We have all seen mentions about how video marketing could be useful in terms of making money online. But the issue with it is that few business owners use it, and many of them don’t really do it well. Can you use video sharing sites like YouTube and Daily Motion to attract some customers to your website? Definitely. Here are some tips that you will find helpful for this:

• Use public video sharing sites and not your own server

The obvious advantage of this is that you will be saving bandwidth, as the videos will be hosted on a site such as YouTube and not your own server. Another advantage of this is that more people will be able to see your videos if they search for their related keywords. If you host your videos on your own server, they can only be seen on the places where you put them, such as websites, blogs or social media pages.

• Put your website and business logo at the beginning and end of your video

Even though YouTube allows you to put links in the description (which you should do as well), you are better off putting your website in your video as well. This is because some people may see your video and choose to embed it on their own website or blog, or share it with social media. If your video goes viral and is seen by a lot of people, chances are it will be embedded on a lot of sites, so to get the most traffic from this effect, your website must be present in the video itself.

• Give useful content to your viewers

It is said time and time again, nobody comes online to watch commercials, there are enough of them on TV. The content of your videos therefore needs to be relevant to your products and niche, without looking like you are only promoting your website or goods. Instructional or informational videos are the best. For example, if your company sells replacement iPhone screens, then having a video which demonstrates how to open up the iPhone and change its screen without messing up the phone would be quite useful. It can also be used for intangible products such as guides and learning materials. So if you sell language courses, you can create a video which teaches some important phrases, pronunciation, words, in another language, then at the end refer the viewers to your website so they can check out the product and see if it is good for them.

• Don’t give up if you don’t get many views

It is a fact that most videos will not achieve millions of views, especially if your niche is very specific. The issue is quality and not quantity. You can make sales with just a handful of viewers that are truly interested in the content of your video and the product behind it, while uploading a video that gets thousands of views because it is “cute” or “funny” may not bring you any serious site visitors.

Previously, we have seen some tips on how you can test the dropshipper that you intend to use and the fact that it is much better to have more than one dropshipper to do business with. But how do you find a good dropshipper? There are a few ways to do this. Here are some of them:

• Look through dropshipping websites

There are some website out there such as DH Gate, TradeTang and Alibaba that are a real treasure trove for all kinds of merchandise. Anything like clothing, electronics and jewelry can be found there. The good thing about these sites is that they are mostly aimed at business owners who are looking to acquire merchandise rather than at individual consumers. This means that you can easily find dropshippers or buy merchandise in bulk. This is the good thing. But the bad thing about these sites is that they also contain many scammers who will either rip you off and not send anything, or ship something different than what they advertise.

But there are ways to protect yourself from that. Obviously, you can apply what we covered in the previous article which would be to make a test order first to see if they deliver. But you should also check the seller’s feedback on the site. See how long they have been active and how many positive comments they have from others who have done business with them. Also, look to see whether they have a website and phone number. While this is not a guarantee of safety, it does make it more likely that you will be dealing with a legitimate supplier rather than a scammer. If possible pay with PayPal or a credit card and avoid sending money through Western Union or Money Gram, as these services are preferred by scammers due to the fact that the transaction cannot be reversed.

• Look at internet marketing forums

Most “make money online” forums will have a section that is dedicated to eBay selling or dropshipping. Check it out to see what others are saying. You may find the contact information for some good suppliers, complete with comments from forum members who have used them and were happy with their transaction. You might even find some members of the forum who are suppliers for a wide variety of merchandise and who can drop ship to your eBay buyers.

Dealing with someone from a forum can be safer than dealing with a seller on Alibaba, as the supplier will often be well known in the forum and have members who can vouch for him. But this is not a guarantee that everything will go well. Don’t forget to use common sense when you are looking for a dropshipper, no matter where you find him. Always try to check their reputation out before you decide to use them as a supplier for your eBay online business. If you are careful, then you will reduce the chances of getting scammed when doing business with one.

If you want to make a full time income online, there are plenty of business models to select from. Of course, it is possible to earn some decent money by providing services to others, such as doing web design, writing articles, sales copies, etc. However, there are some things that you can do to make a full time income without spending all day actually doing the services.

What you can do is to outsource the actual service creation to other workers that you can find on classified ads sites, freelancing sites as well as forums. If your business gets really big, you always have the option of actually getting a physical office and hiring a full time staff.

Here are two business types that you can start:

• Web Design Agency

A lot of small and local businesses right now are getting online and would like to have a website. The thing is, very few business owners have the skills to create a good looking website and many of them do not want to spend the time it takes to learn how to put one together. This is where you come in.

All you need to do is to put together a team of a few freelancers that specialize in web design. It is always good to have people with diverse skills on board, such as one who specializes in blogs, while another one that does flash websites, etc. Basically, you would get clients to pay you for a website. Let’s say you charge $100 per site and pay the freelancer $60 for their work. You would then pocket the difference.

• Digital Marketing Agency

Plenty of business owners are also realizing the potential that the internet has when it comes to attracting new customers. This is where you will be helping them. You can offer a complete marketing package to small businesses, which would include optimizing their website for SEO, building backlinks, creating articles and uploading them to directories, creating and managing social media pages, putting up ads and listings in business directories and classified ads sites, managing their ad campaigns on PPC and media buying platforms, etc. This can be a very profitable business model, as there are plenty of local businesses that would like to advertise online, but don’t really know how to.

Getting Clients

Remember that most of your clients aren’t really up to date on the whole internet marketing scene, so advertising on IM forums is not really the best idea. It would be better to advertise in local classified ads sites, business directories, as well as in local businesses. Doing direct mail campaigns as well as calling up local businesses can sometimes yield quite good results, although these methods of advertising are a bit more expensive and time consuming for you. However if you do great work at competitive rates, you are likely to succeed in building a full time income.

Some recent security breaches such as the whole LulzSec affair have been reported in the media, where groups of hackers have targeted companies such as Sony, as well as agencies of both the British and American governments. Many online business owners are wondering what they can do to keep from becoming a target of hacking attacks. Here are some things you can do:

• Make a risk assessment

This basically depends on how big and popular your website is. There is little prestige for a hacker group to attack a website of a small business which contains no sensitive information. However, this doesn’t mean that you should not take any precautions and there are still some reasons as to why you may get hacked, which brings us to the next point:

• Avoid making people angry

Obviously, don’t go on “underground” websites and start taunting hackers. But also, you should know that certain hacking attacks have been motivated by revenge against businesses who are alleged to have engaged in disloyal competition, intentionally sold poor quality products, or otherwise ripped off their customers or business partners. So in other words, try hard not to make anyone angry at you.

• Use security measures, such as encrypting your customer information database

While no e-commerce or content management system is completely secure, they all have security features either built in, or available as external plugins. Learn what they are, how they work and what they do. And don’t forget to PUT THEM TO USE! Also, avoid systems which store sensitive info, such as customer details in plain text without any encryption.

• Secure your own computer as well

Make sure that any computer you use as part of running and administering your website or online business is free of malware, such as trojans and keyloggers. Quality anti virus and anti malware programs exist and there are some excellent ones, such as AVG, which are completely free. Therefore, there is no reason for you not to use them, as they are FREE!

• Exercise common sense

This is quite simple to do… but yet a lot of people fail and fail hard here. Don’t use “password” as a password for your web hosting account. Don’t leave the passwords at the default password for the system you are using either. Don’t open attachments in emails if you have the slightest suspicion it may not be a legit file. And if you have to visit “naughty” websites or download pirated software… at least don’t do it on a PC you use for your business, as these are also a popular source of viruses and malware.

• Get a security analysis of your site done

There are many online security firms that can do a complete security analysis of your website for a very low cost. They can point out any security vulnerabilities that your website has and then tell you which actions you should take to plug these holes.

If you want to start an online business and make a relatively decent amount of cash, without spending thousands of dollars or working full time on it, there are some ways to accomplish that. While there are many ways of earning money online, here are some examples of methods that have been shown to be profitable for many online entrepreneurs. These can be used to build a part time online business, however there is nothing that is really stopping you from turning these ideas into a full time online business if this is what you wish to do.

• Providing services

We have seen this in the micro online business article, and it really is the same concept. You provide services that are useful for business owners and online marketers and you get paid for it. Popular examples include: article writing, backlink creation, web design, ebook writing, etc.

The main difference is that you will be spending more time doing the work, around 20 to 30 hours per week should give you a very good part time income.

• Outsourced service creation

Same thing, but with a bit of a change. While you can do some of the work, you will be outsourcing most of it to other people for less than what the client is paying you and you will pocket the difference. So let’s say that someone pays you $12 to create a 1000 word article for them. You find a worker that can create quality articles on a forum or freelancing site and pay them let’s say $8 for it. You will then keep the $4 difference as profit. While this seems insignificant, if you get orders for 10 articles a day at $4 of profit, that’s $40 per day, and you didn’t do much work besides co-ordinating the work between what the client orders and what the outsourcer produces.

• Light Ebay selling

Ebay is the most popular online marketplace in the world, where some sellers have made millions by selling various kinds of merchandise to consumers. Of course, it’s not easy to earn 7 figures from the site, but it is well possible to make a few dozen dollars per day from it with a bit of effort and investment.

Selling on Ebay is the electronic equivalent of you having a stand at a flea market. You buy goods from a distributor at a low price and then re-sell them at a profit to the end consumer. All you are doing is applying the concept of buy low/sell high, which has existed for thousands of years.

So, for example, you would buy 10 cell phones at $300 each from a distributor that sells wholesale goods. You then resell them on Ebay for $400 and you keep the difference minus Ebay and PayPal fees. Basically, to be successful, all you would need to do is to find goods that are easy to acquire, in demand and easy to sell at a profit.

We have previously seen that there are many different categories of online business objectives. The main difference between them is the amount of money that could be made, as well as the amount of commitment (time and money) that the online entrepreneur will need to make.

Let’s first take a look at the micro online business model. Basically here, you will be making up to $500 a month and putting in 10 to 20 hours a week maximum, with little or no investment on your part.

This business model is basically service based. This essentially means that you will be offering some services to other webmasters, online entrepreneurs as well as business owners. What are some examples of services that you can offer, which will not demand too much time or effort from you? Here is a short list:

• Article writing
• Translation
• Video transcription
• Graphic design
• Very basic web design
• Writing reviews
• Creating backlinks
• Doing short online videos
• etc…

Of course, this is not a complete list, there are many more services that you could offer, based on your skills and the demand that is on the market right now.

The main question is: where do you go to find projects that you can do? The top places are freelancing sites, where people from everywhere gather together to offer or request services. The most useful sites for easy tasks are:

Microworkers – www.microworkers.com

Amazon Mechanical Turk – www.mturk.com

Fiverr – www.fiverr.com

Internet marketing forums also have a section for freelance work. Here are some of the best ones:

Warrior Forum www.warriorforum.com

Digital Point www.digitalpoint.com

Black Hat World www.blackhatworld.com

However, do take note that if you want to find work on forums, you should first spend a few days making USEFUL posts to build up your reputation and get your name seen by the other members.

In these sites, you will find tens of thousands of different tasks that you can do. The pay isn’t especially great, however, if you work in an efficient way without distractions, you can make something approaching $10 to $15 an hour. The tasks could sometimes be quite repetitive and tedious, which is why most people do not spend more than one or two hours working on them per day. But still, you can make a few hundred dollars a month from these sites.

Always strive to do quality work, follow instructions accurately and complete the projects on time. Not only will this help boost your feedback on the sites, but will also allow you to make some useful contacts and potentially earn you some regular projects to do.

Here’s a tip: working with the same people on a regular basis is much better and will make the time you spend online much more productive and efficient. The reason: you will be spending a lot less time hunting for tasks to do and projects you can participate in and much more time actually doing work that will be profitable for you.

Previously, we have looked at why it is important to keep an eye on information posted about your business in the online world. The principal reason behind this is quite simple: not all of the stuff that will be posted about your company will be positive. Some of it could be complaints or dissatisfaction from your customers or members of the public. What is the best way to react to it? Here are a few tips:

• Don’t try to remove negative information

Why? Simply because chances are very high that you will not succeed in doing so. Unless the information posted is libelous or is blatantly false, it will be very difficult to remove it from the internet as many websites, such as consumer advocacy and complaints boards have a policy of not removing content from their sites. You should also know that attempting to censor information can very well create a “Streisand Effect”, where doing so will cause the information you want to hide to actually gain much more popularity and thus spread even further on the internet.

• Respond to complaints

Rather than trying to have them removed, one of the best ways to deal with complaints and negative information about your company is to actually respond to them. This can be done through various methods. Consumer advocacy sites give business owners the option of giving a “rebuttal” concerning any complaint posted about them. YouTube lets you create a video response to a video that was posted. On forums, you can join in on the discussion and make posts.

All of this will give you the chance to present your side of the story, ask for more information from the complainer to see what happened and reassure people online that you care about defending your company’s reputation.

It will also give you the opportunity to straighten out any potential incorrect information that was posted about your company and to further explain your products, services, policies and the way these work to your customers and other people in the online world.

Responding to complaints will show that you are interested in running a legitimate and honest business and not a fly by night company.

• Fix the issue

Responding to complaints is of course an important step to take, but what is even more important is to fix the problem that was reported by the person who is dissatisfied with your business. In some cases it will be quite easy, while in others it will take some time and require you to negotiate with the customer to try and come to a solution.

In some cases, resolving the issue may not be possible, especially if someone is making unreasonable demands or doesn’t want to cooperate to resolve the problem. But in these cases, you will at least show that you have in good faith attempted to fix the problem and solve the issue at hand.

There are plenty of local business owners and internet entrepreneurs who are asking as to whether going with a local hosting company in their city is a good idea. One of the principal reasons as to why they are interested in using a local web host is to support the local economy and to support local small businesses like theirs. Certainly enough, no one could ever say that supporting a local business is a bad idea. But are web hosting solutions which are provided by small local companies really adequate for everyone’s needs?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Here are some possible drawbacks of using a small local hosting company for your website:

• They haven’t established their reputation yet

Large, international hosting companies which do business with everyone and are not aimed at a particular city have usually been thoroughly reviewed and talked about on the internet. You will find reviews made both by webmasters who have simply hosted a website with them, to experts in the field of web hosting. This can be very helpful in making a determination as to whether a certain web host provides quality service or not. If you can’t find many reviews on the host you intend to use, it can be quite hard to make this decision.

• Their support could be limited

Small companies often cannot afford to have staff members that are available 24 hours a day who can answer all of your questions and resolve problems, just like the bigger hosting companies. Remember, your website is not like a store, it never closes. Therefore, it needs to be up 24 hours a day and help should also be available 24 hours a day should it be needed to resolve any technical problems that cause your site to not function properly. This staff should also be truly able to fix problems, rather than just note down information and say that someone will get back to you the next day.

• They may have limited resources

Smaller companies usually cannot afford to make large investments in order to have an entire data center filled with servers. Furthermore, they may not have the facilities to make daily backups, as well as have a contingency plan in place should there be a problem, such as a fire, natural disaster, or power failure.

So, who are local web hosting companies actually good for?

If you run a small website for your business and you don’t mainly depend on the site to conduct your operations, then you could go with a local hosting company if you believe that it is a better idea in your opinion. However, if you are running an e-commerce site that is the main source of revenue for your company, you are much better off using the services of a larger web hosting company which has shown that they have a good reputation in the marketplace and have a perfect record when it comes to reliability and support.

One of the main attractions of advertising your business in the online world is that you are able to reach people all over the world. Anyone, from anywhere can visit your website and do business with you. However, for certain small businesses, this is not what they need, especially if they only do business in a certain local area. Therefore, for them, receiving visitors from all over the country and all over the world will be quite useless and will simply result in wasted time and wasted bandwidth on their website.

Think of it this way. If you run a local landscaping business, you don’t need people from the other end of the country seeing your website. It will be as useless to them as it is to you. The visitor will simply see that you don’t serve their area and then leave your site. For them, seeing your website would have simply been nothing more than a waste of time. But how do you target visitors that are only from the area that you do business in? There are many ways in which this can be accomplished. We will take a look at some of the techniques that you can use to make this happen.

Proper Local SEO

Sure, there are many different ways to get people to see your website. With dozens of different advertising options, many business owners don’t focus much on SEO, considering it too complicated to perform on their own and too costly to outsource to a professional firm. As you will see, both of these assertions are not necessarily true. In any case, even if you don’t expect search engine traffic to be your main source of clicks, doing some SEO work on your site is recommended, even if it is just the most basic type.

Basic SEO is not complicated at all for a local business. It simply consists of targeting the right keywords in the proper way. Therefore, you should optimize your content towards keywords that are more “local” than simply general keywords. So if you run a landscaping business in Boca Raton, Florida, you would optimize your content for keywords such as “Boca Raton landscaping” or “landscaping in Boca Raton”. By doing so, you will only be competing for rankings with local businesses, which is easier than trying to rank for the more general “landscaping”. Furthermore, a person doing a search for (product or service) + city is more likely to be in buying mode and seeking out a place where they can GET the service in your city. Even if they are not ready to make a decision yet and are just comparing prices, they are much more likely to contact YOU if they notice that your business offers the best value. On the other hand, someone searching for “landscaping” could simply be looking for landscaping tips and tricks and not interested in hiring anyone’s services.

But is it really hard to do SEO for local businesses and is it really costly to get help? These are topics that we will discuss in the second part.

Now that you know how to find a virtual staff, it is time to go forward and to actually set up your business in an efficient way to take full advantage of the opportunities that having a staff to help you will provide.

There are basically two things that they can be helpful for. Either by helping you with your own internet marketing efforts or by providing services to other internet marketers.

Let’s say that you are an affiliate marketer that is pushing Clickbank ebooks. You can use your staff to do certain things, such as writing articles that you will submit to article directories, building landing pages for you, building backlinks, etc.

You can also provide services to other internet marketers and business owners as well. This can be done by simply applying the “Buy low – sell high” concept that nearly any business in the world uses. Now say you own a landscaping company. You would charge the client a certain rate for landscaping services, which would factor in the cost of materials, operations and wages for your employees. You would then picket the difference as your profit.

The same thing can be applied online as well, and doing so actually is more advantageous in many aspects than running a “traditional” business for many reasons. First of all, you won’t have much overhead, as you don’t need a physical office from where to run your business. You can run everything from home… or anyplace that has a computer and internet access, for that matter. It’s that simple.

All you have to do is to find clients that will pay you for your services. This can be done by putting up a thread on internet marketing forums or on classified ads sites that will attract customers who will pay for your services. You will then outsource the work to your virtual staff and pay them a lower price than what the client is paying you and thus pocket the profit.

Say, for example, that a client is paying you $6 to write a 400 word article to promote their website. You would then pay $3 to the outsourcer and then pocket the profit. While this may seem like just a few dollars a profit, if you get larger products and many new clients you can make a lot of money by outsourcing services to your staff members.

One of the best things that you can do with this method is to basically do a combination of both providing services for others and using your virtual staff for your own marketing efforts. That way, you have two streams of income at any time.

Now, how do you make sure that all your operations will run smoothly and that the staff that you hire will be the very best? Join in tomorrow for more information about how to ensure that your staff members will be capable of doing the job and how to avoid common scams.

Everyone notices that the world around us is always changing at a fast pace. After all, we don’t live in the dark ages anymore, so technology, culture and society are always evolving. The same can be said for the internet and especially social media sites.

If your business is not on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, it is the time that you consider joining them and create a page for your business or website on these social networks. It doesn’t cost anything and it can be done in less than an hour if you are not the most computer savvy user, or a few minutes if you are an internet expert.

But how do you truly take advantage of all the social media sites? To do this, you need to be aware of one thing: the social media world is always evolving as well. Let’s take a look at Facebook. It currently has over 500 million active users around the world. But there is a fact about the site that very few people actually know. At first, Facebook was only designed for students who were currently enrolled in a college or university. The site then opened up so that anyone could sign up and also create fan pages for businesses. This created a wealth of opportunity for business owners to promote their offerings on the site.

Besides the most famous sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, there are plenty of smaller social networking, social bookmarking and video sharing sites that, while being used by thousands of people, are often ignored by marketers. Not expanding your reach to the smaller sites out there could be a big mistake. Here’s why:

1. The potential for growth

The internet world can be quite unpredictable at times. There is obviously no way to predict whether a certain site will one day detrone Facebook or YouTube in terms of popularity. But it could happen. By creating a profile and being active on various social media sites, you will be one of the first ones in should a site explode in popularity. And it doesn’t take much time: creating the pages and making regular posts only takes about an hour each day. You can outsource it if your schedule is really tight and you want to save time.

2. These sites still have traffic

Even if they aren’t as popular, smaller social sites still have people who visit them, otherwise their owners would simply close them down. Even though having a presence on a certain site may only bring you a few hits a day, this is still good traffic that is going to your site. With online traffic, you never know which visitor will be profitable for you. Out of these few visitors that you get from small social sites, one of them could become a great client who makes regular orders, or could turn out to be an excellent business partner who could help your company get even more online profits than it is doing now.

When you start your own web marketing agency, one of the most important questions that you will ask yourself is: how do I get clients? After all, without any clients for you to do work for, you won’t be making any money. There is also another thing that you need to take into consideration: how much will you charge for your services.

Getting clients is not as difficult as it may seem at first. You basically have two options: either you can have people come to you or you come to them first and offer your services. In order to maximize your chances of success, it is recommended that you adopt an approach that would combine both concepts.

Having people inquire about your services means that you need to advertise in order to let others know about your business. You can use a variety of methods to do so. For example, you can optimize your website for certain keywords such as “internet marketing (your city)” or “web site creation (your city)”. This will allow it to be found more easily on search engines. Targeting “local” keywords means that you will be facing less competition as you will only be competing against web marketers that are located in your area and not around the world.

You could also combine your SEO efforts with PPC campaigns on both the search and content networks to see if this gets you results. Of course, you should also use free or low cost advertising methods that are highly effective. Posting on classified ads sites under the “business services” section and including your agency in online business directories is highly recommended, as many of your clients might be looking at those places if they are in search for someone who could start or improve their web presence for them.

Another thing that you can do is actually contact business owners to see if they are interested in your services. Of course, this requires a bit more effort than simply putting up a web page and some ads. You will also need to deal with rejection quite often. However, when you do direct marketing, this is all part of the game and simply something that you have to live with.

To accomplish that, you first need to make up a list of potential clients who look like they could use your services. Here again, there are numerous ways to make that happen. Check out online classified ads sites for local small businesses, such as hair salons, car dealers, plumbers, cleaning companies, etc. Do they have a website? If so, does it look like it was made by an elementary school kid for his computer class? Then you can offer them to redesign the site and make it look more professional and attractive. Even if they do have a site, you can still contact them and offer to promote it for them so they get more traffic and thus more customers. Another possibility is to print out a nice pamphlet with details about your offerings and send them to local businesses in your area.

     The power of email marketing is vastly underappreciated by today’s business owners. It is not a technique that is strictly used by large corporations, on the contrary it can do wonders for small internet based businesses too. Through email marketing you can inform subscribers about upcoming product launches, promotions you are offering, and news related to your niche. This is a great way to advertise to consumers who are already interested in your niche and your products. Here are some considerations to remember when creating an email marketing campaign:

• Create emails that are relative to your niche and products. You can include tips, new technology, and information about your products and what they can do for your consumers.

• Send regular emails. A good rule of thumb is one email at least every 90 days but not more than one in a two week period.

• Add images and graphics that relate to your article topics. There are email templates to use, or you can design your own email marketing pages

• Include a business email and encourage your subscribers to give feedback and ask questions about your business or products. Be sure to give prompt feedback on any emails exchanged.

Email marketing is a free way for you to begin marketing your online business and it doesn’t require an intense amount of technical computer knowledge. Begin your relationship with your clients as repeat consumers are a great way to consistently develop revenue to your business and in your pocket.

Image:http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/EmailIcon.jpg

As a business owner you may have heard all about the advantages of getting an online presence to help your business acquire new customers and better serve existing ones. But you may have some reservations about the whole thing. One of the main concerns that business owners bring forward today is security. These concerns are certainly valid. After all, it is rare that we see a week go buy without a mention in the media of some high profile security breach. But this should not dissuade you from taking full advantage of what the online world has to offer for your business. Here are some of the most common security threats facing small businesses transacting online and how they can be mitigated:

Payment fraud.

This is the most common security risk that you will face and it can consist of either: a fraudster making a purchase with a stolen credit card or sending a forged check, or a “real” customer making an order, paying with a legitimate credit card and then charging back on the transaction claiming that they never placed this order, never got their merchandise or that it was damaged when they got it.

Fraudulent payments are, unfortunately, a part of the e-commerce world and there is no sure-fire way to stop them. However, there are certain things you can do to bring the amount of fraud close to zero.

First, use a payment processor that uses security measures such as verifying that the address on the credit card and the shipping address match. Especially when it comes to high value orders, do not ship to an address other than the billing address. Most payment processors have automated tools that evaluate each order and can help determine the chances of it being legitimate.

Verify the customer’s information yourself before shipping the item. Call them on the phone number provided to ensure that it is valid.

While doing business internationally is great, be very careful about shipping to certain countries where internet fraud is rampant such as Nigeria, Russia, Indonesia, etc. A common story used by scammers is that of a wealthy businessman based in the USA ordering a high priced item as a “gift” to a relative who just happens to be working in a third world country known for credit card fraud.

If a customer sends you payment by certified check, call the issuing bank to ensure that the payment instrument is legitimate. Just because a check has cleared your bank account does not mean that it is genuine. Stolen or forged checks are sometimes used by scammers when ordering high priced items like jewelry, industrial equipment or electronics.

Use a courier service that gives you the ability to trace shipments and requires a signature on delivery. Any item over a hundred dollars should be sent insured for its full value. This will prevent dishonest customers from claiming they “never got the package.”

And most importantly, use common sense when processing orders and always err on the side of caution.