Chapter Ten
Getting Paid
Getting paid for online work is easy. If you are selling as an affiliate for eBay, Amazon, Clickbank, or other companies they take care of collecting the money. You merely drive people to their websites where the sale is made and you get credit. Most companies like these will pay you once a month, and this is either by check, bank transfer, or PayPal.
If you don't know what PayPal is you certainly need to find out. For those home business people like me, PayPal is the main way we get paid. PayPal is a company that will handle all the credit card payments for you and put the money in your PayPal account.
Once the money is in your account you can spend it to buy other things online, have the money sent to your checking account, or even spend it from your PayPal Debit Card.
There are other ways to get paid for items you sell as well and one of those is by having a Stripe account, or Alert Pay. I suggest starting out with something simple like PayPal to start. PayPal even has capabilities for you to send invoices for billing purposes. This works great for me as an online entrepreneur.
If your new home business is online the first thing you need to do is set up a business account so that you will be ready to accept payments. It's completely free to open a PayPal account and easy to understand.
When you sale a product or service online of course the payment is upfront, usually through some kind of shopping cart, but if you sell a service like I do things are different. I personally make an invoice for my clients in my word processor and email it to the client.
Once the client makes full payment I start work on their writing projects. Again, there is one exception I make to this rule.
This is not set in stone but I ask for payment upfront unless I'm dealing with a brand new customer. For new customers I will allow them to pay half up front and the balance upon delivery. The next time they order, its payment up front. This builds trust for new clients.