Merchant Accounts

[Mazboy]

I am considering starting two seperate websites selling different products both owned and run by one company. Does anyone know if i can use the same Merchant account to do this or do i need a seperate Merchant account for each website?

So far i am getting very mixed answers!

[faze3]

Actually, I think your getting the same answers - one merchant account will do. I have a single account with 4 sites linked to it.

Alan.

[Mazboy]

Do your sites sell different products?  Do you mind if i ask who you bank with?

[Mazboy]

We are considering using Barclays as our Merchant and they are insisting that we need a seperate Merchant Account for each website! :-(

[seamus]

paypal, nochex etc, you can use these payment methods on various different sites, all using the one account, I'v a few sites all conected to the same account, no problems there.

[Rainee Bows]

i have 2 accounts , one takes payments across the webdesign sites , the other takes payments from retail, the retail sites are all connected to one account under a trading name ie,


pinkmonster is trading as part of the onyx group ... .

that may be the best way around it ???


Rain
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[conran]

If you're using a payment processing system such as Sage, this could be different.

But using a company like PayPal or Nochex, you can link as many sites as you like to that and process all payments through it.
As Rain-bow says, you're better off creating one umbrella brand and then add this brand to each site. So you'd have "website name" as part of "Primary brand". Then you'd need to make sure your PayPal or Nochex account reflects this brand in the user experience. So you'd have the primary email for either going to your umbrella brand, and the banner on all those payment pages outside of each of your sites showing the umbrella brand and listing the sites it controls.

I think the advice you're being given is confused. Perhaps they think you intend to create sompletely separate companies or identities. Just tell them you'll still be trading under the same name, you'll just be increasing the number of outlets and using different brands for each - all under your single primary brand.

[Rainee Bows]

I have never had issues running my sites in this way ....

we have just done the same with the web design sites as some of them are now automated, they all take payments through the one account the umbrella site is the rainbow studios group and encomapasses upwards of

4 (and growing) seperately named sites all displaying the "part of the rainbow studios group"  text


Rain
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[Mazboy]

Thanks Rain, that's good to know.

Are you UK based?

[Rainee Bows]

who me ? yip I am

Rain
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[conran]

Somewhat related...

Is the key to becoming successful in online business operating more than one site?

I mean, in your opinion, is it rare for a person to make an adequate income from the operation of one site alone?

Personally, I've seen opinion divided on this. Some seem to think it's better to have one site that you can focus on and devote all your time to. While others suggest that you should operate several sites and eventually work out what works and what doesn't. Some sites may become more beneficial than others because of something minor that has been overlooked. So by having more than one, even in the same arena or product range, you've a better chance of making an adequate income.

As my intention is to give up my day job and do this full time, I need to be making (on average) 10 - 20 sales a day. And this should be easy enough with four or five sites of adequate standing.

I only have my primary site online. But I am now working on three others.

Your opinion?

[Rainee Bows]

unless you have a formula for guaranteed success and a plan for each to follow i would hold off on going to mad with other stores,

I personally have several retail stores and several sites for web design, each hits a different niche, some are performing well , the newer ones still need work ( a couple needs insane amounts) each has a niche and a plan though,

understanding marketing , your market and seo is key, from experience it can be a hard slog to get anything moving in the direction you want it to

If you have the time and the energy it can be very rewarding when things do start happening though.

So i cant give you a definitive answer to that I'm afraid, i have clients that have more than one store who are struggling, and i have clients with more than one store doing well :o)

Rain
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[Grifter]

I am new to this but I go for the multiple sites in a big way. You get to learn so much more with many sites. I have about 10 or 20 domains but I've only worked a few. But they have made me concentrate over the last 12 months on how to get the sites up in the rankings for natural search and how to try to market otherwise.

I did a lot of affiliate stuff on the sites so that I didn't have to worry about orders and such. However, this is a painful process without solid traffic. What I have found though since the caffeine update with google in June is that activity is being highly rewarded. Here's an example:

First of all I am absolutely no good at sales copy etc so I don't look to my future as being running online stores. What I think is to make a site/store and sell it once it has got some traffic and income. Then the new owner can make their changes to make the sales improve. Here's the last one I started, it's the one in the showcase section. I looked at the suppliers in this forum and did some keyword research to look for a market. I actually started it with Gothic Dropshipping as there is a good gap in some of the search queries. However, it was for clothes and he only offered a few t shirts. But, whilst doing this I came accross clubbing stuff. So I went for clubbing outfits and clubbing dresses in particular. I used DGTG and Simply gorgeous and deputydog as a reference for what products I could offer. There is a difference with these suppliers and not one I noted immediately, but that doesn't matter.

I take out the following domains (edited at posters request) and org and net and info (com must have been taken). I start up the .org and just let wprobot fill it with content. Some will look at that as crazy since you are putting content on but having loads of links outward. Well that site has probably over 2000 outbound links. I built maybe 40/50 good article type links inward to it. Added maybe 500 less type links to it. I also added a couple of hundred links to the top 5 article links.

The site goes from 400ish to 40-50ish. Then after backlinking the articles it disappeared for nearly 2 weeks (standard). It came back second in google uk and com for clubbing outfits. For clubbing dresses it came in at about 5th eventually.

Then for co.uk site I make a store. I put in a very few links to it from articles. But only solid ones. And I add on to each post made from .org and .net a spinnable anchor text back to .uk. So after a month every post from .org and .net are posting at least one link to .uk. Now, lots of links from one site aren't considered great. But, they are considered. In Yahoo site explorer the .org has about 40ish backlinks (500 at least true value) in google it has about 18. The .uk site has about 30ish in yahoo and in google it has over 500.

Result so far:
Google uk
clubbing outfits
2nd for .org
4th for .uk

in google.com
clubbing outfits
2nd for .org
4th for .net (minimal work)

google uk
clubbing dresses
5th for .org
6th for .co.uk

google.com
hmm not there but in the top ten I have an hubpage and an ezine article

and then there are other keywords to go for after that.

However, I think by the time I work the .net and boost it then the .co.uk will outrank them both. Also I will have a blogger site of the same term that will work exactly the same. I will build lots of links to it and it will eventually only link to my uk site. I always have noindex for archive pages set. Add that to regular content daily and it's working. The only downsides are:

Could do with more user generated content (but everyone who comments are just wanting their own backlink). So I go through them now and again and strip their links and approve them after akismet catches them.

Feedburner (another thing google bought). Another indicator of acitvity. If you can get people to subscribe to rss feeds then this is very good. Especially if you set your feed up with google's feedburner.

The others are not so malleable. Users using chrome obviously are going to indicate to google their activity. A more popular option though is google toolbar. Many, many people have this installed. If you look in the settings you'll see that on default setting that user usage is sent to google. Google are trying to undo the damage done by autoscripts that give sites backlinks. Caffeine seems to be giving a high vote to usage and activity even if it's just new content posted. New content seems to be considered more relevant in google's eyes. Think of surges when hot items hit news.

[Grifter]

Hmm I do apologise but I'm vodka'd up. There is much more that I've missed but I was merely trying to point out the value between activity to content for old sites.

I am outranking sites with thousands of backlinks and old domain age plus google pr rank. Why? Activity is my only answer. I expected to stay there for a couple of weeks before getting dumped but we'll see.

For those running ecommerce sites here's the tip. Add one or two products per day. Even if those products are already on site. Delete them and give a fresh description. Assuming you're using canonnical urls etc that is.

I know there are many on here that know far greater than me and I'd love them to participate and give their insights like on other threads. I've gone way off topic but have learn't so much from guys here that we should try and help others. Conran who posted the question that made me reply actually earns more from his single site than my dozen or so(in my belief). So I've tried to help now I also invite you to help back. How did you make your single site an earner?

[conran]

Thanks for all that info Grifter.

My single site is nowhere near providing a stable income. But sales are steadily rising each month.

Although I'm ranking second on Google for reasonable traffic keywords, I'm not seeing much of that traffic. I'm trying to build links to move up into 1st place, because I believe there is a significant drop off (if the search data is accurate). Most of my traffic comes from referring links from associated sites, blogs and forums.

I really do need to build links in consistently for various keywords, but choosing them is a lengthy process. It's hard to be realistic and aim for keywords that are achievable, but the phrase I'm now ranking 2nd for I thought was out of my reach so I guess assumptions can be incorrect!

I completely agree with you on updating content. I tend to add three or four new products every week, and I'm now in the habit of writing original content for each after starting off only slightly changing the standard product descriptions.

But that's all I've done; update the site regularly, add links here and there and post a couple of articles.

As I've said though (and I bring it up regularly in related ecommerce forums) building a community around your product or service is incredibly beneficial. Shortly after I started my shop, a friend of mine started an adult male community and invited me to be an exclusive partner/sponsor. I suddenly had sole access to advertise to a new community of over 1000 men (unfortunately the group experienced a server problem and the membership started again, currently at 400 ish).
People talk about the power of social networking, but I believe the real power is in niche networking and communities. Forget Facebook and the rest, create your own, have a friend start one as a hobby or offer benefits to an existing site in exchange for advertising to their members. By doing this right you can have access to potentially thousands of your ideal customers who are already in the right frame of mind to buy from you or are your target audience.

Using this method, I can also stay in contact with those customers, give them special offers, freebies and so on.