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How_To_Take_Payments_On_Your_Website
| How To Take Payments On Your Website
After my two-part article about selling things on your website,
I had several people ask for more details on billing companies
and shopping carts. So here goes.
If you were to Google for billing card companies, you'd find out
that there are thousands of places out there. Most of these
companies have set up a merchant account for their own
companies, but added the right to accept payments for other
companies. So any person with a merchant account, who pays the
extra fees to accept other company's payments, can sell their
services online.
As with anything else, online or offline, be sure you know who
you are doing business with. Be advised that I have only dealt
with CCNow and PayPal. The other companies I talk about I have
not used myself, but they are popular on the Internet. Still
check them out well to be sure they offer the services you need.
Of course, you could always set up your own merchant account,
but unless you are doing a lot of sales, I wouldn't suggest
going this route. When you set up a merchant account you have to
pay a set-up fee, annual fee and a fee per transaction. They
will also charge a fee if you want a credit card machine. You
have to sell a lot of items that are making you a lot of money,
to make this profitable. A company may also require you to sign
up with Verisign to ensure your site's security. If you live in
an area with a Sam's Club, I would suggest checking them out.
They have the lowest fees of any merchant account company that I
have been able to find. Costco also has good prices.
When you are looking for a billing company, you need to check
out several things. ·Do they take credit cards? ·Which credit
cards do they take? ·Do they take checks? ·Will they accept
payments from people in other countries? ·Do they charge a
set-up fee? ·What do they charge per transaction? ·Do they
charge a monthly or annual fee? ·Do they require that you sell a
minimum amount each month? ·If you don't sell the minimum amount
they require, what fee will they charge you?
Once you know what a billing company needs to do for you, check
out these companies. ·CCBill http://www.ccbill.com - Among other
things, they offer E-tickets. This lets members subscribe to
your pay site by issuing usernames and passwords after
subscribers pay their fee. ·CCNow.com http://www.ccnow.com -
Easy to use, they do charge a fee of 9% on the transaction, but
you can only sell products, not services. They also have a
shopping cart you can use. ·DebitPayment.com
http://www.debitpayments.com/pub/home.html - This company
specializes in helping you with international purchases.
·Ibill.com http://www.ibill.com - They have some limitations on
what you can charge a client. ·Itransact, Inc.
http://www.itransact.com/ - They offer check processing for your
site. If you have a merchant account, you can use it through
them too. ·Instabill http://www.instabill.com - To use their
service you have to pay a set-up fee and pay an annual fee.
·Merchant workz.com http://www.merchantworkz.com/ - They offer
merchant accounts and credit card processing. ·PayPal.com
http://www.PayPal.com - Very inexpensive and easy to use.
·StormPay https://www.stormpay.com/stormpay/index.php - They let
people make payments via e-mail.
Besides a billing company you may also need to consider getting
a shopping cart for your site. If you are selling only one item
on your site, you won't need a shopping cart. But if you're like
me, and selling several items, then you will want a shopping
cart. Without a shopping cart, a person can only buy one item at
a time. They would have to complete the entire transaction for
one item. Then go back to your site and start all over again for
the next item. It makes it very difficult, which means that you
will lose a lot of sales. With a shopping cart, people can
select as many items as they want and the shopping cart will
keep track of everything. Then when they're ready to pay for all
the items, it's just one simple transaction. Keeping things as
simple as possible for the client is one of the keys to success
on the Internet.
Here are some companies offering shopping carts. ·1Shopping
Cart.com http://www.1shoppingcart.com - They charge a monthly
fee. ·CCNow - See their listing under Billing Companies. ·Miva
http://www.miva.com - This is a very powerful shopping cart.
·PayPal - See their listing under Billing Companies. ·Yahoo
www.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant - They offer 3 different
packages, charge a monthly fee and take a percentage of each
sale. They will also drop ship your orders, so you never have to
ship anything, Yahoo does it all.
The above companies have the cart on their site and you send
people to them during the buying process. You can also download
shopping cart software onto your server for your visitors to
use. Be sure to check with your hosting company to be sure the
software you want to download will work on their server. The
following link lists free shopping cart software. However, know
that you often get what you pay for, and that technical support
may be poor or nonexistent with this free software. So check out
Online Orders http://www.onlineorders.net/links/Free/ . They
have a section on their site that, as of this writing, lists
thirty-nine free shopping carts.
Many billing companies also offer a shopping cart, usually for
free. For example, I use PayPal on my site and they have a free
shopping cart that works in conjunction with their billing
service. The purchase process is easy and I can even change the
look of their shopping cart to be similar to my site.
Some website hosting companies also offer billing services and
shopping carts. You may want to go this route so that everything
for your website is done through one company. However, if your
hosting company doesn't do a very good job hosting your site, I
don't think you'd want to trust them with your billing and
shopping cart service.
Here are a couple of website hosting companies that offer
shopping carts and more. ·ValueWeb http://www.valueweb.com/ -
They offer shopping cart and credit card processing. ·Westhost
http://www.Westhost.com - They have the Miva Merchant storefront
and shopping cart software and Payquake for payment processing.
As with most things on the Internet, you have a lot of choices.
To make a choice that's right for you, know what you want and
consider the points I've mentioned above. When you have a
billing and shopping cart company that meets your needs, and
your client's needs, it will make everyone's life easier and
make you more money.
About the author:
http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website
designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating
or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating
a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can
also create all of the copy for your website.
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