After further research, and much gnashing of teeth I finally chose to set up my very first business account with the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, due to their offer of a permanently free business current account with internet banking, and also because of their connection with EuroConex (which I thought might help to speed things up a bit). There was a fairly straight forward form to fill in and two types of photographic identification along with verified signatures were required (authorised by two separate officials, e.g. police, teachers, postmasters etc), before finally being accepted 2 weeks later.

Once the business account was sorted, the merchant account joining pack could finally be filled in. Even though this account was essentially with the same bank as my newly granted business account (Alliance & Leicester), yet more identification and verified signatures were required by them. Two weeks passed before Euroconex emailed me saying that their underwriters additionally needed 3 consecutive months of statements from Paypal. Never having used my Paypal account for anything other than buying stuff from Ebay I was very concerned that, at this last hurdle, I was going to be refused an account.

Three long weeks passed before I could take no more. I phoned up Euroconex to find that my fears were unfounded. After 3 months of research and form-filling I was now officially ready to accept credit cards over the internet. Who would have thought that such a prospect could be such a relief!

Conclusion Well it's no easy ride and the caviar is still on ice, but if I'd found an article like this in the first place it would certainly have saved me a great deal of time and stress. Essentially I ended up with the following services which work well together and represent great value for money:

• Shopping Cart - www.mals-e.com
• Payment Service Provider - www.secpay.com
• Inter
  Your Home Based E-Business In A Global Market
  Most companies will try buying and/or selling products around the world. When choosing e-commerce software or looking for an new off-shore supplier of products for your business, check these factors, which indicate how strongly the software or the potential supplier is focused on the international market;• Are transactions in different currencies supported?• Is the software supported in all countries where you do business?• Can the software handle those countries' taxation & reporting laws?• Is the software available in languages other than English?Most E-Business software is Country SpecificWarning: E-Business software is made country specific because different countries have their own tax and business regimes. Taxes are levied differently in the USA from the way they are in Singapore for instance. The software may be manufactured in one country with different versions produced for customers in each country the software is sold in. Because of their local knowledge and experience, the licensed distributors in each country may have the right to customize the program's source code so the software is usable in their country. Totally different country specific versions of QuickBooks are sold in the USA and Singapore. Some more expensive software suites like ACCPAC, MICROSOFT GREAT PLAINS and SAP etc are customizable by the user and can be used in any country.Other Key Elements to Consider• Capacity - Software may be limited in the maximum number of customers, vendors, inventory items etc.• Reporting Capabilities – Check the software produces sufficient standard reports for your needs. If not, can you design and produce customized reports with minimal time and effort?• Ease of Input – You want to be able to enter information quickly and effic
  Unless you're an experience-hardened entrepreneur, fear of the unknown is always going to be one of the most stressful things about starting up any new business. And with the wealth of up-to-date information readily available over the internet these days you'd be pretty daft to look anywhere else. So when I set out on the road to eCommerce fame and fortune for the first time I thought it would be plain sailing, followed by canap?s and caviar, alas not quite. However, this account of my own journey to accepting online credit card payments should allow you to avoid the many pitfalls and quickly point you in the right direction.

  My initial searches proved to be quite fruitful. If you're based in the UK and want to set up your own eCommerce website the general theory behind this is (sort of) straight forward. Here's the list of the essential processes broken down, in simple terms, to explain what's happening at each stage...

  Shopping Cart eCommerce Software/3rd Party Service

  This handles the various 'Buy' buttons on a site, and places items into the customer's shopping cart. When at the 'checkout' area of an online store, this is also used to gather the customer's name, billing address and credit card details etc, along with any items they've placed in the cart. The card details are then securely passed on to a payment services provider (see below). This can also be used to set up and automatically send out your company receipt to the customer, upon payment approval.

  Payment Service Provider (also known as a 'Payment Gateway')

  These people act as a middleman between the shopping cart software (see above) the customer's credit card issuer and the store owners Merchant Account (see below). Card details are checked for validity, encrypted and sent back and forth. If the transaction is approved the customer's shipping details and 'bought item' details are then decrypted and sent to the store owner for shipping to take place, and the customer will receive an automated receipt from the payment service provider.

  Internet Merchant Account from an 'Acquiring Bank'

  This is the service (offered by most high street banks) that actually carries out the customer's credit card processing and puts the money in your pocket. Simple in theory, but the longest and most expensive part to set up.

  If you already have a 'Merchant Account' with an Acquiring Bank this will need to be changed over to an 'Internet Merchant Account' for any online transactions to take place, regardless of who the service provider is.

  Okay that's all the theory out of the way. Of course you could avoid all this nonsense and save a lot of time and money by simply setting up a Paypal merchant accoun. Afterall, they now accept credit and debit cards without making your customers set up any sort of account with them. Unfortunately, Paypal still has a bit of an image problem (mainly due to it's Ebay roots). If you're selling home made mittens I'm sure this won't be a problem. But if like me, your potential customers are from other businesses, and you want to convey as professional an image as possible, it can send out the wrong sort of message. Also, in my experience, many businesses are notorious for regarding any 'new' payment methods with great suspicion, and many still find it hard to stop using chequebooks. However, I'm sure Paypal will be viewed differently in time, so to cover all eventualities, I chose to implement it on my own site in addition to the more traditional 'merchant account' method for accepting cards.

  Finding a Shopping Cart

  Beyond this first bit of research I was hoping to find forums full of real life accounts and experiences of the above mentioned services which would quickly point me in the direction of the best software available. On the subject of 'shopping carts' the problem seems to be one of volume. There are a lot of people recommending a lot of different products, so you end up not seeing the wood for the trees, and they range wildly in price. All the big names in this area are PC based, so if you own a mac you may need to also consider the extra cost of either buying a cheap PC for the job or, if you're pushed for space, Virtual PC emulation software.

  I read a few times that ecommerce is in it's infancy, but after 2 weeks of studying these "easy" software solutions I was frankly shocked at how dismal these offerings are for normal people like me. Most of them expect you to know some sort of programming language, PHP scripting and spreadsheet inputting. Now I regard myself as being above average when it comes to most things technical, but in this particular area I was quickly left feeling like the school dunce. My personal feeling is that if I've just spent ?300 on a piece of eCommerce software why on earth do I need to know anything about any of these areas, surely that's what the shopping cart software is for? In addition to this my personal experience showed that many are firmly aimed at the US market and are often incompatible with UK payment service providers. Not surprisingly, I had to grudgingly give up on this area of research and spent a week worrying about the future of my site.

  All was not lost however. There is an alternative to becoming one of the heavy-metal t-shirt wearing brigade and emerging yourself in the joys of Perl scripting. Third party providers offer 'Remotely Hosted Shopping Cart Software' which again varies enormously in price and also in how the costs are structured. To cut a long story short I found www.mals-e.com recommended enough times to catch my eye which has an easy to use 'admin page' system. After you sign up you get issued with a small personalised line of code which you add to the HTML of all your 'buy' buttons (which can be either text hyperlinks or images of your choosing). Log in, and start customising the comprehensive list of admin settings (accepted currencies, taxes, postage etc, etc) that's about it really. It's simply priced too at ?13.60 ($24) for 3 months or ?49 ($86.40) for 12 months service. Apart from the reasonable price, the ability to also use the service for free if you only want to implement Paypal on your site is a great way of testing the service first before you pay for the credit card accepting 'Premium' service. And so far I have to say I've been very happy with the way it works.

  Finding a Payment Service Provider

  If I want to find the cheapest electricity supplier, the cheapest mobile phone contract, or buy the cheapest pair of tartan slippers for Father Day there are loads of websites that will compare these things at the touch of a button. And it's pretty simple business sense that in order to remain competitive your overheads should be kept as low as possible without quality of service suffering. With this in mind my first port of call was the Business Link's 'product and cost comparison service' at www.electronic-payments.co.uk (click on the 'Use The Tool' button) which aims to compare the services and costs of various Payment Service Providers.

  Initially you're put through the annoying and totally unnecessary hassle of registering with the site. After this dodgy start you are presented with a simple form asking you to put in 3 figures, 'annual turnover' (actual or estimated), 'average online transaction value', and your 'business borrowing/overdraft rate'. All sensible stuff. From there another 4 pages of forms come up 'Transaction Bands', 'Acquiring Costs', 'Payment Method Split' and 'Compatibility' where you can enter more detailed information as you feel necessary before finally being presented with your personalised results. Overall the experience is a bit clunky in places but if you bear with it you find it's a fairly invaluable service.

  The cheapest/best 'Payment Service Provider' I found at the time was www.secpay.com. They deal with 10 of the 13 available Acquiring Banks in the UK and (most importantly) their system is compatible with mals-e.com mentioned above. Charges are as follows: an initial ?50 set-up fee (?58.75 with VAT) and ?10 per month thereafter (?11.75 with VAT). Each transaction is charged at either 1.9% or 39p of the sale price (the choice is yours), and the money from the customer will generally take 2-3 days to appear in your business bank account (which is a lot quicker than some). Apparently they also offer an online 'virtual' swipe card facility for telephone orders at no extra charge, but I have yet to test this out myself.

  I should also point out that there are a small number of operators such as Netbanx who don't require you to have a merchant account so set-up costs are kept to a minimum, but their individual transaction costs are higher, so for me at least, this was a false economy. I also chose not to accept American Express and Diners Club cards yet, as they need a separate merchant account to handle each of them.

  Finding an Internet Merchant Account

  This is no easy task, currently there's a serious lack of any specific hard facts and figures on the internet on this subject. There are also no up-to-date comparison tools or lists that I could find, this may well be because a bank's charges can often depend upon how much they're already making from you for other services. For instance, if you already have a loan from the same bank they may charge you less for each online transaction cost. Ecommerce forums were equally disappointing, I found scant accounts from individuals with any personal experience there. Even on the individual banks' websites finding costs and set-up fees is often impossible. In fact I resorted to phoning various departments of HSBC Bank over the course of a whole afternoon where none of the staff could tell me anything about their own merchant banking fees! Merchant banking it would seem is deeply stuck in the dark ages, so they're all more than keen to waste time and paper by sending you their glossy 200-page merchant account 'joining pack' in the post. On the last page in small type you will invariably find these illusively secret figures finally revealed. However, even this was a partial waste of time, as by the time the last 'pack' (of six) arrived two of the banks had already restructured their fees. I was still none the wiser.

  So I took a step back, and started again from a slightly different angle. I phoned Secpay asking if they recommended any particular acquiring banks, and they helpfully suggested using either EuroConex (which is the Bank of Ireland/Alliance & Leicester) or Lloydstsbcardnet (Lloyds/TSB) if I want to keep cost to a minimum. From there I called EuroConex (based in Ireland) and had to tell them my predicted annual turnover, and average transaction amount. Based on this, they would charge me a one-off set-up fee and a percentage cost per transaction on credit cards (they had a sliding scale from 1.9% to 2.5% at the time), and 24p per transaction on debit cards. They also have to see your website in order to check that what you're selling is 'ethical'.

  A month later, after further research, I finally decided to go with EuroConex, so phoned them up before filling in the forms. Their prices had soared, now there was a ?150 set-up fee (instead of ?100) and 3.46% per transaction on personal credit cards (instead of 2.4%). This basically meant that their prices were roughly the same as all the other merchant bankers, and was beginning to see how they'd earned their entry in the dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang. There were two more blows to follow though, this hike in costs meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new 'joining pack' with the new figures, and (and this was my oversight) that I would need to already have my own 'Business Account' set up before being considered for an internet merchant account, grrr! Being entirely new to this, I had naively assumed that because a 'Merchant Account' is just a different type of 'Business Account' that alone would be fine, and hadn't allowed for this level of banking pedantry.

  After further research, and much gnashing of teeth I finally chose to set up my very first business account with the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, due to their offer of a permanently free business current account with internet banking, and also because of their connection with EuroConex (which I thought might help to speed things up a bit). There was a fairly straight forward form to fill in and two types of photographic identification along with verified signatures were required (authorised by two separate officials, e.g. police, teachers, postmasters etc), before finally being accepted 2 weeks later.

  Once the business account was sorted, the merchant account joining pack could finally be filled in. Even though this account was essentially with the same bank as my newly granted business account (Alliance & Leicester), yet more identification and verified signatures were required by them. Two weeks passed before Euroconex emailed me saying that their underwriters additionally needed 3 consecutive months of statements from Paypal. Never having used my Paypal account for anything other than buying stuff from Ebay I was very concerned that, at this last hurdle, I was going to be refused an account.

  Three long weeks passed before I could take no more. I phoned up Euroconex to find that my fears were unfounded. After 3 months of research and form-filling I was now officially ready to accept credit cards over the internet. Who would have thought that such a prospect could be such a relief!

  Conclusion Well it's no easy ride and the caviar is still on ice, but if I'd found an article like this in the first place it would certainly have saved me a great deal of time and stress. Essentially I ended up with the following services which work well together and represent great value for money:

  • Shopping Cart - www.mals-e.com
  • Payment Service Provider - www.secpay.com
  • Intern
    Top Customer Service Speaker Says: Forget About Service, Focus On Satisfaction!
    “I really LOVE my customers,” I heard one agent gush.“My customers ADORE me!” another one boasted.“I always try to do something EXTRA,” confides a third.Ask most customer service managers what they would think about these three reps and they’d probably beam with pride and be elated.Each rep sounds as if she is reaching for the stars, never satisfied, and always achieving.I hate to bear bad news, but they’re all off the mark.Customer SERVICE is about what WE do, the techniques we use, and the feelings we have.But customer SATISFACTION is about something entirely different.Satisfaction is about the RESULTS we produce for customers, and it’s the single most important thing we need to focus on arousing, time and again.But, you might wonder, if I’m enthusiastic and fully committed to delivering the best service in the world, my customers will just have to appreciate me and my company, right?NOPE.Peter F. Drucker, one of my revered professors, an international giant in the field of management, and a consultant to several nations, including Japan and Brazil, wrote a seminal book, called MANAGING FOR RESULTS.Please study those three words very carefully.Drucker’s view is that there is far too much attention paid to the mechanics of business, to the actions we take, to our internal processes of developing and delivering and servicing products, and not enough attention paid to what customers truly value.What we like and what we value has to come second, Drucker maintains.The customer is the alpha and omega of our business lives, and for all of our protean efforts, if the customer doesn’t think they matter, they don’t matter.Drucker has a wonderful way of cutting through the fluff and our self-delusions, es
    d debit cards without making your customers set up any sort of account with them. Unfortunately, Paypal still has a bit of an image problem (mainly due to it's Ebay roots). If you're selling home made mittens I'm sure this won't be a problem. But if like me, your potential customers are from other businesses, and you want to convey as professional an image as possible, it can send out the wrong sort of message. Also, in my experience, many businesses are notorious for regarding any 'new' payment methods with great suspicion, and many still find it hard to stop using chequebooks. However, I'm sure Paypal will be viewed differently in time, so to cover all eventualities, I chose to implement it on my own site in addition to the more traditional 'merchant account' method for accepting cards.

    Finding a Shopping Cart

    Beyond this first bit of research I was hoping to find forums full of real life accounts and experiences of the above mentioned services which would quickly point me in the direction of the best software available. On the subject of 'shopping carts' the problem seems to be one of volume. There are a lot of people recommending a lot of different products, so you end up not seeing the wood for the trees, and they range wildly in price. All the big names in this area are PC based, so if you own a mac you may need to also consider the extra cost of either buying a cheap PC for the job or, if you're pushed for space, Virtual PC emulation software.

    I read a few times that ecommerce is in it's infancy, but after 2 weeks of studying these "easy" software solutions I was frankly shocked at how dismal these offerings are for normal people like me. Most of them expect you to know some sort of programming language, PHP scripting and spreadsheet inputting. Now I regard myself as being above average when it comes to most things technical, but in this particular area I was quickly left feeling like the school dunce. My personal feeling is that if I've just spent ?300 on a piece of eCommerce software why on earth do I need to know anything about any of these areas, surely that's what the shopping cart software is for? In addition to this my personal experience showed that many are firmly aimed at the US market and are often incompatible with UK payment service providers. Not surprisingly, I had to grudgingly give up on this area of research and spent a week worrying about the future of my site.

    All was not lost however. There is an alternative to becoming one of the heavy-metal t-shirt wearing brigade and emerging yourself in the joys of Perl scripting. Third party providers offer 'Remotely Hosted Shopping Cart Software' which again varies enormously in price and also in how the costs are structured. To cut a long story short I found www.mals-e.com recommended enough times to catch my eye which has an easy to use 'admin page' system. After you sign up you get issued with a small personalised line of code which you add to the HTML of all your 'buy' buttons (which can be either text hyperlinks or images of your choosing). Log in, and start customising the comprehensive list of admin settings (accepted currencies, taxes, postage etc, etc) that's about it really. It's simply priced too at ?13.60 ($24) for 3 months or ?49 ($86.40) for 12 months service. Apart from the reasonable price, the ability to also use the service for free if you only want to implement Paypal on your site is a great way of testing the service first before you pay for the credit card accepting 'Premium' service. And so far I have to say I've been very happy with the way it works.

    Finding a Payment Service Provider

    If I want to find the cheapest electricity supplier, the cheapest mobile phone contract, or buy the cheapest pair of tartan slippers for Father Day there are loads of websites that will compare these things at the touch of a button. And it's pretty simple business sense that in order to remain competitive your overheads should be kept as low as possible without quality of service suffering. With this in mind my first port of call was the Business Link's 'product and cost comparison service' at www.electronic-payments.co.uk (click on the 'Use The Tool' button) which aims to compare the services and costs of various Payment Service Providers.

    Initially you're put through the annoying and totally unnecessary hassle of registering with the site. After this dodgy start you are presented with a simple form asking you to put in 3 figures, 'annual turnover' (actual or estimated), 'average online transaction value', and your 'business borrowing/overdraft rate'. All sensible stuff. From there another 4 pages of forms come up 'Transaction Bands', 'Acquiring Costs', 'Payment Method Split' and 'Compatibility' where you can enter more detailed information as you feel necessary before finally being presented with your personalised results. Overall the experience is a bit clunky in places but if you bear with it you find it's a fairly invaluable service.

    The cheapest/best 'Payment Service Provider' I found at the time was www.secpay.com. They deal with 10 of the 13 available Acquiring Banks in the UK and (most importantly) their system is compatible with mals-e.com mentioned above. Charges are as follows: an initial ?50 set-up fee (?58.75 with VAT) and ?10 per month thereafter (?11.75 with VAT). Each transaction is charged at either 1.9% or 39p of the sale price (the choice is yours), and the money from the customer will generally take 2-3 days to appear in your business bank account (which is a lot quicker than some). Apparently they also offer an online 'virtual' swipe card facility for telephone orders at no extra charge, but I have yet to test this out myself.

    I should also point out that there are a small number of operators such as Netbanx who don't require you to have a merchant account so set-up costs are kept to a minimum, but their individual transaction costs are higher, so for me at least, this was a false economy. I also chose not to accept American Express and Diners Club cards yet, as they need a separate merchant account to handle each of them.

    Finding an Internet Merchant Account

    This is no easy task, currently there's a serious lack of any specific hard facts and figures on the internet on this subject. There are also no up-to-date comparison tools or lists that I could find, this may well be because a bank's charges can often depend upon how much they're already making from you for other services. For instance, if you already have a loan from the same bank they may charge you less for each online transaction cost. Ecommerce forums were equally disappointing, I found scant accounts from individuals with any personal experience there. Even on the individual banks' websites finding costs and set-up fees is often impossible. In fact I resorted to phoning various departments of HSBC Bank over the course of a whole afternoon where none of the staff could tell me anything about their own merchant banking fees! Merchant banking it would seem is deeply stuck in the dark ages, so they're all more than keen to waste time and paper by sending you their glossy 200-page merchant account 'joining pack' in the post. On the last page in small type you will invariably find these illusively secret figures finally revealed. However, even this was a partial waste of time, as by the time the last 'pack' (of six) arrived two of the banks had already restructured their fees. I was still none the wiser.

    So I took a step back, and started again from a slightly different angle. I phoned Secpay asking if they recommended any particular acquiring banks, and they helpfully suggested using either EuroConex (which is the Bank of Ireland/Alliance & Leicester) or Lloydstsbcardnet (Lloyds/TSB) if I want to keep cost to a minimum. From there I called EuroConex (based in Ireland) and had to tell them my predicted annual turnover, and average transaction amount. Based on this, they would charge me a one-off set-up fee and a percentage cost per transaction on credit cards (they had a sliding scale from 1.9% to 2.5% at the time), and 24p per transaction on debit cards. They also have to see your website in order to check that what you're selling is 'ethical'.

    A month later, after further research, I finally decided to go with EuroConex, so phoned them up before filling in the forms. Their prices had soared, now there was a ?150 set-up fee (instead of ?100) and 3.46% per transaction on personal credit cards (instead of 2.4%). This basically meant that their prices were roughly the same as all the other merchant bankers, and was beginning to see how they'd earned their entry in the dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang. There were two more blows to follow though, this hike in costs meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new 'joining pack' with the new figures, and (and this was my oversight) that I would need to already have my own 'Business Account' set up before being considered for an internet merchant account, grrr! Being entirely new to this, I had naively assumed that because a 'Merchant Account' is just a different type of 'Business Account' that alone would be fine, and hadn't allowed for this level of banking pedantry.

    After further research, and much gnashing of teeth I finally chose to set up my very first business account with the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, due to their offer of a permanently free business current account with internet banking, and also because of their connection with EuroConex (which I thought might help to speed things up a bit). There was a fairly straight forward form to fill in and two types of photographic identification along with verified signatures were required (authorised by two separate officials, e.g. police, teachers, postmasters etc), before finally being accepted 2 weeks later.

    Once the business account was sorted, the merchant account joining pack could finally be filled in. Even though this account was essentially with the same bank as my newly granted business account (Alliance & Leicester), yet more identification and verified signatures were required by them. Two weeks passed before Euroconex emailed me saying that their underwriters additionally needed 3 consecutive months of statements from Paypal. Never having used my Paypal account for anything other than buying stuff from Ebay I was very concerned that, at this last hurdle, I was going to be refused an account.

    Three long weeks passed before I could take no more. I phoned up Euroconex to find that my fears were unfounded. After 3 months of research and form-filling I was now officially ready to accept credit cards over the internet. Who would have thought that such a prospect could be such a relief!

    Conclusion Well it's no easy ride and the caviar is still on ice, but if I'd found an article like this in the first place it would certainly have saved me a great deal of time and stress. Essentially I ended up with the following services which work well together and represent great value for money:

    • Shopping Cart - www.mals-e.com
    • Payment Service Provider - www.secpay.com
    • Inter
      Always Have a Current Resume
      What is the biggest mistake people make with resumes?People write their resumes as a chronological summary of everything they’ve done in their professional lives. Employers only care about one thing: what you can do for them. If they can’t quickly get that answer out of your resume, it’ll get tossed in the garbage can. An effective resume draws their attention, clearly spells out why you are better than the other candidates, and lands you an interview.Should I use an experienced resume preparer?Yes. Get it done right the first time because once your resume starts circulating, you won’t get a chance to go back and clean it up. Frankly, when I work with people on their resumes, I am shocked at what they’re sending out. These days, employers keep resumes in their databases for months or even years. So if it is poorly done and unimpressive, you may have blown it. Don’t take any chances on this.How long does a really good resume take to prepare?At least several weeks. You can’t throw one together and expect it to be your best. That’s another reason to engage a preparer. That person will look at the resume with a critical eye, speed up the process, and improve the quality. It’s very, very important to start working on your resume early. I can’t tell you how many people send me resumes that need a ton of work. Yet they need to send it in “tomorrow”.Does this mean I have to use a resume preparer forever?No. And be very wary of someone who tries to tell you otherwise. The preparer should explain how to update it yourself, going forward. You need to take ownership of your resume. It’s your life. It’s your career. When I do resumes, I show the person how to organize each section and how to add new information in a way that attracts the most attenti
      ended enough times to catch my eye which has an easy to use 'admin page' system. After you sign up you get issued with a small personalised line of code which you add to the HTML of all your 'buy' buttons (which can be either text hyperlinks or images of your choosing). Log in, and start customising the comprehensive list of admin settings (accepted currencies, taxes, postage etc, etc) that's about it really. It's simply priced too at ?13.60 ($24) for 3 months or ?49 ($86.40) for 12 months service. Apart from the reasonable price, the ability to also use the service for free if you only want to implement Paypal on your site is a great way of testing the service first before you pay for the credit card accepting 'Premium' service. And so far I have to say I've been very happy with the way it works.

      Finding a Payment Service Provider

      If I want to find the cheapest electricity supplier, the cheapest mobile phone contract, or buy the cheapest pair of tartan slippers for Father Day there are loads of websites that will compare these things at the touch of a button. And it's pretty simple business sense that in order to remain competitive your overheads should be kept as low as possible without quality of service suffering. With this in mind my first port of call was the Business Link's 'product and cost comparison service' at www.electronic-payments.co.uk (click on the 'Use The Tool' button) which aims to compare the services and costs of various Payment Service Providers.

      Initially you're put through the annoying and totally unnecessary hassle of registering with the site. After this dodgy start you are presented with a simple form asking you to put in 3 figures, 'annual turnover' (actual or estimated), 'average online transaction value', and your 'business borrowing/overdraft rate'. All sensible stuff. From there another 4 pages of forms come up 'Transaction Bands', 'Acquiring Costs', 'Payment Method Split' and 'Compatibility' where you can enter more detailed information as you feel necessary before finally being presented with your personalised results. Overall the experience is a bit clunky in places but if you bear with it you find it's a fairly invaluable service.

      The cheapest/best 'Payment Service Provider' I found at the time was www.secpay.com. They deal with 10 of the 13 available Acquiring Banks in the UK and (most importantly) their system is compatible with mals-e.com mentioned above. Charges are as follows: an initial ?50 set-up fee (?58.75 with VAT) and ?10 per month thereafter (?11.75 with VAT). Each transaction is charged at either 1.9% or 39p of the sale price (the choice is yours), and the money from the customer will generally take 2-3 days to appear in your business bank account (which is a lot quicker than some). Apparently they also offer an online 'virtual' swipe card facility for telephone orders at no extra charge, but I have yet to test this out myself.

      I should also point out that there are a small number of operators such as Netbanx who don't require you to have a merchant account so set-up costs are kept to a minimum, but their individual transaction costs are higher, so for me at least, this was a false economy. I also chose not to accept American Express and Diners Club cards yet, as they need a separate merchant account to handle each of them.

      Finding an Internet Merchant Account

      This is no easy task, currently there's a serious lack of any specific hard facts and figures on the internet on this subject. There are also no up-to-date comparison tools or lists that I could find, this may well be because a bank's charges can often depend upon how much they're already making from you for other services. For instance, if you already have a loan from the same bank they may charge you less for each online transaction cost. Ecommerce forums were equally disappointing, I found scant accounts from individuals with any personal experience there. Even on the individual banks' websites finding costs and set-up fees is often impossible. In fact I resorted to phoning various departments of HSBC Bank over the course of a whole afternoon where none of the staff could tell me anything about their own merchant banking fees! Merchant banking it would seem is deeply stuck in the dark ages, so they're all more than keen to waste time and paper by sending you their glossy 200-page merchant account 'joining pack' in the post. On the last page in small type you will invariably find these illusively secret figures finally revealed. However, even this was a partial waste of time, as by the time the last 'pack' (of six) arrived two of the banks had already restructured their fees. I was still none the wiser.

      So I took a step back, and started again from a slightly different angle. I phoned Secpay asking if they recommended any particular acquiring banks, and they helpfully suggested using either EuroConex (which is the Bank of Ireland/Alliance & Leicester) or Lloydstsbcardnet (Lloyds/TSB) if I want to keep cost to a minimum. From there I called EuroConex (based in Ireland) and had to tell them my predicted annual turnover, and average transaction amount. Based on this, they would charge me a one-off set-up fee and a percentage cost per transaction on credit cards (they had a sliding scale from 1.9% to 2.5% at the time), and 24p per transaction on debit cards. They also have to see your website in order to check that what you're selling is 'ethical'.

      A month later, after further research, I finally decided to go with EuroConex, so phoned them up before filling in the forms. Their prices had soared, now there was a ?150 set-up fee (instead of ?100) and 3.46% per transaction on personal credit cards (instead of 2.4%). This basically meant that their prices were roughly the same as all the other merchant bankers, and was beginning to see how they'd earned their entry in the dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang. There were two more blows to follow though, this hike in costs meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new 'joining pack' with the new figures, and (and this was my oversight) that I would need to already have my own 'Business Account' set up before being considered for an internet merchant account, grrr! Being entirely new to this, I had naively assumed that because a 'Merchant Account' is just a different type of 'Business Account' that alone would be fine, and hadn't allowed for this level of banking pedantry.

      After further research, and much gnashing of teeth I finally chose to set up my very first business account with the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, due to their offer of a permanently free business current account with internet banking, and also because of their connection with EuroConex (which I thought might help to speed things up a bit). There was a fairly straight forward form to fill in and two types of photographic identification along with verified signatures were required (authorised by two separate officials, e.g. police, teachers, postmasters etc), before finally being accepted 2 weeks later.

      Once the business account was sorted, the merchant account joining pack could finally be filled in. Even though this account was essentially with the same bank as my newly granted business account (Alliance & Leicester), yet more identification and verified signatures were required by them. Two weeks passed before Euroconex emailed me saying that their underwriters additionally needed 3 consecutive months of statements from Paypal. Never having used my Paypal account for anything other than buying stuff from Ebay I was very concerned that, at this last hurdle, I was going to be refused an account.

      Three long weeks passed before I could take no more. I phoned up Euroconex to find that my fears were unfounded. After 3 months of research and form-filling I was now officially ready to accept credit cards over the internet. Who would have thought that such a prospect could be such a relief!

      Conclusion Well it's no easy ride and the caviar is still on ice, but if I'd found an article like this in the first place it would certainly have saved me a great deal of time and stress. Essentially I ended up with the following services which work well together and represent great value for money:

      • Shopping Cart - www.mals-e.com
      • Payment Service Provider - www.secpay.com
      • Inter
        How to Hire and Manage Employees
        Soon after I founded my company in 1989 I realized that the greatest challenge I faced was learning how to hire employees and manage them effectively. As a new employer I quickly learned that without proper motivation many employees will do as little as possible to get by until payday. I had to find ways to motivate my employees to provide an optimal experience for every customer, every day. I learned that employee management and accountability ensures that the experience my company provides is desirable, leading to repeat customers.With the guidance of a good leader people often perform beyond even their own expectations. Continually motivating your employees is essential to having them perform at their best every day. Of course, if you hire qualified employees with proven track records your management hurdles will be lessened. Still, verbal and written communication are vital to effective leadership; therefore, your company policies must be clearly stated and strictly enforced.You must motivate employees to take responsibility for their own actions. Each employee should have the understanding that the success of the company (and the paycheck they are expecting) depends upon all employees consistently performing to the best of their ability and working as a team. How do you accomplish this?Build RespectIntegrity is possibly the most important trait you should possess. Employees must be treated equally and fairly, as should every customer and vendor. You must remain professional at all times, using diplomacy and tact to discipline undesirable behavior. In addition, you must always lead by example.Here are some tips for building respect:• Set the example -- be certain that you remain in compliance with all company policies.• Keep a positive attitude.
        y also offer an online 'virtual' swipe card facility for telephone orders at no extra charge, but I have yet to test this out myself.

        I should also point out that there are a small number of operators such as Netbanx who don't require you to have a merchant account so set-up costs are kept to a minimum, but their individual transaction costs are higher, so for me at least, this was a false economy. I also chose not to accept American Express and Diners Club cards yet, as they need a separate merchant account to handle each of them.

        Finding an Internet Merchant Account

        This is no easy task, currently there's a serious lack of any specific hard facts and figures on the internet on this subject. There are also no up-to-date comparison tools or lists that I could find, this may well be because a bank's charges can often depend upon how much they're already making from you for other services. For instance, if you already have a loan from the same bank they may charge you less for each online transaction cost. Ecommerce forums were equally disappointing, I found scant accounts from individuals with any personal experience there. Even on the individual banks' websites finding costs and set-up fees is often impossible. In fact I resorted to phoning various departments of HSBC Bank over the course of a whole afternoon where none of the staff could tell me anything about their own merchant banking fees! Merchant banking it would seem is deeply stuck in the dark ages, so they're all more than keen to waste time and paper by sending you their glossy 200-page merchant account 'joining pack' in the post. On the last page in small type you will invariably find these illusively secret figures finally revealed. However, even this was a partial waste of time, as by the time the last 'pack' (of six) arrived two of the banks had already restructured their fees. I was still none the wiser.

        So I took a step back, and started again from a slightly different angle. I phoned Secpay asking if they recommended any particular acquiring banks, and they helpfully suggested using either EuroConex (which is the Bank of Ireland/Alliance & Leicester) or Lloydstsbcardnet (Lloyds/TSB) if I want to keep cost to a minimum. From there I called EuroConex (based in Ireland) and had to tell them my predicted annual turnover, and average transaction amount. Based on this, they would charge me a one-off set-up fee and a percentage cost per transaction on credit cards (they had a sliding scale from 1.9% to 2.5% at the time), and 24p per transaction on debit cards. They also have to see your website in order to check that what you're selling is 'ethical'.

        A month later, after further research, I finally decided to go with EuroConex, so phoned them up before filling in the forms. Their prices had soared, now there was a ?150 set-up fee (instead of ?100) and 3.46% per transaction on personal credit cards (instead of 2.4%). This basically meant that their prices were roughly the same as all the other merchant bankers, and was beginning to see how they'd earned their entry in the dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang. There were two more blows to follow though, this hike in costs meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new 'joining pack' with the new figures, and (and this was my oversight) that I would need to already have my own 'Business Account' set up before being considered for an internet merchant account, grrr! Being entirely new to this, I had naively assumed that because a 'Merchant Account' is just a different type of 'Business Account' that alone would be fine, and hadn't allowed for this level of banking pedantry.

        After further research, and much gnashing of teeth I finally chose to set up my very first business account with the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, due to their offer of a permanently free business current account with internet banking, and also because of their connection with EuroConex (which I thought might help to speed things up a bit). There was a fairly straight forward form to fill in and two types of photographic identification along with verified signatures were required (authorised by two separate officials, e.g. police, teachers, postmasters etc), before finally being accepted 2 weeks later.

        Once the business account was sorted, the merchant account joining pack could finally be filled in. Even though this account was essentially with the same bank as my newly granted business account (Alliance & Leicester), yet more identification and verified signatures were required by them. Two weeks passed before Euroconex emailed me saying that their underwriters additionally needed 3 consecutive months of statements from Paypal. Never having used my Paypal account for anything other than buying stuff from Ebay I was very concerned that, at this last hurdle, I was going to be refused an account.

        Three long weeks passed before I could take no more. I phoned up Euroconex to find that my fears were unfounded. After 3 months of research and form-filling I was now officially ready to accept credit cards over the internet. Who would have thought that such a prospect could be such a relief!

        Conclusion Well it's no easy ride and the caviar is still on ice, but if I'd found an article like this in the first place it would certainly have saved me a great deal of time and stress. Essentially I ended up with the following services which work well together and represent great value for money:

        • Shopping Cart - www.mals-e.com
        • Payment Service Provider - www.secpay.com
        • Inter
          Specialized Marketing Methods
          Magazines One of the main features of magazine advertising is that ads in this medium can often be read over and over, because magazines are often kept for long periods of time. Another benefit of magazine advertising is that it can be targeted to your specific client demographics because there is literally a magazine (or several) for almost every person's taste. Like the other forms of mass media, this is another occasion when talking to a salesperson may be of some advantage. The main thing you need for any magazine publishing is to know their reader demographics, and geographics are, and their volume of circulation. If these fit your client profile and is within your budget, they can be a powerful advertising medium for you.Promotional giveaways Have you ever received a coffee cup or a pen with a business's name printed on it? Of course you have. Have you ever received a pen or a coffee cup with a website printed on it? Promotional items – coffee cups, T-shirts, key rings, pens, fridge magnets and hundreds of other items that are available – can be great promotional ideas. When you select an item, think about what your customer demographics are and what would be appealing or novel to them. One important thing to keep in mind with these giveaway items – you need to have a way to give them away. This will dictate a couple of things – the volume and value of what you produce. It may be that you have few clients so something like golf shirts or tote bags may be what you want to give away, but if you are in a high-traffic area, something like pens or pencils may be more appropriate. Remember, giveaway items need to be given away so know in advance how you are going to accomplish this.Circulars, flyers and door-to-door Don't we all hate junk mail? Of course we do so why
          rices had soared, now there was a ?150 set-up fee (instead of ?100) and 3.46% per transaction on personal credit cards (instead of 2.4%). This basically meant that their prices were roughly the same as all the other merchant bankers, and was beginning to see how they'd earned their entry in the dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang. There were two more blows to follow though, this hike in costs meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new 'joining pack' with the new figures, and (and this was my oversight) that I would need to already have my own 'Business Account' set up before being considered for an internet merchant account, grrr! Being entirely new to this, I had naively assumed that because a 'Merchant Account' is just a different type of 'Business Account' that alone would be fine, and hadn't allowed for this level of banking pedantry.

          After further research, and much gnashing of teeth I finally chose to set up my very first business account with the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, due to their offer of a permanently free business current account with internet banking, and also because of their connection with EuroConex (which I thought might help to speed things up a bit). There was a fairly straight forward form to fill in and two types of photographic identification along with verified signatures were required (authorised by two separate officials, e.g. police, teachers, postmasters etc), before finally being accepted 2 weeks later.

          Once the business account was sorted, the merchant account joining pack could finally be filled in. Even though this account was essentially with the same bank as my newly granted business account (Alliance & Leicester), yet more identification and verified signatures were required by them. Two weeks passed before Euroconex emailed me saying that their underwriters additionally needed 3 consecutive months of statements from Paypal. Never having used my Paypal account for anything other than buying stuff from Ebay I was very concerned that, at this last hurdle, I was going to be refused an account.

          Three long weeks passed before I could take no more. I phoned up Euroconex to find that my fears were unfounded. After 3 months of research and form-filling I was now officially ready to accept credit cards over the internet. Who would have thought that such a prospect could be such a relief!

          Conclusion Well it's no easy ride and the caviar is still on ice, but if I'd found an article like this in the first place it would certainly have saved me a great deal of time and stress. Essentially I ended up with the following services which work well together and represent great value for money:

          • Shopping Cart - www.mals-e.com
          • Payment Service Provider - www.secpay.com
          • Internet Merchant Account - www.euroconex.com
          • Business Account - The Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank Business Builder Current Account
          Having read this article it's my hope that you'll have a better understanding of the process, even if some of the information may become out-dated over time you'll still have a good starting point to base your own research upon. Best of luck in creating your own eCommerce site, and consider sending me some canap?s in the post when you've made your fortune.