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An eCommerce merchant account can be likened to the cashier of an actual, physical store. They process payments, and eCommerce merchant accounts do the same, albeit, with added flair and whole lot more features.

Much like how an actual, physical store cannot do business with a cashier, an online business would falter without a reliable eCommerce merchant account, sales can be lost and credibility lost.

But what is an eCommerce merchant account, exactly?

An Ecommerce Merchant Account Is The Heart Of Your Business.

An eCommerce merchant account can be likened to the human heart which makes living a reality by pumping blood to every vital organ of the body. An eCommerce merchant account does the same thing for an online enterprise. The operations of an Internet venture depend on the profit that can be made, and an eCommerce merchant account makes this possible.

An eCommerce merchant account can be availed of by choosing the many services that can be found in the World Wide Web. But bear in mind that not all eCommerce merchant accounts are built alike. Some eCommerce merchant accounts are simply better than others.

Choosing The Right Ecommerce Merchant Account For Your Business’ Needs.

There are certain considerations which you must pay attention to when choosing the right eCommerce merchant account for your needs. Let us take a look at them so that we may be guided in determining the most appropriate eCommerce merchant account worthiest of our investments.

* Applicable fees. Some eCommerce merchant accounts charge a monthly rate. Some eCommerce merchant accounts charge a onetime fee. With this regard, your choice of an eCommerce merchant account would depend on how much you are capable of spending.

* Credibility. Ecommerce merchant accounts are your partners for profit. As such, you should select the eCommerce merchant account with a proven history of reliability. You wouldn’t want to entrust your payments to an eCommerce merchant account that would just crumble as soon as you sign up, right?

* Coverage. The perfect eCommerce merchant account should be able to process payments from popular payment sources. This means that such an eCommerce merchant account should be able to accommodate users who would pay with major credit cards. Additionally, it would be ideal if such an eCommerce merchant account would also be able to process payments from other alternative online payment schemes, like PayPal, Stormpay, E-Gold and the likes.

An eCommerce merchant account could also be likened to a ship that would bring your to the Promised Land of online success. The waters may be rough, but if your eCommerce merchant account is made of sturdy stuff, you will reach your destination with flying colors.

Jeff Usher researches and writes articles on all aspects of Internet Marketing and eCommerce. For further information on the subject of this article please visit:-
http://www.more-merchant-account.info

As eCommerce purchasing trends have matured over the last four years, it has become abundantly clear that consumers leverage multiple channels when making a purchase decision. To meet continuously rising consumer expectations, retailers of all shapes and sizes need to understand and embrace the power of delivering a consistent and integrated multi-channel experience. Any retailer that utilizes more than one channel to sell merchandise - be it a catalog, brick and mortar store, or eCommerce store, can gain tremendous business benefits by effectively executing multi-channel initiatives.

In a nutshell, the term “multi-channel” is primarily used within two concepts in retail:

• Multi-Channel Marketing

• Multi-Channel Integration

This article is meant to be an introduction to the overall topic, with a focus this month on multi-channel marketing. Next month, I will follow with content related to multi-channel integration and how it can also be leveraged.

Multi-Channel Marketing

Multi-channel marketing is the tactic of reinforcing your brand messaging by utilizing multiple sales channels to communicate with customers. It’s been proven in numerous studies that when retailers facilitate the behavior of consumers to shop via multiple channels, they become more valuable from the standpoint of lifetime value. Look what JC Penney discovered when they starting testing and measuring multi-channel behavior a few years back.

• The company found that internet only shoppers spent $121 per year, retail only spent $194 per year, catalog only spent $242 per year, and a customer who shopped all three spent over $1000 per year (source: ebusinessiq.com)

• “We want to go out and aggressively introduce J.C. Penney.com to our catalog and retail customers and get them to shop online because we know it is going to increase their purchases across all channels” (JC Penney eCommerce Executive)

Why do these incremental gains happen? It’s not always an easy question to answer, but in my opinion, it is primarily because the consumer now has the capability to purchase in the channel which best suits their needs (ie. most convenient), while still receiving messaging from the other complimentary channels. A real life look makes it more simplistic.

Let’s take for example that you are a high-end electronics retailer. You operate 12 physical stores, send out a catalog four times a year, and operate an eCommerce store. The key to multi-channel success is to leverage the strengths of each sales channel by coordinating messages and driving customers to all three sales outlets. Each of the channels is different - and your multi-channel strategy should capitalize on the strengths of each channel to best represent your brand.

The catalog serves as a great tool for browsing but is not the most effective when it comes to comparing products. Its tangible nature makes it readily available for shopping (judged by the number of catalogs my wife has on our dining room table), but its space constraints within the pages make it limited from a product information standpoint.

Retailers should leverage the catalog to create initial interest, but encourage shoppers to go to the web to learn more and ultimately purchase. One standard tactic to achieve this is by heavily promoting the URL within every page and by providing unique “catalog quick shop” numbers for each product. A retailer can also message the customer about “web only” specials, or closeout products that are not available in the catalog, but are only available from the website.

When a consumer then comes to the website and types the provided product number in the “catalog quick search” box, a retailer then has the option to either send the visitor directly to the product page, or send directly to the shopping cart with the product pre-populated in the cart. Both options have their pros and cons - with the latter option being a more direct and aggressive approach to convert a visitor by reducing the number of clicks to purchase.

The potential negative consequence about sending traffic directly to the shopping cart from the catalog quick search is that consumers may still be in “shopping” mode and may be turned off to such a direct approach of merchandising. Monitor your analytics to see which path is more effective from a conversion perspective.

A plethora of other tactics can be leveraged by retail businesses in an effort to promote cross channel purchasing behavior. Retailers can have catalog sign up forms within their online store to allow site visitors to receive their catalog via standard mail. Email marketing campaigns can message in-store promotions that are in the vicinity of the user’s physical address and include coupons or discounts that can be printed and brought to the store for redemption. In-store associates that utilize a web-based POS should ask each and every person who purchases for their email address so that they can receive “member benefits” sent via email. Online versions of the catalogs and circulars should be live on the eCommerce store and can be tailored to a visitor location. All of these tactics increase the level of customer interaction with the brand and are extremely valuable in driving repeat purchase behavior.

Craig Smith is the founder of Trinity Insight LLC (http://www.trinityinsight.com) a consultancy that helps online retailers better execute eCommerce strategies

As a former Chief Executive Officer qualified in Human Resource Management, Employee Relations and Accounting it has often been my question as to what place the recruitment industry plays today’s marketplace and to whether they give value for money or not.

Releasing my companys hard earnt dollars I was recently parted with $36,000 for two employees with salary packages of less than $100,000 I reflected on the cheque I had just signed going out the door. Who in their right mind would pay this extortionate amount of money.

What has become increasingly apparent over the last 10 years is the gap between what the recruitment industry espouses and their ability to deliver.

While this may be perceived as personal bias, I speak from experience having worked in a recruitment agency for a period of time and have seen and heard what goes on.

It’s a jungle out there.

And their fees 10% to 25% of total package represents almost madness.and amount was not lost on my superiors overseas who were not amused.

A high profile Director in the recruitment industry recently shared with me that most new starts last 18 months and either burn out or move on to the next offer, firm or change careers.

Indeed many former senior recruiters are now leaving the industry and setting up their own boutique company’s offering attractive alternatives, These attractive alternatives include experience, mobility, industry understanding and vast personal networks, some globally.

However, there are some good operators operating within the framework of the recruitment industry and I have come across several really wonderful people in my business career. The common denominator in all of these people was that they previously held management positions and had personally run businesses.

On one such occasion I requested that a recruitment agency search out a paramedical sales person in Victoria and New South Wales and have them on a very tight timeframe. The agency delivered and the candidates were offered positions. But this is rare in my experience and the manager had operated real world businesses before recruiting.

Problems

Churn

There is a nasty little practise that goes often unnoticed in the industry but is alive and well, I have observed it first hand.

Its called CHURN. This is where an agency puts a very good candidate into your business and some months later comes back with a better offer in another company. The candidate moves on, the agency gets it’s fee and gets to replace the person who moved on, or should I say they encouraged to move on.

There are some high profile agencies known to engage regularly in this nasty little practise. Certainly a very nice little gravy train but totally without ethics or morality.

Fees

Who in their right mind would pay out 10% to 25% to place a candidate in their business. There is no empirical evidence to suggest a better outcome from an agency than throwing a dart at a pile of resumes sent to you.

Ordinary businessmen and women are being taken to the cash flow cleaners for the privilege. Money is burning and have you read the fine print, pay our invoice in 14 days or no replacement guarantee.

>From my experience many recruitment people are in fact not service providers but sales people and have never run a business or held a real job.

Ask the question and find out for yourself. Ask what companies and entities have you managed.

Don’t get me wrong there are some good operators out there but you need to know whom and what questions to ask.

How to protect yourself

1.If you wish to outsource ask the agency what business management responsibilities have you held in other industries,

2. Ask, have you managed a business,

3. Can you give me a two-year replacement guarantee to get my business without fine print. There are agencies that will guarantee this to get your business and honour that request. Ensure that this is placed in writing,

4. Negotiate the fee, if they don’t negotiate do not give them your business. Of course they will use impressive sounding words, but we all know words are cheap,

5. Pay no more than 10% unless it is for a specialised and highly competitive field, eg nursing unit manager for adolescent mental health,

6. Ask them about the CHURN practise and tell them you are aware that it goes on,

7. Go with your gut instinct, why is it that women often tell their partners, be wary of him or her and they are later found to be right. Men learn from this,

FINALLY

There are some good operators in agencies but from my experience in the marketplace they are in the minority. So do your sums and ask the questions.

Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware.

Copyright of author Philip Lye

As an affiliate, it is risky to focus on promoting a single product. You need to promote multiple products or services and generate multiple streams of affiliate income instead. Here are a few ways on how you can do it:

1. Sell Offline Products
You don’t necessarily need to endorse the online products to people. There are products or services offline that can be really lucrative for your affiliate business. For example, the Sattelite TV subscription, promoting the membership to a certain fitness club and much more.

2. Sell Classified Ads
Have you ever read the classified ads on a newspaper? It’s almost the same but you get to sell them in your newsletter. Usually, classified ads are rather short, maybe 3-5 sentences of words and are promoted together with the other ads in the newsletter.

3. Sell Solo Ads
Another way to generate a profit from your newsletter is by selling solo ads. Solo ads in short, are much longer ads than classified ads and they are sent individually in an email. This way, the ad will get more attention from its readers and will be much more effective and responsive.

4. Sell Ad-Spaces On Website
If you have a website which pulls in decent number of visitors, you can start selling ad-spaces on your website. People do this by either putting the advertiser’s banner, ad or any other visible graphics and texts somewhere on the website to promote what the advertiser wants.

5. JV Brokering
This includes joint venturing with another list owner on selling an affiliate program with 2-tier commissions. You request the list owners to sign up under you as a 2nd tier affiliate and give them a good offer why they should sell the affiliated product.

Usually, you will need to prepare the tools, offer a bonus product to the joint ventured list owner so they can promote the affiliated with the bonus to their subscribers.

6. Create Multiple Websites
If you’re focusing on selling online, jump on another product after you have successfully endorsed the previous one. Don’t get stuck in only one product as it can lose its popularity or favor. Keep moving on and on, replicate the process of endorsing a product and make sure they are all personally tested, useful and good products.

7. Pay-Per-Lead
You can earn a commission by directing your subscribers to a website which pays you for it. This can be a survey held by big companies like Coca-Cola, PEPSI and so on. This is a really great way of earning commissions as directing a lead to a website is very easy.

8. Pay-Per-Click
Have you heard about Google Adsense, Chitika or Yahoo Publishers Network? When you sign up for these services and put a script on your website, there will be ads shown on it. You will earn a small commission every time a visitor clicks on it, a fairly lucrative way of earning affiliate commissions.

By creating more occasions to earn money, you can make sure that your income will continue to develop daily instead of having a fall. The rest, take action today.

Seth Chong is the owner of IMViral, one of the largest, greatest viral Internet Marketing Newsletter which is being spread around the world, you can sign up for the Newsletter(worths $197) for Free at www.IMViral.com

Only a few manage to sell everything under the sun over the internet. There are billions of web sites running online business, trying to outdo each other by various means.

But only a few succeed in building, promoting and sustaining a profitable, professional, successful online business. Only a few web sites are able to deliver what they preach and make sale.

How do they do it? Some magic formula….??? Nope

What they do is -Plan, Develop and Strategize- their efforts in building a successful online business. They paln their moves or strategies wisely and invest intelligently on services and products that help them build, promote and grow their online business.

What kind of products or services do they use?
Good question….:-)

There are many services and products that helps in developing an online business, but none comes across Site Build It!

Site Build It! (SBI!) is the only all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing product that makes it easy for you to build a professional, popular, and profitable Online Business.

Its significance lies in its simplicity, effectiveness. It is user-friendly. It does all the work for you. All you have to do is to feed in the necessary ingredients like, planning the designs and outlets of a website, creatively writing high-info value-keyword-focused preselling contents that ranks well with the search engines and turns visitors into customers. Just follow the instructions, and you are up and running with a web site that sales and builds you an online business. It is the single most powerful driving force behind a website’s success.

It doesn’t only builds web sites but builds business. It’s a complete R.O.I, Return On Investment service.

There are other equally effective softwares. All you need to do is to choose one that suits you.

Starting an Online business is very easy, provided you know the basics and have a desire. Go through all the informations you need about Online Business, mix your own creative efforts and follow the instructions and guidance you recieved.

Devasish Gupta
Independent WebMaster:
I run my own Internet Marketing Blogs that provides informations on effective Site Building, Site Development and Site Marketing services.

Learn more about Site Build It!

Internet Marketing Blog…

An E-Merchant? What’s that?

An E-Merchant is a person who makes his living by selling goods or services over the internet.

I am an E-Merchant. I have a business selling a service over the internet.

After having made my living running a financial services company with 40 employees for a decade or so I sold it and retired.

It was not to be. I quickly came to learn that I am one of those people that was never meant to retire.

Having been fascinated by the internet for a decade or so I was intrigued by the potential for marketing inherent in that medium.

I quickly learned that there are two ways to approach this. You can sell goods that involve shipping and inventories with all the problems that go with that or you can sell only things that can be paid for over the internet and delivered electronically.

A good example of the latter would be computer software products and E-Books.

I chose the latter and it has proven to be a very sensible choice due to the simplicity of the business flow and the vast supply of products and services to sell.

I have chosen this form of commerce because of the lifestyle and income choices it provides me.

What follows is my usual daily routine

Typically I awake to a fresh cup of coffee and commute to my office down the hall to my computer and key in my sales report for the night to see how many sales have come in during the night.

My website never sleeps. It is busy marketing in Australia and New Zealand and many other time zones while I sleep!

I have a system that provides me with all sorts of inventory for my store and it also contains a reporting system that tracks sales, keeps an ongoing balance of commissions and sends me a check every two weeks. I have never had a late check with this system.

After breakfast my Border Collie takes me for a walk along the river. He has an appointment with every squirrel and rabbit in the area and prefers not to keep them waiting.

After we return, I am back in front of my screen checking my website and its links to make sure none have failed overnight. Miss this little chore and it can cost you as a broken link means your customers can’t reach your product.

Then it’s on to read my incoming emails and answer those that need attention.

About now I like to log on to my financial sites to see what is going on in the investment world and make any moves that the days events demand.

On to visit my article publishers who have a reporting system telling me how many people have read my articles over night and which ones have been picked up for publishing by E-Magazines. Vital stuff this. The very life blood of my business!

Had an idea for an article involving the marketing day of an E-Merchant. Takes me about an hour to think it out and commit it to Word Perfect and send it off for distribution. It is accepted and published within minutes.

What an amazing thing the internet is! I can do more and more quickly by myself in the peace of my home than I ever could with a staff at my disposal in my previous life!

It is now 11:00 AM and my work day is over. That’s it! I’m done!

I am free to enjoy the rest of the day as I see fit.

Now let’s look at all this realistically.

You have to pay your dues.

Nothing of any consequence can be achieved without some serious effort.

For me that serious effort entailed months and months of research on internet marketing to gather the necessary information on which to base a sound business plan.

I attended several courses, bought various E-books on the subject and it wasn’t long before a pattern emerged.

No one source seemed to have what I, with years of business experience, would consider a cohesive business plan. It was up to me to glean bits and pieces from each so- called “Guru” and assemble a business platform that made sense.

As an aside, many of these “Gurus’ are nothing but charlatans who have nothing much to offer or have made up courses by pirating ideas from others and presenting that as original thought. Amazing how many of them are obvious repeats of each other!

I did, however, in my quest for solid information uncover the work of some individuals who were indeed making serious incomes as E-Merchants and had created a cohesive plan for success.

In my view you need four things to succeed in this business.

[1] A good work ethic and the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff.

[2] The ability to define exactly what you want to sell.

[3] A solid business platform that includes easily available inventory that is much in demand. You need a professional website, a good online payment system and a reliable payroll system to get the cheques into your mail box.

[4] You need to learn how to drive lots of traffic to your website.

Now I can’t help you with the first one but you can find competent answers to the other three by following the link in the Bio below where there is much more information on how to succeed in becoming an E-Merchant.

The author Simon Jones operates a business online that specializes in assisting those who would like to make a living as E-Merchants on line. Further information can be obtained by visiting http://www.howtoearnmoneyonline.org