Hello

I last left off after briefly explaining fees associated with merchant accounts and accepting credit cards on your website. I gave a brief explanation so please make sure that you ask as many questions as you can so that you don’t have any unexpected charges after locking into a contract with a credit card processor.

In this post I’m going to explain the most popular payment provider out there, Pay Pal, and the pros & cons of accepting credit cards via Pay Pal. For those who aren’t familiar with PayPal.com, PayPal lets you send or receive money from anyone with an email address. They are sort of the middleman to ensure secure transactions for both the buyer and the seller. PayPal makes their money by charging a minimal fee on completed transactions. The fee is generally paid by the seller.

I’m sure you’ve heard and probably used them but Pay Pal is probably the most trusted provider of merchant services on the internet. Most shopping carts out there are integrated with Pay Pal because of the popularity of the payment processor. They offer a few different options but if you don’t have any intention of setting up a true credit card processor right now they are without a doubt the way to go.

Be sure to sign up for their Business or Premier plan because this will allow you to accept credit cards without your customer having to have a Pay Pal account.

PROS:

• No Setup Fees – It’s free to send money, and PayPal is affordable for businesses of all sizes.
• No Monthly Fees – You pay only when you sell items.
• It’s Private – PayPal does not reveal your financial information to sellers.
• It’s Fast – Payments are made immediately and you generally can withdraw the funds immediately. Visit PayPal.com for withdrawal options.
• Trusted Name – Industry-leading fraud prevention keeps you safe and secure. (Assists with conversions)

CONS:

• Processing Fees – A Bit Higher Than A True Merchant Provider. (Visit PayPal.com For Exact Fees)
• Professional Image – Since all you really need is an email address to setup a PayPal account some people would prefer to go through a merchant that has had to be approved to accept credit cards via a true application process.
• Chargebacks – If someone disputes a charge with PayPal it’s very difficult to get them to side with you and will often times refund the customer plus a $10 processing fee on top of it. I know this first hand and I went well out of my way to prove that my customer received their order.
• Support – Although it’s gotten much better, it’s been difficult to receive a timely response. As I mentioned though, it’s gotten much better.

Here are some other basics related to Pay Pal. They offer some great ways to get your money fast, going so far as offering a Pay Pal debit card so that you can start using your funds the same day. You will need to go through some verification steps to be an ‘verified’ PayPal merchant which is a must because it proves to your customers that you’ve gone through the steps to prove you are who you say you are. This is going to help when it comes to conversions.

Also, if you plan on selling on eBay you’ll definitely want to accept Pay Pal because they won’t accept any other payment providers such as Google Checkout. Pretty much anyone that uses eBay will use Pay Pal as their payment method. This is obviously my opinion but it’s an opinion drawn from experience.

In closing, even if you accept credit cards through a true merchant provider you’ll want to also give the option of Pay Pal. Many people don’t have a credit card and this gives them a reason & the capability of still purchasing through your website.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

Hello

I just wanted to leave a couple more posts regarding domain names before I move into information on web design, web hosting & search engine optimization. There are quite a few things you can do with a domain name once you’ve found a domain that works for you. What you do really depends on what you plan to do with the domain name. I don’t want to make this a boring post so I’ll just list a few domain name basics with a brief explanation.

1. Web Hosting – If you plan on actually putting up a website you’ll need to purchase a web hosting plan. This is the space on a web server that you place the files that make up your website. There are a lot of options in regards to web hosting and I’ll be covering that in an upcoming post.

2. Domain Forwarding – If you have a current website you can just forward a domain name to your current website. This is something that’s very common with real estate agents. For example, a Remax agent gets a Remax provided website address such as http://ww1.remax.com/associates/243443433.asp.

Obviously this isn’t something to put on a business card so they register their full name, if available, as a domain name. They then simply forward TheirNewDomain.com to http://ww1.remax.com/associates/243443433.asp. This makes it much easier for them to give their website address & looks much more professional.

3. Email Accounts – Many times people will register a domain name simply to use for email purposes. Rather than using a free email service such as Yahoo or HotMail, many people would like to have a custom email address. For example, say your name is Bill Smith, rather than using a Yahoo email address such as bill_smith2008@yahoo.com you could search for a domain that represents your name, your interests or just about anything else that you want.

Then assume that you were able to register Smith.com, which you wouldn’t be able to do but for explanation reasons let’s assume it’s available. You would then be able to setup any email address you want such as Bill@Smith.com, Sales@Smith.com, Info@Smith.com, etc. There are a few email addresses that you can’t use such as www@YourDomain.com but other than a few your options are limitless.

4. Domain Parking – If you have a great idea for a website or think that you’ve found a domain name that may be valuable you can simply register the domain name and ‘park’ it. This is simply a page showing that the domain is registered and/or Coming Soon. A few things about park pages is that you can park a domain name with a company such as NameDrive.com which will display ads on your website and if someone were to type in your domain and click on one of those ads you would earn a percentage of the revenue earned on that click.

That’s about it for the domain name basics, there are a few more options but these are the 4 main reasons for registering a domain name. I’m sure that I’ll receive an email saying that I left something off the list but like I mentioned, these are the 4 main reasons for registering a domain name.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

Hello

It’s been awhile but I’m back with some more great information on how to build a website and accept credit cards online. This is by far one of the most confusing parts of operating a website that has a secure ecommerce shopping cart. Let’s get into the fees that generally are associated with merchant accounts and in the next post I’ll break down the options for merchant accounts based on fees & ease of use.

There are 3 primary fees associated with a merchant account.
1. Initial Setup Fees
2. Monthly Fees
3. Transaction Fees

Here is a breakdown a brief explanation of the fees. By the way, if you think reading a cell phone bill is difficult wait until you receive your monthly merchant statements. Your cell phone bill will look like a Dr. Seuss book.

INITIAL SETUP FEES – You’ll generally run into two fees but these days the market is so competitive that many merchant providers have reduce if not eliminated their setup fees. The application fee is the fee that the merchant provider charges to setup your account. This can vary anywhere from $0 to a few hundred dollars. You will also find a Gateway Fee, the payment gateway provides an interface between your website and your merchant provider.

Think of it as your credit card terminal, you won’t be able to swipe a credit card so the Gateway is the connection to your merchant provider. I personally use Authorize.net as my payment gateway and have never had a complaint. By the way, you generally won’t find a company that waves this fee, if anything they will just add it into their application fee. Lastly, most initial setup fees are non-refundable.

MONTHLY FEES – You’ll generally run into 2 main monthly fees but don’t hesitate to ask about any additional monthly fees that a merchant provider or payment gateway may charge. Your monthly payment gateway fee will vary, I pay $25 for each of my Authorize.net accounts. This fee is for the use of the payment gateway’s processing services and will include items such as transaction reports & many other miscellaneous charges.

The monthly statement fee is a fixed monthly fee that pretty much all merchant account providers charge. This fee is really a fee that merchant providers provide each month that really breaks down your traffic for the month in regards to charges, credits, charge backs. You’ll find that even though your merchant provider claims a certain percentage of each sale, what they don’t tell you is that these rates vary. For example, someone uses a card that offers them reward points, you’re going to pay a higher percentage on those charges. The bottom line is there is not a way to avoid the monthly statement fees so just make sure that before you sign anything make sure that you ask as many questions about any fees that vary.

TRANSACTION FEES – These are another set of fees that you won’t get away from because this is how the merchant providers make their money. Like I mentioned above, make sure that you get a full report on varying transaction fees, fees for declined transactions & even charge backs. By the way, a charge back is when a customer disputes a charge with their credit card company. Your merchant provider will charge you a fee in addition to refunding the customer. In regards to the transaction fees you’ll run into two different fees of which I’ve broken down below.

Discount Rate – This is charged as a percentage of each transaction. This is the fee charged by the credit card company and your merchant provider adds a certain percentage to this number to pay their bills. These rates vary so much it’s difficult to say what a good rate is, if I say 2.29% someone is going to say that they can do better but they don’t tell you about the hidden fees that you don’t see until your first monthly statement arrives. When you’re just starting out you may find that your provider has a monthly minimum fee of $25. You may also find that as you do more business with a provider that you can earn better discount rates.

Per Transaction Fee – This is a fee that you pay per transaction on top of the discount rate. Let’s say your ‘per transaction’ fee is $0.30, if you have 100 sales/transactions in a month your monthly transaction fee will be $30. Again, this is on top of all other fees including the discount rate.

Well that’s it for now, hopefully this clears things up a bit and gives you an idea of the sort of questions to ask your merchant provider. We offer some great merchant account options so please take the time to look them over and give tech support a call at 1-480-624-2500 with any questions.

In my next post I’m going to list some great options for merchant accounts that can help you cut down on some of the costs associated with a full service merchant account.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

Shopping cart software doesn’t have to be an intimidating factor in getting an online shopping cart online. You basically just need to know what your needs are and then go from there.

Majority of the shopping carts are integrated with PayPal so you can accept online payments easily. Eventually you’ll need a merchant account to accept credit cards but if you’re getting started, a PayPal account will do just fine. I’ll get into merchant accounts in my next post.

Now back to shopping cart software, Quick shopping cart is an easy to use application that allows you to add products to your catalog along with descriptions & images. There is absolutely no programming or HTML knowledge needed so you can realistically have your shopping cart online within an hour depending on the number of products that you offer.

For a basic shopping cart you’ll want certain features such as coupons, in depth reporting, and integration with certain shipping companies. One feature that Quick Shopping Cart offers is eBay integration so that you can list items on eBay without having to list items individually.

Other features that you will eventually want are cross selling which allows you to offer certain products when it relates to an item that a visitor is looking at. It’s a great way of upselling! Once your sales start rolling in you’ll need a way of reporting your sales & expenses so your shopping cart should be integrated with an accounting package such as QuickBooks.

These are the most important aspects of any shopping cart software. With that said, I invite you to learn more about what Quick Shopping Cart has to offer and how user friendly and feature rich the application is.

As I mentioned, in my next post I’ll get into merchant accounts and how to accept credit cards.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com