the hard sell!

If you're looking to sell goods or services, or offer membership or benefits at a cost on your website, you're going to have to enter the murky world of online retailing.
The good news is that it isn't as hard as it sounds! Like everything else on the net, you can have systems of varying complexity, starting very simple and going all the way through to Amazon style mega warehousing.

At the most basic, if you've got an email address and a bank account, you can receive online payments via Paypal. This works well if you don't expect a huge number of transactions, and is a good low cost solution at this level.

If, however, you're talking about selling large amounts of goods or services, you'll want to consider online payments via the major credit card companies. There are a couple of things to note about this: Firstly, customers will expect the transaction to be secure, and you may need to use a secure online payment facility. Secondly, the credit card companies charges can be prohibitive if you don't acheive a reasonably high level of sales. There's a natural break even point, below which using credit card companies doesn't make financial sense, but above which it does.

On the right, you'll see a screenshot of a typical secure online payment company