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Paypal or Other Payment Gateways?

By Christina Jovillar-Ebeling in Featured

Okay, now you have your ecommerce website design and you want to set up a payment gateway. Where do you begin? You can find these payment gateways on the Internet and see which one is more suitable for you.

First things first, what is a payment gateway and why do I need one? A payment gateway connects your ecommerce website to your merchant account. It connects payments by a secure order form with your merchant account at a bank.

I would start by researching all the different payment gateways companies and compare security, features, price and reliability.

Some differences I found when researching are mainly the fees and services offered. Some have higher fees than others and some have services such as fraud protection, eCheck processing, and risk management you should look into. Fraud protection identifies suspicious transactions with built-in fraud tools provided by the online merchant company. Electronic checks (eChecks) are another payment method that allows customers to enter their banking information online. Risk management is where sensitive data is stored in the online merchant’s PCI-compliant data center, never on your computer.

Some fees to look into are the setup fees, monthly fees, and transaction fees. Most providers will charge a monthly fee and transaction fees. Some companies will waive the set up fee.

Reliability is an important thing to look at. Make sure your gateway is up 24/7 especially when your customers are ordering online throughout all hours of the day, all over the world.

Authorize.net is a company that offers payment gateways. I would also look into Paypal, especially Paypal Websites Payment Pro. Your customers won’t even need a Paypal account to purchase your products or services if you go with Paypal Websites Payment Pro. This is a very good choice, plus you will save on fees as there is no monthly fee for this type of account. Websites Payment Pro accepts all credit cards and all Paypal payments, and works with a number of shopping carts.

Considering security, price and reliability features for the payment gateway will help you on your way to getting your ecommerce web site ready to go live.

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This article is written by the owner, Christina Ebeling, at a web development company that offers web development from Edmonton, Alberta to clients all over Canada.

The Advantages of Using PayPal As Your Shopping Cart

By Kathy Dobson in Featured

Any e-commerce application needs a good shopping cart to handle any purchases and payments for subscriptions. Of course you want the best shopping cart you can get for your blogs or websites, but there are so many options online, all promising you the world, that it can get confusing. Still wondering what a shopping cart is on website?

There are several points to consider, but the simplest description that all of us will recognize is the shopping cart in grocery stores. While that one has squeaky wheels and gets pushed up and down the aisle, the shopping cart on your website is a set of scripts that track what your customers buy so they can pay for the entire selection with one click.

All the shopping cart does is keep track of any items you have placed in it for purchase. Without a shopping cart your customers would have to pay individually for everything they want to buy. After your customers press the “Buy” button on your site, their transaction is transferred to a payment processor to collect the money owed, send it where it belongs and enables the download if required.

It’s not quite that simple, but it is a quick explanation of what happens behind the “Buy” button. There are several processes that are sending and receiving the request for payment on a mouse click that ends with the download instructions for your customer. It gets confusing when you start searching for a shopping cart for your own sites. A simple search will probably send you several hundred choices, all claiming to be the premier shopping cart for your needs.

An excellent choice would be PayPal’s shopping cart. For several reasons, using PayPal’s shopping cart will streamline your customer’s payment processes by letting you accept credit and debit cards and direct bank account payments. Some benefits for your customers include purchasing more than one item at a time and paying for them with a single click of the “Buy” button. It’s good customer service. You don’t want to irritate customers ready to spend money with you.

Other PayPal benefits for your customer include the ability to browse your entire collection of products and check out a list of what they bought before they click on your “Buy” button, which gives them the opportunity to modify the list. Ease of installation which does not require knowledge of CGI scripting is one big advantage of PayPal’s shopping cart. Opening an account is free of up-front costs and you are charged the same fees charged when you get other PayPal payments.

To find the fee schedule, check out the bottom of any page, even the log in page, for a link to “Pricing” or “Fees.” Some of the technical benefits of using PayPal’s shopping cart include being able to set shipping rates, if necessary, and tax rates. You can let your customers make donations to charities of their choice. You can easily convert your “Buy Now” buttons into “Add To Cart” buttons to make multiple purchases seamless to your customer.

Their free 410-page PDF, “Website Payments Standard Integration Guide,” has all the in-depth information you might need about using “Buy Now” buttons included. You can find a comprehensive list of services on PayPal when you click the tab, “Merchant Services.” If you click on the tab, “Products and Services,” you will find a link to the ebook. For your business records, PayPal will keep detailed transaction records on their website for your use when you need them.

You will also find details needed to integrate PayPal with your site, including how to pre-populate your customer’s sign-up forms. It might be a good idea to download their free PDF User Agreement for your records. You can find a link to the document at the bottom of almost every page on the service. Look for “Legal Agreements” and click that link. PayPal is easy to use with whatever application you need. It has been time tested for a longtime as eBay’s payment processor.

Besides being highly recognizable as something that a lot of people use already and have a comfort zone with, another undocumented benefit of using PayPal’s shopping cart is your own peace of mind in knowing that your business income is in good hands.

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Kathy Dobson is a free spirited business owner and entrepreneur dedicated to helping others achieve financial and personal freedom through Internet marketing with an emphasis on membership sites.

10 Ideas to Increase Your eBay Response

By Clint Herman in Featured

So now you have a potential eBay buyer checking out your auction. They’re obviously interested in the item you are selling, or they wouldn’t be checking out your auction. Let’s say they’re on the fence about whether to buy or not. So how can you nudge them and get them to bid or buy? Well, check out the tips below.

Increase your picture quality: It’s been said over and over – a picture is worth a thousand words. If your picture is not good quality then it probably won’t matter what you wrote in your description Maybe you missed something important that a good quality picture would convey. If you have bad lighting or a background that drowns out your item then it will be worth little to nothing to those checking out your auction. Make sure people can see what you’re selling and consider using multiple pictures to show different angles and aspects of your item.

EBay Warning: Dropshipping? PayPal Is Holding Your Money!

By Melody Wigdahl in Featured

EBay has been the ideal home based business for years. Most of us started with the ‘clean out the garage’ model, and over time graduated to dropshipping, and in many cases, it has turned into a pretty significant fulltime income.

Over the last several weeks, several VERY disturbing changes have taken place at EBay as EBay seems intent on wiping out the very business base that built the behemoth, to focus on the corporate clientele that have taken a much larger position on EBay over the past couple of years, using EBay to sell off their excess inventory directly, rather than selling to the large discount chains as was the previous habit.

Here’s an overview of some of the most significant – and damaging – changes that affect you and I, the folks that have built home businesses around EBay….

1) The EBay Feedback system now only allows Sellers to leave POSITIVE for Buyers. On the other hand, Buyers can leave any kind of feedback they want for Sellers. This means that if you have a problem with a Buyer (gee – that never happens, right?) you are pretty much out of luck! So, if the Buyer feels that he should have received his widget in 3 working days – even though you clearly state that it takes no less than 10 working days for the widget to ship – he can give you a negative! And you are pretty much powerless since there is no arbitration system in place.

2) Neutral Feedback? HAH!! Guess what? They no longer exist! All of your neutral comments have now been converted to NEGATIVE feedback ratings. Top PowerSellers have lost their PowerSeller status and the perks that went along with it – including the extra discounts that were often factored into their pricing. Although the PowerSellers were given a period of time to ‘correct’ the situation – the bottom line is that Buyers are not terribly responsive to such requests – and this means that a huge percentage of PowerSellers…aren’t. An interesting side note here is that one PowerSeller that was hit by these changes…..is also one of the speakers at this week’s EBay Live Conference in Chicago……should be a very interesting speech…….

3) The Final Straw…….dropshipping is huge on EBay. My hubby has been very successful dropshipping on EBay – both through EBay partners such as Doba and others, as well as resources of his own, through his 25 years in the wholesale gift industry. Today he received an email from PayPal stating that any orders that were ‘known to be dropshipping” would result in a 21 day hold on the funds from the customer! The only way around this is to send PayPal the tracking notice when the product ships and supposedly they will ‘release’ your funds.

Personally – I have dealt with PayPal in the past over disputes – and the response times are horrible. Basically, this means that if you have been earning a living dropshipping – you will now have to be financially solvent enough to cover all of your sales out of your own pocket, rather than paying for the product with the funds from PayPal. This pretty much will kill the entire dropshipping business model for most people on EBay.

4) No digital products – Ebooks were a HUGE seller on EBay and it was a great business model! Automated download, a real ‘set it and forget it’ business model if handled correctly. But apparently it was not handled correctly by many and now ebooks and other digital items must be sold in DVD format and physically shipped. exactly why it was such a great business – you didn’t have to ship anything!

At one point, we had 4 stores on EBay and thousands of products, but we have been ‘branching out’ and are looking at other products, such as the EBay Affiliate program, niche store scripts etc.

After this latest round of changes, and the notice today from PayPal, we will be pulling 99% of our products off EBay.

As a home business – it no longer works for us.

Over the next few days we will be posting reviews of the various store models as we take them for a test drive – we will bring the pros and cons of every system!!

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Melody Wigdahl is a serial entrepreneur, lifelong geek and founder of Work At Home Ideas For Women, and The WomensNet Network, Home Of The Amber Grants For Women Entrepreneurs , a networking and resource site for women entrepreneurs. Melody has been working from home for more than 2 decades – web based since 1996 – and loves to share ideas and stories with other entrepreneurs!

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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