Alternatives to PayPal:13-Amazon Payments

Oct 7, 2010

Alternatives to PayPal:13-Amazon Payments


Amazon have a number of interesting products under their ‘Payments’ banner. They have a system  for sending money which is free to use for sending money between Amazon users, and they have a number of more ‘E-commerce’ related products. If you are looking to just send and receive money in the U.S. they have a pretty attractive offering.  If however, you are needing a transaction option, you are going to have to pay for the privilege.

All of Amazon Payments uses their databases stored internally to aid with the checkout process, essentially giving sellers less hassle with the checkout process, also giving access to Amazon’s patented ‘One Click order’ services. In a similar vein to PayPal, they also offer cut and paste HTML code for their Simple Pay product, which can get you up and running quite quickly if you only have a handful of digital products to sell. Processing is performed on Amazon servers, prior to the customer being returned to finish the checkout process, which isn’t that big a deal considering its an out of the box payment solution.

As for costings, this is worked out on a per transaction basis, with fees starting at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for volumes under $3000. See more details on the pricing for business accounts here.

At time of writing, Amazon Payments UK hadn’t been rolled out, and the service exists for the U.S. only.
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Alternatives to PayPal:12-OboPay

Alternatives to PayPal:12-OboPay


Obopay is one of the first mobile payment systems to make it to the web, enabling customers to transfer money to one another right from the mobile phone.  Technically this is achieved using a combination of the technologies offered on mobile devices – traditional SMS, WAP,  HTML / Web apps and bespoke iPhone applications – allowing them to cover all bases regardless of  the handset capabilities.

With more and more of the web moving mobile, its no surprise to see startups taking advantage of this, and wedging a foothold in this space. For example in May that announce that they were going to allow banks a branded payment solution to take advantage of the growing mobile trend – saving them the hassle of the implementation, and allowing OboPay to get on the pig’s back so to speak.
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Alternatives to PayPal:11-Paymate

Alternatives to PayPal:11-Paymate


Availability: Australia, USA, New Zealand

Paymate provides secure, reliable and innovative Internet-based payment services to buyers in 57 countries around the world and sellers in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. You can use Paymate to receive online payments via credit card, and like PayPal – you don’t need to have a merchant facility with a bank.

Although this is a service which exists inside particular locales, it is still a worth competitor to PayPal, and has performed particularly well on Ebay Australia – where Ebay were forced to accept it as an alternative payment provider for fears of anti-trust litigation.

Details on the fees charged can be found here – with the fee for buyers in the UK at the time of writing being 3% + 0.25p  per transaction regardless of the size of transaction. However there does seem to be charges for chargebacks and a credit check charge for new customers opening an account.
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Alternatives to PayPal:10. iKobo

Alternatives to PayPal:10. iKobo


If you’re looking to send money either at home or abroad, or make recurring payments or mass payments, then Ikobo.com might be the alternative to PayPal for your personal or business money transferring needs. Check out the iKobo fees chart to determine how much your funding or money transfer requirements will cost as well as card limits. Their handy fee calculator can help you with getting a better idea of what your particular needs may cost.
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Alternatives to PayPal:9. AlertPay

Alternatives to PayPal:9. AlertPay


Whether you’re looking for a personal account, a business account, or just need a way to send money home, AlertPay.com may be a viable alternative to PayPal. Fees are dependant upon the plan you choose for your payment or processing needs or whether you’re just looking to withdraw or deposit money or convert currency.
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Alternatives to PayPal:8. CyberSource

Alternatives to PayPal:8. CyberSource


Accepting a wide selection of payment options, CyberSource.com offers the ability to Transact payments in over 190 countries and fund in 21 currencies’. Some of CyberSource’s payment services include credit card processing, automated payment reconciliation, recurring billing, and electronic check processing, among others.
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Alternatives to PayPal:7. ProPay

Alternatives to PayPal:7. ProPay


Whether you’re selling on eBay or operating your own internet business, ProPay could be the alternative to PayPal for which you’ve been searching. Their annual fees and transaction charges vary based upon a number of factors including the type of services you choose for you various business needs and payment method.
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Alternatives to PayPal:6. MoneyBookers

Alternatives to PayPal:6. MoneyBookers


With no setup costs or monthly payments, MoneyBookers.com may be an attractive alternative to PayPal. With transaction fees ranging from 1.9%-2.9% based upon monthly sales, plus a $0.29 per transaction charge, MoneyBookers.com may be a cost-effective answer to your e-commerce needs.
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Alternatives to PayPal:5. ClickBank

Alternatives to PayPal:5. ClickBank


Boasting a sale somewhere in the world every 3 seconds and serving more than 200 countries, ClickBank.com members pay a $49.95 product activation fee for order processing services, customer support, and fraud services. You can also take advantage of ClickBank’s affiliate marketers who can help promote your products or services for a commission.
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Alternatives to PayPal:4. CCNow

Alternatives to PayPal:4. CCNow


Providing credit card processing, shopping cart, secure checkout, and risk and fraud management as just a few of their services, and accepting a variety of payments methods, CCNow might be the right PayPal alternative for you. According to CCNow’s Client Rate Schedule, their retail margin is 4.99% of gross sales charge plus a $0.50 charge per transaction as well as a one-time new account setup fee of $9.95. A $9.95 monthly fee is waived if sales are $100.01 or more that month.
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Alternatives to PayPal:3. E-Junkie

Alternatives to PayPal:3. E-Junkie


E-Junkie offers  Buy Now Shopping Cart buttons, Shipping and Packaging calculator, and Discount codes among their many features. Pricing is based upon the number of products you have for sale and storage space and starts at just $5 a month. If you’re a non-profit organization, you may even qualify for a waived monthly fee!
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Alternatives to PayPal: 2Checkout

Alternatives to PayPal: 2Checkout


Accepting customer orders through a wide variety of options including, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, PIN Debit, even PayPal, and a number of others, you might find 2Checkout.com a good alternative to PayPal. 2Checkout.com has a one time set up fee of $49 and then charges a 5.5% commission on each transaction and a $0.45 charge per sale.
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Alternatives to PayPal:1. Google Checkout

Alternatives to PayPal:1. Google Checkout


Well of course Google has joined the online payment game. Would you expect anything less from this titan of industry? Whether you’re a buyer, seller, or both, Google Checkout might be what you’ve been looking for. With rates ranging from 1.9% to 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction for sellers, this option could be worth checking into as a viable alternative to PayPal.
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How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated

Oct 6, 2010

How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated


Google, being the undisputable leader in search engines, is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search results.
Most especially now that the company is public property. In order to keep the shareholders and users of its engine happy, the quality of the returned results are given extreme importance.
For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated.

Here are some you must avoid:

Hidden texts Filling your advertisement page with texts too small to read, has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty.

Page cloaking. There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.

Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a site under two separate URL’s is the same as inviting trouble and even termination.

Likewise, this is a reason to avoid auto submitters for those who are receiving submissions. Better check first if your domain is submitted already. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.

Link farms. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them.
Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so limit your outgoing links.

Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on all of the search engines' bad sides.

Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines.
There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content. In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP’s, registry dates and other data. Having multiple domains with the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. Simply put, you should only build your site for the human users and not for bots.
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Using Adsense With Affiliate Programs

Using Adsense With Affiliate Programs


Adsense is really making a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry. If you are losing rather than winning in the affiliate program you are currently into, maybe it is about time to consider going into Adsense marketing and start earning cash through them.
Google is readily providing well written and highly relevant ads that are closely chosen to match the content on your pages. You do not have to look for the ads yourself as the search engine will be doing the searching for you.
You will be able to concentrate on providing good and quality content, as the search engines will be the ones finding the best ads to display.
You are still allowed to have Adsense ads even if you have affiliate
links on your site. It is prohibited, however, to imitate the look and
feel of the Google ads for your affiliate links.
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