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I often get asked for advice on how to obtain a merchant account or how to select a good merchant account.  A merchant account allows you to accept credit cards for your business. I wanted to share with you a few thoughts about what merchant services are, some terminology they use, and how to select a good one.  I'll finish with a few personal recommendations.

Visa is by far the largest credit card company.  Forty-four percent of all credit cards and 48% of all debit cards are issued from Visa Inc.  The next most popular cards are MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.  When you sign up for a merchant account, you usually automatically get accounts with Visa & MasterCard. You usually apply separately to be able to take Discover and American Express cards.

There are literally thousands of companies that offer merchant services to customers.  In the end, there are only about a dozen companies that actually do the processing for  Visa, MasterCard, and Discover payments (American Express processes its own payments).  When you sign up for a merchant account, you're most likely signing up through a reseller of one of the dozen or so processing companies.

If you want to get really rich and make money gouging people, perhaps you should become a credit card processing company :) .  There are many fees you should be aware of, and compare among companies when choosing who to go with:

• Account type.  There are two account types, and they have different rates and fees.  The first is card present, and the second is card not present.  If you are doing mostly online sales, you'll want a card not present merchant account.
• Discount Rate.  I don't know why they use the word "discount", sounds more like an "interest" rate to me.  But that's the percentage of the sale the credit card company will take for every sale. 
  
  For cart not present accounts, this number is usually around 2.2% to 2.4%.  But be aware -- this quote is for the absolute minimum they will take.  You could get charged 2.2% if the card you were processing were a very basic credit card issued from a very basic bank.  However, most people that use credit cards use cards with bonuses -- such as cash back, airline miles, and so forth -- you actually end up paying for the bonuses as the credit card company charges you a much higher discount rate (such as 3.4% to 3.9%), so beware.  Make sure you ask the company what ALL of the discount rates are for all types of qualifying transactions.
• Transaction fee.  Credit card companies usually charge a few cents (10 to 25) per transaction, regardless if the card was declined or accepted.
• Billing fee.  Some credit card companies charge you so that you can receive your bill.
• Monthly Fee.  Some credit card companies will charge you a monthly fee to have the privilege of having a merchant account.  Take note that there are some companies that don't have a monthly fee.  Instead they have a....
• Monthly Billing Minimum.  The most common figure for this fee I've seen is $25.  That is, that you agree to pay the company at a very minimum $25 per month in credit card fees.  If you do more than that amount in credit card fees, you win.  If you do less than that amount in credit card fees, they win.
• Look out for other fees.  There may be other fees credit card companies charge, make sure you read all of the fine print and ask the sales person to disclose all fees or better yet, have them show you a sample billing statement and have them explain what all the codes and symbols on the bill mean.

The biggest complaint I hear from clients about their credit card companies have to do with the quality of their customer service.  I recommend doing a Google search for the merchant account company you're considering, and look at page 2 - page 6 of the search results.  You might see a few places where people have complained about the company's service.  Note: all companies have a few "pesky" customers and it's impossible to satisfy 100% of people 100% of the time, so read the entire review and see for yourself if you think the review is reasonable.

When I started my business, I began my search for a merchant account online.  There were many companies, and narrowed down my search to a few.  I also happened to contact my local bank.  Turns out that at that time, my local bank had a much better offer than what I found online.  I've been very happy to have gone through them for my merchant account.

I have personally had bad experiences with CyberSource, and have known others that have had bad experience with FirstData.  I have heard good things about Elavon.  Also, if you are a Costco member, I hear that they resell merchant accounts to members and offer really good rates.

Good luck looking for your merchant account company.  If you have experiences you want to share about your merchant account company, please share them in the comments for this blog post.

Category: Business Tips | Read 1 Comment(s)

Yesterday we held a webinar about how to use Facebook for your business.  Facebook is a free online social network with a very large following.  This tutorial walks you through setting up a Facebook Fan Page and discusses a few strategies to gaining a following.  You may also download the powerpoint slides.  View the video in full screen to catch all of the details.

Category: Webinars | Leave A Comment

Gregory Case is a professional photographer specializing in photographing quilts and other art.  Photographing art and quilts uses different techniques than photographing people and other objects.  You may have taken photos of a quilt or painting and wondered why the photo doesn't turn out right, giving the quilt justice.  We interviewed professional photographer Gregory Case to share with us some tips on how to make your photos of your quilts look stellar.

As quilters get better at their craft and their confidence and competence improves, often time they consider entering quilt shows or posting their quilt images online on their blogs or websites. Unfortunately, most entries in juried shows fail due to poor photography images, as do quilt images on websites and blogs. Thus, these photography tips will help you improve the quality of your quilt images for shows or web viewing.

We chose four problems most often encountered by jurors in quilts shows and by students in my photography classes. The reality is that once you enter a juried show or post your photo to your blog or website far more people will probably see that image, than they will ever see your quilt.

• Problem: Distracting Backgrounds
  Solution: Photograph against a blank wall ideally painted white or very light color. If a wall is not available crop the quilt image in-camera or using image editing software, such as Photoshop Elements or Photoshop without cutting into the edges of the quilt. Don’t show your hands, feet, the family dog or cat, etc. in the image.
• Problem: Keystoning
  Solution: Keystoning is created when your camera is not at a 90-degree angle to your quilt, making your quilt looks distorted (wider at one end and narrower at the other).  When photographing your quilt, your camera should be aimed at the center of your quilt at a 90-degree angle and at a distance far enough back to capture the entire quilt. However, for larger sized quilts you may not have enough space to move the camera back. One popular option is to place the quilt on the floor and climb a ladder then photograph it from high above. However, this often times creates a problem called “keystoning.”  While you can solve this problem with image editing software, it works better to keep your camera as close as possible to a 90-degree angle to your quilt. 
• Problem: Blurred Photos
  Solution: Almost all cameras have an automatic focus feature, use it! Additionally, along with using automatic focus, I strongly recommend using a tripod when photographing your quilts. 
• Problem: Improper Lighting of Quilt
  Solution: Whether you light your quilt using natural light (outdoors) or with indoor (studio) lights, make sure all four corners and the center of the quilt are evenly lit. Before you put your camera away, make sure to download your image on to your computer and review it on your monitor. Do not rely solely on the camera’s LCD screen to judge the evenness of your lighting—that screen is too small and thus too forgiving. And while reviewing your image on your computer screen, check to make sure all four corners and the center of the quilt are in focus. 

By following these tips, you have eliminated the majority of the problems seen in quilt images in juried show entries, websites, and blogs.  

Gregory Case and Elena Morera have photographed quilts and textiles for over 7 years. Their work has been published in over 80 different publications and Gregory is the staff photographer for the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. They have recently moved to Colorado and their new web site (www. gregorycase.com) design, featuring lots of quilt and textile images, will be completed sometime in April 2010.

Category: Quilting Related | Leave A Comment

Many of us hear people say "Use gotta use Twitter to advertise your business!"  Or, "If you really want to get big, you need a Facebook fan page with tons of fans."  Others encourage you to run off and spend countless hours reading forums, blogs, and subscribing and following tons of people's sites to do "social networking" to boost your business.

That's all fine and dandy.  But there's one thing that's important to remember: when you begin, begin by being social.  Talk to others, ask questions, engage in a dialog. Far too many fail and get burnt out with social media marketing because they spend their time self-promoting, and their fans / followers grow tired of reading ads.

Businesses that succeed most with their social media marketing efforts work hard to engage their readers and create dialog.  Asking for feedback, sharing fun stories, responding to other's comments are a great start.

Category: MMM | Read 1 Comment(s)

Let's pretend you run a website that sells different kinds of jewelry.  Let's say you want your website to rank higher for a specific brand of jewelry, "Jill's Jewelry".  Here are some simple first steps you can take to help increase your search engine rankings for that keyword:

1. Create a flat page and title it "Jill's Jewelry".  Make the URL portion of the web page be something like /jills-jewelry/.  In the body of the web page, write thee or four paragraphs about Jill's business, and refer to her whole business name often (once or twice per paragraph, as what seems natural).

2. Ask friends and others to link to the flat page you created on on your website.  Don't have them necessarily link directly to your home page, but have them go to the new flat page you created.  We're assuming the home page is more generic and not specific enough to be about Jill's Jewelry, so we want links coming in to the specific page.

Getting incoming links requires a lot of creativity.  Some ideas to get incoming links include posting the link to your Facebook profile page, other people's blogs (or better yet, getting people to blog about your collection of Jill's Jewelry), website directories, etc. 

When people links to your flat page, have them put "Jill's Jewlery" in the link text (instead of "click here").  For example, "Go see Jill's Jewelry on the Bracelets & More website."  Have the text in the paragraph surrounding the link talk about Jill's Jewelry (why it's so great and why everybody's going to want to go to the site to check it out).  This increases the relevance for the keywords "Jill's Jewelry".

3. Back on your website, be sure to link to the new flat page you made for Jill's Jewelry.  One way to do it is to add it to your Site Map page.

4. Wait about a month for the search engines to notice the updated links and the page of your site.

You should notice an increase in rankings there for your page.  To help your rankings improve even more, try to find ways to get more people linking in to that particular flat page.

Category: MMM | Read 1 Comment(s)