Hi Kiyi, First, congratulations on all your success! I hope you can help out.. I am going through the process of opening an online store as well. How do I go about accepting credit cards? What are the costs involved? Did you shop around at all? What are the requirements? How about the technical backend? I noticed you are doing everything via ASP. How did you link this up w/ the merchant? Are you using another service? Sorry about all the questions, but I just dont have any idea what everything involves! Thanks in advance!
Also trying to get a merchant account for my online store. If you have some advice I'd appreciate it. I am opening my store through Yahoo! Stores and they don't accept every merchant account provider.
Hey, I know I am not kiyi, but when I was operating a small business, I researched this. There were a number of vendors offerring service to merchants for ATMs. But the best prices I found tended to be with legitimate brick and mortar banks. YMMV. Hope it helps!
yeah TomJones, that same brick and mortar bank then allow anyone to come in and take money out of my bank that didn't have access to it. Yes, and there was nothing the courts or police did to stop it and all I was doing is what I am doing now, It also caused me to get evicted, get sued again cause of back rent. Those Brick and Mortar banks want money, they don't care if they lose a small customer who is trying to make a living. The bank president was the only one to go to jail for the whole thing but I never recieved compensation for any of the problem I endured from the whole mess. The people I am using now, but not be the cheapest, but when I email or call them, they answer and give me a no bullshit answer. Try to get one of those from a brick and mortar bank. What kind of small business did you have? Why don't you still have it or is it a Larger business? Another thing is, This is a good point and I want to make this clear, You need to target your market, and you need some money to finance a advertising campaign to your target. Currently this is the hardest part when you are poor like me. Has anyone found good alternatives?
Kiyi - i would recommend hiring some college staff.. or getting on some public bulletin boards such as this one, but geared towards your target market. Hire some reps, some distributors that can move your product.. That is the process I am currently involved in now..
I'm sorry to hear about your situation. That really sucks. What kind of small business did you have? Why don't you still have it or is it a Larger business? [/QUOTE] I was running a small computer consulting/repair firm. Some customers had asked about paying with CCs, and I thought being able to add it to advertisements might have helped me attract more clients. I eventually quit the business when I was offerred a very lucrative position with a Fortune 700 firm. Your point about proper advertising and capitalization is crucial. It's very tricky to come up with money for a $500 advertisement when you're down and out. I think my business actually failed because A) I ran it on a cell phone and B) Alltel, my service provider, had too much cell traffic in my area. Frequently calls to me would go to voice mail even though I was not on the phone, and had 5 bars of reception. Sometimes Alltel would just DROP the calls. So I might have had 3X the customers I wound up getting, if I'd been able to receive every call.
Mine failed cause my money wasn't handled by my bank and by Cardservice haphazardly. It was a nightmare. I will never ever do it again. As for the current service, I have done more business with them and no problems with them at all so far. I also been doing about 50 times more now then I did before.
HI I AM A MERCHANT ACT DEALER PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU STILL NEED MERCHANT SERVICES SET UP. THANKS AND TO ANYONE YOU KNOW HAVE THEM EMAIL ME INCOMING@CMBINTERNET.COM OR CALL ME I WILL GIVE YOU NUMBER VIA EMAIL UPON REQUEST
