Online payment: Accept payment through your website!
Accepting payments online is an absolute necessity for people who conduct business transactions online. As an online marketer, if you can’t process online orders, you lose a lot of money in lost sales. But if you can accept credit cards, you will increase your sales in your online home business by more than 300%. With technology, it’s easy to process orders online. You just have to paste a code inside your web page.
You can accept payments online by setting up a merchant account or by using a third-party credit card processor. To set up a business account, you need to make arrangements with your bank or any other online company of your choice. There are quite a few professional companies on the internet like marketingtips.com/creditcards/ that can help you. Using a third-party credit card processor does not require a merchant account. In most cases, this involves setting up a form and/or putting a link on your order page.
To accept online payments through a merchant account, you must use a secure server (a web server that supports any of the major security protocols, such as SSL which encrypts and decrypts messages to protect against tampering by third parties) and a shopping cart system. While a secure server protects your customers’ information, a shopping cart allows them to make purchases online and calculate the totals of what they have purchased along with the total cost.
Let me focus more on accepting online payments through third party credit card processors. If you do not have a merchant account, third-party credit card processors can easily process your credit card orders, even if you do not have a credit card account. It’s easy and there’s no monthly fee. You are only charged one "per transaction" fee and a reservation fee. When you make a sale and the payment goes through them, they send you the payment minus any transaction and booking fees. A reservation fee is a small amount withheld to cover any charges you may have. If you do not incur any charges within a specified period of time, the reservation fee is returned to you.
There are several prominent third-party credit card processors, but for illustrative purposes, let me focus more on Paypal.com. Paypal.com is a great company that allows any business or customer with an email address to send and receive payments online safely, cheaply, and conveniently. It allows you to easily sell your products and services on your website. There is no setup fee involved, other than a small transaction fee charged when you make a sale.
How do you set up a PayPal account?
To create a PayPal account, simply visit their website, PayPal.com, and sign up for a personal account, master account, or business account. The personal account is mainly for individuals who only send money to pay for the products purchased. The master account allows an individual to sell and buy online and the business account is for businesses to sell and buy online.
If you already have a personal account, simply log in and click on the "Bill" located in the navigation links below to upgrade to a Premier Account or Business Account, depending on your preferences and the nature of your business. Once you fill in the details in the form provided, you will receive a link via your PayPal email address. Click on the link to be directed to a page where you will select your preferred payment method and create a PayPal payment button. You will be provided with a code, which you will need to paste on your web page.
You can also integrate a shopping basket, which can be obtained from other service providers in association with PayPal (PayPal provides a list of them) with a monthly subscription that is charged according to the package you select.
Lastly, your online ordering process should include a sales page, an order page, and a thank you page. Your sales page should have well-written sales copy with a link to your order page. Your order page must include a form and a special link provided by your third party credit card processor (PayPal). The link will direct your customers to a form found on the payment processor’s website. The thank you page is intended to thank your customers for the purchase with detailed payment information of the transaction made.