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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.
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Handy Guides: eCommerce
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