Part 10 - How to accept payment online - even while you sleep 

"To have more you must first become more"

Jim Rohn

Receiving payment for your product is probably one of the most rewarding feelings you'll get. It's almost as rewarding as spending it later!

You can accept almost any kind of payment you like. However, if you want to receive your payment instantly - even when you're sleeping, you need to accept credit card payments online. This will also give your customers the ability to download their product immediately after paying for it.

In order to accept credit card payments at your offline, bricks and mortar store, you have to set up a merchant account through a financial institution. This is both expensive and time consuming.

In contrast, setting up credit card payments for your new online business is as easy as clicking on a link, filling in some basic information, and hitting the submit button.

There are many online companies who will give you an online "merchant" account. Many of them are free to set up.

The two most popular merchant account providers are PayPal and ClickBank.

You can access PayPal at http://www.paypal.com/ and ClickBank at http://www.clickbank.com/.

Both will set up your account free of charge, and both are easy to work with.

CLICKBANK

ClickBank has a one-time fee of under $50, at this point in time, which activates your "publisher's" account. This allows you to sell your own digital products. ClickBank only deals with entrepreneurs who sell digitally delivered (downloadable) products. They collect your payment for you.

ClickBank doesn't actually store credit card numbers. Instead, they send your customer directly to the bank, so to speak, for processing. They send you a check twice a month with all your payments to date, minus their small commission. Check with them for their actual fees.

There are literally thousands of professional, web-based businesses using ClickBank. Many highly successful online entrepreneurs recommend ClickBank.

One of the major features of ClickBank is their affiliate management program, which is second-to-none.

Remember, affiliates are like commissioned sales people. They are your own sales force who go out and promote your product through their own websites and by linking back to yours.

When your affiliate refers someone who buys your product, they get paid a commission you predetermined.

Normally, you would have to buy a program or service that would generate a unique affiliate link for that one individual or company. You would then use that program to track the sales your affiliate generated through that link. The link itself leads a prospect to your product site and identifies which affiliate referred them. You would pay your affiliates their commission checks on a regular basis.

What ClickBank's affiliate management program does is to do all the work for you. They track and pay your affiliates accordingly - eliminating that major headache from your life. Your job is to get your product site online. You then implement the code they give you to program your "Buy Now" button. This button directs your customer to ClickBank for payment.

You also place an affiliate link at the bottom of your web page. This offers your prospect the chance to make money by recommending your product to others. They don’t even have to purchase the product from you.

Your prospect is taken to your ClickBank affiliate sign-up page. They are issued a user name which they use to then sign up as an affiliate for your particular product. ClickBank tracks everything from there. They also generate an ongoing report for you.

ClickBank will also list your digital product in a section for registered affiliates seeking products to sell.

PAYPAL

Setting up an account at PayPal is totally free. You can check out their low transaction fees at http://www.paypal.com/.

Like ClickBank, PayPal is one of the most widely used payment solution companies on the Internet. Unlike ClickBank, who only accept payment in U.S. Dollars, PayPal accepts payment in multiple currencies. However, they don't have the affiliate management system that ClickBank does.

PayPal is an eBay company, with over 40 million users worldwide.

Applying for an account with PayPal is extremely fast. You'll be able to accept credit card payments online within minutes.

PayPal accumulates your funds inside an online account which only you have access to. They allow you to electronically "withdraw" any amount of money and deposit it into a bank account of your choice.

You give PayPal your bank account number. They test the validity of the account by depositing a couple of cents—or whatever your currency is—into the account. You will see a validation number on your bank statement. You then report this number back to them which confirms the account is actually yours.

The process of transferring money from your online account to your bank account can take up to several days.

Because PayPal stores your money in your online "PayPal account", many PayPal users, especially those who buy or sell on eBay, prefer to pay you directly from their PayPal account.

The money is transferred from their account directly to yours.

This avoids the hassle of entering credit card information every time a purchase is made. This makes the entire process fast and painless.

Depending on your situation, it may be good to offer your buyer a couple of buying options: ClickBank and PayPal.

There are other payment solution companies out there, like http://www.2checkout.com/, http://www.worldpay.com/, and http://paydotcom.com/homepage.php but I have only listed the two most popular.

The PAYDOTCOM Advantage

We discussed PayPal not having an affiliate management program like ClickBank does. With PayDotCom ( http://paydotcom.com/homepage.php ) you now have a third party solution to that. PayDotCom is a company founded by Internet Specialist Mike Filsaime. Mike has achieved extreme success through Internet Marketing, and is held in high esteem by the Internet marketing community.

At this point PayDotCom's fee structure is cheaper than ClickBank's. They also allow you one account free (to get you selling your first product), then a one-time set-up fee of $29 AFTER that to activate an UNLIMITED number of accounts (to sell as many different products as you desire). ClickBank charges you $49.95 for each different product (account) you sell. Things change quickly on the Internet so check ClickBank's fees.

Unlike ClickBank, PayDotCom pays you immediately into your PayPal Account when you make a sale, so you're not waiting around for a check in the mail.

You need to decide what works best for you. One of the huge pluses with PayDotCom is that they have an affiliate program for themselves. So, you can refer people to sign up with PayDotCom and make 7% of every transaction fee they incur! To me, that's a huge bonus.

Plus if you sign up an affiliate for your OWN product and they later sign up as either a vendor with PayDotCom, you make the 7% of their fees per sale. Unless ClickBank and PayPal have changed at the time you're reading this, they don't offer this amazing money-maker!

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