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Article by: Douglas Titchmarsh
There are many ways of accepting payments online, some are easier,
some more expensive, and some which offer ways to take online
payments, and pay affiliates without tracking them yourself.
Accepting payments online can be a minefield and as the amount
of online payment processors grows, the choice becomes more difficult
as to which online payment processor to use. Here we weigh up
the pros and cons of 3 of the top online payment processors.
One of the biggest and most widely accepted ways of accepting
payment online is to use Paypal. Anyone who has used Ebay is likely
to have already come accross Paypal even if they haven't signed
up for an account. Paypal allows the online merchant to accept
instant payments from customers either directly from the customers
Paypal funds or from a credit card. This combined with its high
profile, and use by Ebay makes it a useful payment processor to
the new marketer online.
Paypal also gives you easy ways to create buttons and sales links
to sell your products, and in the case of digital or downloadable
products can be set to send a customer straight to the download
page so your delivery work is done automatically. The thing to
bear in mind is the fees associated with Paypal, as they take
a percentage of every sale paid through them. The fees can soon
add up and knock a hole in your profits.
Another favourite payment processor with online marketers is
ClickBank.com who also accept credit cards on your behalf.
Clickbank is preferred to Paypal by some vendors due to its built
in affiliate program which also has many affiliates searching
for products to sell for commissions.
Clickbank makes it easy to setup an affiliate program and pays
your affiliates for you directly, and can also offer the instant
downloads the same as Paypal. As it already has a huge army of
affiliates and people making search scripts to find products in
the Clickbank marketplace it seems to be the answer to all your
online sales needs, but unfortunately Clickbank have made it difficult
to sell more than one product, so you need another account each
time you want to sell something, or all your products on one page
for affiliates to send their potential clients to.
Another thing in Clickbanks favour is that they have recently
started allowing payment from Paypal, so that makes the payment
options more varied for your customers, and affiliate customers.
Clickbanks one drawback is that you can only sell digital products
through its system, so if you want to sell physical products such
as books etc. then you need to look elsewhere.
Another option is to use an online credit card processor such
as 2 Checkout (AKA 2CO) which offers the user the ability to accept
all kinds of credit cards, and is able to be "plugged into"
many shopping cart scripts for use on websites. Although it offers
no affiliate program itself, 2Checkout doesn't stop you using
multi level affiliate scripts, unlike Paypal, and Clickbank which
are limited in this respect. Where 2Checkout doesn't compare so
favourably is in the fees charged for each transaction, but you
do only pay a one off fee to get an account unlike most credit
card processors which charge fees and a monthly or yearly membership
fee.
These are just some of the choices available to the online marketer
who wants to accept payments online, all have pros and cons, but
you need to look at what you want to do, and choose one or two
of these services to start selling your products online. Use the
one which best fits your business model, and budget, you can always
look at other ways to accept payment later, but these will get
you started.
Douglas Titchmarsh is the webmaster at http://www.thediscountebookstore.com
and also writes for several blogs online, including http://www.thediscountebookstore.com/blog
In addition Douglas maintains an information site at http://www.informationpagesonline.com
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