Blogs have in more recent times gained a ridiculous popularity. A lot of people previously thought that blogging was just for kids or for people that wanted to just talk about the goings on in their lives, but not so anymore. Businesses as well as people creating niche websites are using blogs more than ever. Wordpress being the popular choice. So why should you use a blog if you have a E-Commerce website or just a simple site promoting your business? The following list covers these points.

1. Announce new products or Services to your customers.

One of the best things about a blog is the announcing of new products which will be available for purchase, or bring attention to new services that you will be providing. This can be good especially if you do not plan to update your website as frequently, and want to make a simple blog post about it to inform current and potential customers.

2. Mention upcoming sales or special events.

What better way than to announce on your blog that you will be having an upcoming sale. If the content of your blog is good quality articles, then adding in a special sale that your E-Commerce site will be having in the near future can be a nice touch. This can lead to people coming back to your website more often to check on deals you may be offering. The more you get someone to come back to a site, the the greater potential for a sale increases.

3. Get on a more personal level.

Your blog gives you a great opportunity to build relationships with customers on a more personal level. It helps to give you more credibility and shows customers what you are about. This is especially important when it comes to repeat customers, and those who really do want to know who you are.

4. Help guide public image.

The fact that people have an image defined of who you are from looking at your website, or from what others say is Big. A blog will allow you to not only clear up possible misconceptions, but guide persons view of what your company is all about. This helps you in the branding of your business and making a name for it.

5. Create more quality content to drive traffic where you want.

This is a key factor with a blog and is good because it allows you to put more emphasis on different areas of your website. Internal linking to specific pages of your website will help with Search engine placement as well as targeting areas of your website you want more traffic to get too. The more articles you write, the more content you have which is relevant in search engines. This means more organic traffic for you, which in turn leads to sales.

As you can see, a business blog can be very essential and add to the overall value of your website. A blog is very easy to set up as well. As I mentioned previously, Wordpress is the tool by choice for most bloggers today, as it has more functionality and ease of use. If you have a HostGator Account it is very quick to set this up in the Fantastico option of Cpanel. With this function you can be up and running your Wordpress blog in no time, so make good use of it.

Ever since the inception of new concepts like e-commerce and online retailing the growth of the Internet and internet business opportunities have increased tremendously. The best feature about an online business is that anybody who is interested and passionate about it, and also learns the simple steps about how to turn that opportunity into money, can easily make a large amount of money online. There are all sorts of online business systems from which to choose.

There are several businesses for which you would require some specialized knowledge, but there are many other online opportunities for which you would require just some basic idea and a few simple skills. If you like the flexibility and challenges that come from working online, you can carve out your own piece of the ever-growing world of online money making opportunities. If you spend time on the Internet, you will no doubt run across a significant amount of these wonderful opportunities.

With online opportunities like Blogging, Google Adsense, Click Bank, article writing, paid to post forums or even creating web content, you should be able to write with reasonable effectiveness but you certainly do not have to be an expert writer. You only need to be able to write something that would be understandable to a sixth grader. Sound simple? It is!

A huge investment is not always required to take advantage of online business opportunities. Reputable opportunities are listed in a number of online publications that post reviews and ratings for home based businesses, and are a good place to get reliable information to get you started. More people now work from home than ever before thanks to the huge number of businesses available and the World Wide Web.

Would you like to leave the hustle and bustle of corporate America and take advantage of the many online business opportunities? Do you have initiative and persistence? If so, then the world is your oyster! With a little research, you can easily find the right home based business for yourself and begin earning money online by tomorrow.

by: Dallas Cove

PayPal

Many people are hesitant to provide credit card information over the Internet. PayPal provides a secure server (SSL) so your transaction is safe, but moreover, when you make a purchase through a PayPal merchant, you have additional security because only PayPal, not the merchant, is provided with your credit card information. This helps to reduce the incidence of credit card fraud due to unscrupulous merchants. The Web Marketing Consultant Company wants your online shopping here to be safe and give you the peace of mind, knowing that your purchases here are entirely.

When you proceed with making your online purchase, you will be transferred to the PayPal site where your transaction will be processed. You don’t need a PayPal account to purchase, but it helps. If you do not have one, relax. It takes only a few seconds, it’s free and best of all it’s the safest and most secure service in the world.

So if you do not already have a PayPal account you will need to register - there is no cost to you. If you are already a PayPal member just enter your Email Address and Password. After you have registered once, you are able to make purchases from any PayPal merchant you may wish to do business with in the future. You do not need to register each time.

Additional Features of PayPal

1. Buyer Protection Guarantee
Purchases made through the PayPal service are protected against fraud when you purchase goods from a Verified Seller and do not receive the promised goods. You are entitled to a refund if you do not receive the goods from a Verified Seller. Buyers are protected up to a total of $5000 per year for fraudulent transactions.

2. Free Automatic Account Insurance
SafeWeb Insurance automatically protects your PayPal account against unauthorized withdrawals for up to $100,000. This is your assurance that your money is safe and secure. And best of all, the insurance is free with your PayPal account.

3. PayPal Transactions Are Safe & Secure
Shop on-line without exposing your financial information.

If you don’t have a PayPal account, now is the time to get one. PayPal is the Internet’s number one, most secure method of transferring funds over the World Wide Web.

Register PayPal Here Free !!

These days, a lot of people may realize how beneficial a franchise business is for them. This is because they can start their business with the help of their mother companies or the primary franchise company. With this, they have the utmost confidence in managing the business than if they will start their business on their own.

But even if a person chooses to get business franchise, the primary problem that they face is how to find the business option for them. They do not really know how and where to find the business that will suit them. With this, the following are the ways for a person to find the right business franchise opportunities.

The first and very simple way of looking for business franchise is through the internet. If you will search the internet, you will find all the potential business franchises for you. Aside from the business itself, you may want to check the business ranking in the market. With this, you can be sure that the franchise that you will get is competitive in the market in order for you to earn the income that you want. However, it is important for you not to choose just any websites in getting these business names and rankings. You have to find a reliable website focusing on businesses so you will have the most reliable rankings and avoid being lured by fake claims. The good thing about these websites is that they even provide the amount of franchise amount to pay upfront.

The other way for you to find the right business franchise is to check on business sectors within your area. In this way, you will be able to get the franchise businesses offered in your location and try to get information about them as much as possible. You may also ask some statistic about the business and gain a lot of information about the business and use them to your advantage.

Finally, you may want to check a number of businesses on your own. If you will notice, there are a number of businesses found in the area that has the same brand. This is very indicative of the business to be in the franchising world so you may want to check the stores and see if they have advertisements about the business being on franchise. If they do, you may want to get their contact numbers and then ask them for the franchise costs.

In getting the right business franchise, it is important for you to get the right business brand in order to get you the best and reliable companies that will help you get the income that you would like to have for your business. In this way, it is very much possible for you to find the right business brand and start to be successful in your aim of getting the best income that you want and even use your profit in other business ventures that you may want to explore in the future.

Allocating your small business marketing budget to maximize return on investment and minimize the risks of a low or negative return can become a lot more unpredictable when your investments involve trends and emerging technologies. Investing in trends requires smart timing and consumer analysis.

You would think that marketing trends would be closely aligned with consumer trends, since effective marketing depends on getting your messages to appear where the highest concentration of qualified eyeballs are focused. That isn’t always the case, however, because trend-focused marketers tend to place an inflated value on revolutionary technology and early adoption.

Thankfully, the majority of consumers permanently relocate their attention with much less frequency than marketing bandwagon drivers. Still, missing a trend or sticking with a has-been spells opportunity lost at best and negative returns or loss of market share at worst.

Since your trend-marketing returns are only as good as your ability to make educated guesses, here’s some advice to help you avoid turning educated guesses into marketing messes. The following list features the top 10 internet marketing trends for 2010, in no particular order, and tells you whether to invest, test or let it rest.

Trend #1: Search Engine Optimization
Advice: Test
Sites with relevant content and credible links will continue to rule the search rankings in the coming year, but 2010 has the potential to reveal a few new standards. As the volume of web content continues to grow, consumers will demand even more relevant and personalized search results. That means search engines will be looking for more relevant and personalized content from publishers and brands. In fact, the search engine algorithms are already beginning to pay more attention to date of publication, geo-location, mobile device browsers, past behavior and social media content.

Don’t abandon your current SEO strategy in search of personalization, but make sure you allocate a portion of your budget to testing content, keywords and links that are targeted toward niche audiences. Test keyword and link placement in social media, local content and mobile websites, and make an effort to more frequently refresh some of the content you devote to search engine rankings. Once the search engines have tested these new search targets and revealed some concrete standards, you should be prepared to invest accordingly.

Trend #2: Paid Search
Advice: Invest
Paid search hasn’t seen a revolutionary trend since the idea of thelong tailwas applied to keyword bidding. That’s OK, because consumers will still use search engines in 2010 as a primary means of finding products and services to fulfill their needs, and they will still be clicking on relevant ads. Search advertising prices will remain reasonable, and average returns will remain comparably high as larger companies with decreased search marketing budgets continue to allocate resources to lower-cost SEO tactics in hopes of attracting visitors at lower prices. 2010 has the potential for even more downward pressure on price-per-click if Bing can gain enough loyal searchers to attract business away from Google.

You won’t exactly feel like you’re in the driver’s seat when your search marketing placement choices are limited to Google, Microsoft or both, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from investing in the highly qualified leads that paid search is capable of producing for your small business.

Trend #3: E-mail Marketing
Advice: Invest
It isn’t hard to justify an investment in e-mail marketing when the cost of sending e-mails is so low. The low cost isn’t the only reason to send e-mail, however. Most consumers still consider e-mail to be their primary form of communication, even though there are several alternative ways for consumers to subscribe to periodic content from small businesses.

E-mail marketing will remain highly predictable in 2010 and may even become more powerful as e-mail service providers improve social media integration, search engine access to archived e-mails, auto-responders and new integrated applications. If you don’t already use an e-mail service provider, invest in one in 2010. If you already use an e-mail service, invest in your e-mail list and in producing valuable content to nurture leads and attract repeat customers.

The cost of building a permission-based list is likely to stay the same in 2010 as it was in 2009, but more than one-third of consumers changed at least one of their e-mail addresses in 2009–due to job changes or other economic factors. Spend more time and money in 2010 focused on keeping your e-mail list current when those consumers return to work and change e-mail addresses again.

Trend #4: Social Network Marketing
Advice: Test
Social media has one redeeming quality for marketers–lots and lots of eyeballs. That’s attractive if you’re a major brand, but profitable interaction will continue to be the exception for small businesses in 2010 rather than the rule. A good test of your social network marketing potential is to survey your current customers to see how many of them consider social networking to be a primary form of communication. You should probably experiment with a Facebook fan page and a Twitter page if you find that a meaningful percentage of your current customers indicate an interest in following your business.

Make 2010 your year to test content that attracts repeat and referral business. Your current customers are more likely than total strangers to respond to offers posted on social networks because they already know you and trust you based on their prior purchases.

Trend #5: Blogging
Advice: Let it rest
If you’re writing a blog to help with search engine rankings or to inform existing customers, you should continue to test or invest. If you’re blogging in an attempt to attract new prospects and convert them to customers, however, 2010 will be a year that exposes the blogosphere’s vulnerability to the law of averages. Converting prospects into customers depends on driving visitors to content that maximizes conversions, and that means your conversion rate is only as good as the content on your landing page. If that landing page is your blog and your blog changes frequently, your conversion rate is only as good as your latest blog post.

Instead of blogging to convert your website visitors into customers in 2010, work hard to test and develop great landing page content. When you find something that works, don’t change it.

Trend #6: Web Presence
Advice: Invest
If you want people to see the content on your website, it might make sense to advertise the location of your website content by placing ads on other high-traffic websites. Driving visitor traffic to your website isn’t the way to go for 2010, however. Instead, you need to spend 2010 driving your website content to the visitor traffic.

The difference stems from the fact that content aggregation websites like YouTube are boosting consumer demand for instant gratification and what I like to call “content nesting.” Content nesting allows consumers to browse through content fed to them through a single web page, or nest, so that they don’t have to click on links to individual websites all over the World Wide Web, which takes more time–not to mention that the results can be anywhere from unpredictable to shockingly irrelevant.

To take advantage of content nesting in 2010, your website content needs to be nested in as many content aggregation sites as possible. For example, a lot of people search for videos on YouTube. If you have a video on your website and it’s not also on YouTube, people on YouTube won’t bother searching for your website. To them, YouTube represents the total number of videos available to them on their topic of interest.

Trend #7: Mobile Marketing
Advice: Test
In case you haven’t heard, mobile marketing is all about marketing to people through their mobile phones and smart-phone devices. Small businesses haven’t had much of an opportunity to engage consumers on mobile devices, but 2010 has the potential to change that.

Demand is increasing dramatically for mobile applications and mobile web-browsing due to wider adoption of devices like the iPhone and the Google Android phone. As more people adopt these phones and features in 2010, look for small-business marketing services to start providing lower-cost mobile marketing solutions like text messaging, mobile e-mail marketing, mobile websites, mobile application development and location-based marketing.

Make 2010 your year to collect mobile preferences from your prospects and customers, and use tools likeGoogle Analyticsto see how many people are visiting your website on mobile web browsers. If you find interest in mobile interaction among your customers, begin testing simple mobile marketing campaigns such as sending a few mobile coupons via text or building a mobile micro-site for one of your products.

Trend #8: Podcasting and Online Radio
Advice: Let it rest
Online radio is actually on a bit of a growth trend, but that’s just because so-called terrestrial radio is suffering so much that radio advertisers are switching their investments to digital formats. 2010 will be a year of exploration for online broadcasters as they struggle to find and attract loyal audiences. iTunes has long been the leader in podcasting, but there are still no clear leaders in internet radio.
Even if leaders emerge in 2010, internet broadcasters will need to make their media more sharable, more engaging, more trackable and more mobile to attract money from advertisers. If you’re looking to attract an audience by broadcasting or advertising on broadcast media, go with online video in 2010 and wait for radio to finish reinventing itself.

Trend #9: Online Video
Advice: Invest
If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a 30-second online video paint? Countless buying emotions and memorable brand moments are possible with video. Until recently, spreading your message with video was limited to the television screen. In 2010, watch for video to become more accessible to small businesses through online outlets. Online video is interactive, memorable, widely accessible, cheap to create and highly shareable. There’s also a lot of investment happening around video, which is sure to create even more low-cost opportunities for small businesses to participate in video promotions in 2010.

Video presents a great opportunity for small-business marketing, but don’t think of video as a replacement for text. As powerful as video can be, it can be more cumbersome than text because you can’t scan a video as quickly as you can scan a page of headlines, links and text to quickly find the exact information you need. Use your investments to find the right balance for your customers.

Trend #10: Coupons, Discounts and Savings
Advice: Test
OK, this one isn’t entirely an internet marketing trend, but it’s important enough to mention because of the economy. 2009 was another tough year for retailers, and consumers are so accustomed to shopping for deals that they might begin to expect the plethora of deep discounts currently available to continue forever. If you’re engaged in heavy discounting to attract sales and survive the economic downturn, you’ll need to spend 2010 slowly weaning your customers off your lower prices, assuming that the economy recovers. Resetting expectations won’t be easy, so try swapping discounts for special privileges like loyalty discounts, free upgrades and other offers that won’t lock you in to price comparisons.

Internet marketing trends develop quickly, so expect many new and exciting trends to emerge in 2010. Don’t be too quick to jump on new bandwagons because consumers move more slowly than marketers and technology. Stay focused on attracting repeat business, deepening your customer relationships and solving problems for people. Those are the trends that never fail small businesses.

John Arnold’s no-nonsensemarketing adviceis featured in his well-known marketing books, includingWeb Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies,E-Mail Marketing for Dummiesand the forthcoming Mobile Marketing for Dummies. Arnold is also aleading marketing speaker, trainer and consultant who specializes in do-it-yourself marketing advice for small businesses, franchises and associations.

source : msnbc.msn.com

Most businesses can benefit from free online promotion. We round up a handful of the best free resources for promoting your business on the web.

While there are hundreds of free services out there, these are our pick of 10 of the essential resources that will help drive traffic to your site.

While we’ve tried to include sites with worldwide reach, we recommend doing a local search for services in your locality as well as industry-specific listings sites and directories.

1. People’s Guide

One of the newest sites, but notable for being the cleanest and simplest way to add a free business listing. As these 100+ cities have just gone live, our advice is to get in early to pick up the most traffic.

Choose your city (there are over 100 worldwide, in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, China etc.), select your category from the pretty wide list: Restaurants & Cafés, Bars & Pubs, Entertainment, Shopping, Sports, Health & Beauty, Places to Stay.

2. Google Local

Any land-based business should be on Google Local.

Tightly integrating with Google Maps, Google Local is a great way to get your business to show up on Google searches.

Takes longer to add your business, partly depending on the confirmation method used (phone call is clever, postal is slower), after which you need to wait another couple of weeks typically, but worth doing today.

3. HotFrog

Another strong & multi-national business-listing site.

HotFrog is a nice simple business listing site (no reviews), active in several countries round the world, including the UK and Australia.

4. Windows Live

The Windows Live Local Listing Center is also free with reasonable reach.

Launched in October 2007, Microsoft’s Windows Live Local Listing Center service allows business owners to add their business information within Live search and Virtual Earth.

5. Yahoo! Local

Like the People’s Guide, Yahoo Local is a combined business listing and community review site, organised by location and category.

Pretty clean and well laid-out site that’s certainly worth adding your bricks & mortar business to, if your city is featured. Wide range of categories too.

Note that, if you get reviews via Yahoo! Local, businesses with higher ratings get higher listings.

6. Yellow Pages.com

Needs no introduction for most people. Strong brand recognition.

Yellow Pages is certainly big in the US and UK. The big US site does offer a free listing.

7. Best of the Web.com

Offers free advertising for the first 60 days only.

Basically premium search results ad placement, similar to AdWords, the free 60-day trial is worth taking advantage of.

8. Adland Pro

AdlandPro has apparently been offering free and paid advertising services to small businesses since 1996.

Allows you to place free ads in classifieds and community pages, and also in a “Free Traffic Exchange” system, which looks a little riskier.

9. Squidoo

A good number of lenses on the Squidoo network offer the opportunity to add a link to your site, free.

Squidoo gives you simple tools to build your own web pages, and get a share of ad revenue, so it’s also a route to a budget web site where you can promote your products or services. (Also have a useful page about free advertising.)

10. eBay

OK, maybe not free, but don’t overlook finding advertising bargains on eBay

Don’t forget that a lot of people auction promotions on eBay. It’s possible to pick up really cheap mailouts or ad runs, without investing too much time either.

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1. Personal trainer: If you are fitness-minded, you can start your own business as a personal trainer, visiting clients in their homes. Check out the National Federation of Professional Trainers for information about the certification process.

2. Yoga instructor: You don’t need a studio to teach yoga; just like a personal trainer, you can visit clients at their homes or offices. The Yoga Alliance Web site provides information on yoga schools, certification, insurance, and more.

3. Tutoring: You can start a business tutoring students in their homes, at schools, or at local YMCAs or other child-care organizations. Talk to your local school district officials and school principals to determine their needs.

4. Business coaching: Do you have experience in management or some other specialized business skill? Share it with others by becoming a business coach. The International Coach Federation provides certification and a coach referral service for its members.

5. Consulting: If you are an expert in a specific industry, such as finance, marketing, or mediation, consider beginning your own consulting business.

6. Medical and legal transcription: If you have transcription skills and the necessary equipment, you can easily work from home for a variety of different companies. Check local community colleges or search online for transcription training courses.

7. Medical claims billing: This industry is one of the most popular work-from-home businesses. eLearners.com can help you locate legitimate transcription training courses online.

8. Accounting: There are many opportunities available for certified public accountants. If you are interested in getting certified, take a look at the Web site of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants for information on specific state requirements.

9. Web design: If you can design quality Web sites, consider turning your skills into a home-based business. Because this industry is constantly changing, good Web designers are always in demand.

10. Senior care services: The rising number of senior citizens who want to stay in their own homes means big opportunity for nonmedical home care providers, who help seniors with tasks of daily living.

11. Photography: If you are skilled with a camera, you can open your own photography business. You can visit clients at their homes or, if you have space, set up a small studio in your home.

12. Home inspection: The National Association of Certified Home Inspectors Web site provides information on becoming certified to inspect homes.

13. Remodeling: If you are a gifted carpenter or contractor, you can turn your passion into your own business. Find a niche that’s in demand in your area and target it.

14. Interior design: If you have a flair for the creative, consider interior design. The American Society of Interior Designers Web site provides resources for aspiring interior designers, including a list of each state’s requirements for licensing.

15. Catering or personal chef: Consider starting your own catering or personal chef business. Target a niche by providing specialized services such as low-carb or vegetarian menus. (Catering requires a food establishment license and a commercially equipped kitchen that meets state and federal health requirements. Contact your local city or county health department for more information.)

16. Gift baskets: Gift basket creation is a popular and creative home-based business. You can sell your baskets online and target both individuals and businesses to increase potential sales.

17. Wedding or event planner: If you are an ace at organizing important events and have a lot of contacts, consider becoming a wedding or event planner. There are numerous certification courses online, including one from Weddings Beautiful.

18. Personal shopper: If you love to shop and have an eye for people’s personal styles, you can offer your services to people too busy to shop for themselves. Increase your profit potential by providing a gift-shopping service as well.

19. Concierge service: If you have a lot of energy, great organization skills, and the ability to juggle multiple tasks, consider providing a personal concierge service to busy businesspeople or upscale clients.

20. Custom jewelry creation: Designing your own custom design jewelry can be fun and lucrative. You can sell it online at your own sites or at crafters’ sites such as Etsy.

21. Computer repair: Are you the person everyone calls when they have a computer problem? Turn this into a business and start getting paid for fixing fatal errors. You can target small businesses, consumers, or both.

22. Cleaning service: If you are good at cleaning, consider offering your services to others. Both residential and commercial cleaning operations can easily be run from home.

23. Carpet cleaning service: A variation on cleaning, carpet and upholstery cleaning services are well-suited to operate from home.

24. Mobile pet grooming: If you love animals, offer consumers convenience by equipping a van and visiting clients at their homes to bathe and groom their pets.

25. Child-care services: Turn your expertise with children into a home-based day-care center. Be sure to stay abreast of your state’s regulations and insurance requirements for this type of business.

To learn more about franchises, visit the Franchise Center of AllBusiness.com. And for ongoing advice, see Frank Ross’ Home-Based Business Blog.

resource : http://www.allbusiness.com/specialty-businesses/home-based-business/3315-1.html

Ever since the inception of new concepts like e-commerce and online retailing the growth of the Internet and internet business opportunities have increased tremendously. The best feature about an online business is that anybody who is interested and passionate about it, and also learns the simple steps about how to turn that opportunity into money, can easily make a large amount of money online. There are all sorts of online business systems from which to choose.

There are several businesses for which you would require some specialized knowledge, but there are many other online opportunities for which you would require just some basic idea and a few simple skills. If you like the flexibility and challenges that come from working online, you can carve out your own piece of the ever-growing world of online money making opportunities. If you spend time on the Internet, you will no doubt run across a significant amount of these wonderful opportunities.

With online opportunities like Blogging, Google Adsense, Click Bank, article writing, paid to post forums or even creating web content, you should be able to write with reasonable effectiveness but you certainly do not have to be an expert writer. You only need to be able to write something that would be understandable to a sixth grader. Sound simple? It is!

A huge investment is not always required to take advantage of online business opportunities. Reputable opportunities are listed in a number of online publications that post reviews and ratings for home based businesses, and are a good place to get reliable information to get you started. More people now work from home than ever before thanks to the huge number of businesses available and the World Wide Web.

Would you like to leave the hustle and bustle of corporate America and take advantage of the many online business opportunities? Do you have initiative and persistence? If so, then the world is your oyster! With a little research, you can easily find the right home based business for yourself and begin earning money online by tomorrow.

As an internet marketer, you need to grasp the attention of your target customers. You need to spend more effort to make your website eye-catching. If you do not have any experience in graphic designing, you need to seek the help of a professional and you need to pay more for availing his service. 2 Graphics packages come to your rescue, as they are ready to use immediately. They support various types of graphical display and give you the flexibility and freedom to create awesome graphic designs.

Graphic packages are professionally designed to improve the quality of your website. You would be surprised to see your sales letter conversations and one time offer conversations increasing significantly after using these images. You can therefore increase your online profits without spending lot of money, effort and time on graphic designs.

Graphics packages include images like

• Arrow image
  Arrow images are available in various colors and in various directions like up, down, left and right. Down bullet arrow, to left bullet arrow and curved arrows are also available in these packages.
• Contact images
  Contact images are essential to help your website visitors to contact you for any information or to buy your product. The Graphic packages offer various “contact us” images in different fonts, colors along with curved arrows in various directions.
• Button images
  Button images help direct your visitors to order your product or to join your website as a member. You can select from the multiple ‘order now’ and ‘join now’ images from the graphic package and insert anywhere on your website you want within a few minutes.
• One time offer images
  If you want to increase traffic to your website, you may need to give some offers. In fact, free offers can attract large amounts of traffic to your site. You can make use of the one- time offer image available in this graphic package instantly. You can select the clock image to specify the time of offer. You can select the image specifying “stop, you are going to see this page Once Only” image to persuade your visitors to buy your product.
• Subscribe images
  You can find attractive “Subscribe” images in this package. They come in several colours and you can select any one that suits your website.
• Free bonus images
  If you want to give free bonus to your members, you can then opt for a suitable “free bonus image” available in the graphic package. You simply need to click on the image you want to download instantly.”
• Guarantee images
  Guarantee images help you to convince your prospects to buy your product. Graphics packages provide various images for this purpose, which include “ no questions asked money back guarantee”, “100% customer satisfaction guarantee” etc.
• Special membership images
  Some appealing special membership images include “for members only”, “exclusive membership” and “free membership

In addition to these images, you can also get audio images, video images and testimonials with these packages. Sometimes, if you want your visitors to hear some information about your product, you need audio images, directing them to listen to what you have to say. 2 Graphics packages provide various images like “listen to this”, “Hear what others are saying” etc. You can choose any image, as per your wish. Similarly, if you want your visitor to see any video, you can select from the images that say “see for yourself” or “watch this video”. Testimonial images are important to get the feedback of your visitors and the graphic packages have varieties of testimonial images to choose from.

You can insert these images in any location you want. They come with Private label rights and you can enjoy the freedom of doing anything you want with them. These professional double graphics packages available at reasonable prices let you enjoy a consistent source for all your graphic solutions.

In other words, the more online payment options you offer, the more online payment processing you’ll do on your site and the more money you’ll make.

Here are the online payment options you could offer on your site:

1) Credit card processing

If you were only going to offer one online payment option to prospective buyers, (which I strongly discourage!) this would be the one to choose. Credit cards are still the most popular way to pay for goods and services online.

To set up credit card processing on your website, (MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover), you need to get an Internet merchant account.

You can get an Internet merchant account through your local banks. Notice I say banks; to get credit card processing of all the major credit cards on your website you may need to get Internet merchant accounts with two separate banks as many banks only deal with some of the credit cards involved.

You can also get an Internet merchant account through a third party merchant account provider, such as Beanstream, Moneris, PSiGate or InternetSecure.

The advantages of getting an Internet merchant account through a third party merchant account provider are that most don’t require any security deposits (unlike banks), are quickly set up, and often can be bundled with ecommerce service packages that include the Internet gateway you need for online credit card processing (Web point-of-sale) and a shopping cart.

The disadvantage is higher fees. Discount fees in particular tend to be higher than if you had set up your Internet merchant accounts through the banks.

Wherever you get your Internet merchant account, you will have to also purchase an Internet gateway service. The gateway verifies information, transfers requests and authorizes credit cards in real time. All four of the companies I’ve mentioned above offer these credit card processing services as well, but there are many others that do too – including PayPal.

2) PayPal

PayPal is now also an all-in-one online payment solution. Their Website Payments Standard program lets you accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express credit card payments as well as bank transfers and offer PayPal as well – with no monthly fees, setup or cancellation fees. PayPal charges you a fee of 1.9 to 2.9 percent of transaction plus 30 cents per order, depending on your company’s sales volume.

PayPal also offers an upgraded version of Website Payments Standard called Website Payments Pro, where customers check out right on your site rather than on PayPal’s (currently available only in the U.S.).

They also offer a PayFlow Gateway and PayPal Express Checkout for businesses that already have Internet merchant accounts. Compare PayPal services here.

3) Debit Cards

The debit card is the preferred method of payment for one out of two Canadians and there are more than 35 million debit cards in circulation in Canada, according to the Interac Association. In 2006, Canadians made more than three billion Interac Direct Payment transactions worth $148 billion and the number of debit card payments grows about five per cent every year in Canada. (“Debit Card Use Rising on Target”, CBC.)

With numbers like that, this is an online payment option you definitely want to offer your customers if you’re selling online.

Interac Online is one option that allows your customers to pay for goods and services online directly from their bank accounts. It’s convenient and secure for customers because they don’t have to share any of their card numbers or financial details when making a purchase; payment is completed through their own financial institutions.

To start offering Interac Online on your website, you have to go through one of their certified acquirers or online payment service providers, such as Beanstream, Moneris, Internet Secure, iCongo or PsiGate. Here’s their current list of online payment service providers.

UseMyBank is another Canadian company that provides online debit payment services. Like Interac Online, buyers use their existing Online Banking bill payment service with their own bank to pay for your goods or services online and the payment is directly debited to the selected bank account.

UseMyBank fees “will be assessed upon activation of account” according to their website. A discount rate of 1.5% to 5% and a minimum $1.50 fee per transaction are posted. There is also an account fee. To get started using UseMyBank on your website, apply directly through the UseMyBank website.

4) Give Them Offline Payment Options Too

Some of your potential customers are people who just aren’t comfortable with any of the online options outlined above or people who want to talk to a live person. If you want to fully monetize your website and make all the sales that you can, it’s important that you give these people ways to pay too. Include a toll-free number and an order form that customers can fill out and email or snail mail if they prefer.

The More Online Payment Options the Better

The success of your online business depends on sales. So why deliberately decrease your sales potential by limiting the ways potential customers can pay for your products and/or services online? Make as many sales as you possibly can by offering as many online payment options as possible on your site.

By Susan Ward