In my last post we discussed various ways of working from home and touched on the subject of direct sales. This is where you offer a product for sale yourself rather than through an affiliate relationship where in fact you are marketing a 3rd party product sale.
In order to be able to sell directly you will nearly always need a means of accepting online card payments if you are going to operate effectively. The vast majority of people who purchase online like to make online payments, it is a part of the whole convenience package that they are being offered. If having offered a product online, you then advise your customer that they need to make an offline payment you might find in a lot of cases that they will not proceed with the purchase. People really are getting used to online banking, look at Chase Bank Online, Citibank Online, big banks with lots of customers that have become used to operating their finances online, even when it comes to their salary.
I have to qualify that statement however by saying this is the case for the vast majority of products, but not all, and at the end of the day you will need to rationalise what is the best method of payment i.e. an offline payment option, offline combined with online, or a combination of online payment options. To maximise your chances of making a sale it is a good idea to have at least 2 ways people can make a payment.
