Earning, Blogging, Tips and More

Profile of North American Bancard

North American Bancard is a merchant credit card processing services provider. They service mostly retailers with acquisition, equipment, and acceptance. The company was started in 1992 and has grown considerably and now employees about 300 people. Recently they moved into a new office building to support their growth. It measures at about 10,000 square feet. If you look at their Linkedin page, you will find a very good North American Bancard Company Profile.

The company has a network of agents that make commissions off of signing up accounts. One example of an incentive to become a North American Bancard Agent is the residual income and bonuses that you are offered. This is a great way to grow a company, and it is a standard practice in the merchant account industry.

A tell tale sign that the company is growing is by seeing all the North American Bancard Jobs that are being posted on CareerBuilder.com. It appears as though they are hiring in many different departments throughout the company, from sales to accounting.

If you want to learn more about this company, you should be sure to check out the North American Bancard Blog and the North American Bancard Wikipedia Page

Research Your Way To Getting The Best Web Host

Searching for the best and most suitable web host for you and your blog can be quite a tricky road. Yes, there are a lot of web hosts out there -- some too expensive but with promising features, and some a little cheap and with humble and simple features.

Depending on your budget and your choice of features, you can almost always find the most suitable one for you. That is, if you carefully do your web host research. Just like in university, eh?

How To Do Your Research: Looking For The Best Web Host

Find web hosting review websites. Do not rely on web hosting description merely. Always read what real customers have to say to a specific web host. Some are happy, some disgruntled -- you've got to look out for the mind-changing comments.
Go through web host rankings. This can be usually seen in web hosting review websites too. With this, you can compare features and price easily -- in table form.
Look for what you really want. Do you want an eCommerce hosting, VPS hosting, or dedicated hosting? Some websites categorize web hosts accordingly and rank them per category. For example, for Best Dedicated Hosting, InMotion Hosting wins.
I'm a freebies person. So I look out for what a web host could give me for free. If you're like me, you might want to do a little more research on the freebies section like Free Google AdWords on some hosts like iPage.
Lastly, don't just rely on web hosting reviews. Ask around -- forums, blogs, chat rooms, etc. People with experience on web hosts know better and a top notch higher more reliable than mere web hosting reviews. Don't be shy if in the end you want what's best for you.

So that sums it all up. Research is important not only in the academic world but also in things like looking for the best web host for you. Keep looking! :)

Photo credit: brainpop_uk from Flickr

Online Businesses: Customer Satisfaction Through Live Chat Support

We've seen a lot of online businesses grow since the time the Internet went through a fast forward phase of popularity. The area of business and commerce benefited from this upsurge in Internet usage. eCommerce, as it is commonly called, continuously grows up to now. Many businesses start online, some expand online and find success in their business online. The keyword really is online. The Internet.

Businesses build their websites to aid their business making online. A website, at the very least, is absolutely important when doing business online. I've done a seminar on eCommerce in school and I've learned that having an informative, reliable website ensures the customer of the reliability and authenticity of your business. A website can range from being an ordinary product/service catalog (not effective) to a full interactive one.

One of the nice-to-have features of an eCommerce or business-related website is real-time support. Customer satisfaction through speedy support approach is absolutely important. Customers don't want to wait for their queries to get answered. A business that approaches this area poorly is likely to lose it's customers fast. Real-time support can mean many things but the most common way to do this is to have a 24/7 live chat feature in the website.

Take for example a web hosting business. Customer A's very important website suddenly crashes because of server problems. Customer A tries to contact his hosting provider through the website. Without live support, Customer A may have to wait for hours before getting an answer and that means his important website may lie dead for a few hours waiting.

To have live support on one's business website, a live chat software will be installed. Along with that, of course, is the person to do all the customer support in the live chat. It costs something, but it is worth more than losing your customers because of poor support.

So what do you think? Is a live support feature generally important or can it be skipped by online businesses in most cases?

Photo credit: Saxoji of Flickr

Understanding Merchant Accounts for your E-Commerce Website

If your e-business is not accepting credit cards by now, you might be in for a rude awakening when you start having severe cash flow issues. Being able to accept credit cards in the e-commerce industry is a necessary part of doing business. If you haven’t set this up by now, you will not be able to compete with other websites that sell the same products or services that you do. Obviously you have to do your due diligence when choosing a provider. Here are a couple of pointers when choosing a provider.

Fees

Many credit card processing companies will charge a percentage of each sale plus monthly fixed costs for maintaining the merchant account. These fees vary by provider, but they should be closely analyzed in order to add to your monthly budget.

Some companies require a monthly minimum fee. This is one of the fees the merchant account provider charges the customer in order to maintain the account. If the monthly fees do not add up to the specified minimum dollar amount, the customer has to pay the difference.

Early termination fees are charged to customers that close their accounts out before the contract is done. A contract is generally 1-3 years long. Many unforeseen events may occur in a 1-3 year period for a business, but the merchant account providers also run a business and have to protect themselves.

Chargeback fees are definitely a concern for institutions. There are many cases of fraud over the internet, which results in many chargebacks. The merchant account provider’s bank is responsible for processing the chargeback according to Visa and Mastercard, so in order to protect Visa and Mastercard’s own interests, Visa and Mastercard will fine a bank a significant amount of money if their customers’ chargebacks rise above 1% of dollar volume. Ultimately the banks will pass this fine onto the customer that is racking up the chargebacks.

Customer Service

Customer service is very important, and I have had a very good experience with North American Bancard, which handles my credit card processing service. They were attentive and patient, as I was just starting out in owning my own business. They guided me through the steps very slowly, as I learned the basics. Customer service is especially important for an industry with complicated pricing structures, as you need someone that is very good at explaining things in a calm and patient manner. Like any other service, you would like to be treated with respect.

Price and service are the name of the game in the merchant account services industry, so you should take a look around. I am sure you will find a service that fits your business needs.

What Do You Think Of The New dNeero Homepage?

Our favorite survey social networking site just recently got a new look. Check it out!

So what do you think? Loved the colors? Does that microphone look good on their homepage? Take this survey! Few more slots and days left. Good luck!

The Best Forum Hosting Is Just Host

It is not only blogging that has boosted its presence in the Internet lately. We see a lot of lively forums and forumers going on and about in every corner of the World Wide Web. Internet forums, known before as message boards, get popular because discussion and interaction is high in such avenues. From a technological standpoint, forums are web applications managing user-generated content.

A common perception is that a forum is just an appendix of a website. But no. Forums can stand alone even without a website on its aid. Some popular forums do. Because of that, another "branch" of hosting was opened for forumers solely. We call it forum hosting. A web space is dedicated only to hosting a forum where a high number of users can join/register and interact. One important requirements of forum hosting are stability, reliability and uptime. Stability is needed when a very large number of forumers altogether access the site within a close time frame and the server's load capacity is tested. Reliability is how the forum itself protects the many accounts it hold from web thieves. Lastly, uptime ensures that the forum will be there to support 24/7 interaction between people and not go down and discourage users from participating more.

Finding the best forum hosting won't be a pain anymore. Web Hosting Geeks, a web hosting directory, ranked Just Host as the Best Forum Hosting in its website. From the website:

Just Host has been recognized as Best Forum Host thanks to the advanced software and top-notch support that they provide for the forumers. The forum software available with all Just Host accounts includes phpBB2 and SMF which are both really well known applications that offer the user tons of features.

Just Host, Ltd meets all BBBOnLine Reliability participation and Better Business Bureau membership standards and is authorized to display the BBBOnLine Reliability seal.

So if you plan to start up your own forums, you know where to look. If you want a blog plus a forum, try looking at the best blog hosting category too in the Web Hosting Geeks website.

Share your favorite forums below. Mine's our own Cebu Bloggers Society forum.

Where To Get Your List For Your E-mail Marketing Needs

As I've said in my previous post Why Venture In E-mail Marketing?, e-mail marketing is one of those marketing strategies that uses e-mail as a medium of commercial communication and selling to a specific audience. In simple terms, it is sending an e-mail to a potential or current customer for the purpose of acquiring a new one or engaging in repeat business. But with all those basic information, the next dreaded question comes in: where do I get the e-mail addresses of potential consumers?

Your e-mail marketing software would be practically useless not with a good bunch of marketing data to boot. What you really need before starting your e-mail marketing campaign is to get hold of sufficient telemarketing lists. What's this, you ask. A telemarketing list is a set of e-mail addresses of both business entities and potential consumers. You have e-mail addresses of businesses to gain potential partners. You also get e-mail addresses of potential consumers, those who might be interested in your campaign. But where to look? Some companies specialize in e-mail marketing lists. They provide such lists to businesses involved in e-mail marketing or telemarketing. They have done their research and analysis of data well to generate such effective list for companies to use.

The important thing in e-mail marketing is you get a list of potential buyers and not a list of uninterested buyers. For example, you might want to acquire a mortgage mailing list when you sell related services or products. You don't want to market your mortgage services to teenagers, right? A mortgage mailing list must have contained e-mail addresses of professionals or parents. Before you buy a mailing list, make sure it hits your target audience or consumer group. That way, your e-mail marketing campaign would be highly effective.