E-commerce and Affiliate Programs

If you have something to sell on the Internet, there are two major ways of increasing your sales for little effort:

• Provide online shopping and accept credit cards
• Offer an affiliate program so that others do the work and get paid only on results

E-COMMERCE

If you already have merchant facilities to enable you to accept credit cards, check with the company whether this includes online sales, as usually this requires a separate agreement. Once cleared, there are several options available to you, to operate your own online shop, depending on your budget, either using the services provided by your hosting company or by using stand alone software.

1&1 provide comprehensive eShop hosting packages from under £10 a month. The basic package includes the ability to sell up to 100 products in different categories and even set up your shop in a different language! You also have the power to send & receive confirmation of all orders via email. Five Wizards and thirty templates are provided for an instant start to online trading.

£400 worth of software on CD, including NetObjects Fusion is also provided, together with traffic generation tools.

A free option is Mal’s e-commerce at http://www.ait2000.com where you add “buy me” buttons to your existing site which link to a shopping cart.

ProStores is an eBay Company. it is an award-winning ecommerce solution that enables small and medium sized businesses to sell products and services online through a fully customized Web store. Prostores makes creating a Web store easy for your visitors to subscribe to and use, with built-in, step-by-step wizards that help them design the look of their store, upload products, and set up shipping and sales tax information.

They offer a full suite of functionality including:

• Domain registration and hosting
• Shopping cart
• Secure, SSL-encrypted credit card processing
• Integration with eBay and PayPal
• Marketing and Merchandising Tools
• Product catalog

Unless you already have a merchant account, or a long track record with a successful company, it can be virtually impossible to accept payment by credit cards in the UK, with over 75% of applications being turned down by the banks. Your own bank should still be your first point of contact but there are alternatives. Several international card processing companies now offer services for UK residents without prior merchant status. Take a look at the following:PayPoint processes real time payment transactions made by consumers for goods and services (both tangible and intangible) over the Internet, by telephone and mail-order in the UK.

Built around an advanced payment gateway, PayPoint service also includes an Internet merchant account (akin to a bank account for credit/debit cards, which is required before a merchant can trade) and a suite of value added services including fraud prevention, ID verification and subscription management. They service some 500 merchants, including WHsmith & Firebox primarily based in the UK.

Key Benefits include:

• Quick account setup
• Highest security standard possible – level 1 PCIDSS compliant.
• Powerful real time reporting and account management
• Fraud prevention, ID verification and chargeback management
• Merchant helpdesk providing telephone and email support

Visit Paypoint to find out more.

• 2checkout.com charges only a one off $49 Merchant Account Setup Fee plus 5.5% and $0.45 per Transaction. They even accept American Express cards and you can be up and running in minutes. Covers both goods and services and is extremely easy to use. Highly recommended.
• Clickbank For web businesses that deliver unique products and services over the Internet itself (via web pages, files, or email), ClickBank has a one-time $49.95 activation fee, and a $1 + 7.5% fee per sale. No monthly fees.
• Netbanx Ltd
• WorldPay
• http://www.datacash.com
• www.securetrading.com
• http://www.multicards.com
• http://www.kagi.comIf you are only operating online and don’t have a budget or sufficient sales volume to justify a merchant account, you might like to consider PayPal. Available worldwide in a choice of currencies including dollars, euros and sterling, anyone with an account can send money, using the funds in their account or their credit card, to anyone else with an account. Tools include subscription facilities, instant notification of payments, shopping basket, auction tools and much more yet the only costs are a small fee per transaction.

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

If you’d like others to do your marketing for you, consider setting up an affiliate program where you pay commission on sales of your products and services. You can either use an affiliate tracking software package or use the services of a management company.

The MyAP affiliate software works with virtually every ecommerce/billing system through a variety of integration methods that allow you to track both online and offline sales.

Features include:

• The ability to customize and brand the look and feel of your entire affiliate program.
• The ability to pay who you want, what you want, when you want.
• The ability to offer your affiliates unlimited marketing material like banners, text links, HTML ads, Flash animations, and more.
• Simplified Management – eg easy to find an affiliate, approve a pending transaction, run a special promotion or update anything
• Reliable methods to track affiliate-referred clicks, leads, sales or any other activity visitors may complete at your site.
• Complete Reporting to help you break down, calculate and analyze program performance stats

For more information about My Affiliate Program please visit: www.myaffiliateprogram.com

Click here to receive the KowaBunga! Affiliate Marketing Plan EBook for FREE to help you take the right steps before launching your program!

For downloadable products eg ebooks, software etc. several payment processors will provide affiliate services as part of the package. Long established and recommended is Clickbank.

ClickBank sells thousands of the web’s most popular products every day. Becoming a publisher allows you to list your products for sale in their high-traffic marketplace, and take advantage of their reputation and over 100,000 affiliates who know how to promote digital products.

ClickBank offers customers a safe, efficient shopping experience. Their simple checkout offers customers a wide variety of payment options; a welcome convenience that increases sales. And their friendly customer service guarantees satisfaction even after the sale. The no strings guarantee ofered on all products means your customers can always buy with confidence.

As a ClickBank publisher, you decide how much commission you are willing to offer affiliates who actively market and promote your product. Acting as a trusted partner, ClickBank’s sophisticated affiliate tracking systems will accurately award commissions and pay affiliates on your behalf. And the best part is, after the initial set-up fee of under $50, you only pay if there is a sale. Find out more from Clickbank

AffiliateAnnouncement offers a comprehensive range of services for both new and established affiliate programs.

Services include:

• Press Release services
• Affiliate Directory Submissions (to one of the largest range of directories available)
• Exclusive entry to our own affiliate directories
• Affiliate Advertising and program announcements
• Exclusive rates to AffiliateFuture (for qualifying sites)

Full details available from AffiliateAnnouncement

Affiliate Networks

Commission Junction not only set up your program for you, but they’ll manage it, administer it and even promote it for you. For payout purposes, all Commission Junction programs are administered together so anyone who signs up as an affiliate with you doesn’t need to reach a minimum payout with you before getting paid, they need only reach that figure from all the programs they operate combined.

If you’ve tried affiliate programs and find that too many of your affiliates simply aren’t producing any results take a look at “Internet Success Spider” which shows you how to find the “super affiliates” who generate thousands of sales for others, ask them for a promotion (using the rules in the “Irresistible Formula”), create an individual webpage for them to link to, and wait for the sales to roll in! You’ll find more details, including their no-strings money back guarantee at Internet Success Spider.