Merchant account services are the services that allow you to accept credit cards as payments, both online and off, and help you handle the credit card transaction processing. Without merchant accounts, your customers would have to pay with cash or check- and believe it or not, most customers will spend more if they can swipe their card and worry about the bill later.

The Cost of Accepting Credit Cards

Merchant accounts can be costly. There are numerous providers of merchant accounts that are reputable and offer good value for their service- but there are even more providers of merchant accounts that charge excessive fees and have hidden expenses that you were not aware of when agreeing to use their service to accept credit cards online.

Fees range from per transaction fees (usually a percentage or a few cents on each card processed) to monthly or annual maintenance fees that can range from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.

Online Businesses Need Merchant Accounts

Online merchant accounts are crucial to having a successful online business venture. Consider it from the eyes of a customer: if you were on a website, looking to buy a widget, would you want to take the time to mail a check or money order, or do you plan on making a purchase right then with your debit or credit card? Most people don’t want to take the time to write and mail a check or money order for an online purchase- not having the ability to accept credit or debit cards will severely hurt your business as an online merchant.

As the merchant, credit and debit cards make your life easier, as well. You get your money much faster than waiting for a customer to write and mail a check or money order; and you don’t have to wait for the payment to clear the bank before you can mail out their purchase. Credit card payments offer you payment within a day or two of the customer putting in the card details.

Deciding if a Merchant Account is Worth the Fees

So are the fees that are paid for merchant accounts worth the value the accounts provide your business? It all depends on the type of business you are operating and the volume of sales you process on a given month, as well as the merchant account provider you choose to go with. Merchant account providers are not a one-size-fits-all solution for every business, and you really need to do a little research before selecting a provider. Consider the per transaction fee, the application fee, monthly maintenance fee, set up fee, and any annual membership charges you must pay. Do you have to purchase or lease any special equipment? Is the software for processing online credit card payments included in the service, or is that an additional fee?

Once you have that information for a few different merchant account providers, you can determine what you believe your credit card sales will be each month. This may be difficult to do, but make your best estimate based on your current level of sales and the idea that people typically spend more with a credit card than they do with cash.

Determine what fees you’ll pay on your estimated amount of sales each month, and see if it makes sense to pay for a merchant account. As mentioned previously, if your plan is to operate an online business- you really need a way to accept credit card payments online in order to become successful.

This article has been provided by Creditor Web. Creditor Web has the articles and other credit card processing resources to help you choose the right provider.

eBay announced the arrival of one of their new features recently that has added some great new content to their ever growing online shopping site. eBay Guides and Reviews, this new feature, lets the average layperson or writer display their opinions, facts and any information they may have gathered on a subject and create an article to display for others. This huge database of consumer information on subjects ranging from the task office chair to the greatest new CD from Korn can help consumers find information and help them to better make educated purchases on the products they are interested in.

Recently when looking for a new duvet cover for my comforter, I was interested in a particular brand with a hefty price tag. Although I knew that this was the pattern and colors I wanted, it was not in my nature to just place the order for something with that big of a price tag without at least finding out more about the manufacturer. I decided to “google it” and find information on this brand. Clicking off of the eBay homesite and onto google’s home page, I was surprised to find that the first three pages to appear when typing in this brand name for a search on google, were on eBay.

I ended up clicking on the link and was directed back to eBay, where I just had left, and I was able to find a ton of information regarding the manufacturer, the materials used and even was able to find reviews of the exact comforter and pattern that I had been looking at. I had no idea that eBay offered such great content and information for free to anyone looking. I was able to make an educated decision on eBay’s site and find the absolutely lowest price anywhere online without having to click around all over the place.

As an owner of an eBay store myself, specializing in Office Chairs and Furniture, I had long been aware of all of the great deals that were available in eBay and always check eBay first when looking for the lowest online price. Now I am pleased to find that I can also access great product details, information and reviews to help me with my purchase. It made it simple to navigate and I feel better that I know I am getting the information from an old and trusted friend in eBay.

Author, Amy Pedersen is penned as Sit On This Ergonomics featured Ergonomic Insider. Having worked in the ergonomics and office industry for over 10 years now, she is currently co-founder of Sit On This Ergonomics, operating a number of Ergonomic Sites dedicated to office chairs and the practice of good workplace ergonomics for better seating and productivity.

Featuring a wide variety of executive, leather, mesh and task office chairs with an online sales catalog, their website also provides detailed ergonomic information on proper work chair positioning.

Office Chairs and Furniture:
Office Chair Catalog

Ergonomics Detailed:
More Ergonomic Info

What is ecommerce? Ecommerce of course is the art or process of doing business online. You can call it whatever you want, but a tiger by a different name is still a tiger. And that is the way I feel.

You can call ecommerce web business, you can call ecommerce online business, you can call ecommerce home internet business – you can call it anything you want – but it is basically the art of making money online.

So what are the basics to making money with ecommerce?

There are two basics to making money online, with ecommerce? One is that of traffic, and the other is conversions. You have to have conversions to make any money online, and you have to have traffic to get conversions, that is for sure.

So how do you get conversions? One of the big things is that you have to develop a relationship with your traffic. And I think the best way to create a relationship with your traffic is to build a list – that way you can communicate with them on a regular basis.

And the best way, in my opinion, to get traffic is by writing articles and submitting them to the various online article directories – commonly called article marketing.

So your pattern for making money with ecommerce, if you apply the basics, and you do the basics the very best way possible – then you will drive traffic using article marketing and you will build conversions with list building. That is the way I do it – article marketing and list building for making profits in ecommerce.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 900 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

It is a popular assumption by many people that there is no money left to be made in the Internet. Those big boys at eBay, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Amazon have eaten all the pie. Or so they think.

Wrong! There is more money than ever to be made on the Internet. The pie is getting bigger and bigger every day.

People see the competition on the Internet and wonder, how are they going to make money?

Let me tell you how - simply by tapping into a worldwide market, a feat that was unachievable by most companines before the Internet came along.

Internet commerce sales now comprises of 12% of all retail revenue. This is expected to reach 25% in 2012. Ok, so 75% will still belong to offline sales.

But humor me, how many of these offline businesses are able to target a worldwide market? More specifically, how many of these businesses merely sell to their local neighbourhood or city? And how many of these businesses operate 24 hours a day?

While the costs of doing business in the real world is increasing, costs of doing online retail is decreasing. To book a domain name in 1999 cost $40, now you can buy one for $8 or less.

Every year, the number of people going online is increasing. The opportunity to tap into these new people who get online every year, and turn them into customers, is an opportunity not to be missed.

So if you’re wondering whether or not there is still money to be made on the Internet, you’d better believe there is!

Fabian Tan makes a short trip to his office everyday – his home! In 2006, he ‘murdered’ his job and now earns a solid income online. Go behind the scenes to discover more of his job-killing strategies and secrets at MurderYourJob.com

How do you create a compelling offer? An offer that will make people buy? This is one of the main problems many online retailers face. Yes, you can drive traffic to your website. But if it dosen’t convert to sales, then your effort was in vain.

In my travels on the Internet, there have been two types of retailers that I have come across: The Generous Retailer and The Stingy Retailer.

The first retailer gives you the feeling that you had the best offer in months or years, an offer you felt had ridiculous value! This retailer will really overdeliver and make you feel that you got a fantastic deal not offered anywhere else.

The Stingy Retailer gives you the feeling after the sale that you have overpaid or even been scammed.

Which retailer do you want to be? I know which one I want to be!

So how do you create absolutely irresistible offers on the web?

First of all, give them something free to take away or download! Give them bonuses by the truckload! Then put a timescale on your offer. Make it a limited offer. And then be true to your word..

The word ‘free’ is always exciting. By giving away so many free items, you make sure the customer will think he is totally insane not to click that Buy button!

And the feeling of scarcity always creates urgency and fear. Set a time limit to your offer, or only offer a limited amount of your product. Give the customer a reason not to wait, put a deadline to your offer, or he might never return.

Use these time-tested tips and your conversion rates are sure to soar. You’ll be making more sales in no time at all.

Fabian Tan makes a short trip to his office everyday – his home! In 2006, he ‘murdered’ his job and now earns a solid income online. Go behind the scenes to discover more of his job-killing strategies and secrets at MurderYourJob.com

Is setting up a payment merchant gateway on the Internet really expensive?

An aspiring Internet entrepreneur a few years ago would need hundreds of dollars to set up his own ordering system and shopping cart on the Internet. Now that has changed. It is now far easier to get started than ever before.

Imagine if you can set up an ordering system for a price so low, your first few sales will immediately cover it’s costs.

At an offline store, buying the cashier equipment (or POS machine) and hiring a cashier at that, will cost thousands of dollars. And it is something you have to pay for and maintain every month.

On the Internet, just set up once and you are done. Your ‘cashier autobot’ works for you 24 hours round the clock, 365 days a year, dosen’t demand benefits, dosen’t get tired, and dosen’t need to be fed.

How much does this cost, you are asking? Well it can be as low as nothing. At paydotcom.com, you can set a shopping system for free. A small percentage of your sales (1%-5%) goes to them, but it is a drop in the ocean.

If you want a more established service, Clickbank.com provides it for you. For $50 your completely secure and efficient payment gateway is set up.

For those with a tight budget, you can also go for Paypal. All these services allow you to process credit cards with no risk (and I hate risk) on your part, because the processor handles all the work for you.

Fabian Tan makes a short trip to his office everyday – his home! In 2006, he ‘murdered’ his job and now earns a solid income online. Go behind the scenes to discover more of his job-killing strategies and secrets at MurderYourJob.com

Every year there are new things to look out for when you are on the internet. Trends change very rapidly and we have listed the top five things to watch out for in the field of e-commerce this year.

If one can keep these trends in mind, there will be absolutely no problem regarding investments in business on the internet or e-commerce, as it is better known

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

The non-local networks were been first used by the “Advanced Research Projects Agency” of Pentagon (the defense ministry of the state) in 1960.

By designing the network, the main goal was to connect each computer to two other stations, so the sent packet messages could be transmitted in

various ways. After a few times, this network changed gradually and shaped a new means that was the modern Internet.

At that time, there was nobody to believe that the whole network will be grew too quickly to be moderated that difficult and there is a necessary need to specialist and expert managers. The most important reason was the free space on the web!

But today, the “World Wide Web” theory is making all the users feel free to access the Internet without the requirement of technical information. In the other word, a complicated mission with an easy usability that makes the user mixed up between “Web” and “Internet” as two separated means.

The essential goal of “WWW” theory was the easy and simple access to online content and services by using a specified application with special capabilities. So the production of these applications was a great step toward online utopia and classification of services and context on the net.

The enhancement of Internet and web-based services is occurring too quickly that it is impossible for everyone to remember even the one tenth of current active website names because he have to remember daily more than 20,000 new domain names.

The ease of use and friendly application environment are the best reasons for each user to take part in using the network services. So it is not logical to expect a user to try surfing hundreds of websites to access various and different services or register for divers providers and be concerned about saving the privacy information of each registration.

So the web, reached to an unwanted new level that is called to be “Web Portal” era.

So I think that if we desire to result a new declaration of “web portal”, we have to translate it, word by word.

We are almost acquainted with the specified definitions of web and we know that web is a simple way to access virtual and cyber content or services.

But the question is the portal. When we talk about portal, we mean to a cyber gateway or doorway. In the other word, portals are trying to get advantages from numerous related websites and take them together in a unit place. A unit place that is implemented to provide the daily needed content and services and prevent the diffusion of content.

So from this definition we can understand that web portal is not a special product, but has a standard personality and nature that is being made by two structural concepts: Services and contents.

The definition above would make the common and inexpert user to get mixed up that every “links page” or each multi-usage website could be named as a portal that facilitates the access to other websites, but with regard to the main definition, we can claim that it is not correct at all to call the hyperlinks collection and site directories as web portals because the web portals have a known personality with the possibility of servicing and providing the desired content to their users.

The base goal of web portals is to categorize the information and making the access to them, easier than before. This could helps to prevent the user to be strayed and the information to be lost. This could be possible through accessing to portals by creating a digital identification and gathering a personal profile.

Most of web portals are common and joint in some items containing:

1- The variety of services

2- Rising funds and business plans

3- The way of user access to information

4- The way of service providing

5- The spread provide of information

These simple but vital items are the basic structures of web portals growth and activation that could results to a rough and interesting competition among portals.

The variety of portal services is much different in compare with a website that is working in a special and professional field. Due to the limitations of common websites to engage in various and different fields and issues, we can observe that the indoor workgroups of such websites are very smaller than web portals those have to share their attention in many directions and issues.

Below are the most important services, hosted by portals:

· Search engine

· Email services

· Free space and weblog hosting

· Information provide and advertising

· News

· Hot downloads

· Chat and messaging

But such web portals are trying hard to bring new innovations and provide modern services in order to avoid the user to be bothered and also to interest some new users and consumers.

To not lose the great amount of customers and users, web portals are trying to offer their main and domestic services for free so the chance of victory in the competition field with all the opponents will increases.

One of the other properties of web portals is the way of its services managing by the user. There is a single and unit way for user to access all the services such as blog service, radioblog, mail and chat, online shopping etc and that is his personal ID and Password.

It will prevent the user to create and save numerous Ids and remember all the security information for each of them and reduces the bothering among various cookies, cache files and security items.

But lets state that all the web portals that offer their services for paid types would fail strongly.

Also, the indirect access to Internet services is one of the great concerns of each 21st century user. One of the main duties of each web portal is to provide the user with wide-area and remote services such as SMS-2-Email and other mobility engines.

If all the preliminaries are provided, so we can say that our web portal is reached to the productivity level and we can take advantages of it. But the lack of financial programming and economic reasoning in a scientific way would threaten the whole life of the project.

With regard to the definitions above, it occurs a common and general question. How a web portal reaches to productivity? If all the services such as emailing, web-based search, news groups, radio and instant messaging are free so how it could be beneficial and financially useful to us as the owners of project?

But the answer is so simple. Web portals are in a straight relation with e-commerce techniques. So the return of net income and productivity is gained through electronic commerce.

But the make the issue clearer, lets define E-commerce once forever. E-commerce is the interchange of products and services with money by using the abilities of network!

It means that E-commerce equals the notification, advertisement, communication and exchange through the electronic and online data processing. The good examples for common e-commerce today are the online stores and e-shops.

It is a gross diplomacy for portal owners to upgrade their visitors and users amount by offering popular and favorite services and meet the financial needs and inquiries by gathering good advertisement from predominant companies and well-known brands.

Many think that portals are subcategorized into two columns: General portals and specialized portals. And it results the portals to be grouped into horizontal portals level and vertical portals level. But I think that it is not a correct arrangement and would make mistakes in specifying. Many other think that portals are divided into the groups of applied portals and informative portals. But it seems to be incorrect too, because the nature of portal demands on the brining information and services mixed together.

In the other hand, some others think that portals are divided into these categories:

· Business to customer portals (B2C)

· Business to business portals (B2B)

· Business to employer portals (B2E)

· Public portals

B2C ones are the most common portals with the feature of products and services exchange among users and companies. But the B2B portal is only limited to the inter-companies exchange.

In fact with such categorization, we defined a property and ability for few times and expanded the circle without any reason. We forgot that it is possible to have a more abstract and useful categorization.

Imagine that you are on of photo.net users. One of the most incompatible picture resources with the educative courses and being updated daily by thousands of users.

Now the site owners decided to offer the users with the free mailbox services. What is the accounting warranty for this offer?

Remember that the mailbox is just given to them who use and subscribe photo.net frequently and affect the progress and enhancement of it. By being the user disconnected to site, there is no value mentioned for him and his personal profile in the site.

The structure of portal is also considered in one of these items:

· Type of programming

· Type of project management

· Type of financial accounting of the site

The necessity of structure’s definition is preventing the occurrence of probably mistakes, high security provide and economic thriftiness.

There is not any single and unit building structure for all of web portals and it must be defined based on the cultural, financial and geographical conditions. So the portal’s structure is the presentation of it that provides us with the basic information about the configuration and management of project. These presentations are divided into two groups:

· Administrative management

· Customer management

The type of project management and used standards are the basic fundaments of portal. These standards are in a full-time interacting with together and breaking the rules and laws would damages whole the structure and bases intentionally.

————————————————————————————

- Reference: Web portal, recondite credit/ By: Toomaj Fraidoony, Publishers: Naghoos Co, Marva Book 2007

Toomaj Fraidoony is e-commerce adviser and leader of GigaFox team in. GigaFox is a new web portal that will running in Iran. He have many article in Persian and Iranian journals about web portals, web develop and engineering, e-commerce and online business.
He is very young and life for short time in Iran.

Why osCommerce Templates are bad

You can find many osCommerce templates on the Internet and they might seem like an easy way to get a good looking ecommerce site running with only a small investment of time and effort. The truth is that most of the osCommerce templates that you can find on the Internet are made to look good but without a care for the functionality of the system. Template designers are just looking to make quick money by selling you a template, their involvement in your store ends when you buy their template. When installing a template you must be aware that the ecommerce site you are installing will generally be the default installation of osCommerce with only aesthetic modifications. To progress the template to a robust ecommerce system that will cater for the needs of your business could be an arduous task. The aesthetic modifications made by template designers generally complicate matters and it would be much more beneficial to start from scratch.

Make your own osCommerce store

If you have enough spare time to learn the system properly osCommerce will reward your dedication. You will be able to create a very versatile ecommerce system in only a few months, even if you’ve never done web development before. The huge online community is a testament to the flexibility of osCommerce and helps to keep you on the right track. If you get stuck on anything just ask in the forums and someone will jump to your rescue. Bare in mind that to get help you first have to show you have done your homework, don’t just ask for help from the very start without reading the documentation. Read the manual and check the knowledge base as they are both great resources for someone just starting with osCommerce. Once you have become comfortable with the osCommerce way and have learnt the basics of the system and how to modify the code to your needs you should start looking at the thousands of contributed modules available. There are currently around 4000 modules or addons that have been contributed by the community. These can take your site to the next level and instructions are usually very easy to follow.

After you have done this you will probably be in a position to start contributing your own custom code and addons to the project. This is the way open source software flourishes and your involvement in the project won’t go unnoticed.

Speak to the professionals

If you don’t have time for all this exploration and learning then you need to speak to the professionals. We at Freestyle Systems have our own code base that we have been working on almost constantly for many months. We have worked out the major kinks in the default installation and can provide robust ecommerce systems for a very reasonable fee. When you hire a professional company to do your design and development they unlikely to leave you in the lurch like the template designers. We at Freestyle Systems pride ourselves in creating extremely robust osCommerce systems for our clients. If you want the benefits of a solid, effective ecommerce solution but don’t have the time or manpower to go it alone, come and speak to us. We will be more than happy to answer any of your osCommerce related questions.

Word of warning

Just because a company seems professional it doesn’t mean they will give your business the attention it deserves. Take some time to explain what you want in detail and see what they have to say. If they are only prepared to give you a brief answer to your questions then don’t trust them. They will no doubt follow this attitude through to the design and development of your site. We see this all the time and it’s a real shame. You will know when a company is the right choice by the attention to detail they give in response to your query.

Freestyle Systems, Ecommerce, Web Design, SEO and Development

In the heart of a man in a major urban city there beats a dream. This dream includes the proverbial white picket fence and prosperity. He finds a product he is sure will be a best selling item. He does quality research on the item and sees enormous profit potential so he acquires an unlisted phone number and operates his business from a basement apartment located at the back of a house in an undesirable part of town. There are no signs located outside his apartment and each day he wonders why no one comes to buy his product.

If this fictional scenario seems absurd that’s because it is absurd. If you are going to develop a business you need to find a location that is high profile. You will need to advertise your business and employ additional methods of marketing your business.

Yet when it comes to ecommerce there are so many businesses that engage their online business in a hide and seek game with potential customers. There is a lack of marketing strategies that can provide an increase in visitation. Like our fictional example these ecommerce businesses are operating as if they don’t need a phone number, high traffic location or any signs that might help customers find them.

Search engines are to the Internet what phone books are to telephone customers. These search engines are relied upon to help the online customer find the most likely sites that may have the information, products or services they are interested in purchasing.

Similarities also exist in the paid placement of certain businesses in both phone directories and online search engines. However, the search engine is different in one respect. The search engine will rank sites on the basis of how trustworthy and relevant they are with respect the keyword or phrase the customer types in. This information is constantly being updated and positions will change.

Your site does no good if it is hidden away in an undisclosed part of cyberspace. You may have a dream that someone will find it and, in the finding, create a ripple effect that results in your own personal financial independence.

Because you have gone about the hard work of creating a business plan, securing funding and developing a website you should also be as fervent in optimizing your website through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques while employing every other reputable marketing technique at your disposal.

You want customers and they need to know how to find you.

Help them help you.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com