How To Accept Credit Cards Without A Merchant Account
How To Accept Credit Cards Without A Merchant Account
To increase sales on your website, you must accept credit cards. To process credit cards, you could apply for a merchant account through your bank or other financial institution. Sometimes, though, you would be further ahead to use the services of a credit card processor. This is especially true when you are first starting out and have more limited resources. In this way, you may process credit card transactions without the high front-end costs and requirements of a merchant account. Here, then, are just a few ways of accepting credit cards without a merchant account. I personally use all of these vendors and can recommend them wholeheartedly. 1. Clickbank If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or software), you might consider ClickBank.com . For a $49.95 initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales. You receive additional exposure through free listing on their website and through the search facilities of other websites, such as CBMall.com. As an added bonus, you have your own built-in affiliate program. You decide what commission (from 1% to 75%) you would like to pay your affiliates. 2. PayPal PayPal.com has no initial fees. For just 2.9% of sales and $ .30 per transaction (and sometimes less), you can receive money from anyone. Also, you can pay others by credit card or chequing account without supplying your personal credit information to the payee. PayPal can be used to collect money from your auctions, website sales, or even from friends or clients. 3. PaySystems In the original edition of this article, I recommended PaySystems.com (also known as MyPaySystems.com). This is what I wrote about them: “PaySystems.com can handle either intangible (downloadable) or tangible (shippable) products. For an initial fee of $49.00, you can accept all major credit cards as well as online checks. Fees are just 3.95% of sales and $1.00 per transaction. Alternatively, you may pay 5.5% of sales and $ .35 per transaction.” “For this, you receive shopping cart, integration with third-party affiliate programs (such as ClixGalore.com), fraud screening, multi-currency transactions, toll-free support, marketing tools, and more.” Unfortunately, PaySystems.com has discontinued their “Internet Billing Account” for those outside the United States. 4. 2CheckOut 2CheckOut.com can handle both intangible and tangible products. For an initial fee of $49.00, you can accept all major credit cards as well as online checks. Fees are just 5.5% of sales and $0.45 per transaction. For this, you receive shopping cart, fraud detection, integration with third-party affiliate programs, multi-currency transactions, free on-line support, and more. Incidentally, 2CheckOut.com has the same policy as ClickBank.com does with regard to sales taxes. Both companies take the position that you are selling your product to them and that they resell it to the final consumer. Thus, they claim that you are not subject to sales taxes on those sales. J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years. To learn more about accepting credit cards and other profitable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit <a href="http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/creditcards.html" target="_blank">http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/creditcards.html</a>
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Keeping more clients with better customer service
Keeping more clients with better customer service One thing we have to keep in the forefront of our minds as our business begins to grow is the power of customer service. After all, we are all in the business of fixing problems. Every client you have right now is your client because he or she had a problem and you fixed it, simply put. Never thought of it that way, this fact is true, and the reason you are reading this right now is, there is something you want to do better, or want to begin doing so in essence you are looking for a solution as all your clients are, when they call you. If we can remember this from the company level then we will look at customer complaints from a different perspective. When a customer complains, about a service or product, he/she does not really care about your product or service, what they care about is the problem they were, having in the first place that is as of yet unresolved. Your client has made a purchase from you, for you to fix there particular problem and your solution has come up short. The only thing that the client is looking for is to have his original problem fixed. Below is and example of customer service explained and how it has saved one client and created an onslaught of referrals from this client. Let us assume one of our clients calls in and begins to complain about how long it took our company to repair his pc. He also tells us there is another company online that does remote support and they have a 24×7 30 sec response time. In addition, it took us 1 hour to respond and 15 minutes for repair. So what do we do, the product he purchased (DirectTek core) clearly states response time to calls are 2-4 hours and our (DirectTek pro) has a 30 second response time and repairs average 8 minutes. Clearly, our client has purchased the wrong product and what he is upset about is the solution we presented does not fit his needs. The biggest mistake we could make at this point is putting the blame on the client. We could tell him that when we presented our solution to you, it was your company that chose the core product; furthermore, our response times are clearly indicated. We would be right in telling him that but we would probably be with one less client. Instead, we choose to use the opportunity as an up sell versus a loss of a client. we would tell the client in this example, “Sir we are sorry we did not live up to your expectations, but we do have a product that is better suited to you needs and at this time we would like to offer you our DirectTek pro. This solution will resolve your downtime issues and due to you being unsatisfied with our other product we will offer it to you at a 10% discount rate with one month free”. For us to do this our profit margin on that sale will be less then usual. We also have to give him a month free (more loss) but remember the client has already purchased the first product(profit) now he purchases a second product (profit) and he will tell his colleagues about how great our company is, (word of mouth) all in all I think the customer service went a long way. Good customer service does not have to be performed only in the face of problems though. One of the most profitable forms of customer service comes in the form of cross selling. Let’s use our insurance broker as an example. One of our clients (Associated Management) implemented a cross sale, customer service plan here’s how it works. They specialize in worker’s compensation they also carry automobile, fleet, and life insurance. They implemented a customer service call center which would call there existing customer to make sure they were happy with there current insurance solutions. They then began the up sell process of explaining to them the discount they would receive by converting there fleet, life and automobile insurance over to them. As well as making it more convenient to the client by having to only, keep track of one company instead of dealing with multiple companies. It lead to an 11.3% increase in revenue (recently implemented give us some time) Conclusion: Stay in the business of fixing problems and you will stand a better chance of staying in business.12 Years as an I.T. professional, jobs involve but not limited to Help Desk manager,Jr Admin, Sr.Admin,MIS Director,MIS Account Manager/purchaser,Technical Outsource Coordinator,Software Trainer,Network Design. Currently I.T. Consultant
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