Many people start taking money over the internet using PayPal – this used to send a “small company” image but that is changing now. If you open up a business account with PayPal you can take many credit and debit cards as well and your customers do not need a PayPal account. Some people think PayPal is expensive to use – they do take a % of your payment – but most respectable payment processors take similar amounts as well as a large fee for set up. To understand how PayPal fees are applied, visit feecalculatorbuzz.net and its FREE.
Many bank based payment processors or the large companies such as WorldPay.com expect you to be established before they provide their services. I cannot recommend any processor above another – it is something you need to make your own research upon.
If you are not taking full payment before sending of your goods – for example if you are selling bespoke items or selling a service – it is important to send an invoice for items you are selling- this gives a professional image and assures your customers that someone has taken their order.
With many processors you can send an invoice via their system and all of them that I know about – send receipts to you and the buyer. They also, all send you an email with any payments made. Most processors let you customize these documents as well as your payment page and have instructions on how to do this on their web sites. This again is a good way to present a professional image and make the payment process seamless with your web site.
You can make up your own receipts using Word or similar or you might also look at print-on-demand sites and Lulu.com who will also make up brochures for you, as will your local print shop. You should ALWAYS include a receipt and brochure in your packaging. This reminds your customer where you bought the item and encourages them to buy other products from you.
Lastly if you are producing bespoke items or providing a service, you should think very heavily about taking a large deposit from your customer BEFORE you start work. Similarly, you will need full payment before you mail the item. If not, you may not get paid! You can take a 50% deposit or full payment at the start. As you near the end you can send your client photos of the item (or use a web cam) and then ask for full payment. Good luck!
How Can I Get Paid for Products in My New Online Website – A Guide to Payment Processors
Once you have set up your basic website, and placed items for sale on it, you need to ensure you have a mechanism in place to accept payment from your customers.
As a new, and possibly small business, you may find it too expensive to set up a merchant account with your bank, let alone be authorized to have one, as in the bank’s eyes, you may still be an unknown, and there are risks in accepting credit cards with a new merchant account. Assuming you had all that approved, you would still need to integrate their merchant system into the website you have, and that requires comprehensive understanding of HTML computer language, and website editing abilities.
A much simpler way to go about this is to use an online payment processor from a third party. There are numerous options available, that charge reasonable fees, typically on a ‘per transaction’ basis as a percentage. Use this PayPal fees calculator to figure out how much PayPal’s processing fee will be, then create and send your invoice, hassle-free.
I will refer to two options, namely Stripe or PayPal.
Both these providers are available in most parts of the world, but you will find Alert Pay is more easily accessible in some East European countries as well, whereas PayPal is a little choosier.
The idea is to go to their respective websites, and establish an online account. This is relatively straight forward, and can be done with minimal fuss.
Once you have progressed through this stage, you will need to provide valid identification, to protect both you, and the processor. This is in the form of providing a bank account number you would like the funds you earn transferred to, or a valid credit card. In the case of Alert pay, you will also need to forward a copy of your driver’s license or similar. Again, this ensures you are protected, and is a one-time process.
When this is all set up, you are then able to create buttons, in the sense that you need to assign each product on your website a monetary value and item name, so that you will then be issued with code, to place on your website. This can be handled by your webmaster if you are not technically minded.
The idea again, is to ensure that you have a simple system to put in place, to get you on your way to moving your new website economy in the right direction. Most people will be able to set this up in a matter of a day, or at most, with verification, in a matter of two or three days.
What Payment Processor Should I Use for My Membership Sites?
Believe it or not, you can’t simply create a webpage and magically take credit card payments when you want somebody to join your one time or recurring membership site. You have to use an additional service that will take credit card payments for you and tell your membership software that you need to let somebody into your site. But which one should you use? It seems like there are hundreds and there are new payment processors popping up every day so which one should you use?
I prefer to use PayPal for simple payments, Click Bank for affiliate payments if I wanted to have a merchant account. Let’s talk about each of the three.
In my opinion, PayPal is one of the easiest payment processors to use because you don’t have to go through a lot of hoops just to get established. You do need to create a PayPal account that people can click a button and either pay you through their PayPal account or enter in their credit card details. PayPal processes the transaction and puts the money into your account. Then it’s up to you to figure out how to get paid if you want to get paid from a check or direct deposit but the money goes through PayPal.
You do not actually have to create a merchant account, they do it for you. You can create a payment plan on a moment’s notice and you are not restricted about what kind of things you sell. For example, when you create a merchant account you have to establish what type of business you have.
If you want to have a seminar business, you have to say in your merchant account that you are a seminar offline business. Then if you want to take payments for e-books, guess what? You need to create a different merchant account – kind of inconvenient, right? But with PayPal, you simply take payments.
The only flaw with PayPal is that they do not have an affiliate program. For this, I use Click Bank. Click Bank has a built-in affiliate program so if you sell something using the Click Bank payment processor, anybody else can sign up as an affiliate, refer people and get paid a commission. The great thing about Click Bank is that they get paid and they pay out affiliates before you even get paid so they deal with all the tax issues that is completely out of your hair.
The only downside of Click Bank is they are very generous with their refund policy. Therefore, I only take some payments on Click Bank, only those when I want to have some affiliate sales.
That’s the payment processor you should use for your membership site. Just starting off, use PayPal for your membership site. If you want to have an affiliate program then create a Click Bank.