E-commerce Information

The key difference between an (old-fashioned) Intranet and a Portal

Knowledge Management for beginners

Building Bridges

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet."

ClickBank is the Internet's most popular payment processor for online payments but with many rivals appearing on the scene is ClickBank?s popularity drawing to an end?

If your business features products or services for sale, undoubtedly the topic of eCommerce has come up. What is eCommerce? Literally defined as ?the conduct of financial transactions by electronic means,? it refers to purchases made over the Internet. There are popular slang terms such as ebusiness, click and mortar, dotcom, cyber-mall and multiple spellings (eCommerce, e-commerce, E-Commerce), but they are all basically the same thing. Don?t let the different phrases confuse you, it all comes back to the same principle: selling online.

--Online Commerce--

Many people are saying that the internet is dead. So is there still money to be made on the Internet?

My Business is Afraid of the Internet

In my last column I discussed the process of credit card enabling your brick-and-mortar business. I pointed out that research has shown that accepting credit cards can help increase revenue and enhance cash flow. I also pointed out that you may have to look beyond your local bank for help in getting things set up. This week we will look at setting up an online payment system for your business website. If you think hooking up a brick-and-mortar location with a credit card system stymies most bankers, try asking them how to do it on your website.

Anyone using a slow, or an awkward payment processor had better wake up!

Let me share with you a secret that most marketing experts and consultants don?t want you to know? (many of them don?t even understand this secret themselves.)

Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners. Since the base application development costs of open source applications is free, small and medium business owners are able to leverage previously unobtainable technolgies against their sales objectives, operational costs and customer satisfaction levels.

There are lots of ways to advertise for free but they are time consuming so I guess technically, they are not free because your time is worth something! But if you have the time and not the money this is for you.

My previous article I wrote called "One Point Two Billion" attracted quite some attention, the downloads through all the article syndication services has been astronomical compared to any other articles I wrote which are still with them. It seems the numbers game is popular not only with the accountancy profession, but with just about anyone running a website who is interested in more sales from anywhere in the world. The internet has proved to be the great leveller, even a grandmother I know has made hundreds of thousands of dollars just from publishing a couple of e-books, business of that magnitude is not now confined to those people with large sums of investment capital, teams of accountants, planners, secretaries, swanky offices etc. Anyone, even you, can make money regularly on the internet, just aim for a goal and 'go for it!' The costs of setting up have never been lower, the ease of making web pages has never been easier, ( I make my web pages in Notepad, which is on every Windows computer), and the potential audience for your web pages has never been larger. So what are you waiting for? The sheer mountain of information available through e-books on any subject and especially on setting up a business on the internet would take you a lifetime to read through, so just be selective and read only what you need to know about and get started in that business. Businesspeople who have 'been there-done that', have written up an enormous amount of e-books to pass on their knowledge and experience, pitfalls to avoid, how to spend your advertising dollars, and just about everything else you need to know about to ensure success. So profit from their experience, avoid the pitfalls, do what they say you should do, and you should be in a profitable business in no time, just the way they did it. No large sums of investment are needed, just time and dedication. If you provide an excellent service that benefits all your clients, they will recommend you to their friends,if on the other hand you want to be a 'scammer' and a 'fly by night' operator determined to 'rip-off' as many people as possible, you will come to grief. You will find your web hosting account rapidly terminated, your e-mail account likewise, and your name plastered all over the forums and newsgroups. You get out of life exactly what you put in. There are still mysteries about life we still don't understand and this is the reason we come to grief, but on the other hand, if you work for the benefit of others, this 'mystery of life', for want of a better name,cuts in and helps us along, we go with the flow and good things start to happen. I could tell you of many experiences I have had, both good and bad, which I have learnt a great deal from, but space precludes that, maybe one day. All right, you win, I will tell you of one particular incident more recently and then move on with this article. I carried a St.Christopher medallion on a gold chain in my wallet for six years, given to me by the wife of a good friend overseas, 'it will keep you safe' she said. I received a new wallet for a Christmas present and changed everything in the old wallet into the new one, except the St. Christopher medallion, it was looking a bit 'worse for wear' and I decided to put it in the cupboard. That day I lost my mobile phone! For two whole days I felt a loss which can only be described as a 'bereavement'. I had lost touch with the network I was attached to night and day, seven days a week, I felt bereft. I did not know if someone was trying to ring me, whether something was urgent I had to know about, my sense of loss was total. Was this to do with the St. Christopher medallion? I thought surely not. That was on the Tuesday, by Thursday morning I had decided to put that 'good luck' St. Christopher medallion into my new wallet. My mobile phone turned up via a 'good samaritan' who would take no money as a reward whatsoever.I was never more pleased to see my mobile phone. So what happened here?Was it something to do with the St. Christopher medallion? Was it because I had 'bad thoughts' that it was the 'worse for wear'so discard it as inconsequential? I don't know the answer. There have been too many such incidents in my life it would take volumes to relate the details. We don't know these 'mysteries of life' but one thing is important -keep a positive outlook to everything and everyone and good things will happen for you. It's difficult to visualize how many people that are out there who can log on to your website. It's also difficult to understand what kinds of people they are, what background and education they have had. Why they are logging on to your new site. What do they expect to see, or learn, or buy? How will they benefit from visiting your site?. Will they buy a good product, or learn something, or get some amusement or entertainment from it?.

Inherent (or Business) Risk

Are you familiar with Froogle? If you are an online merchant, you certainly should be.

The process of learning how to accept payments on the Internet is similar to the course of figuring out how to launch a business. What at first seems puzzling and intimidating may be viewed as straightforward and easy to understand if one has the right guide or manual. The following serves as a brief primer for any business owner who needs to set up a system to accept credit cards online, and includes a necessary glimpse of the associated fees.

Congratulations! You created an impulse in a customer to buy your product. One small catch? without some way to take their credit card number, your sale is as good as gone. One of the most important ways to grab that sale NOW, is to have your own Visa/AMEX/MasterCard merchant account tied to your shopping system. It used to be hard for just anyone to get a merchant account, but those days are long gone, (as you probably know if you turned on your computer today.) It seems like just about every company out there is ready to give you merchant account status, well, not give sell. To find a relatively inexpensive one, visit my site at http://www.KickStartCart.com.

According to NOP World, 48% of all Internet users have researched or purchased financial products such as insurance and loans on the internet, or used online banking facilities. In April, NOP World had already recorded estimates of 28 million people online in Great Britain, with 13.5 million exploiting the Web for their financial requirements.

I spent a lifetime in retailing and I?m still at it in retirement; albeit virtually.

In this surreal world of the internet, anyone, even you, can put your point across to a staggering number of people in every country on the planet.

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.

For many businesses, e-commerce represents a tremendous method for generating revenues. To maximize the profit potential, you need to keep an eye on issues that drive your prospects nuts. The FTC maintain a list of the top 10 ?dot.cons? complained about by consumers. If your site falls within one of these industries, you must make sure you address these concerns.

Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for a small company (called PaymentNet / then Signio) that handled online transactions. Verisign later purchased this company, and the product team I led integrated the "client" - the portion that took the credit card information and sent it to our servers for processing. The product name is Payflow Pro - maybe you've heard of it?