Make Money Online at Natespost.com

   How do you accept credit cards online? If you want to build a website that sells products or information, or even simply ask for donations, you need a method of payment. There are many different options to choose from, so you need to make the most educated decision possible because when it comes to accepting credit cards it comes down to 1) lower fees paid by you and 2) customer service. Let’s start with lower fees.

   To accept credit cards, it will cost you money in the form of application fees, discount rates, and fees per transaction. Understand that a credit card processor is a middleman that makes money by providing you a service. Its the same when you go to Wal-Mart to buy that new pair of neon camoflauged pants you’ve been looking at. When you swipe your card through the machine, Walmart gets the bulk of the sale amount, but they also pay a percentage to their credit card processor. Now folks like you and me that want to accept credit cards online won’t be able to get the sweet deal that Wal-Mart gets with their credit card processor, but we can make an informed decision that will maximize profits for us. The first thing you need to stay away from is a flat discount rate. Without getting too technical, there is something called an interchange rate (the small percentage that the issuing bank gets paid), and it varies by the type of card used, say debit vs credit, or corporate vs individual. You will get the better discount rate by going with a company that charges “interchange +” as opposed to a flat rate.  Think about it…a credit card processor that gives the merchant a flat rate has to make damn sure that they don’t get shorted. They do this by charging a rate that is above the mean, which covers their butt and equals a higher fee paid by you. There is also a “per transaction” fee that you will be charged when accepting credit cards. This can range anywhere from .30 to .50 per transaction.

   The other thing to look for when deciding on a credit card processor is customer service. How long does it take to setup the account? Do they provide people to help you set it up and answer questions/solve problems? Can they help you with a shopping cart for your site?

   While researching this topic so I could accept credit cards online, I decided on Cardaccept. First of all, there is $0 setup fee, same day setup, 24/7 customer support, and free shopping cart software. Their biggest competitor to accept credit cards online is paypal, so you need to look at the differences. Let’s say you will be making $3000 or less a month by accepting credit cards on your site. With paypal, you will be paying a discount rate of 2.9% of every transaction for their processing service. With Cardaccept, you will pay the lower discount rate + .25%. That’s a quarter of one percent. With paypal you will also pay an additional 30 cents per transaction as opposed to 25 cents per transaction with Cardaccept. Plus, Cardaccept is also compatible with Ebay and you can even accept payments by phone or fax.

   I hope all the technical stuff didn’t bore you or make you think it’s too big of a deal to accept credit cards. Cardaccept is simple with $0 cost to set up, excellent customer service and will save you money in the long run. Just fill out their short form and you’re up and running.

   If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it eventually will. A post that you wrote, one that you worked hard on and did extensive research for, will be stolen. The first sign will be organic search engine traffic dropping for that post. Then, when you do a google search for the keyword you used to rank tops in, you notice that you have been replace by someone else, with your content. And when this happens, you will be slightly pissed. This is what happened to me and here is what I did about it.

   A post I wrote several months ago, http://natespost.com/index.php/install-wordpress-on-yahoo-server/ had still been getting some traffic for me from google. When I was checking on things a few days ago, I noticed that it had completely stopped for the last few weeks. When I did a search for the keywords that I had ranked #1 for, I noticed that I had completely disappeared, and that another blog had taken my place as #1 using my content. The feeling was a little like seeing a stranger driving away in your car, I would assume. Time to get your car back…

   The first thing I did was report it to google. Two days later, I got a response from google explaining the process. To file a DMCA complaint, you have to fill out a form and fax it to the number they provide. Having filled out the form but yet to fax it, I thought I would give the offending party the chance to take my content off his blog first. My email request to him was replied to with a defiant sounding “Show me the proof that it is your content.” The feeling then is like the guy flipping you off as he drives away in your car. Time to do some research.

   Yesterday I published a post which gave an account of the ordeal along with his full name, home address, phone number, and a picture of his new baby. I had collected even more info to use in the future and would know if he was behind any of his friends’ future malicious attempts. Meanwhile, kudos to google. Although I had not faxed in the complaint, an employee there apparently laid human eyes on the situation and corrected the search engine response. (they do have access to detailed caching which can show who posted what and when) For all the bad things you hear and read, I was impressed that someone took the time to help me out. Anyway, after seeing the post about him, he emailed me agreeing to a trade. He would take my content off his blog if I would remove my post about him. Deal. The thing is, now that my “car has been returned”, I really have no ill feeling towards my new-found friend. He is trying to make a dollar like the rest of us, he just needs to go about it the right way. I sincerely hope he continues to be a reader and learns with the rest of us, giving his advice also.

   Now as a small measure of protection, I recommend that when feasible, when you publish a new post, refer to an older post of yours with a link. It can be in the form of “As we talked about in my august post {link to that post} …..” Anything to make it easier for the human eye at google to know that it is your content. Also, at shoemoney, I found a great plugin by Joost De Valk that you can download here. It automatically adds a footer to your post which links back to you when read (or scraped, copied, stolen) from your rss feed.

   When I was in the sales field, I would often stop on Home Shopping Network, QVC, etc. when I was scrolling through the channels at night. I guess I should also say that I didn’t have much of a life. But it is a really educational experience for anyone wanting to sell anything to pay close attention to what they are selling, not what they are saying. What in the world am I talking about? Home shopping is a BILLION dollar industry, and anyone on the show is a trained, experienced, hard-core salesman. They might have the inventor of a certain product on during the segment, but they are always accompanied by a trained sales professional. I remember being impressed by a salesman they had selling a little piece of crap robotic vacuum. He turned it upside down and showed a little roller with bristles on the side of the unit. What it did for you was as it spun, the fact that the bristles were in a spiral shape, they pushed all the dirt that wouldn’t be sucked up by the vacuum pressure towards the center where it could be sucked up. This would keep your little robot from leaving dirt, dust, etc. along the edge of the carpet near the wall. He talked about this for 10 minutes and by the time he was done, you realized that this was the vacuum for the next century. The fact is, every vacuum ever made has the exact same feature, but he sold the feature. As far as you knew, his was the only vacuum ever made that had a bristled roller on it. They definitely sold more piece of crap vacuums that day than Kevin Federline will sell piece of crap rap albums in his lifetime.

  The main point here for a blogger is that you need to do some selling yourself instead of just providing a link in your sidebar. Home Shopping Network doesn’t just show a picture of a product with a phone number below it. They tell you why you need the product. Thy tell you how your life will be better with it. So here is what you do. Whatever affiliate ad you have in your sidebar, link it to a page within your blog. On that page, explain the product or service, why you use it, and what it does for you. Sell it. Then link to your affiliate from that page.

   If your header navigation bar links just to your categories, you are done. If they link to your pages, you need to do the following. Go to presentation, then theme editor. Open the header on the link at the right and find the line towards the bottom that looks something like this:(’sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=’); ?> Under your Manage tab, you can fine the page number for the page you created earlier, and you need to remove this from your navigation using the exclude command. Here is what mine looked like after excluding my shareasale warmup: (’sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=&exclude=55′); ?> You might even want to leave it in your navigation bar, but it never hurts to learn how to play with your header. That didn’t sound dirty, did it?

  So no, Yahoo Hosting’s one click install for Wordpress does not work. So quit trying. Really, I said quit that. Even if you happen to hold your mouth right and get it to work, it will not install in your root directory and you will be left with your url being www.yourdomain.com/blog, which is definately not what you want. Nor do you want the jacked-up permalinks. Follow the directions below and you will be up and running in a matter of minutes, plus you will gain invaluable knowledge on the relationships between html, php, and your database. Don’t let the terms used intimidate you because if you have the ability to surf the internet, you have the ability to do this.

1. Login to your Yahoo webhosting account and select the create/update tab, then MySql database (close to the bottom), then database administrator (second from top on left). Create your username and password and write these down. (not your yahoo username and password)
2. Go back to the create/update tab, then select MySql database, then install admin tool. In the blank box at the bottom, type in “phpmyadmin” then click create directory. When the page refreshes, you will see your newly created “phpmyadmin” folder. To the right of it, click install phpmyadmin.
3. When the screen refreshes, click on the link that shows for your phpmyadmin homepage. *tip - bookmark this page for future use Login with the username and password you created in step 1. In the drop-down box to the left, select mysql, then on the line that says user, click on the browse icon. now highlight the row that contains the username you created in step 1 by clicking it once. Now select the change icon, and change all the privilege settings from N to Y. click GO.
4. When the page refreshes, on the top row, which starts with server:, click on the link of your domain name. In the blank box, name your new database whatever you like, just be sure to write it down. In the drop down box next to that, select utf8_unicode_ci, then click create.
5. Download the latest version of Wordpress. Open and edit the wp-config.php file. Change the DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD to the ones you made in step one. Change the DB_NAME to the database name you made in step 4. Make sure the DB_HOST is set to ”mysql”.
6. In internet explorer, type ftp://ftp.yourdomain.com into the address bar and hit enter. At the top left of your browser, click file then login as and enter your ftp info which you can find under the create/update tab on your Yahoo Webhosting account. Once opened, just drag and drop the Wordpress files into your root directory, go to your install.php file, and you’re DONE!

   BONUS TIP     -    PRETTY PERMALINKS

   Logged into your wordpress admin, select options then permalinks. Select custom, then in the box, paste this in /index.php/%postname%/  That’s as good as a permalink can get with yahoo because they don’t allow you access to the .htaccess file.