Ecommerce Seek

If you’re selling anything online, you’ll need to be able to accept online payments.

There are many ways you can do this, but let’s simplify it down to the hard way and the easy way.

The hard way requires you set up a merchant bank account and then sign up, at quite some considerable expense, to accept online payments on your account. Not only will you have to pay a percentage of each payment you receive, but there is often a monthly charge for running the account too. If you start getting into big figures, you may even find that the bank holds back a sum of money due to you for chargebacks.

A chargeback is where a buyer asks for their money back - either due to fraud or because they are unhappy with the product you have supplied. There are stories of some companies holding back large sums of money to cover the cost of chargebacks.

That’s the hard way!

Now for the easy way.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you’ll have heard of Paypal. It’s easy to set up and account to take payment for goods, downloadable Ebooks and subscriptions without the need to set up a merchant account.

This online payment system is the quickest and easiest way to accept payment online with cards such as Visa, Mastercard and Maestro on your site. It’s easy to open a Paypal account and start accepting payment online immediately.

This article was submitted by Jennifer Carter. Start your own Internet Businesses.

Tags: online, internet, home, chargeback, payment, website, paypal, merchant, businesses, business

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My Business is Afraid of the Internet

Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, once said that there would soon be two types of businesses, those online, and those out of business. Those words still ring true today, and many small businesses are missing a huge boat by not getting online.

A good portion of small businesses have been around for a while, long before banner ads and even email became so wildly popular. These owners built their business from the ground-up, working hard and long to develop their products and services. These owners see great value in hard work, and for that they should be applauded.

As technology increases, hard work changes forms. Today, every business, from a babysitter to a widget manufacturer should have a website. An estimated 60% of homes in the US now have broadband, and nearly 90% have at least one computer. These numbers cannot be ignored by business owners and marketing teams. People are flocking to the Internet to find phone numbers, local merchants, and new friends.

No longer can businesses dismiss the Internet as a fad. The amount of online sales in 2003 surpassed $6 Billion.

Even if a business has no physical merchandise to sell, there are still plenty of reasons to have their information online. Contact numbers, addresses, and maps can save receptionists time on the phone. Forms that need to be submitted can be printed and filled out before customers come in. Newsletters can help promote any business and upcoming sales.

Websites can be very cost-effective to build. For just a small investment you could be online in a matter of days.

No business should be afraid of the Internet. If your business is, or you are, you?d better get hold of someone that can help you, and fast!

by William Hanke

About the Author
Will Hanke is a self-proclaimed geek who owns and operates Lighthouse Technologies (http://www.techlh.com), a web development and hosting company based in Arnold, Missouri. For questions or comments, email him at will@techlh.com. And buy yourself a good virus program so he doesn?t have to fight your emails with anti-virus spray.

Tags: small, online, internet, ceo, page, information, design, marketing, hosting, business

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Google Adsense has just become more powerful overnight. As if it wasn’t enough that Google now gives you $100 for every successful referral to their Adsense program but, advertisers can now battle for placements within your own websites as well.

That’s right, with every Adsense box you add to your site, you can now sign up for “Onsite Advertiser” which ads a button to all your Adsense boxes on your site that states:

“Advertise On This Site”… This new link takes advertisers to a unique landing page (which will include your logo if you upload one) which allows advertisers to advertise specifically within your own Adsense boxes located on your site.

For Some, This Could Be Very Powerful!

Let me break it down for you if you still don’t understand the implication of this. If someone wants to target your site through their Adwords program, they can now have a bidding war with other advertisers! Your Adsense account that would typically make anywhere around $100.00 a month could potential make $1,000.00 a month! If you get the right advertiser that is willing to pay to have their ads displayed on your site, the sky is the limit. If you get multiple advertisers that want to display their Adwords on your site, your site could turn into a gold mine!

For Some Website Owners, This Could Be Devastating!

The harsh reality of this newly found fortune through your Adsense program could mean the demise of your website advertising packages that aren’t part of Google. If you run advertising on your site, your sales could potential drop from the sheer amount of times visitors will be subject to Google’s Onsite Advertiser program.

At least the choice is yours whether or not to have Google Onsite Advertiser installed within your Adsense boxes. There’s no cost to you, all you have to do is log into your Adsense account. Under “My Account” at the top, go to the bottom of the page and fill in your Google Onsite Advertiser profile. That’s it, Google does the rest.

I am curious to see the results of this new program and would definitely like to here some success stories come out of this program.

What Does This Mean For Advertisers???

Finally, you have all the control of your Adwords campaign. You can now not only target specific websites to advertise in, you can physically bid specifically for one specific website whenever you want.

This also means that PPC just got more homework. Not that you already have enough research, bidding, key word analyzing to do, you now have to study every website you visit for potential advertising.

Another Implication No One Might Think About!!!

SEO Companies are probably loving this new feature. Google has now given SEO companies a new service to offer their clients and visitors. Internet marketing companies can now increase the amount of work they do for their PPC client’s campaigns!

In Conclusion:

There are ups and downs of this new Onsite Advertiser program anyway you look at it. For me though, I would love nothing more than to see advertisers fight for ad placements on my websites.

About The Author:

Martin Lemieux is the owner of Smartads. We help business owners to increase their marketing efforts online and offline. Today’s Topic “Pay Per Click“.

Pay Per click Tips:
http://www.smartads.info/articles/ppc

Ezine Article Directory (PPC Articles):
http://www.article99.com/internet-marketing/pay-per-click

Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article on your website as long as the entire article remains the same, including the resource box.

Tags: internet, advertising, site, website, promotion, online, web, google, marketing

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