Super Search Engine Marketing

Your selling a product that is a physical thing.  How do you get paid? There are a number of ways to get paid for product before you ship it.

One way is to get a bank account with a Merchant Account so that you can take and process credit card orders.  Generally with most banks they have interfaces that allow customers through a secure server to make a purchase.  There are some drawbacks to this method. One is that the banks charge fees for this service and with internet based businesses they tend to charge more due to the credit card fraud that occurs on a regular basis.  Some of these fees include monthly account fees, fees on the purchase, fees on deposits, it can zap a start up business with lots of expenses while your waiting for your first sale.

The other is to use one of the many others out there that are offering this kind of service.  You will notice a link of interest which takes you to one of the most used and trusted payment collection methods Pay Pal.  Originally developed so that they could harvest money from E-bay sales they have expanded to cover almost any form of payment and credit card on the face of the earth.  They do charge a fee, but only when money is transferred into your account, and transfers out to your bank account are free and secure.  Pay Pal for all intensive purposes is a bank and needs to use the types of encryption that banks use to process transactions.  This makes payments secure without the need for a secure server or interface. Pay Pal also offers a variety of other services including dispute resolution between a buyer and a seller.  Keeping accurate shipping records is key to dispute resolution with Pay Pal.  The other thing that is nice about Pay Pal is that they are well known and well trusted by people so convincing them that their information is secure is simple to do.

You can also take checks, money orders and direct payments.  These methods for the net are not generally used except for those that fear putting their credit card info on the net.  The net functions for the most part on IMPULSE sales.  People are interested and they buy, instant payment with a credit card is the norm.  Just be sure that the checks clear before you ship the product that is ordered.  If the check is drawn on a US bank that is generally 3-5 days so a simple page that explains payment options and that checks are held till cleared is a simple task.

Those are the basic ways of getting paid for your hard goods.

Sparky

When your selling soft goods you can use the same techniques used for hard goods.  The only thing is that you should push is an instant purchase (subscription) type of method.  This would be like a credit card or my favorite Pay Pal.

When your selling a soft good, you have your customer already locked in. They are ready to view your content or get your information NOW.  People by general nature are very impulse orientated. Even in standard stores impulse sales make up for a greater sale and EVERYONE falls for it.  Just ask yourself how many times you went into a store after a particular item and walked out with other things.  The other things you bought on an impulse.

Soft goods are by nature very much impulse sales. People have found your site and now they want to buy, not tomorrow, not in an hour, they want to Buy NOW and you have to be able to take advantage of that.  The only real way to accomplish the sale is to have some sort of method that they can pay and get access right now.  This means using and instant payment method be involved, along with instant access to the product.

Pay Pal is one of the best ways to do this. People can click the link fill in their info and instantly have access to the content through what Pay Pal uses as a re-direct after the purchase back to your site.  This way you get the sale right away and they get what their impulse at the moment says they want.

Selling soft goods and getting paid for them is just as easy as selling hard goods.

Sparky

One of the eaisest ways to make money off any site is through the use of advertisments on your site. I am sure many of you have profiles on Myspace, Tagged, or visit other sites and you see, like this one, ads from google or other types of ads.  This is how these places are able to let you do what you do for free. They count on you clicking an ad which they charge a fee to the advertiser for the click.

You can take advantage of this in several ways. Google, MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines and even an ever growing market of companies that sell advertising for sites you can get a commission for each of those clicks.

Even if you have a hard goods website the use of ads from the ad companies on your site can increase your revenue. Most of the big ad companies have various different ways that they display ads.   In the example of Google you can use a content form (where google reads your site, sees words in the pages and then puts ads up that are similar to your content), and then refine it so that you get the kinds of ads on your site that you think your visitors will be interested in.

Most all of these companies require that you register with them and then they give you a bit of code or allow you to generate code that is included in your site which calls up the ads from their server.  In the registration process will be a way for them to send you a payment. The key is using a known company to put your ads up for you or if your site is really popular you hitting the net and finding companies that might advertise on your site.  Obviously it is easier to use something like Google to display your ads as you can be pretty sure they are gonna be around for a while and they also allow you to look at what your clicks are, and how much money your making off of them.

Many wonder why would you put ads for other companies that are selling similar products to what you offer on your site?  Simple, most people who run ads are either very big companies with lots of money to spend on ads, or they are new to the net and looking to get people to their sites.  These are people with money to give you for forwarding someone to their site, not that they will buy from them, but you get paid for the click to their site.

Sparky

Check Stub from Google for Ad-Clicks on my sites