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Pay-Per-Click advertising includes services like Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture). In case you haven’t heard of it yet (which I highly doubt), it is a model of advertising in which people write ads and bid on the keywords related to their ads. The higher the bid price, the higher the ad will rank for the keywords. Advertisers only pay when visitors click on the ads, hence the name Pay-Per-Click.

If you’re just starting out with a new online business, PPC advertising is hands-down, the fastest way you can drive specifically-targeted traffic to your website at a reasonable cost. Since a new website starts with practically zero traffic, PPC is by far, the best way to launch your online business with a good start. With Google Adwords, your ads become ‘live’ once you post your ads.

Unlike free search engine traffic, PPC advertising gives you total control over your website traffic. With PPC advertising, the quantity of traffic you want to drive to your website depends entirely on your advertising budget. Although the costs of all the clicks can add up to a huge amount, the important thing to note is to bid such that your advertising budget does not exceed your business revenue – you need to make a profit on each click you buy.

Simply keep a watchful eye on your budget and costs, and keep tweaking your ads and website for better conversion rates, to maximize the profits you make.

With natural search engine traffic, or ‘free listings’ on the other hand, the success of your website hinges on how well the search engine ranks your website. If Google, for example, suddenly changes its algorithm, your website can plunge from the first page of the listings to somewhere on page ten. Although free search engine traffic is entirely desirable, you should treat it like a ‘bonus’ source of traffic. What your business needs is a source of traffic that is entirely controllable, and PPC offers just that.

So how much does PPC advertising cost? For each click, the price can range from a few cents per click to fifty cents or even a dollar per click, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword and how much you want to bid on the keyword.

In the arena of PPC, it may be over simplistic to think ‘If I can earn a dollar of profits for every two dollars spent on advertising, then I can earn ten dollars from twenty dollars of advertising.’ The profitability does not increase proportionately with your advertising revenue, because it depends on other factors like saturation of market demand and changes in the customers’ spending habits.

However, once you can ensure that your PPC campaign is profitable (you get X amounts of profits for Y dollars spent on advertising), your online business becomes something like a ‘cash machine’. This is a ‘cash machine’ that generates passive income for you, with the ability to produce more cash with a higher advertising budget. Indeed, automation is one of the most attractive aspects of an internet business.

In conclusion, PPC advertising is definitely one of the best, if not the best option you can use to launch your online business. The most important point to note is that you need to constantly tweak your ads and your website for better conversion rates, and also ensure that you keep your costs way below your revenue, for your business to succeed.

Why You Need To Accept Credit Cards

Accepting credit cards online is definitely the way to go if you want to have a successful internet business. According to research findings, more than 90% of the transactions done online are made through credit or debit cards. The truth is, your ebusiness simply cannot prosper if it relies on other payment methods like checks or phone orders.

Other reasons for accepting credit cards online include:

• Automated order process. With credit card processing abilities, you can automate the payment aspect of your business. There is no need to bank in the check every time you receive an order – the money is directly credited into your bank account.
• Satisfying the needs of impulse buyers. If buyers are able to make purchases instantaneously, they’re much more likely to buy, as compared to them having to write a check and mailing it to your address.
• Credit card processing functions also build credibility in your customers - People are more likely to trust businesses that can accept credit cards than those that do not.

It’s thus a ‘must’ to accept credit cards online, or else you’ll be missing out on a huge portion of your potential sales.

The question now is – which payment processor should you choose?

Paypal (http://www.paypal.com)

Paypal is an eBay company formed to help individuals send and receive online payments quickly, with email addresses. Lately, it has become an increasingly popular method of making payments online.

Paypal is a unique payment processor because customers can choose to make payments either through their Paypal account or directly from their credit card. If you accept credit cards with Paypal, the funds are credited into your Paypal account first, not to your bank account. After which, you can withdraw the funds from your Paypal account to your bank account.

Paypal is an ideal payment processor for the following reasons:

• Paypal accepts most credit cards like American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and also bank transfers and debit cards.
• There are no setup or monthly fees. The only fee incurred for receiving payments is (2.9% + US$0.30) of each transaction you make.
• Paypal offers strong security measures, including fraud prevention and chargeback protection.

2Checkout (http://www.2checkout.com)

An alternative payment processor you would like to consider is 2Checkout. You can use it to accept all the major credit cards securely and instantly.

There is a $49 onetime signup fee to setup an account with 2Checkout. Recurrent costs include $0.45 per sale or 5.5% of the transaction value. On the upside, you can get started in accepting orders immediately, and there’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee to remove the risk.

Since 2Checkout is a slightly more expensive payment processor compared to Paypal, you may prefer Paypal as your payment processor instead.

ClickBank (http://www.clickbank.com)

If you sell an information product like an ebook, then ClickBank is a viable alternative you can look into. Although it offers the ability to accept credit card payments, ClickBank is different from other payment processors in several aspects:

• After you setup an account with ClickBank, they will sell your product for you. (Not you selling the product yourself.) ClickBank has a community of over 100,000 affiliates who can help promote and sell your product.
• The funds are not transferred into your bank account directly. ClickBank sends you a paycheck twice each month.

The costs to accept credit cards with ClickBank include:

• A onetime $49.95 setup fee.
• $1 + 7.5% of the value of each transaction.
• Commission payouts to your affiliates when they help you sell your product.

If you would like to recruit affiliates easily to promote your products, and would like to accept online payments at the same time, then ClickBank is your ideal Payment Processor.

Other Payment Processors

Other payment processors include iBill (http://www.ibill.com), WorldPay (http://www.worldpay.com) and Authorize.Net (http://www.authorize.net). 

Conclusion

The choice of your payment processor depends on your exact business requirements. Remember to alleviate the customers’ worries by including security information, the ‘padlock and key’ security symbols, and a proper Privacy Policy.

If you only plan to sell one or two products for your ebusiness, then you may not need a shopping cart. On the other hand, if you sell multiple products from your website with a product catalogue, a shopping cart is definitely what you need.

Shopping Cart Functions

First, what’s the exact definition of a shopping cart? It’s actually a script or software that collects the purchasing information from your customer and sends the information to your payment processor via a secure connection.

The shopping cart is analogous to the ‘front-end’ of ecommerce – it displays the products on your website and collects information like the type and number of products in the cart. After your customers are done shopping, they checkout and are taken to the payment processor, where they enter their credit card details. The price will then be charged against their credit cards and credited to your bank account.

Essentially, the main functions of a shopping cart include:

• Calculating the total purchase price for your customers.
• Calculating the taxes and shipping costs.
• Enabling you to manage your online store – to add new products or delete old products, and edit information like product prices and inventory.
• Giving you access to customers’ personal information like name and address, so that you can fulfill your orders.

User-friendliness

One of the main purposes of a shopping cart is to give your customer an easy and seamless buying experience. When selecting a shopping cart, you need to ensure that it’s very user-friendly – customers can browse through your product catalog easily and be able to check out quickly and effortlessly.

Consider this opposite scenario: A frustrated shopper is trying hard to find your product and pricing information, but because of the complexity of your shopping cart, the shopper is much more inclined to leave your site for a store that’s more user-friendly.

Thus, ensure that the shopping cart you use on your site provides easy navigation, and also that information like product features and prices are easily accessible.

Customizing Your Shopping Cart

Of course, the appearance of your shopping cart must be congruent with the overall look and feel of your site. This means that your background color, logo and navigation bars appear consistent with the rest of your site.

To customize the look of your shopping cart, some programming knowledge may be required. Shopping carts like Oscommerce use PHP, so you may need a background in PHP programming before you can tweak the coding of the shopping cart.

Alternatively, the easy way out is to purchase shopping cart templates that allow you to modify the logo and graphics. All you need to do after that is to match the site structure and appearance of your homepage with that of your shopping cart template.

Recommendation – Oscommerce

Unless your business has very complicated needs, there is no need to build and customize your own shopping cart software. OsCommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com) is a free, open source shopping cart software that can cater to the needs of most online businesses. It’s so user-friendly and popular that most web designing companies use it as the shopping cart platform for their customers.

The features it offers are excellent:

• It supports unlimited products and categories.
• User administration area to add/edit/remove products and categories.
• Advanced front-end customer functionality, like order history and search features.
• Compatible with most payment processors like 2CheckOut.
• Ability to calculate shipping and tax costs.

With OsCommerce, the additional work needed include:

• Integration with MySQL database to store customers’ information.
• Integration with the payment processor, like Paypal or 2CheckOut.
• Integration with the design and layout of your website.
• Data entry of the all the product names, pictures, prices, quantities, etc.

Conclusion

Remember that your shopping cart provides the storefront that displays your entire product catalog. The user-friendliness and functionality of your shopping cart is critical for the success of your online business. So make sure that the shopping cart you choose represents your business well.