WHC Internet Marketing Guide
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Payment Processor
If you sell your own products, and even if you promote some products as an affiliate, you'll need to be able to accept payments online (some affiliate programs only pay commissions through PayPal, for example).
The easiest way to get started is to use PayPal.
You might also consider getting a merchant credit card account or using some other payment processing system. But until you have a reason to, that can wait. In my experience, you'll have a lot less trouble with fraudulent payments using PayPal than with your own merchant account.
When selling downloadable or membership products, one option that doesn't require you to have any sort of online account is to sell through ClickBank (okay, you have to have a ClickBank account, but you can receive the money from them by check).
If you sell through ClickBank, you may want to also look into selling through PayDotCom. They place a lot fewer restrictions on you, and if you're product sells for more than about $50, your total fees will be lower. You do however need a PayPal account to work with them.
Note that you can sell the same product both through ClickBank and PayDotCom. Just be sure to set up a separate sales page for each so that you don't cheat your affiliates by taking payment through one system from a customer referred through the other system.
* Amazon.com best sellers displayed using CaRP Evolution with expanding reviews powered by CaRP's "Expander" plugin.