After a month of research, I finally came to the reality that getting a merchant account is too costly for me. The setup fees alone will take away whatever potential profit that I might have.

So, I think I better forget about being a reseller and concentrate on Google Adsense. :bawling: :bawling:


Before I totally give up this dream, could you reseller or anyone tell me whether do you receive payment through Paypal (or if you are not a reseller do you pay through Paypal for your hosting) from your customers?

Thanks for your input.


:bawling: :bawling:

Good bye WebHostingTalk forum. I will not visit this forum as often as before.

:bawling:

What are you trying to accomplish exactly? Are you trying to sell hosting? If so you should consider increasing your prices if merchant account fees are eating all your profits. Some more information about your situation might help us help you.

I want to start with reselling unused diskspace & bandwidth that I have and from there resell the hosting plans of the reseller. My profit margin is US$2 - US$3 higher than the amount I am paying the hosting company.

I don't have the heart too charge to high in order to cover the cost. For the unused space I am thinking of charging about US$10 for 1GB and 30GB data transfer.

I am worried that if I do not have a merchant account, customers will not find me credible. I don't want to be regarded as "scam" as I don't want to cheat others or give bad reputation to my websites.

If I cannot get many customers, one or two customers would be alright with me if they could help to pay half of my hosting bills.

We offer CC, PayPal and check. The percentages go as follows:

CC: 65%
Paypal: 30%
Check: 5%

Hope this helps :)

Originally posted by jasontd101
Check: 5%

People still pay with checks? That is so 1990's. :eek:

Originally posted by mripguru
People still pay with checks? That is so 1990's. :eek:
heh - I still do...:stickout:

Originally posted by mripguru
People still pay with checks? That is so 1990's. :eek:

Most government run sites ALL pay by check. Also many large corporation also do as well.

Paypal is as good as a merchant account.. and for few accounts you actually don't need a merchant account.. also paypal has started mercant account services too.. i remember reading it somewhere on their site

I have begun using PayPal as a last resort. I too could not find a merchant account that would cost less than $40-50 per month minimum, plus transaction fees. I wanted to automate the signup and recurring charges for hosting, so PayPal was the cheapest with only 3% transaction fee (50 cents minimum I think). My only advice would be NOT to rely solely on their online files for your books. Keep a separate accounting of the billing for your own records. Also, in my case the instant notification feature for payments doesn't work with my hsphere control panel most of the time, so I have to apply the credits to my accounts manually. Good luck!

I think paypal is a good option for start an new business to get the amount

Good start with paypal, lots of guys pay by paypal.

Hello,

Here's my rough figure:

Credit card (2CheckOut): 86%
Bank Transfer (local customer): 10%
Bank Cheque (local customer): 1%
Western Union: 1%
PayPal: 2%

Originally posted by domainwala
Paypal is as good as a merchant account.. and for few accounts you actually don't need a merchant account.. also paypal has started mercant account services too.. i remember reading it somewhere on their site

I don't agree.

1). Paypal transfers the customer off your site, which does not look very professional.

2). There is a segment of the market that won't use Paypal to purchase things.. this includes almost all corporate clients.

Why are people so afraid of merchant accounts? They are very easy to get if you live in the USA and have average or better credit.

I did not pay any setup fees for my merchant account. It costs me $40/month minimum (if the fees from transactions are less than this) for Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Discover. Per transaction, it costs 5 cents plus 2.3% of the transaction total (a little higher for Amex). This is not an unreasonable amount of money, especially when you consider alternatives like 2CheckOut that cost 5.5% per transaction!