Posted by tigertom on Mar 17, 2009 in
internet Here are a few ideas for those checking out effective web design:
- - Use Freelances For Jobs You Lack The Skills For. Is your budget tight? Try scriptlance.com or rentacoder.com. The key to acquiring the best work is to a) be as clear as possible as to what you require and b) write your specification in simple, concise terms. Your project will likely be done by somebody who’s native language is not English. Most clients give an inexact specification and get work they’re unhappy with. Pick somebody who’s had a lot of positive reviews recently. Pay in stages. Use the freelance site’s escrow facility. Don’t expect to get more than you coughed up for, and don’t be a cheapskate; if somebody does a good job, they deserve a bonus, not carping.
- - Automate, Automate, Automate! The work involved in web design can be soul destroying. Before you get involved in some long design, submission or promotion process, consider whether you could get a software or a freelancer to do it for you. Or whether it ought to be done that way at all.
- - Install A Blogging Software Easily. Wordpress can be installed in minutes from the Fantastico section of Cpanel. It allows an amateur to put their ideas on the internet easily. You should get a search engine optimised theme for it; this will make Google index it properly. Such softwares are free; you needn’t pay money for them.
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- - Handy Software: 1. Easy Text To HTML Converter. This software can batch convert text files to HTML. See also: dirHtml. WordCleaner can convert Microsoft Word documents to HTML. 2. WinSCP. This is a very nifty piece of FTP software. 3. Putty Telnet/SSH Client. A simple-looking, but sophisticated, freeware telnet and SSH client. 4. CGI-Telnet. A cgi script that allows you to run commands on your server, even if your internet host won’t give you telnet access. 5. AXS Visitor Tracking System. A very fine hit counter. 6. Port 2096. If you have CPanel on your webhost, yourdomain.com:2096 is the internet address of your email accounts. 7. GetColor! This is a small, simple program to find out the colour code of any page or software on your desktop. 8. Arctan Bulk Replacer. This is an unusual thing, a search and replace program for the Windows desktop. 9. ‘1-4a Rename’. A batch file renamer. 10. Netscape Communicator 4.8. This has a very good email client (Netscape Messenger) and a handy WYSIWYG HTML editor (Netscape Composer) in it.
- - A Super-Simple Site: Use a text-to-html generator to create web pages from text files. Then use an index generator to make an index HTML page of these files. Tart these pages up in a WYSIWYG web page editor. Then FTP upload them to your webhosting account. Voila! A super-simple web site. Want something fancier? Get a web hosting account with Cpanel and Fantastico. Look for the ‘Wordpress’ option in Fantastico, and install it. Then get a search-engine optimized theme for your blog; the default install isn’t search engine friendly.
- - Use A Popular, Inexpensive Web Host. Here are a few winnowing criteria: Google PageRank of at least 5. Send them an email or two. See how long it takes to get a response. They ought to have a forum (another indication of popularity and customer support). Oodles of features offered (MySQL databases, Cpanel, Fantastico). Recent positive reviews in webmaster discussion boards. Offers Linux servers (Windows costs more, and offers less). Fee per month can be as low as $10, and still have all the features above.
- - Beware Of The Guru! There are hordes of semi-famous marketers and their fans out there selling courses, books and videos on how to earn lolly in internet marketing. They’re marketing tips on how to do marketing! Nice work if you can get it. The best advice you can get about internet marketing is on marketing forums. Even then, you have to use your own personal b.s. detector to sniff out the gems from the trash.
- - Web Host Technical Support. Technical support is as important as the software features a web host supplies. Some web hosts charge $10 per month and reply to backup tickets in twenty minutes. Some charge $40 per month and reply next day. As long as the question gets answered, this may may be acceptable. If the quality of the back-up goes down, however, it isn’t. One day you’ll need a quick answer to a very urgent problem. You will thank the gods you took pains to find, and pay for, a responsive internet host.
- - Webhost Features. Most geeks favour Unix. It’s been around longer, and is more stable. Web hosts offering Unix variants like Linux have always been less expensive. They also seem to offer a good deal more of toys. I need SSI (Server Side Includes), SSH (secure Telnet), 10 MySQL databases, Cpanel, PHPMyAdmin and a UK IP number. And you can acquire this for $15 a month. Things like MySQL databases, Cpanel and SSH access are real stumbling points for a lot of web hosts. If they’re generous with these, you’ve found a rare jewel.
- - Useful Freeware: 1. NVU Web Editor. This is a pretty good freeware web page editor. 2. GIMP Image Editor. This is a good image and photo manipulation package. 3. OpenOffice, an alternative to the Microsoft office suite. This can save you thousands if you need to buy multiple licences. 4. SimplyMepis. This a Linux operating system package. Like Damn Small Linux, it can be operated from a CD; handy in emergencies.
- - Selling Something Direct? Use A Simple Means Of Purchase. An intermediary service like PayPal is quite good to start with. If you have just a small number of products, their HTML buttons are a good way to test demand. When you bring in over $1000 a month, get a merchant account of your own.
- - Come Up For Air Occasionally. It’s very easy to get mired in the minutiae of this or that web project. There are folks whose _lives_ revolve around tweaking addons to open-source software. You should keep your eyes on the prize; what do you desire and what’s the most direct, legal way of acquiring it?
I hope these few simple suggestions will help you in getting handy web design and marketing done efficiently.
Niccolo Svengali is an author for
web site designer and
UK personal loans internet sites in London in the UK.
Posted by tigertom on Mar 17, 2009 in
dating Here are beginner pointers on checking out dating online and offline:
- - You should be very discriminating on free internet dating sites. Do you want to hook up with cheapskates? Criminals and weirdoes are more common on them too. Some people want to get hitched to get a passport. Some want to get you to send them money for airfare or their sick mother; these are scams. Some women are searching for ’sugar daddies’; a man to leech off of. Some are looking for someone who’ll put up with their intolerable behaviour; the very opposite of a loving relationship, where both parties look for ways to make the _other_ person happier. Conversely, if somebody has had to cough up some cash to join a dating site it means they are a bit more earnest and they’ve got a credit or debit card; a bit more comforting, but you can still easily land a wacko.
- - In any correspondence (email or paper or discussion boards or chat rooms), obey the following rules: Be polite and conventional to begin with. Do not assume familiarity with an absolute stranger. Do not utilize lecherous words or swear-words or blather about violent or cruel acts. Women hate this kind of thing, and it makes them fearful; “uh-oh, another net weirdie!” Don’t boast. Play Up your nicest qualities and your status in the course of the correspondence, but don’t brag. Listen to what she has to say, and talk about HER and her pursuits. Don’t badger her. If she doesn’t want to talk, or doesn’t reply, don’t bug her. Silence is an answer in itself. She may be occupied, she may have received mail from other guys initially, or she just ain’t interested. Again, you don’t want to be seen as a pest-weirdo-stalker. For your own sake, you should try to get a photograph of her as soon as is polite. A photo speaks a thousand words, and you may save yourself a lot of exertion. Even then, photographs can be old or faked or photoshopped, so ask for photographs from her recent holiday, or the like.
- - Paid internet dating sites are a better bet. Better yet is a specialist one. You reckon you’re open to all offers. In fact, in the back of your mind, you have a very specific set of criteria. Bring them to the foreground. Do you like slim or plump, tall or short, blonde or brunette, college-educated or not, extrovert or introverted? It’s smart also to go for people who are of the same faith as you. You might think it’s not crucial now, but when her kinfolk start getting engaged in your kid’s upbringing, it will matter a very great deal.
- - Race, religion and nationality are consequential. Carefree twenty-somethings think they aren’t. Married thirty-somethings find they are, to their regret. When you marry person, you link up two families. Someplace down the line race, religion or nationality will become _very_ consequential. Of these three, I think religion is the most important; it affects rudimentary beliefs about the nature of the cosmos and your position in it. In Catholicism, for example, the Catholic in a mixed marriage has to give an undertaking to rear any children as Catholics. If you don’t cover that issue before getting married, you have set the timer on a bomb which could damage or break-up your marriage. A non-religious Muslim may re-discover his faith in his 40’s; this could be a big problem for his non-Muslim wife. If your in-laws are of a different religion and you require their assistance or they start interfering in your marriage… forget Hollywood; it produces lies and fantasy. You don’t live in an urban, disconnected bubble when you get married, unlike young singles who ’shack up’ together. This is why Catholics have a six-month lead-in period to marriage; if their priest is a conservative and thoroughgoing, they will be asked some searching questions before they can walk down the aisle. And a good thing too! The world doesn’t need any more divorces and fatherless children, and the wretchedness such things cause.
- - Find someone who lives or works near you. A twenty-mile radius is about the limit; five-to-ten would be better. If you can’t get together easily you don’t have a relationship; it’s harder to go to a pub or a cafe or just go for a walk together spontaneously. Long-distance relationships only work for married people, for a short time; even then, soldiers still get divorced or the missus commits adultery or he does.
- - You have to give the impression that you are confident, moneyed, powerful, (and tender in private with her). If you don’t have these qualities, fake them. Women need to see potential, and the origin of the word potential is the Latin ‘potentia’, meaning power.
Got a real-life date? Great! Here are a few more tips …
- - Grooming: A man should be clean, fresh smelling, have well-cared for hands and feet, have clean socks, underwear and clothes, have ironed clothes, have a face that is clean shaven, or with a well-kept beard.
- - While you first make eye contact, smile. If she smiles back, you’re in. Then go up, and say hello. After that, take your cue from her. She likes you, so you don’t have to jabber. You can say the most trite things; it’s your appearance, and the sound of your voice, that’re doing most of the work. If you’re uneasy, just tell yourself: “plenty more fish in the sea if I mess this up”. Which is true!
- - Most crucial: Avoid embarrassing your date in public. Women hate to be the centre of attention for the wrong reasons. If you’re behaving like a little boy or an obnoxious brute you’re using up your credit every second that ticks by.
- - Social skills: A man should ideally be gregarious, with a coterie of jovial friends. He ought be able to hold knowledgeable discussions on an extensive variety of subjects. A man should be observant. He ought to acknowledge when a woman has changed her appearance. He ought to notice when she is unhappy. When necessitated he should not stay silent, but offer compliments or understanding. He should, however, also know that no knight ever won a fair lady by being meek and mild. You’re not obliged to put up with narcissistic behaviour. Don’t take women’s ‘crises’ too seriously. They certainly don’t. One day all is lost, the next day all is well. A strong man holds it all in. A strong woman (or a nutcase!) explodes. Regularly.
- - Some women hanker for a man who is ‘macho’, tyrannical, even a little bit cruel. Emphasis on the little bit. You keep her attention by seeming to be complex and unpredictable. You may act tyrannical, dominating, even a little sadistic. Check her responses closely when you do. If she takes pleasure in submitting to you, a spark in her eye, a suddenly more positive response to you; you may be dealing with a woman who has a masochistic motive to be mistreated and controlled. If such conduct comes easily to you, it can be very efficacious with such a woman. One caveat; masochists like their pain on THEIR terms ultimately. You’ll need to take your cue from her, not just shove her about haphazardly. Moderation is key here.
- - A bad habit: smoking. If you smoke, you’re cutting yourself off from the company of legions of women. I know the weed is diabolically difficult to kick. The brain craves it. But many women won’t go out with you if you smoke. Apart from the outcome on your health, it makes your hair and clothes to smell terrible, and your mouth to savour of an ashtray. Give the grubby habit up, and spend the cash you save turning yourself out nicely.
- - Smiling and touching: A smile shows that you are well disposed towards somebody. Ensure you stand the correct distance away. Near, but not ‘in her face’. You are focusing on her, and her alone; with your soft-spoken jests and earnest interest in what she is saying, you draw her nearer. Nod, smile, chuckle, tease her. Touch her arm while speaking to her. A slightly prurient remark may be fitting, to test how far you can go. You need to drive out the idea that you might be ‘just being chummy’.
- - A snazzy car is an important plus in your search for l’amour. Second-hand sports or classic autos can cost just as much as a new ’sensible’ car, and are a lot more fun. Screw the fuel consumption and the insurance! Women say they disapprove of big muscles in men and their big autos. What they really mean is they dislike men who are obsessed with or who are nothing more than their big muscles or their big cars. If you have both, and can project sensitiveness and authority, you’re three-quarters’ way home. Failing this, get an auto with character like a Morris Minor or a VW Beetle. What you’re targeting is the kind of auto a lady would like to be be found in. If it’s fashion models you want, you need a flash auto. If it’s arty-crafty types, get a ‘character’ car. It depends on your social milieu, and your own persona i.e. a student in a liberal arts faculty would look odd with a BMW, but upon reflection I think he’d be quite popular! Even the fact that you have any kind of car at all will be a bonus; ladies like to be chauffeured, and it opens up many more romantic possibilities. Just keep in mind it’s only a prop in your ‘act’.
- - You’ll have a great deal more self-assurance if you’ve got some cash in the bank, a flat and a motorcar of your own; these ought to be a priority. You ought to also dress well. Dressing well means your appearance oozes power: you’re in control of your destiny. Women like to be looked after; project that you can do that, and you’re half-way home. Your personal circumstances likewise affect how you behave: a man who is actually well-to-do will project that unconsciously, and be more successful with women.
- - Romance: Champagne, moonlight, soft words eloquently uttered, and flowers are arousing to most women. Those who try to get on with women, and talk easily about their pre-occupations, are more successful with women, than less thoughtful types.
- - Women want you to like and look up to and care for them. Casanova was successful with women not because he was good-looking (he was rather plain), but because he truly appreciated them. The archetypical latin lover is very solicitous and complimentary to his quarry, and treats her like a princess, a donna. He says she is the most exquisite woman in the world, and means it. Oh, she laughs at this, but see how she glows too. Most men treat women like an alien specie, or objects to be acquired, as s-x toys, or as cranky incoherent nuisances. A man that accepts a woman precisely as she is, with genuine admiration, can have any woman he wants.
- - Conspicuous consumption shows that you are not stingy with your cash. Demonstrate this by spending some on her, or giving her some! Don’t be a tomfool, however; if the interpersonal chemistry ain’t there, on BOTH sides, move on. You can’t pester or bribe a woman into loving you, ‘though they may be loath to turn away a ’sugar daddy’ entirely. When true love strikes, you’ll both know it; accept no alternative!
- - Examine your responses to women objectively. You’ll find that a favourite type emerges: slim or plump, brunette or fair, extrovert or introvert. There’s a pop or movie star that you can’t help but gawp at when she’s on the screen. There’s a type that causes your head to swivel when you’re walking down the street. That’s the type you should go for; the one that arouses an automatic, positive response. You’ll find it easier to talk to this kind of girl. If you have found your true love she’ll feel the same way about you. You have genes that’ll help her make a better baby; she does the same for you.
- - Don’t over-think it. We are pulled to a certain type, with whom we can make a better baby; more robust, fitter, brighter, better accommodated to its environs. Other types just don’t click with us, ‘though we can acknowledge intellectually they are attractive. It’s a heart thing, a guts thing, and parts lower down. The head merely gives its acquiescence to a decision already made.
I hope these few beginner pointers will assist you in finding a nice girl through online and offline dating.
Nick Svengali is an author for
free online dating service and
self improvement web sites in London, UK.
Posted by tigertom on Mar 17, 2009 in
marketing Here are a few pointers on how to earn extra money from home online:
- - One of the most popular ‘home business’ jobs is associate marketing. This is usually accomplished through businesses which offer affiliate programs that you can join up with. Most famous concerns have a lot of recognizable brands to offer to affiliate marketers. Selling other peoples’ goods and earning a fee is the easiest way to get going.
- - If you’re not familiar with search-engine marketing, it’s necessary to understand how it works. You use search-engines to get surfers to visit your web site. 80 to 95 per-cent of your sites surfers will come from search engines, unless you’ve created a ‘viral’ product of your own, or a ‘buzzing’ forum or blog.
- - Social-media should be given due consideration. Social media sites are changing the way people connect with one another. Your success or failure is decided by your approach. The most important part of a successful social media plan is the content on your profile page. Use them to your advantage. Micro-blogging sites can have embedded web addresses that tell users about products. Free blog networks can help you build search engine optimisation into your web sites as well. There are tons of ways to exploit social media. Look to other media types to publicise your wares.
- - A simple method of making money on the internet is to sell domain names. You can approach businesses which are already on the internet and present to them a domain-name superior than the one they’ve got. If a business thinks your jazzy name would be beneficial for them, you can set to doing a deal with them. If you’ve a flair for this form of thing an eight dollar investment can pay off hugely.
- - Making a website is fairly easy, that’s only half the battle. It’s also important to drive traffic and learn how to sell your website. The problem with working on the web is that 99 per-cent of these cash-making opportunities offered are a waste of time and (your) cash.
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- - Don’t only click on every advert you come across to find income sources; try to find networked groups of WAHMs (work-at-home moms) who have found success in earning money on the web or off and ask them for tips. They can give you some ideas about which programmes are actually worth investing in. Investigate message-boards and forums. Some message-boards allow users to post links in the body of a message. Make sure you read all the forum policies carefully prior to attempting this, or you may be banned for spamming.
- - The difficult part of selling online is staying with the enterprise until it begins to make a profit. You find advice spammed all over the Web, but how much of it can you believe in? Internet scams exist in their thousands, each one designed to bait suckers with the promise of quick and easy cash.
- - Pay Per Click (PPC) might well bring in a good conversion, but each click costs cash. The majority of professional marketing experts will tell you that getting involved in Natural Search is excellent value for your cash.
- - Toddle over to Clickbank.com to find the most recent products. Look for a product that’s popular, but make sure it’s one you know something about. Potential purchasers discount marketers that are ignorant of the product they’re selling, which causes them to be more unlikely to buy it.
- - Article writing is a fine means of website or self promotion. You can also author articles for other people for money, but the most webmasters will offer you is about twenty-five dollars, and often it’s a lot less. Article directories allow you to include a promo piece about yourself and your website to encourage people to visit it. You can also get more potential clients by creating an e-book and using blogs to publicize these.
- - Online success is easy; it just requires a plan. Most webmasters just try anything and everything, haphazardly. You can contact a wide range of consumers and communicate with anyone in the world, speedily. You can use your email opt-in list to send data about your special offers, products and newsletters; whatever you think your potential customers want.
- - Keywords are very important to your websites traffic campaign, but how you make use of them is also significant. Some websites do “key word stuffing” where they create near-random sequences of words to draw in search engine bots. Search engines have algorithms that can catch this and will penalise rather than promote the offending website.
- - Associate programmes are a very useful source of cash-flow. Most internet promotion strategists make the mistake of not developing their client base enough to actually sell their product. Affiliate programs can build your prospect base quickly.
- - If you have a web site set up, you need to design it. All your site needs to include is a review page about your products with user testimonials stating that each item works well and is worth purchasing.
- - You can try reciprocal linking. This is an agreement between website owners to hyperlink to each others’ websites. It’s a good way get a web site off the ground, but you need one-way backlinks to get search-engine ‘love’. It’s a good idea to link to sites that sell compatible but not competing items.
- - Most people who want to earn money via the internet start out working part-time to see if it’s a worthy project before jumping in and stumping up a big investment. Dropship opportunities give you a chance to give it a go for little to no money investment upfront. Create a database of websites that have the kind of viewership your product requires so you can emulate their wheezes and techniques. In drop shipping the vendor simply organises the deal and makes cash from it when a third party company ships it. There’s much less effort involved and it gives excellent rewards if you discover your niche. You can increase trust in your product range by distributing information about them through email newsletters.
- - Commit time to testing out various strategies in order to discover the ones that work best. Select a business type that you find agreeable and that you are keen on. Then research the industry. Start your own website or blog. Build a mailing list. Replicated associate sites won’t provide that for you. Start with what you know.
- - Be cautious of worldwide web marketing scams; they can take every euro you have. Most scams sound good. If you stick to affiliate marketing, you can’t go too badly wrong, unless you invest in PPC marketing to get traffic, and select the wrong keywords.
- - SEO (search-engine optimization) is the means whereby you push your web site up Search-Engine Result Pages (SERPs). At least 80% of all internet traffic now starts at a search engine. You can engage an SEO expert, but choose carefully; an inexpert one can destroy your rankings and get your website banned. Always get references on reputable webmaster forums. A top notch web marketing company will work very closely with your server logs, web analytics, and any additional statistics they can get hold of. This helps the creation and optimization of any ad campaign.
- - Blogging can draw visitors by co-ordinating link-exchanges with other blogs and making more contacts within the blogging community.
- - You can do everything from freelance work, such as writing or web design, to selling goods you’ve sourced yourself on the internet. If you’d rather work in a steady job you can get into remote admin, telecommuting, and work-from-home opportunities.
- - One-way backlink building is a method to publicize your site. Paid links allow you to get listed in web directories that post good quality web sites and offer links to your sites for a fee.
- - The more visitors you draw the greater the possibility of more money. Place content-rich pages on each one of your web sites and include keywords that will climb to the top of search-engine results and increase traffic volumes. Research in advance, don’t just work on an ad-hoc basis.
- - Purchase a web address that’s very similar to to the affiliate marketing product you’re trying to publicise. Do not, however, infringe on the copyright of a registered brand. That may annoy the brand owner.
- - An excellent way to make money online is by generating and then flipping web sites. You can either flog your own website, or you may buy a new website, increase its worth, and then sell it on. Site-flipping can be risky; it calls for a large amount of upfront investment. Thanks to the growth of greater usability, purchasing and selling web sites has become easier. It is considered a regular business venture, and people are making nice money from it. The market is always looking for good web sites. If more traffic is attracted to your website each day, the value of your domain will be higher. Before putting a website up for sale, make it look nice and attractive. Ensure it meets the specifications of likely buyers. Web sites that flog other sites ask for minimal data about your website, such as how many visitors it attracts and how much revenue you are earning from it monthly. The more transparent the data is, the simpler it will be for you to sell. When buyers are convinced about the quality of your site, they will start bidding.
- - When your enterprise is off the ground, if your product is not selling, drop it and try another. Do not hang about hoping that it will sell; it probably won’t.
- - Increase hits using keywords. You can find tons of keyword suggestion tools that generate a list of keywords on a chosen niche. You can make use of these to attract potential customers to your sales page. Most associate marketing programmes offer up to 75 percent commission on every sign-up you generate for them, so they do all the hard labour, and you rake in the cash! What you are doing is being their sales rep. Salesmen are traditionally very well remunerated, as they bring the money in.
- - Online promotion requires brand name exposure. Content on your site needs to be optimised. Get your name all over the Internet in order to generate worthwhile visitor numbers. Targetted traffic is what you’re aiming for; if you get a viral video on Youtube about hang-gliding, but you’re selling mortgages, you won’t make any moolah off it.
- - Blogs are handy for generating interest, but don’t think you can get one well-known in a few days. As a way into marketing, they are fairly quick and easy to set up. Research web-based tutorials and related forums. Or you can hire someone else to create the blog for you. For the time being a hosting account with Cpanel and Fantastico installed will allow you to install a no-frills blog at the press of a button.
- - There are a variety of alternatives for researching internet marketing. These alternatives include reading paperback books, reading affiliate marketers blogs, lurking in webmaster forums, clever search engine queries and paying attention to other successful online marketing campaigns.
I hope these few simple suggestions will be of some use to you in your marketing efforts.
Niccolo Svengali is an internet marketer for
make extra money online and
internet marketing web sites in London, Great Britain.
Posted by tigertom on Mar 16, 2009 in
business Here are beginner tips on looking for good quality merchant account services:
- - Examine Fees Charged. There are many different services out there and as a result there are diverse fees assessed to transactions. If you utilize credit-card processing services you will be charged: A monthly fee, a discount rate which is essentially a percentage of the price of the product sold and a transaction fee. There are also other fees applied by some providers so you should watch out for that.
- - Telltale Signs You Need One. A company that has high revenue and takes in large sums of cash each month, as well as companies with special ecommerce needs and those that are high risk. Fully assess your venture as well as potential services to make sure you find the right fit. It is important to base your decision on all the data rather than just the fees.
- - If you believe you have found the perfect merchant a/c service because the discount rate is very low, the application processing is free, and approval is guaranteed then you’re likely making a mistake. You sign up for one of these low-discount, overnight-approval account providers. Then, several weeks after your company information has been reviewed you receive your real discount rates, transaction fees, and other fees associated with your account which are nowhere near the ‘economical’ or ‘free’ plan you thought applied for.
- - Receiving payments online is not as simple as you might think and when a client purchases something online there are three steps the cash goes through before it actually gets to your bank a/c. These include a payment gateway, Internet merchant account, and your site.
- - Payment Gateway. This is basically Internet code that communicates the payment information made on your internet site to the Internet merchant provider. In this process you’ll be able to accept all the credit or debit card data the provider needs in order to process the payment including full name and address, credit-card number, type of card, expiration date, phone number and any other required info. Once all of this info is collected the card may then be billed. After the payment gateway has accepted the payment info details they are transferred to the credit-card processing account provider which is simply a financial institution that allows you to process credit-card payments. The payment gateway provides the bank with the info and then the credit-card can be billed.
- - Don’t expect to toddle down to your local bank and receive cc processing a/c services because they most likely are not available. There are many online credit card credit-card processing account services that do offer this service however and will probably be your best bet.
merchant account services | merchant account providers
- - The billing process will be completed on and integrated with your internet site where the client will finish the order processing and then be able to sign out or print confirmation numbers that the order was placed successfully. While there seems to be a lot involved in processing a simple online order it actually occurs rapidly and most clients never know their data is traveling to so many places.
- - Rates: You are likely interested in the average fees charged by these companies. Since there are so many different online credit-card credit-card processing a/c providers on the Internet to choose from there are also a multitude of payment structures. In general, however, rates include: Application fee due up front, Discount rate, Termination fee, Monthly fee, Transaction rate and a variety of Miscellaneous fees.
- - Things to avoid, if you can: a) Expensive credit-card processing softwares rental or hire-purchase. b) Monthly fees. c) High discounts (the % of your sales they keep). d) Fat fees up front (anything over $500 is a joke). e) Salesmen calling you up with a scripted pitch. f) Getting lumbered with renting their shopping cart software as well. Also if they want a down-payment, and the size of their application fee. And the usual monthly minimums, discounts etc.
- - Internet merchant accounts: If you have a merchant a/c you can take credit card from anyone in any country, but if you are taking them over the phone or the internet you must be authorised for ‘card not present’ transactions. If you’re taking credit-card details over the internet, specify that you want an _internet_ credit card processing a/c. This is important. ‘Card not present’ transactions attract more fraud; if you do them with an ordinary cc processing a/c you risk losing it.
- - Set up a secure order form on the internet, and get ecommerce merchant accounts, you can trade world-wide. Ecommerce credit-card processing a/cs come in two varieties: Third party, whereby you ‘pimp’ off somebody else’s account, and a true ecommerce credit-card processing a/c, which is yours and yours alone. This latter option not as handy as it sounds if your payment gateway vendor (the service that funnels your orders to the bank) doesn’t have good fraud protection. If you’re just starting out, or you have a low volume of sales, utilize a third-party provider to start with. See how it goes, get a feel for the business, then change.
- - If your ecommerce cc processing account is terminated for reasons of fraud, you will find it very hard to get another one. Effectively, you go on a blacklist. The good news is that most gateway vendors now have good fraud protection. Still, vigilance is necessary. If an order seems suspicious, a bit too good to be true, it probably is.
- - If you have a bank a/c of years standing, a good credit rating, or a business bank account, there’s no reason you can’t get an ecommerce cc processing account.
- - If you want to sell on the internet, you need to accept credit cards. To accept credit-cards, you need a cc processing a/c, or access to one. There’re two ways of getting this: Get your own credit-card processing account, or ‘pimp’ off somebody else’s.
- - You can utilise a third-party to process your payments. They take a percentage of the sale. These are very good if you’re just beginning in business or you have a small business. They also offer more options for payment. This encourages sales. Here are some popular ones: 2Checkout.Com, WorldPay.Com, PayPal.Com and Google Checkout.
- - Chargebacks: A chargeback occurs when somebody asks their cc company for a refund. They claim they didn’t get the goods, or they bought the goods, or the products were not as advertised. This is passed on to the processor, who in turn debits the merchant. Or drops him entirely. You don’t want too many of these.
- - Don’t leave large amounts of money ‘on deposit’ in any web-based company; they’re not banks, and even banks go bust sometimes.
- - Third-party factoring sites have to be very stringent; they are answerable to their own credit-card processing account provider. Too many bogus orders and they go out of business. This is why third-party factoring services like 2Checkout are very useful to a greenhorn merchant: fraud prevention. They can screen out dodgy orders.
- - Most sellers would like to think they can sell worldwide. The fact is most of the world is impoverished; MOST countries can’t afford your products. So some citizens attempt to acquire them illicitly. A smart merchant would forbid most of the world from accessing his cart and only accept orders from the USA, Australia, Canada, Western Europe and New Zealand, and his home country. Harsh, but you’ll rest easier at night.
- - If an order looks dodgy, it probably is. Contact the client by email or ‘phone. If you don’t get a satisfactory reply or doubts remain, refund the card. Don’t let greed cause you to make a mistake.
- - When you’re making $1000+ a month, get your own cc processing a/c. Look for ‘merchant services’ at your local bank. Having one’s own credit card processing a/c means paying less in processing fees.
I hope these few beginner ideas will be of some use to you in looking for inexpensive merchant account services.
About the author: Nicky Svengali is an author for
merchant account providers and
web hosting provider internet sites in London in the UK.