Adds a Hurdle to Cross-Channel Commerce

Getting Your Money

This is where it’s currently impossible to be an international customer, although they say they’ll be expanding soon. Technically, international customers probably could take in payments right now, but they would not be able to get the money out afterwards. WePay could also be forced to close the account.

US-based WePay customers can link a bank account to receive payments or get a cheque sent out. You can even order a debit card for your account.

WePay Vs PayPal Comparison

WePay aim to make it easy for individuals and groups to collect payments. Collecting payments easily is WePay’s primary goal, whereas PayPal’s aim is to facilitate the sending of money too.

Fees vary wildly between PayPal and WePay:

PayPal aim to take fees from merchants and the senders of money, while WePay defaults to take money from the person making the payment (except for donations). WePay customers can also choose to change the default so that the fees are charged to them.

WePay fees are easy to understand, while PayPal fees take pages of detail to explain.

A US$10 payment incurs fees of 50 cents at WePay or a minimum of 52 cents at PayPal (30c + 2.2% for discounted merchant rate), while the normal fee payment would be 59 cents at PayPal (30 cents + 2.9% for merchants or personal transfers).

A US$100 payment incurs fees of $3.50 at WePay or a minimum of $2.50 at PayPal (30 cents + 2.2% for merchants) to a maximum of $4.20 at PayPal (30 cents + 3.9% for international payments), while the normal fee payment would be $3.20 at PayPal (30 cents + 2.9% for merchants or personal transfers).

WePay is not yet available internationally, whereas PayPal is available in most countries.

Check out WePay’s promo video on Vimeo.

Will you be using WePay when it’s available in your area? Why or why not?

Dwolla an Alternative to Paypal

Ever heard of Dwolla? It’s more than just an alternative to Paypal and you should know about it.

The company itself started with a simple mission: provide an easy and fair way of sending and receiving money, and pay for services online. For the most part,  Paypal has been the only way to move money around through internet storefronts. Their great partnership with Ebay years ago has placed them in a position of strength. Yet, someone looked at what Paypal and credit cards were doing and thought they could make something better. That someone is Ben Milne.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Paypal is amazing, not to mention a financial giant, but for someone who is looking for a great alternative, here you go. The fee structure is very simple: receiving less than $10, is free; receiving more than $10 will cost you only 25 cents, always. Simple, right?

Milne, the company’s founder, has been honored since taking his company public in 2010. He has been on the 30 Under 30 list and made MIT Technology Review’s 35 Under 35 in this Sept.’s issue. In fact, Technology Review reported Dwolla most likely will process over $1 Billion for 250,000 businesses and consumers in 2013, which goes to show that it Dwolla is a viable alternative to Paypal.

With some top investment firms backing Dwolla, like Andreessen Horowits, who, incidentally, helped Twitter and Skype make it, it’s no wonder the company is taking off and starting to show that they can rival the Paypal juggernaut. If not rival, at the very least, they are a healthy competitor and provide consumers and businesses more choices.

What is amazing about the way that Dwolla works is how it’s already integrated into the services we participate in. If someone already has an account, you can send them money by using their name, their Facebook ID, their Twitter handle, even their LinkedIn profile, telephone numbers, or email addresses. Sending and receiving money between two private parties has never been this easy.

The amazing thing about Dwolla, and Paypal as well to a certain extent, is that it allows us, the consumer, to move money around cheaply. This whole process is to do away with credit cards and the money they take from us. Part of the use of credit cards is to pay for the infrastructure that is already in place to continue running. That infrastructure is what is needed to process that sixteen digit card number. While this system was great back when the cards were first introduced in the 1970’s, with today’s technology and culture, it is no longer the best way to go.

Dwolla, in short, is doing its best to streamline and make it cheaper for people and businesses to move money from one back account to another. In making this process more efficient, they have also made it cheaper.

While Dwolla may not be the final solution, nor Paypal for that matter, it is defiantly clearing a path for more to follow. And in the path clearing that Dwolla is doing, it is showing that it is not only a good alternative to using Paypal, but a good alternative for credit cards as well. Provided, of course, that you have the money sitting in your account.

John Lewis' New Fee Adds a Hurdle to Cross-Channel Commerce

Most merchants are trying to eliminate the barriers between their online and physical storefronts, yet the U.K. retailer John Lewis has put a small but meaningful barrier between these two channels.

The company slapped a £2 (about $3.12 U.S.) charge on all e-commerce orders under £30 when shoppers ask to pick up the item in a store. This goes against the trend of making so-called Click & Collect purchases free of additional charges, though it could help the retailer recoup payment-processing costs for small-ticket items (or discourage those purchases altogether).

"We are sure customers will understand why we are doing this. There is a huge logistical operation behind this system and, quite frankly, it's unsustainable," Andy Street, the John Lewis managing director, told The Guardian. "We consider ourselves to be leaders and we want to take the lead on this."

But even if most purchases don't qualify for the fee, it creates a mental hurdle that could take away one of the key advantages retailers have over online-only competitors such as Amazon.com; the fact that an order can be placed with one click and then picked up on the walk home from work is a key merged channel strategy.

Another key potential is upsell opportunity. Once inside the store to make that free pickup, shoppers are likely to make additional purchases that outweigh the £2 cost that John Lewis aims to recoup. And of course interchange is a factor. The actual cost of handling a card payment varies widely based on a retailer's sales volume and negotiating power, it is a non-trivial consideration on all small purchases, including those under the £30 threshold. Generally, it's even more of a concern for sub-$10 purchases because the merchant pays a flat fee in addition to a percentage of the sale amount.

Distribution costs are likely low for a company like John Lewis, since it already ships items to its stores on a regular basis; even a $2 item would not add significant costs if it is bundled with a shipment that is already planned. This is unlike e-commerce, where each shipment goes to a different home address and thus a threshold for free shipping addresses a steeper cost for the merchant.

But another solution to the issue of card-acceptance costs is to promote the use of alternative payment methods. First Data's Gyft, for example, offers more rewards to consumers who pay with Bitcoin or PayPal than those who use credit cards. In the U.K., Barclays' P2P app Pingit is another alternative payment option.

John Lewis declined to make an executive available for an interview, though the company confirmed the accuracy of the quotes in The Guardian's article.

WePay – A New PayPal Alternative To Try Out

the Internet is not only accepted, it’s often essential. There are many freelancers who nowadays rely on Internet payments in order to carry out business. Most of us currently rely on PayPal to ensure our payments get through. Now there’s a new competitor called WePay in town who might make a viable alternative if you’re a US-based customer.

It’s also a neat way to take payments for donations and events. For non-US users, there’s still some merit in using WePay for making payments, so read on.

Sign Up & Get Money

Currently, WePay are running a great promotion which gives you a $10 credit for new accounts and $10 for each person you refer to the service. These credits won’t appear in your account until you’ve received one credit from some other source, because they want you to actually use the service rather than just getting free money (also, this means non-US customers won’t be able to get the credits – sorry).

Sell Tickets Or Items

You can use WePay as a ticketing agent or a store checkout, collect donations or send bills to your customers.

Directory Wordpress SSL Certificate Newsletter Affilate

You may come across something called Mingle Forum, but their website is full of affiliate marketing nonsense and far too much advertising; my gut feeling is to stay away from it given there are better choices, this forum post is full of dissatisfied users.

Forum Server is another that I found, but it’s hard to recommend when there are simply better solutions out there. That’s not to say Forum Server was bad in any way, it just isn’t any better and isn’t as well known.

vBulletin is a well known forum/bbs system, but there’s currently no great way to integrate it. Something is in the works over at WPMUDev, but nothing yet. phpBB did make a valiant attempt at integration with a plugin called WP-United, but the site has since been abandoned and overtaken by spammers. There are a few projects also in development for the current phpBB 3 release but nothing solid yet.

Summary:

From the makers of WordPress, my money is with bbPress all the way. It’s the only plugin here that follows true integration, and simple configuration that defines exactly why WordPress is so popular in the first place; furthermore it perfectly compliments BuddyPress. If you’re not afraid of a little hard work and coding though, Vanilla would be my next choice; it’s simple yet powerful, and has a superb track record with some of the biggest names on the internet.

Did I miss your favorite WordPress forum software? What are some of the other best WordPress plugins that do this? Do let me know about it in the comments. In the meantime, check out all our other WordPress and web development articles.

Image Credit: Shutterstock – forum

Directory Paypal ssl newsletter wordpress plugin

This Pinterest plugin makes it really easy for Pinterest users to “pin” your site images and bring you lots of traffic.

This plugin adds a simple little “pin it” button on your images when a user holds their mouse over the picture. They just click and pin.  Easy for your users… and really great for you.

If you’re like me, you love WordPress plugins like these — they can seriously become addicting!

Problem is, plugins can drag down the performance of your site and if you have multiple plugins running, it can be a pain to figure out which plugin is causing your site’s issues.

With this plugin installed, you simply run it and let it “profile” your site and plugins, making it simple for you to see any problem plugins or ones that are not configured properly.

Site speed and performance are both important… this is a great plugin to have to help you optimize your site for best performance for your users.

Do you have any favorite or “can’t do without” WordPress plugins you use for your affiliate websites?

If so, please share in the comments below.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Plugin Wordpress Affiliate Directory newsletter paypal

bbPress is my personal favourite, and if you choose to install forum components when setting up BuddyPress, this is the forum system that’ll be added. bbPress integrates fiendishly well into the WordPress system; as it should, since it’s made by Automatic, the people who built WordPress in the first place. As such, you can expect a quality product, with lots of support, and frankly the best integration you’re going to get.

As with WordPress, and BuddyPress, bbPress also has a number of plugins available to enhance functionality. The core features are on the light side though: this plugin is designed to integrate perfectly with WordPress, not overload with whizz-bang widgets. Basic forum features exist of course, but the focus is on simplicity.

Pros:

Integrates very well into WP admin panel

From the makers of WordPress itself

Works great with BuddyPress

Integrates with your existing design and page templates

Cons:

Perhaps too simple, especially if migrating from existing forum software

Another well developed external forum system, Simple:Press is incredibly feature rich and fully integrated into WordPress.

Once installed, the administration pages for your forum are incredibly complicated; this is designed for the power user, certainly not for the typical WordPress user. Simple:Press it may be called, but simple it is anything but – even I found it overwhelming (perhaps I’ve just been using Apple products for too long now, I expect everything to have no more than 3 buttons and no config!)

I should note: Simple:Press also managed to completely mess up file and folder permissions on my test site, though this could be unique to my VPS setup. Proceed with caution, and make sure you have a backup in place.

Pros:

Complete WordPress plugin, not a bridge to a standalone system

Tons of features

Small number of useful plugins

Cons:

Must FTP upload, cannot use WordPress plugin install/upload interface

Complicated admin

Overwhelming for average user

Others

3 Of The Best WordPress Forum Plugins

popular, and then people start crying out for a community. I wrote before about BuddyPress, which is one approach to take that effectively turns your site into a social network; forums are another option.

There are quite a few forum plugins out there, but I’ve distilled them down to the Top 3 to help you decide which will suit your as an admin and will be just right for your users.

Vanilla is an open source forums system used by hundreds of thousands of sites – you might have heard of PennyArcade; Cult Of Mac; or 9to5 . The point is; these guys know forums, and this is a Pro-level solution. With both a paid (hosted) and free (host yourself) plan, the free option is quite an involved install process – this isn’t just a plugin, but exists as an entirely separate system that must be uploaded and configured. That said, if you managed to upload WordPress and type in your database details, then you’re going to have no problems getting Vanilla and running.

Once it is setup, you can continue integration with WordPress by installing the WordPress/Vanilla bridge plugin. It’s a lengthy procedure, but this tutorial will walk you through it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to solve some of the integration problems; perhaps I was rushing it, but others think the WordPress plugin may be the culprit, so hopefully this will be fixed soon with an update.

Pros:

Superb forums, advanced features

Well trusted and used by large sites

Lots of plugins

Widgets for your WordPress

Embed code provided to place forums onto an existing page

Cons:

Complicated install with FTP and DB configuration; not plug and play

Difficult integration with WordPress (with the latest version at least)

WP All Import WordPress Datafeed Importer Plugin

Be a part of SMX East, the world's largest search marketing conference programmed by the team from our sister site Search Engine Land. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.

About The Author Jennifer Ledbetter aka "PotPieGirl" is most known as an affiliate marketer who went from zero to six-figures a year starting with all free methods (like she teaches at OneWeekMarketing.com). (Some images used unI’ve written about Datafeedr in the past as a paid WordPress plugin that I have used to create affiliate sites with datafeeds.

I looked around at the alternatives a while back, and I didn’t see anything in a league with Datafeedr.

But I recently came across WP All Import and it looks like another quality plugin to import XML or CSV datafeeds into WordPress. The WP All Import plugin enables affiliates to quickly create a ready-to-promote affiliate store with thousands of products.

Also, the plugin works with any theme. Please note that I have not personally used it, yet, but I plan to in the future.

More Information at wpallimport.com. The post WP All Import WordPress Datafeed Importer Plugin appeared first on Affiliate Marketing Blog.der license from Shutterstock.com.) 

5 Free WordPress Plugins For Affiliate Marketers

Sign up for content marketing news and tips delivered every Tuesday. WordPress is a very simple-to-use solution for creating powerful affiliate websites. The best part about WordPress is all the plugins that are available. It seems there is at least one plugin for just about anything you can imagine!

I’ve put together a list of 5 free affiliate marketing plugins for WordPress that I really like to use. This is probably my favorite WordPress plugin for my affiliate sites. In a nutshell, this plugin allows you to take long and nasty-looking affiliate links and easily turn them into “pretty links” that look like they are links within your site. So, instead of using that funky-looking Clickbank link, you could make that affiliate link look like YourSite.com/cool-product (for example).

This is a very useful plugin that I love. Oh, it also tracks clicks on each link you create! If you create a lot of WordPress affiliate sites, you probably find you spend a lot of time tweaking your theme and settings with each initial set up.

What if you could get your basic WordPress set up done and then make a copy of it each time you wanted to create a new affiliate site? This is really easy to do with the free Duplicator plug-in. This handy plugin also allows you to easily move sites from one host to another and back up your sites (which is so important to do).

This plugin is pretty nifty. All you do is install and activate the plug inside your wp-admin dashboard, and then add your Amazon affiliate ID in the settings area. Once this is set up, any time you add a link to an Amazon product in your posts, the plugin automatically makes it your affiliate link and it directs the user to the proper Amazon site according to their location. Pinterst is amazing for traffic, and it’s a site you really should consider adding to your traffic-getting toolbox. I have had sites blow up with traffic all because one visitor “pinned” an image from my site.