3 Simple Techniques To Survive As An Online Affiliate Marketer

Successful affiliate marketers are always on the lookout for a good market or product that will provide them with a large and ongoing paycheck. Do they have a magic formula available to them to market these products? The short answer is no. It is a more complicated than a magic formula. It requires some hard work and dedication. There are a number of tactics that have worked in the past and continue to work to this day in online marketing. I am going to provide you with 3 marketing tips that are essential for you to use if you want to survive as an online affiliate marketer. If you continually follow these 3 tactics, you will be able to increase your online sales and continue to grow your customer base and earn success as an affiliate marketer. Only 3 tactics you say? In reality, of course there will be more than 3, but by using the 3 listed below with your other tactics, you are assuring yourself that you are going to make some sales. Have you pre-determined the tactics? OK, here they are. 1.) You must have your own web site. I know you've heard many 'gurus' saying you can make millions without your own site. To a point this may be true, but eventually, to be a top affiliate marketer, you will need your own web site. Once you have a site, you want to make sure you use a different web site for each product you are promoting. Do not get lazy and try to put everything in one. You don't need different hosting for each site. You can use one hosting account and use add on domains. We won't get into these here, but an add on domain is actually a sub-domain that has a top level domain name. This is an entirely different topic, so again, that is all we will say about them here. You need to make it look like you have used or tested the product you are promoting on your affiliate web site. It is actually not a bad idea to purchase the product and run it through the mill. Then you can write a review about it on your site. Don't hold back. If you loved the product, tell your potential customers why. Explain how it works, what was easy to do, did you see something that needed improving, but wasn't a big enough problem to out weigh the good things. Let them know your honest opinion. Let them know uses for the product that you have discovered. Think outside of the box. If you found a problem with the product, it may be a good idea to let the developer know so they can consider fixing it. Make your review so it has a call to action for your readers. Get them excited about the product. Make the call to action irresistible so they want

to go and get the product. Perhaps your friends could try the product and then get testimonials from them and put those on your web site. Of course, get their permission first. By giving a review and testimonials, your customers will have some idea of what the product is about and how it works. This can get them excited enough to want to purchase from your page. 2.) Offer your potential customer something free from your site. This could be a report you have created or have rights to, an ebook you have rights to, a newsletter, anything that is of value. It is a proven fact that it takes approximately 7 visits from a customer before they purchase, so if you don't get an email address, there are only 2 other avenues for the prospect. Either they buy the first time they or on your page, or you lose them forever. Get an autoresponder and put a subscription form near the top of your page. Make it enticing to your prospects to sign up and then have a message going to them every other day, then once a week, then once a month. Just make sure you stay in contact with them so they are constantly reminded about your product. Don't make every email a sales push, just a gentle reminder of specific reasons why they can't live without the product. Use a very strong subject line, and then make sure you focus on the important things. How the product makes life easier, saves time, makes less work, etc. Benefits are what people want to hear about. Also, avoid using the word free and other spam triggers, or your email may never get through. 3.) Get traffic that is targeted to what it is you are promoting. If you are promoting dog training and you are driving traffic to your site for everything, you are wasting your time and money. People that are not interested in dog training will come to your site, see it is not what they want, and never return. Write some articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. Tailer them to your site theme and only send them to e-zine publishers that are in that niche. If you can, make an attempt to write and submit at least 2 articles a week. Again, you want traffic that is interested in your site theme. Another statistic is that it takes approximately 100 people to visit your site to make 1 sale. That is a 1% conversion rate. Some sites do much better. If your visitors are targeted to your theme, you may break the 1% mark. As you can see, the above tactics for your affiliate marketing are not hard to do. However, they take some time to do correctly. The main thing you need to do is take action and implement these tactics, the extra work on your part will be well rewarded with increased sales and customer list. If you want to succeed and be a super affiliate marketer, these are easy steps to take you along that path.


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How To Choose Affiliate Programs To Promote Online?

I don't know about you, but I personally have problems deciding which affiliate programs to promote on the internet. So much as that I tend to stay away from affiliate marketing as much as I possibly can. However no matter how much I may want to stay away from affiliate marketing, I do realize that it is yet another income stream for me. I have therefore decided to implement it as much as possible to my overall internet marketing strategy. With this in mind I have a list of questions I ask myself before joining or promoting any affiliate program. Let's go ahead and look at these, shall we? 1. Before you join any affiliate program you should always ask questions first. Go ahead and do a little research about the choices of program that you wish to join into. Make sure to get answers because they will help you make the best decision for your future affiliate marketing success. 2. You should always look into the cost, for example does it cost you anything to join? The beauty of the whole affiliate marketing thing is that most affiliate programs being offered today are absolutely free of charge. So think about it, why on earth will you settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining. After all at the end of the day they still take a certain percentage of every sale you refer to them. 3. When do you get paid? When do they issue the commission checks? Each affiliate program is different. You will find that, some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. You should select the one that is best suited to your payment time choice. Many affiliate programs are now setting a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed in order for their checks to be issued on the next payment date. 4. What is the conversion rate? This is the average number of visitors you send to the website that it takes to generate a sale based on all current affiliate statistics. This factor is very important because this will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can earn a commission from the sale. You have to be careful with this rate, some super affiliates have access to very responsive lists, and this sometimes increases the rate to misleading levels. I recommend you run your own test as far as this rate is concerned. This way you can choose the affiliate program based on the quality of traffic you can personally generate for the website. 5. How are referrals from your affiliate site tracked and for how long do they remain active in the system? You need to be confident on the program enough to track those

people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can get credit for a sale. The period of time that those people stay in the system is also important. This is because some visitors do not buy on the first visit but may want to return later to make the purchase. Know if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done some months from a certain day. 6. What tools and stats are available to affiliates? Your choice of affiliate program should be capable of offering detailed stats. They should be available online anytime you decide to check them, i.e. all the time. Constantly checking your individual stats is important to know how many impressions, hits and sales you are converting. 7. Is the affiliate program on a pay per click basis, pay per referral or the most common pay per sale. Does the affiliate program also pay for the hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales? It all depends on which type you are more comfortable with. 8. Who is the online retailer? Find out whom you are doing business with to know if it is really a solid company. Know the products they are selling and the average amount they are achieving. The more you know about the retailer offering you the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to know if that program is really for you and your site. One way to ensure you will always get paid your commissions is to use the know affiliate companies e.g. Clickbank.com, Linkshare.com, cj.com etc. At least these companies have an established reputation you do not have to worry yourself too much about whether you are going to receive your commission checks or not. 9. How many tiers or levels do you get paid on? Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program? A single tier program pays you only for the business you yourself have generated. A two tier program pays you for the business, plus it also pays you commission on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor to the affiliate program. 10. Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid? 5% - 20% is the commission paid by most programs. Although most programs on Clickbank.com pay up to 75% per sale. Of course, that will be the commission level that most affiliates would like to earn per sale. However, don't let the commission received per sale be the sole deciding factor, you have to consider all the other previous points above as well. These are just some of the questions that you needed to ask yourself first before you join an affiliate program. You should be familiar with the many important aspects that your chosen affiliate program should have before incorporating them into your website. Try to ask yourself the above questions for each affiliate program. These can help you select the right program for you site from among the many available.


Article Source: http://www.articlebasement.com/articles/7794/1/How-To-Choose-Affiliate-Programs-To-Promote-Online/Page1.html

4 Ways To Make Money Online With Affiliate Programs

Here is what I have found over the years when it comes to making money online. The less you ask someone to do the easier it is for them to do it. The more you ask them to do the less they will do it. When it comes to making money on the internet with affiliate programs this is certainly true. So many of us make money with Google Adsense because it is easy for our visitor to click on an ad and it is easy for us to implement it into our webistes. But you can make alot of money online in other ways as well. Let's look at 4 ways you can make money online with affiliate programs. - Getting paid by the click is easy, but low paying. You can make that up in volume. I earn thousands every month from Google Adsense and PPC programs. All you are asking your visitor to do is click on an ad that is brought up on your page from pasting some short script provided by the ppc company. - Getting paid by the lead. A short form with 2 questions might pay $2. Not very much, but if you get 10 of those a day you would make an extra $600 a month. The shorter the form the better. The longer the form the less likely your visitor will fill it out. - Getting paid by the sale. This requ

ires more of your visitor, but can pay the most depending on the sale price and commission percentage. Selling an eBook for $50 and making a 60% commission is worth $30 to you. Selling 20 of those a month would bring in an extra $600 this way. If you are filling a need and the affiliate sales page is compelling enough to create action you will sell products. - Getting paid for a membership sale. This is great because you get paid over and over for doing the work once. Selling a program that earns you $10 on the sale every month could be worth $120 in a year. That could really add up over the years. Kind of like residual income an insurance salesman earns. Lastly would be to capture a name and email address for future follow-up. Maybe you sell nothing on the first visit, but with consistent follow-up you develop a relationship that earns you a sale from one of the above methods. This is why it is better to send your visitors to your website and not directly to an affiliate sales page provided to you. To summarize why not do a little of all 4 of these ways to make money online. Get paid by the click, get paid by the lead, get paid by the sale, and get paid over and over for selling membership products. Find some good affiliate programs and you can get started today.

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Why Affiliate Marketing Is A Blessing For Online Marketers

Affiliate marketing is different things to different people, but essentially, affiliate marketing is the act of marketing someone else's products or services for a portion, or commission, of each sale that you make. Some people do affiliate marketing as their full time jobs. That's it. That's all they do. They market other people's products or services, collect their commissions, and live their lives as they wish. They do not have to deal with customer service, shipping orders, or anything else. All they do is promote other people's products or services, everyday. Other people use affiliate programs in conjunction with their own products or services, using affiliate programs as front end products, upsells, and back end products. For example, if you had an information product about weight loss, you might want to market exercise equipment, exercise clothing, vitamins, or other items or services that are related to weight loss along with your weight loss information product to increase your revenue. Obviously you would not want to create these items, so you would find these related products or services, and sign up for the affiliate programs, allowing you to promote them. Some people even low cost information products, such as ebooks, in order to sell high ticket affiliate products or services. Alternately, some people just use inexpensive affiliate products to enhance their own high ticket products or continuity programs, such as membership sites. Some people are confused about what affiliate marketing actually is. For instance, many people who have products and offer affiliate programs for those products might say that they sell their product through affiliate marketing. What they mean is that they have affiliates who sell the product for them, but they are actually merchants or affiliate managers, in affiliate marketing terms. But basically, affiliate marketing is selling someone else's products or services through various means, for various reasons, either to earn an income, to enhance a product, or even to sell an additional product. In fact, many people use low end affiliate products as lead ins, or entry level products, for higher end affiliate products never actually creating or promoting a product or service of their own. Is money being made? You better believe there is! If you include all products and services that are sold through affiliates, affiliate marketing is essentially a billion dollar industry, even t

hough it isn't technically considered an industry in its own right. Many people don't even consider it a career, but they are mistaken. Right now, at this very moment, there are thousands of affiliate marketers that you have never even heard of quietly promoting affiliate products and collecting huge commission checks every month. Why haven't you heard of them? You haven't heard of them because they are not in the Internet Marketing products market. They are in other consumer niches, such as weight loss, healthcare, sports, gambling, education, financial products, etc. Now, if you have an active interest in those things, or any other conceivable thing, you have probably searched for information or products related to your interest on the Internet. If this is the case, you have most likely come into contact with an affiliate marketer, without even being aware of it. You may have even purchased a product through an affiliate marketer without ever knowing it. Even Google has an affiliate program. That's what Google AdSense is all about. It's an affiliate program, but it isn't technically called that. EBay has an affiliate program, as does Microsoft. There is an affiliate program available for just about any product that you can imagine, but not all brands have affiliate programs which of course is their mistake. Affiliate marketing presents a win-win-win situation. The owner or maker of the product being sold is making money. The affiliate marketer is making money, and the customer is getting what they want or need. Everybody wins. Affiliate marketing has been around longer than you think it has as well. Many people think that affiliate marketing started sometime after the Internet came into existence. This is wrong. Amway, Avon, Mary Kay, all of these are essentially affiliate programs, but the people who were actually doing the affiliate marketing were called distributors or representatives and they are still called distributors or representatives to this day. Affiliate marketing can even entail network marketing. Affiliate marketing is the act of selling a product for a commission. Network marketing also involves selling a product for a commission, but also focuses on bringing other resellers (or affiliate marketers, distributors or representatives) into the program as well. Sometimes, however, affiliate marketing also allows and encourages you to bring other affiliate marketers into the program. Again, affiliate marketing is different things to different people, but the goal is the same to make money. Affiliate marketing offers you the opportunity and ability to make money without creating a product of your own.


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How To Effectively Market Affiliate Programs Online

Affiliate marketers are always on the look out for more successful markets to earn larger income. Since there is no magic formula to point them in the one right direction, they must proactively seek out this information in diverse ways. The best marketing practices that have been time tested and proven over the years is hard work, dedication and a strong commitment to succeed. Some of the strategies that have worked before with online marketing and are still working today to produce sales and noticeable profits are: Using a unique website to promote each separate product or service you are marketing. Lumping all of your affiliate links together is not a good way to achieve your outcome. You should have a specific site focusing on each and every product that you are marketing. In other words if you are selling cars, the site should be about cars and nothing else. It is a good policy to include some product reviews on your site listing the benefits to be gained by using this product. Some permission testimonials from users are always an excellent way to assure the buyer of your products integrity. The content on your website should be articles about your products or services pointing out the many varied uses and how it could benefit the user. Your web pages must be attractive, compelling and request that the reader takes action now. Each headline must get the readers to continue reading more, and even to contact you for more information. To help your readers take action, highlight all special features then ask for the click. Offer freebies to your readers, reports, e-books, special promotional discounts. These should be placed somewhere close to the top right or left of your page and made conspicuously visible. Use an auto-responder to send messages to the readers who input their name and e-mail address at your subscription box. Always stay in touch with yo

ur subscribers, more so after the sale is made. When visitors land on your site, they may not buy anything, but if the information is very good your page could be bookmarked for future visits. Getting that sign-up address and mailing a reminder to them about your product on regular basis, is normally the trigger that gets them to return and purchase from your website. Your mailed information must be about how buying the product will solve a particular problem or other tangible benefits to be gained. This should be worded as a friendly reminder only. Your salient points must be how this product can enhance the quality of life by creating more leisure, savings, more income etc. The most compelling subject lines should be used in your email. Also avoid the use of "FREE" because, Spam Filters routinely removes this kind of e-mail before anyone sees them. You will need targeted traffic to your site based on the product or service you are marketing. Therefore, your marketing must be directed only to people who would want to purchase the products. Article writing is an excellent way to target the market you want. Have your well written product focused article distributed online by Article marketers, paid or free, they have a wide distribution base and this allows many websites to pick-up your article and use as content on their sites, giving you a wide exposure online. Go for a minimum of 1 or 2 articles each week, with 500-900 words in length. By the end of a year you will be pleasantly surprised at the number of targeted visitors to your site each day. 1 in 100 will buy your product or service, when you are generating as many as 1,000 targeted visitors to your website in a day, you could be making about 10 sales, multiply this by a factor 10, 100, 1000. See the potential? The strategies outlined here are achievable with proper planning, execution and motivation your actions will determine the outcome. It is recommended that many affiliate programs should be marketed in order to create better than average income.


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How To Make Money Online With Google Adwords?

The one way to take advantage of Google AdWords is to become affiliate. Affiliate marketing is where someone advertises for another website and in return that person receives commission for each sale their advertising brigs to that website. Here’s an example: Let’s say I want to sell Laptop Computers, but I don’t have a website and/or I don’t have any computers to sell. Well instead of starting a company, I can just find a company online which already sells computers and offers an affiliate program. Now that I have searched and found a company, I look at what they offer. Let’s say they are giving 10% commission on every sale I make. I decide to use that company and I set up my affiliate account with them and they give me a special URL (a web address that will let the company know that it was my advertising which gave them the sale), which I use in my advertisements. Now I make ad advertisement, and display it on Google. Whenever someone sees and clicks on my advertisement it will go to the company’s webpage. Let’s say that one hundred people clicked on my text advertisement and one of them buys a computer that cost $1,200. Because that person who bought the computer clicked on my advertisement that company will give me 10% of $1,200 which means that I made $120.00

Most online companies offer affiliate program. Companies like Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Max, Amazon.com, Buy.com and many more, literally tens of thousands. There are also companies online which all they do is offer other online business a way to have an affiliate program. These affiliate Companies manage affiliate programs for thousands of online companies. This means that if you have an account with Affiliate Company (they are completely free), you can advertise for any of the thousands of companies that use them to manage their affiliate sales. If you want to, you can search Google for affiliate programs just to see how big online marketing currently is.


By using AdWords and high paying affiliate program you can start earning money today. The AdWords advertisements are Pay Per Click (PPC), which means that the owner of that advertisement pays Google every time someone clicks on their advertisement. The main reason for wanting to pay for traffic is because it is very very difficult to receive free traffic on Google. When you sign up for Google AdWords Pay Per Click advertising your advertisement will be displayed almost immediately in Google’s search results (usually within 5 minutes). You can also decide which page you want your advertisements to be displayed on ( the first page receives more visitors than the other pages).

It is very simple to start Google AdWords account. Go to www.google.com and look toward the bottom of the page. You will see a link says “Advertising Programs”. Once you there, you should click on the link which says Google AdWords. After clicking “Click to Begin”, you will be taken to a couple of pages which will ask you how you want to set up your advertising group(s) with Google. Google will send you an email to the email address you specified which will contain a URL that you will need to go to in order to activate your account. After you go to that URL you can log into Google AdWords using your email address as your user name. Now that you have an account set up, you are ready to learn how to create a Campaign so you can begin making money online.

Here is how to create a AdWords campaign in Google. First off to create a new keyword campaign, click the link” Keyword-Targeted” campaign. You will be prompted to name your campaign. Your campaign name is what will be displayed on the first screen when you log into your Google AdWords account. Since you will most likely have several campaigns, when you name your campaign you will want to make sure it is unique name that will let you know exactly what you are advertising in that campaign. Next you will need to name your AdGroup. Remember, you will have several different AdGroups with one Campaign, so name it something that will help you know exactly what keywords are in that AdGroup. Next, you should choose the area(s) where you want your ads to appear. There are three different ways to choose where you want to advertise. You can choose to advertise by Countries and Territories, Regions and Cities, or Customized.

The most important thing you need in order to have a successful Google campaign is a text ad with a high CTR. Text Ads with a high CTR will increase your Quality Score which will increase your overall position.
Things You Should Know:
1. You are not required to have “http:” or “www” in your display URL.
2. Google will not let you capitalize all the letters in all your words, but they
will let you capitalize most of your words.
3. The website must not require additional software to load (example: it
cannot be a .pdf instead of .htm).
4. Back button must be able to go back to Google with one click.
5. You can’t have websites that mirror other websites that are advertised for
the same keyword (example: having the same pictures and text but using
a different web address). I know many affiliates do this, but I don’t know
how much Google enforces this rule.
6. The website you are advertising cannot have a pop up or pup under ad.

Another key to having a successful online business is making sure that every single person who is even the slightest bit interested in your product sees your advertisement. The best way to do this is by creating a very huge keyword list (thousands of keywords). Some products have many keywords, while others have very few. Usually the more keywords there are available for the product, the better. Not because it is searched more often, but also because most people who are also selling the same product will only select a few general keywords which may be very broad keywords.
When you bid on Google, you will not always pay the price you enter. The price you enter is the MCPC (Maximum Cost Per Click) you are willing to pay for that keyword. Google constantly updating the bids for the keywords in their search engine. For example if your MCPC is $0.15 and the advertiser in front of you is bidding $0.16 and the Ad one position behind you is bidding $0.05, you will only pay $0.06 per click, because there is no reason why you should have to pay $0.15 per click if you can get the same Ad position for $0.06 per click.

Google is a most searched search engine on the internet and with that they are consistently making update and improvement. If you are really serious about making money online or promotion you current business I will make a recommendation that will make you an absolute pro on AdWords. I’ve spend thousands trying to research best possible ways to market in the internet. With all the money I’ve spend I could of just gotten one system Google MoneyPro by Steven Holdaway. You absolutely cannot ignore what he has to share with you. He personally makes over $120,000 per MONTH.

By: Dennis Alexander

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/How-to-Make-Money-Online-with-Google-AdWords-/122822

Will Using Google Checkout Damage Your Company Reputation?

Choosing the wrong online payment processor can drive your customers away and kill any chance of your online business succeeding. You may not even know why your business is failing.

Google has developed a shopping cart/checkout system to compete with other online merchant service providers. This is a lucrative market for them and it is a service that is in high demand by online sellers.


Online sellers are often start-up's who need a way to accept credit cards but do not want to go through the headaches involved in setting up a merchant credit card account. Using an online credit card charging service is much easier. Most services allow you to create a simple buy-now link that you can place on your website. You can sign-up and start selling your product in minutes.

But wait, it is not so simple.

Usually when Google develops a system, they test it. They have done an excellent job with their Adwords and Adsense systems. These are well researched and the people running them are very knowledgeable.
That is why I was surprised to find that Google Checkout is so poorly designed.

Here is a Comparison.

When you purchase through PayPal using a credit card, you have a clearly stated buyer protection policy and PayPal makes it easy to file for a refund if you do not receive your order. This is not the case with Google Checkout. Once you send a payment using Google Checkout, there is no facility to file a complaint for non-receipt. On the order page for Google Checkout, there is no mention of any buyer protection or fraud prevention. That is because there is no protection. They force you to contact the vendor and if the vendor is unwilling to ship the item you paid for, you have no other recourse than to file for a charge reversal with your credit card company. If you have filed for a reversal before, you know what a pain that can be plus you then have to cancel your card and wait for a new card to arrive.

Here is a typical scenario. I purchased a DVD video set from uBid which uses Google Checkout as their payment processor. My card was charged and I received a message the next day with a USPS Priority Mail tracking number. Three weeks later I still did not have my DVD set. A check on the tracking number showed that my order was never shipped. I went to my Google account and that is when I realized there were no buyer protection options.

The only option I was given was to contact uBid. I did that. Three days later they had not responded. I then went to the uBid site and tried to contact them through their web form as instructed. When I completed the form and clicked Submit, I received a big red letter message saying they did not accept Google Checkout inquiries. After some web searching, I see uBid has a history of failing to ship purchases. During my checkout from uBid using Google Checkout, I also was presented with a box asking if I wanted to receive promotional offers from uBid. I did NOT check the box, but two days later I started receiving spam anyway. I had to wonder why they bothered to ask if they planned to spam me anyway.

When I realized I was not going to receive my order, now 4 weeks after I paid, I returned to Google Checkout and spent more than half an hour going through their help system trying to find out how to report a fraudulent charge(I paid but they will not ship or respond to customer service messages and that is fraud).

If I had used PayPal, 2Checkout, ClickBank, or any other service, I would have had some protection and could have requested a refund. The seller is unwilling to resolve the matter and Google has no facility to report fraud or to authorize a refund.

This puts the buyer in a very weak position.

On a side note: Google Checkout has a number of other disadvantages for online marketers. They do not offer any type of managed affiliate program. Since Google is making the actual charge, they should also offer a managed affiliate system similar to ClickBank, but they failed to include this common feature. Any good online marketer uses affiliates. The absence of this feature is stunning to me.

As an online marketer myself, I would be afraid to even offer Google Checkout.
The inability for customers to file a complaint against bad merchants makes it a perfect tool for dishonest marketers and I do not want my sales websites associated with that stigma.

I have a Google Checkout merchant account. I did test it but after finding all the shortcomings, I quit using it long ago. Now that I have discovered how the system works from the buyer's side, I know I will never offer it as a payment option again.

Online marketers must carefully evaluate the companies they use to process payments. If a large number of buyers have a bad experience with Google Checkout, then you can bet they will be less likely to trust your website when they see a Google Checkout logo. They will know that they have no real buyer protection and will either avoid your site completely or look for an alternate payment method(Such as PayPal which gives them the most control and they do not have to share their credit card number).

Many marketers pick a credit card processing company based on what it does for THEM. You must also think about what it does for your customers.
For example, Digital River's Swreg software sales service offers a great deal for online sellers. At least it appears great. It is easy to setup, you can create links to place on your site that your customers use to pay by credit card. Sellers have the option to pay 2.9. Which do you think most marketers will choose? Right, they will pick the 0 is not the best option for buyers or sellers. In order to obtain this special low price package, Swreg adds an $8 charge to every shopping cart purchase. This charge is for a software backup service. Most sellers of software already offer this service for free but there is no way to remove the extra charge by the seller. That means when you try to sell your $19.95 software, the customer clicks through and they are immediately charged $27.95. The price just jumped almost 30%. The seller does not see one cent of this $8 fee. When customers need to re-download, they usually contact the seller and not Swreg so the customer paid extra for a service and the seller is the one who must provide the service, uncompensated, while Swreg pockets the $8.
Some customers will remove the extra charge from the shopping cart, but most will think they are being gouged when the price shoots up and they will click the back button to find the next company offering a similar product. The end result is that the seller has generated bad will with a customer and driven away a sale.

Choosing the best selling option for the seller is not always the best option for the buyer. If it is not the best option for the buyer, then it is never the best option for the seller because it means lost sales.

Many of these services will also charge outrageous fees for normal course-of-business services, make unexpected additions to your shopping cart, spam your customers with their own offers, or offer related items from your competitors automatically on the checkout page. Once the buyer clicks another offer, they are unlikely to return and finish purchasing from you.

You must be very careful when choosing a payment service. Choosing a Digital River related site could result in lost sales due to unexpected items appearing in the cart or spam. Using Google Checkout can also damage your sales because once a customer is burned using them, they will remember that they have no buyer protection and never use the Google Checkout service again.
Always research a payment processing company from the buyer's perspective. Make sure you place a real paid(not a test) order and use a special email address that you can monitor for spam abuses. You want to know how the company really works before sending your hard-won customers to their site. Look at the order process through the buyer's eyes. Pretend you have never seen the order page before. Is it confusing, are there any distracting offers that may lead a buyer to buy something other than your product? Are there any unauthorized items automatically added to the buyer's cart? Is there a clearly stated buyer protection offer or link?

If you were the buyer and you are not willing to order from your own site, then customers will not be willing to buy either.

By: Michael Ford, The Auction Inquisitor

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Will-Using-Google-Checkout-Damage-Your-Company-Reputation-/483897