Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

PayPal Merchant Tools

Unless your website is wildly popular, ads and other affiliate programs will net you only spare change. If you have all-consuming dreams of web riches, you need to actually sell something.

You don’t need to go far to run into self-made Internet commerce kingpins. A surprisingly large number of people have made their living with creative products. Examples include t-shirts with political catchphrases, empty bottles of wine with R.M.S. Titanic labels, and collectable toys from a relative’s basement. Your path to a thriving e-business might involve little more than buying tin spoons from Honest Ed’s and decorating them with macramé.

No matter how good your goods are, you need a way to sell vast quantities of them easily and conveniently. Very few people will go through the hassle of mailing you a personal check. But if they can make an impulse purchase with a credit card, your odds of making a sale improve significantly.

Accepting credit cards isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. You can do so in two ways:

• Open a merchant account with a bank. This is the traditional way businesses accept credit cards. Requirements vary from country to country, but you may need a business plan, an accountant, and some up-front capital.

• Use a third-party service. A number of companies accept credit card payments on your behalf in exchange for a flat fee or a percentage of the sale. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to use one of the best—PayPal.

Unless you have a large business, ...