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Web News & Tips - Issue #272 $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at the end of this newsletter Web News & Tips Published by MateMedia, Inc. Your Partner on the Web Providing quality Web services at affordable prices since 1995 MateMedia provides the following services: * Small Business Web Hosting (Shared & Managed Dedicated Servers) * Web Design & Development - Custom Web Applications * Database Development & Hosting * Website Maintenance & Webmaster Services * Search Engine Promotion (Optimization & Submission) * E-Commerce - Shopping Carts - Sample Shopping Cart * Domain Name Registration * Domain Name Affiliate Program * Web Hosting Affiliate Program * FREE Website when you order a web hosting account! For more information about our services email sales@matemediainc.com or call us at 877-309-7521 - Read what our clients have to say about us IN THIS ISSUE: Become a MateMedia Domain Name Affiliate Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Free Webmaster Tools Free Scripts for Your Website Accepting Payments Online: An ECommerce Web Site Overview Web News A Step by Step Guide to Getting Started on the Web Recommend this newsletter to a friend Advertise in Web News & Tips $7.00 per month Small Business web hosting from MateMedia Accepting Payments Online: An ECommerce Web Site Overview By Bobette Kyle There are a seemingly infinite number of choices and configurations to accepting payments online. Choices range from almost total "do it yourself" programming to turnkey packages. You can accept online payments from an ECommerce Web site in two general ways: 1) Through your own online merchant account and/or 2) Through a third party online payment processor. Accepting Payments Online through your own Internet Merchant Account Accepting payments online via a merchant account puts you in control and limits your reliability on outside payment acceptance services. This approach can also seem like a jigsaw puzzle. Besides an Internet merchant account, you will need shopping cart software, a store or site host, a processor, and a secure payment gateway. You may fit these pieces together in several different ways. On one end of the spectrum, you can choose the provider for each piece individually. On the other end, you may choose a turnkey solution, where a single provider has completed the puzzle for you. There is no single best solution. Your choice will depend on your particular needs and experience. Among other considerations, you should factor in your own comfort with the technologies, customer convenience, providers' service levels, available technical support, reliability, costs, and time commitment involved. Fees There are a myriad of potential costs and fees involved in accepting payments online, making it difficult to compare different options. Potentially, you could be charged fees by each provider involved in helping you accept payments online - application fees, set-up fees, yearly memberships, monthly statement charges, monthly minimums, gateway access fees, statement fees, fixed transaction fees, variable transaction discount rates (processing fee for each transaction), and cancellation penalties are all common. Often, it is easy to misinterpret the fees you will owe. Rarely are all costs revealed in one place. If you are reading about a merchant account, for example, the quoted costs may not include gateway access, hosting, and/or shopping cart. Because you may be comparing "apples to oranges", options that at first appear low-cost can - upon implementation - turn out to be pricey. Similarly, expensive-sounding solutions may actually be reasonably priced. Accepting Payments Online through a Third Party Online Payment Processor If you are not ready to set up your own online merchant account and/or you want to offer additional online payment options, you can turn to a variety of third party online payment processors. Third party online payment processors provide a way to accept payments online without the extra cost and obligation of a merchant account. To compensate, transaction fees and/or discount rates are significantly higher than for merchant accounts. Each program is a little different and no single third party payment processor is right for all situations. Clickbank, for example, helps you sell digital products online. At last check, CCNow processes payment for tangible items only. Deciding What's Best for You Whether you accept payments online through an Internet merchant account, through a third party payment processor, or both, read all agreements carefully before committing. Do not hesitate to ask the providers questions if information is unclear or incomplete. There is more information about accepting payments online - including explanations of merchant account fees, finding the right ecommerce providers, and third party payment processor overview - on the ecommerce information site Take-Payments- Online.com, http://www.Take- Payments-Online.com. Put together the "puzzle pieces" for accepting payments online and your ecommerce Web sales will flourish! E-mail: articles@WebSiteMarketingPlan.com Author's URL: http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com Bobette Kyle is publisher of the ecommerce information site Take-Payments-Online.com. She is also proprietor of The WebSiteMarketingPlan.com Network, subject-specific Web sites designed to help you find the right information for writing and implementing your marketing plan. $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia Increase your rank in the search engines! Check out our new search engine optimization plans Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Web News $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia There have been no new epidemics reported of Internet users rushing online for health information, according to research from Harris Interactive, which found "cyberchondria" nearly flat in the February 2004 report. Harris Interactive calculated that 111 million adults have looked for health information on the Internet, compared to 109 million in 2003 and 110 million in 2002. The annual survey of more than 1,000 American adults found that 74 percent of all those online have looked on the Internet for health information, with fewer indicating they look "sometimes" than indicated in surveys from the past two years. The Internet has become as legitimate as any other sales channel for most of the 300 executive respondents to the e-tailing group's annual merchant survey, suggesting that e-commerce is as mainstream as a trip to a local mall. Nearly 9-in-10 of the respondents indicated that their e-commerce site is fully integrated into the overall business, resulting in steady online shopping improvements and strategies. Only 13 percent consider the online portion of their business to be a separate entity from the organization. Internet users who moved to Portland, Ore. or Portland, Wa. in 2003 to take advantage of the plethora of hotspots can now relocate to San Francisco, as Intel named the city, "the most unwired" for 2004. Based on the number of public and commercial wireless access points, local wireless networks, wireless e-mail devices, and Internet penetration, the study identified the Bay Area as the metropolitan statistical area that gave residents the most untethered access. In the top ten unwired cities, California claims three spots, while New Jersey snags two. The Portland/Vancouver area dropped to 5th place on the list, and Washington, D.C. edged up from 6th in 2003 to 3rd in 2004. 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