2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Another favourite payment processor with online
marketers is ClickBank.com who also accept credit cards
on your behalf.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.