postage costs? Electrical goods. Obvious really but ensure that any goods are designed to run on our voltage! VAT. Be very wary when buying from abroad outside the E.U. You may find that you need to pay an extra 17.5% when your goods arrive. This is especially enforced when buying from the States. A friend of mine, who intended to buy and sell on Ebay as a business, recently bought 25 top of the range Ipods from the States estimating that he could make a fair profit. However on arrival he was hit with a 17.5% extra charge which as you can imagine seriously reduced his profit margin. Ebay Shop. Okay so you have seen an item for auction that you want to bid on. The first thing to do is check to see if the seller has an Ebay Shop. If he does than check it out you may often find that an identical item is in his shop with a ‘Buy it Now’ price less than the current auction price of the auctioned item. Other Listings. Always check the sellers other listings. It is surprising how often inexperienced sellers will list an identicle item with a complete time only a few minutes after the first and of course depending how many items there are the second item appears on subsequent pages. Inevitably the second item is always cheaper often by a mile! I used this technique last month to by a Dyson vacuum cleaner. The leading auction price finished at around 60 but I managed to buy an identical model from the sane seller for 17 that finished 4 minutes later! When to Bid. Always bid at the last possible moment. This is for 2 reasons. Articles for auction that have bids attract more bidders, this is the reason sellers start at a low price. Secondly you are less likely to be out bidded. There are ’snipe engines’ you can purchase that automatically bid for you up to a set limit in the final moments of the auction but as to whether are worth it or indeed work I shall leave up to you. I personally have never had the need for one. What Days to bid on. Traditionally Sunday evening is when most activity takes place on Ebay so if possible try to find items that do not finish then. I have found that weekday lunchtimes (Not Friday) are also very busy times as office workers go on the site during their lunch break so again avoid items finishing at this time. How Much to Bid. Novice buyers will say I will pay say a maximum of 5 for this item and enter this as their maximum bid. Do not do this but put a maximum bid of 5.03p. For the sake of the extra 3p you increase your chances of winning the auction ten fold. You could try 5.01p but I have found 5.03p is the optimum. Bad Spelling. Believe it or not sellers do make silly mistakes in the listings so check phonetic sounding words when you search for an item as obviously these items gain far less exposure. For instance I recently purchased some lead soldiers however they were listed as led soldiers which I managed to purchase for 8.99 the starting price as I was the only bidder. I resold them on Ebay a week later for 59.00. This idea of getting bargains is so prolific on Ebay that you can purchase software that actually generates a search string of incorrectly spelt words. Fortunately, or not, my spelling is bad enough that I have never had the need for such soft ware! Other On-line Auction Sites. Believe it or not there are other on-line auction sites that are not as popular as Ebay but because of this you can often pick up a bargain. The tips above equally apply to those sites. One good site I frequently use is Ebid it’s far cheaper to sell here and you can find some real bargains.Hi, I am trying to set up sites to protect users who are starting internet businesses from internet bandits! Vist me at http;//www.scampain.com
Source: www.ArticlePros.com
The Best Deal with Online Auction!
If you list a few items “here and there” at online auctions, it only takes a few minutes to get your items up for sell. However, if you build an online auction big business with hundreds of items for sale, you’ll run out of time and energy fast. That’s why automation is so important. Even if you find the wonderful one stop online auction shop where you can sell all your items in one place, automation will still be necessary to keep the business going - and keep your sanity! Here are some great ways to automate your auction tasks. There are software programs that are specially made for auctions. These programs will store all your listings in a database along with titles, descriptions, photos, pricing and shipping details. Some programs have a feature where you can save templates for certain categories. For example, if you sell household products, you might use the same template for all household items. Then, you might use a completely dissimilar template for your wholesale products. Therefore, you can save each template and have them available when you need them. A great benefit of using auction software is you can list more items in less amount of time or visit www.auctions-profits.com Here’s how it works: Type in your listings and accompanying details. Upload photos or banners for your listings. Submit the items to the auction site for listing. It’s that simple. Without this software, you will likely have to submit each item by hand through an online form with some screens. This could take several minutes or longer per listing. To get this software, check with your one stop online auction shop first. They might offer the software as a free tool. Use the search engines to search for “auction software” or “auction listing automation.” Once items have been sold, you should have some email templates ready to go for “thank you” messages, up-sell messages, etc. Create several “thank you” emails for the types of goods you offer, each being customized for those customers. Also, create several “special offer” emails to send buyers throughout the year. Some one stop online auction shops provide automated email systems for you. It’s free and easy to set up a system like this, and the rewards are tremendous! Keep shipping supplies on-hand at all times you can visit www.auction-o-matics.com Prepare envelopes, boxes or bags ahead of time with labels, packaging materials, etc. Develop a system that you will use every time you receive an order so you won’t get disorganized. Take advantage of shipping “tools” supplied by your one stop online auction shop or sum processing company. Some auction sites or payment processors will provide packing slips for every order with the customer’s buy details already printed for you. Schedule your items to end around the same time so you can easily deal with them once the auctions end. If you schedule auctions to end on weekends, you can concentrate on shipping the items at the beginning of the week. Those who run auctions weekly usually go through a cycle of listing, ending and shipping about the same times every week. Automation will help you save time and money. You can list and deal with more items through automation. Also, you’ll have a better chance at getting repeat business by sending regular mailings or e-mails to buyers. The more money you can save the superior bargains your customers will receive. <a href="http://www.mining-auction-gold.com">www.mining-auction-gold.com</a> <a href="http://www.auction-extreme-package.com">www.auction-extreme-package.com</a>
Source: www.ArticlePros.com
