SuperTips Ezine: Issue 09

May 26th, 1999
Harvey Segal, Editor:

IN THIS ISSUE

1. Greetings!

2. How to Sell MORE on the WEB Faster!
- by Christopher M Swift

3. Readers Forum

4. How to Avoid Unfair Affiliate Programs
- by Glenn Sobel

5. More "Super" Tips
5.1 Affiliate programs for newbies
5.2 A tip for managing your time
5.3 Make it easy for your customer

6. Next Issue

1. Greetings!

Hello folks,

I've added one new line after the subscribe information at the foot of this newsletter.

In response to many requests I now provide archives of all past issues of the SuperTips Ezine.

Do you know how easy it is to provide archives using the particular list management service (Onelist) which distributes this newsletter ?

You just have to click one button ! The one which says -please archive all issues.

Dead easy ... but this is NOT what I have done.

Read on and you'll see why. Fellow ezine publishers - take note.

Regards, Harvey

2. How to Sell MORE on the WEB Faster!
- by Christopher M Swift

It always amazes me to see how much emphasis business owners spend promoting their websites and how little they spend on their payment solutions. Lets talk about how you can take payment from your customers. The one thing you have to understand about selling on the Internet is that people buy on emotion and impulse!

Think about all the effort and money you invested to get your customer to visit your site, read your classified ad, respond to your autoresponder or whatever other means you’ve used to get interest in your company. Suppose you’re selling an informational product to teach people how to market on the Internet. They read your initial sales ad and say to themselves "This looks good!," so they visit your website or request more information. After reading your follow-up information they’re excited and ready to make the purchase you’ve strived for!

== The lost sale
Your prospective customers look at your order form and see that you only accept check or money orders. Some may say "I wish they took credit cards because I don’t have enough money in my checking account" so they simply don’t order. Lets assume they’re really interested in your offer and want to order from you. They print your order form or jot down your mailing address and continue surfing the web. An hour or so goes by, its getting late, so they sign off from their computer, spend some time with their family perhaps have a late night snack and go to bed.

Wait a minute... What just happened? That prospect that was so interested has gone about their everyday life! Sure they jotted down your information but do you think its as fresh in their head as it was last night? Of course not! If you think about it, you are asking a great deal from your client. You’re asking them to hold on to the impulse and excitement even though you can’t support it in the moment. You’re asking them to get out their checkbook and write a check or go to the bank and get a money order, fill out an envelope, stamp it, and go to a mail box...and wait.

How many times have you ever talked to a client on the telephone or over an email who said, "the check is in the mail?" Do you remember how successful you felt about closing the sale and how many trips you took to the mail box looking for the order which never arrived? That’s quite a disappointment especially if you are involved in a start-up business. You need to make ordering as simple and safe as possible to capitalize on the impulse shopper!

==Check-by Fax payment solutions
You should definitely consider purchasing a check-by-fax software program. Check-by-fax software is a must for all E-commerce businesses and it is especially important for a new start-up business because the price is reasonable, usually under $200. Check-by-fax is a software program that will allow you to accept checks by phone, fax, or email. More people have checking accounts than credit cards, so why lose out on their business? You simply enter your clients check information into the software fields, put some check paper into your printer, print a duplicate of the check and present it to your bank for payment. No more disappointing trips to the mail box and you’ve taken the first step towards securing the impulse buy.

==Do you take credit cards?
If you have a website and aren’t allowing visitors to order your products online, then you may be losing sales everyday. This is why you should consider accepting credit cards directly at your site. How many times have you had your customers ask you the question, "do you take credit cards?" If you don’t, what did you say? What did you tell them when they asked "why not?" If you don’t accept credit cards, the question can be very uncomfortable. If you are serious about making money online the answer to the question,"do you take credit cards?" must be YES! You’re probably saying to yourself, "you just said more people have checking accounts so why do I need to concern myself with credit cards? Besides, it probably costs a fortune to accept credit cards and banks won’t approve me because I’m not a retail business." Not true! In fact with the new evolution of electronic commerce, obtaining a merchant account is easier than ever for home based/internet business. Accepting credit cards makes sense when you consider the average cash or check sale amount is $9 and the average credit card sale is $40, a 450% average sale increase!

== Ordering from your website
Accepting credit cards at your website is one of the best ways to capture the impulse shopper. You provide an order form at your website so your shopper can fill in their credit card and contact information; the order and amount is confirmed and then the "submit" button is clicked and the order appears within minutes in your e-mail box. You can even have an automated system that will confirm each order, sending the shopper an emailed confirmation receipt. When you offer online ordering you give shoppers the convenience of ordering 24 hours per day seven days a week, you can literally make money in your sleep!

When looking for a merchant account provider, I recommend you find one who can offer you secure online ordering. Secure ordering means that the shoppers personal and credit card information will be kept confidential through a special server side software that encrypts the message where the information is stored and prevents it from being stolen. Customers will know you have secure online ordering because their web browser will notify them of the security features. In addition a closed lock or key will appear in the bottom right hand corner assuring your customers information is secure.

== Inside Information
Let me give you a little bit of inside information on the approval process, criteria, and pricing information involved with obtaining a merchant account. You will probably come across companies who will charge you an application fee. An application fee is nothing more than security for the merchant company that you are serious about using them for your services. Merchant companies incur upfront fees such as paying the bank an application fee, shipping parcel costs and site survey inspections so they try to recover these costs through an application fee. Do you need to pay an application fee? Absolutely not, in fact you should ask the provider to waive the fee! If they will not cooperate chances are they are a small provider and rely on application fees to make a profit.

You will need a credit card processing terminal or software which allows you to enter credit card data and obtain authorization for each charge. Terminals connect to a telephone line and calls the clearing house to approve the sale with software you will need a computer and a modem to authorize your sales. If you are involved in a mail order business, software is recommended because of its Address Verification System (AVS) feature. When you run a sale through your software you will need to get your customers credit card number and expiration date in addition you would ask them for the billing information which appears on the statement of the credit card they want authorized. When you submit the sale AVS will check to make sure the person is a match for the card protecting you from non- face to face transactions. Expect to have your funds deposited into your business checking account within 3 business days.

Most companies package the cost of getting you merchant status with the cost of the equipment. Generally they will offer you a purchase or lease option. Purchasing can be expensive if you’re an up-start business which can make leasing very attractive. The benefit to leasing is low start- up costs. First and last month lease payments will be required, generally $40 for the merchant account and equipment. Keep in mind the leasing company is funding the merchant account provider their purchase price and will be billing you. Most leases are a 12 to 48 month term, and you will be paying almost double the purchase price for the convenience of inexpensive startup costs. Also note you do not own the equipment at the end of the lease. Some companies will offer a lease buyout option.

Be sure to ask your provider if they have any payment plans available to you. Quality companies will have a payment plan program to help you afford your merchant account and equipment without entering into a long term lease. Always be sure you own the equipment when the payments are complete!

There is a discount rate associated with each credit card transaction. The rate is always higher for mail order businesses generally no more than 2.5% for Visa and Mastercard (3.5% for American Express and Discover) plus a transaction fee (generally 30 cents). For example, if you had a $100 sale with a discount rate of 2.29% plus a 30 cent transaction fee you would pay $2.59 to the credit card company.

Believe it or not, most providers will be able to get you approved regardless of your credit situation. Be honest and let them know of your situation. Most companies have programs designed for poor credit so don’t let bad credit hold you back from applying for a merchant account.

Make paying for your services convenient for your customers! You work hard promoting your company, don’t waste your efforts with poor payment solutions.
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Christopher M. Swift is the Director of Marketing for Superior Bankcard Service United, a merchant services firm that specializes in electronic commerce solutions. He is also the publisher of WEBTRANZ a weekly E-commerce & Marketing Ezine which provides, strategies and solutions for selling more on the web. To get your free subscription mailto:webtranz@smartbot.net
Article supplied by The Gallery at http:/www.e-zinez.com
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3. Readers Forum

They say that one of the most influential advertising techniques is to include testimonials from your customers.

I must admit that when I read a newsletter containing favourable comments from readers they somehow do work to boost my impression of that newsletter.

So I am going to include a recent post, not to impress you -well maybe a bit ! - but to make an observation.

This is from Michael Y. (I've not used his full name as I have not yet asked for permission to use his letter - a point I'll cover next week).

I was just reading through your supertips website. GREAT JOB!!! I love this site. The information is truly valuable, not only to my business but to anyone doing business on the net.

I have a question for you. I did not see any copyrights on the articles. Are they all written by you? If they are, would it be possible to copy them in whole onto my members website (free service for my members) with links back to yours?

Here's proof if you ever needed it that free content and free articles are one of the best ways for getting traffic to your site. I've written an article about this "Win customers by giving away Free information"

You'll find, as above, that a helpful article will start to be circulated around the Net, people will ask YOU if they can use it.

For the record, they are all my articles. I have not bothered to put a copyright message on them because if someone wants to steal them (and they have) I doubt if that would stop them. If you know otherwise do let us know.

4. HOW TO AVOID UNFAIR AFFILIATE PROGRAMS Stop wasting your time and money on the wrong programs.
- by Glenn Sobel, J.D., B.S.L.

How many of you use affiliate programs on your sites? I bet it's over 90%, and I bet that you don't make as much as you expected from most of them.

Why is that? Could it be that your site is not designed properly? Or maybe you don't get enough traffic? Or maybe the program is not suited to your visitors? Well any of those reasons will hurt your sales, but what if you're doing everything right and you still aren't making the money you expected?

The reason for disappointing commission checks could just be that the program is not designed fairly. How carefully did you read the affiliate contract? Did you analyze the tracking system used to credit your sales? What about the commission structure, is it fair? And is there full disclosure on these issues?

ANALYZE BEFORE YOU AFFILIATE

Too many people are joining up with programs that they don't really understand. Can you tell me exactly how your sales are tracked, how commissionable sales are defined in your contract, and when you will be paid? If you can't, I suggest that you need to reconsider your approach to using these programs.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use them, because there are many excellent programs that you can make good money with. But there are others that will only frustrate you, wasting your time and money, and taking your visitors away from your site for no benefit to you.

UNFAIR CONTRACTS

Have you read some of these contracts? Is the language consistent with the way the program was described in the promotional materials? Do they limit payments to unfairly high minimums so that you have to wait a year for your first payment? Is there an exclusivity clause that limits your right to use other programs also?

Read the definition of a commissionable sale. If there are unfair limitations you may never qualify for a check. Don't think that the hype in the promo material is the deal you are agreeing to, it isn't. READ THE CONTRACT.

TRACKING SYSTEM

If you are selling a product that requires planning or other factors that tend to delay a purchasing decision, any tracking system that requires immediate purchase will leave you with nothing. When the buyer returns to complete the purchase you will not likely qualify for the commission. So don't be fooled by a high percentage. You have to qualify for the sale to get the commission.

REASONABLE COMMISSION

Compare the commission schedule to other similar programs. Is it fair? Is the product a high profit margin sale with a low percentage commission? Do they use a high commission promise to suck you in, then tell you that you have to sell over a million dollars worth to get that commission? Don't laugh, this happens. Think I'm Kidding? Read the Barnes and Noble contract! In the contract you'll find that the commission you will get for your smaller sales is much less than you were led to expect.

WRAP-UP

If this makes you think about your affiliations, good! I want you to get the most from your investment in these opportunities. These are business decisions, treat them accordingly.

Okay, I know not everyone has the legal skills to properly interpret a contract or the technical skills to understand a tracking system. That's why I added a resource list to my site with rankings on programs that I consider to be unfair. And I hope you will let me know if you come across one that you think should be added to the list.

Good luck with your sales efforts.

Glenn Sobel is a consultant on domain names, affiliate programs and online marketing. You can get further info from mailto: dnainfo@sendfree.com and you can sign up for his newsletter or read more articles at http://www.DomainNameAdvisor.com

5. More "Super" Tips

5.1 Affiliate programs for newbies

Following Glenn's article above, if you are not familiar with affiliate (or reseller) programs and how they are one of the most effective and simple ways of bringing in extra revenue there is a write-up "How to Profit as a Reseller"

5.2 A tip for managing your time

Do you find that 24 hours in the day are not sufficient when you run an online business ? There's always email to answer, more business opportunities to follow up, better software tools to evaluate, more places to advertise, web pages to improve, and so on.

It helps if you are organised: I'm a great one for writing 'Todo' lists and continually reshuffling priorities.

Then what I used to do was battle my way through the list not really knowing what I expected to achieve by the end of the day.

But here's a change I recently made - it's resulted in a huge increase in my productivity.

It's so simple. At the start of the day I just draw a horizontal line at the point on the list which I want to have reached by the end of the day.

This becomes the goal.
By having a target to aim at you'll find that you become focused on reaching it and more often than not you'll go on to accomplish even more than you anticipated.

Try it !

As regards how to prioritise your tasks I always have the same item in first place - answering Email. This leads me on to a little plug, if I may, for a company whose products I promote. I have never come across an organisation with such an amazing response time as Virtualis Systems who provide web hosting services. I keep a record of all my messages to them and they have all been answered within 10 to 15 minutes - apart from one time.

On that occasion there was no reply.

Because of their previous superb record my first thought was not that they had failed but that somehow the Email was not getting through. And sure enough, with their help, I discovered that the 'reply-to' option in my Email software had been corrupted and their replies were not reaching me.

With a service level like that the details of their product range seem almost secondary, however their systems are as you may expect state-of-the-art.

Read about Virtualis systems and their web hosting services here

5.3 Make it easy for your customer

In Christopher Swift's article he made the point about giving shoppers the convenience of ordering 24 hours per day using credit cards.

It pays to examine all parts of your business to check that you have made life easy for your customer.

I'm sure we've all visited web sites which have taken ages to load, very difficult to navigate, with confusing instructions for ordering.

And then, when we want to write a complaint to the web master we cannot find his Email address anywhere.

But here's another common situation - where the intention is good but the approach is similarly 'unuser friendly'.

You subscribe to a newsletter, you're keen on seeing the back issues but you end up trawling through page after (slow moving) page on the net trying to extract the information you want.

With this in mind I decided that I wanted to provide the archives of my newsletter on autoresponders so that you can read them offline at your leisure.

Also I wanted to have an index of all the issues showing the articles and tips in each one for selective reading.

Well here is the index::e00@sendfree.com
Send off for all details of the back issues.

If you publish a newsletter consider using this idea.

But wait - I hear you say - I've got to start paying for autoresponders.

Well here's a surprise for you. If you don't mind having a sponsored ad appear at the head of your autoresponder content - I don't - then you can have them for free.

And here's the punchline. Every time that YOUR newsletter gets requested by autoresponder it earns you credit so that your own ad will appear in another person's autoresponder message.

Every two times someone requests your autoresponder message you are credited with one free ad.

So what I have done is provide information about the archives in the automatic welcome message that is sent to new subscribers. As they request first the index and then particular issues I am receiving credits for my ads which in turn are enticing readers to my web site, where they are joining my newsletter, and so on ad infinitum.

You can read about the autoresponder system called Sendfree and join up now, for free, here

I also wrote in detail about this system in the April 21st issue and if you like I can send you .... whoops, what am I saying ... you can get that issue by autoresponder from the archives.
Just send an Email e00@sendfree.com

6. Next Issue

Do you have a JavaScript pop-up window at your web site ? Do you even know what it means ?

Well according to Nick F. Nichols it's one of "20 Things That Should Never Appear On Your Site"

Read his complete list in next week's issue

I'll be trawling around the Net looking for the best articles to bring you. It's nice when they turn up on you doorstep. Glenn Sobel offered me today's article and I was pleased to publish it. So why don't you send in one of your own or any comments for the Reader's forum.

Also if you have any suggestions to improve this newsletter so that we can make it a great resource for all our readers please drop me a line.