There are a lot of ways to make money when you make a website, but the best is probably by selling some sort of product. Advertising is often an inconsistent method of making money from a website, so selling a product or series of products has emerged as the top way to earn an income from your site. But if you are going to create a Web Commerce site, or if you are going to add Web Commerce functionality to your existing site, then there are a few things you need to decide. Not least of which is how you are actually going to process payments.
Ecommerce Options
You have a few options when it comes to e-commerce, each with their own pros and cons. Here are the most common and most popular choices.
1. PayPal is probably the single most commonly used form of payment processing online. It is a very powerful and flexible system that provides you with a lot of options for getting money from your visitors and clients. For example, if your buyers have PayPal accounts than they can simply transfer money from their accounts to yours. The way this works is simple. Basically each person’s PayPal account is linked to either a credit card or bank account. The PayPal account uses these credit or cash accounts to fund themselves, and then transfers those funds to the other person’s PayPal, where they then get withdrawn into a bank account. This is an extremely flexible method of payment that can essentially condense numerous payment accounts into a single gateway.
PayPal also offers upgrades to their shopping cart systems, which allows more direct credit card processing systems and the like.
Of course, PayPal isn’t perfect. They have a sizable list of rules and regulations that you have to adhere to if you are going to use their processing services, and this can limit what you sell. PayPal doesn’t offer any kind of fulfillment services, so you’re going to need to deal with getting whatever you sell your clients to them on your own. You will, however, be bound by their Buyer Protection Policy, which allows buyers to file complaints about whether or not you sent them their goods. Paypal can lock your account for any reason that it sees fit. And, of course, PayPal also charges a small fee on all of your transactions.
For most people, the downsides of PayPal are much smaller than the system’s upside, making it a great way to take payments on your Web Commerce Site.
2.There are a number of other much smaller payment processors out there that you can incorporate into your account. Many of these seek to deal with many of the above-mentioned issues surrounding PayPal. For example, E-Junkie is a great payment processor that offers a wide variety of benefits that PayPal doesn’t.
To start, E-Junkie only charges a flat rate monthly rate to use their shopping cart system, whereas PayPal takes a percentage of each sale. E-Junkie also offers fulfillment services that are very helpful, especially for downloadable products, and which take most of the work off of your hands. E-Junkie is just one of the many alternate payment processors out there, but most of the others will offer you essentially the same benefits.
3. You can also, of course, simply set up a merchant account with a local bank that allows you to take and process credit card orders on your own. This method of processing payments is becoming less and less common these days as more and more people are turning to one of the above-mentioned digital solutions, but it’s important to know that you still have the option (provided you have acceptable credit).
Choose One then Implement it Quickly
Ultimately, how you process orders and fulfill them isn’t as important as simply making sure that you have the capability to. It doesn’t matter how great your product line is if you have no way to sell them. It’s important that you set up these systems as early as possible, and that you plan to have them incorporated (ideally) as soon as you launch.
