Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

TJ,

That may not be a large amount of money to you, to someone that makes 30 to 35,000 a year, has rent, car, utilities, child support,
grocery, insurance, and a whole slu of other bills,
then yes, 3 to $5,000 is alot of money. Not all of us make $70 to $80,000 + a year.....
That is the whole point of starting a business is to make more money to get out of what ever rut you are in and to better your income. And like I said, if you wait till you have the funds, then chances are you will never start. If, at least you start with what you can and as time goes by, then you can improve things becuase you are seeing results and you can determine what stages to move onto from where you are.
If you sit wait, just think of all the time you wasted when you could have already had your foot in the door compared to just starting out....
********just a dose of reality...............******

Hi Lizzers,
Welcome to SuN! I use PayPal Pro for my site and I really like it. It allows me to take Visa, MC, Discover, AmEx as well as PayPal. People like having a choice. For a cart I use Mal`s E-Commerce which is at www.mals-e.com. It`s a great inexpensive cart. There is a free version but I use the premium edition for advanced shipping.
One big benefit of PayPal Pro is that it creates your shipping labels for you. This is a huge time saver for me. I go in to PayPal, click "ship" next to the customer`s name, and it asks me if I want to ship via UPS or USPS and creates the appropriate prepaid label. I just LOVE that feature, and although the fees are slightly higher per transaction for PayPal Pro than some other merchant accounts/gateways, that shipping feature makes it totally worth it.
I hope that helps! Good luck with your biz!

By the way, I also wanted to point out that PayPal has a couple of options - you can just use PayPal Standard (you only take PayPal), or you can use PayPal Pro which allows you to take CCs as well as PayPal. I don`t feel you look any less professional using PayPal Pro. (Standard - yes.)

Also, I think it`s just fine to start out small. I started out with just PayPal and the free Mal`s cart, and I had sales and did fine for my first year. I think it also depends on what you`re selling. I will say that my sales doubled when I started also taking regular CCs. PayPal Pro costs $20 a month, plus you pay transaction fees of 1.9% - 2.9% + $0.30 USD. There`s no set up fee at the time of this post. Also, like I mentioned  - I love that shipping feature!

Ok, After reading everyone`s posts... I thought I drop my two cents in..
Ok here is the difference between paypal and payment gateway.
For starts; Paypal Charges you a Whopping 2.9 % +.30 cents per transaction.. Now lets use the 5000 example. 5000x2.9% is approximately $145.30, that you will have to pay Paypal to use this service. That`s 145.00 short of your item price. Not only that, lately there`s been a growth with "Phishers" Phishers are people that sit around and highjack unprotected paypal Links and trust me they cause lots of trouble. Not to mention the 60 day, policy Paypal has in returning back your money. (Real life Experience)
The biggest dilema with paypal is, lots of clients don`t like when they see the paypal Logo. Not because they don`t want to purchase from you but, rather because they do not want to go through the whole process of creating an account.
Payment Gateways:
If you use a payment gateway such as Linkpoint or Authrize.net, It`s more convenient. Simply because if you make sales of more than 1K a month they can lower your rate down to about 1.4% +.10 per transaction, thats a huge difference. I also like the fact that your money will be transfered to your bank account within 24 hours as oppose to Paypal, With PayPal it takes 5 days for a $100.00 dollar transfer to your bank. With a payment gateway, the only thing you need in place is an SSL certificate and your shopping cart. Shopping Cart Integration is easy as sending an email.
For all of you that are interested in the system that I am using, here is the link.
http://americanpaywise.com

I was amazed at their prices, I am paying around $39.99, for a wireless processor, a Regular Processor, and a payment gateway.  So basically, 28.00 goes to the equipment purchase and the 11 something for monthly payment gateway.
I think this is a good investment.

-------------------------

Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

I just wanted to clarify - when people put things in my cart and go to pay, they do not have to sign up for a PayPal account. They basically choose if they want to pay by PayPal or Credit Card, and then it goes through as a regular credit card transaction. People don`t see the PayPal logo after that point.

The merchant accounts/gateways that I checked out all ended up costing just as much as PayPal Pro in the end - with all of the extra fees that they were charging, and like I said, the shipping feature that automatically adds the name, address and shipping fee to the UPS and USPS labels was a big selling point for me.

Have a great week all!

Hi Lizzers;  Welcome!  Not every person has the $$$ to start a business and it`s okay to start with only determination and a good idea.  Lot`s of people have...... Bill Gates comes to mind.

You`re a bootstrapper, a person who building from the bottom up, out there on his own dime, taking all the risks and that`s okay!  Having good mentors and good resources will help you go far.