How To Set Up Your Site To Take Payments
The internet is a marketers dream. Here you have an audience that runs into the hundreds or even thousands of millions. All you need to do is get your slice of the action. I’ll discuss that in another article.
So the big question is; how difficult and expensive is it to set up your web site with a payment processor?
It’s fairly simple really, and very affordable. The first time you do it you may sweat a little as everything you do for the first time is not easy, but you will soon learn. It is also most affordable for most people. So what do you need to do?
Well, what do you do?
The first requirement would have to be a good web host. I would suggest a cheap host not a free host. I don’t mean cheap and nasty. There are plenty of good deals to be found. The other reason you don’t want to use a free web hosting provider is you don’t want their advertising on your site.
Then you need find someone that will process your payments.
You will also need the software to make your pages.
With regard to your web hosting provider, here are some things you will need to look for:
How many domains can you run on your account? This is important. You will over time produce and promote many products. You will want a new domain name for each product. You would not want to have to organize and pay for a new hosting account each time you decided to run with a new product.
Can you use CGI and PHP scripts on your site? How much disk space do you get with this account? How many MySql databases are you permitted to run? These are some of the things you need to get answers to in choosing a web host.
You also need a payment processor. There are hundreds of these. I am just going to look at three of them. They are all budget and very affordable. One is totally free to set up.
The free one is PayPal. You pay them a small percentage of your sale when you make one. Their payment system works with email. You will need to set up a dedicated email account. You will be able to do this with your hosting account. Your hosing account should allow you to set up quite a few email addresses.
2Checkout.com is another payment processor. They charge a one off fee of $50 to set up your account and then a small percentage of each sale. This processor also is used by many internet marketers.
The last one we’ll look at is ClickBank. They sell many products for internet marketers and businesses. They organize and pay affiliates. It is free to join ClickBank as an affiliate. To become a seller you need to set up a separate account with a one off fee of $50 to set up the account and then a percentage of each sale.
Both PayPal and 2Checkout.com generate code for you to place in your site. You will need to place this code onto the body of your page where you want the button to appear. ClickBank generates a URL which you can link to a sales button.
As you can see, setting up your own e commerce web site is not real difficult and is very affordable.
Filed under: Web Hosting