Summary:

You’ve already spent a lot of time in getting all your ducks lined up so that your first website will be a real winner. Did you forget something? Maybe yes – and here are some items that are critical to making sure that your new website is a success. Critical, as in “how do I collect the money for the things I sell?” I’d call that critical, wouldn’t you?

How to Collect Money?

If you are trying to make money with your blog, you absolutely, positively need a way to get it from your prospect to your own account, right? The most popular way is using PayPal – a subsidiary of eBay. PayPal does all the things you would like to do, and maybe even others you never thought of – but beware their quirks. For example, if your income suddenly jumps up, say from $50 per day to $1000 per day – PayPal is likely to shut you down – why? It’s called “suspicious activity.” You’re ecstatic – the new tweak that you just applied has payed off in spades, but to PayPal, it looks strange compared with the steady $250-350 per week you have been bringing in. Also, you may have overshot your yearly limit at the same time! Getting this straightened out can be very difficult and it can cost you numerous sales and maybe also give you excessive refunds. They (PayPal) also keep your money while things are getting straightened out!

PayPal has some slick button images that you are allowed AND required to use PROVIDED (of course) that you are signed up with a PayPal account, and that you abide by their rules and regulations (read them on the PayPal website here https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/ebook/PP_ExpressCheckout_IntegrationGuide/PlacementDesign.html – it’s the latest one for the USA market, I think).

PayPal looks so great, until you run across one of their problem areas. The first solution? Read ALL the rules and do it their way. The next solution? More than one way to collect money! The most reliable way is a so-called merchant account at a responsible bank. What is that? It’s the one way you can accept major credit cards online (or offline) without anybody else in the middle. We are not yet using one, partly because of our geopolitical location. Also because we have not yet found one that serves all our requirements with reasonable costs. Google, as you might expect, was not to be outdone by eBay, and has created Google Checkout. It seems to function like PayPal, but the problem areas are not so well defined as yet.

Internet guru Mike Filsaime (see the point farther along in the posts) recommends Power Pay at e-powerpay.com. They are the merchant processor within the HSBC international banking organisation.

There are other operations such as AlertPay and SafePay, but to be honest, if you are used to credit cards or PayPal, we find most of them somewhere between difficult and impossible to use, particularly from outside the USA, even as a client. Do you want international business? Go with PayPal, AlertPay, and/or an international merchant account. Since you are presumably starting small, PayPal and AlertPay sound like the logical first step solution, at least until you start getting some substantial business.

So, that’s about all there is to this step. Stay tuned for the next step – how to deliver your products to the clients in Step 4.2 – “Delivering Your Product”

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