Previously, we’ve seen some advice on how you can maintain a good amount of privacy when doing business online. There are many ways that you can avoid sharing unnecessary personal information with the companies that you do business with by using ways such as registering a business name, using a private mail box and using a separate phone number for your online business activities. But there are also some other things that you need to be aware of when you do business online: how to keep your online business safe from threats such as hacking and fraud. Here are some methods that you can include in your regular activities that will make doing business online safer for you:

• Research your business partners (companies and individuals) carefully

Whether it’s joining a new affiliate network, signing up for a payment processor so you can make sales online, or hiring someone to develop a website or Facebook app for you, doing your due diligence can go a long way. Do some research on the person or company that you’re going to be dealing with. This can be as simple as doing a Google search to see if you can uncover anything about them online that would be negative, such as past disputes. When dealing with businesses, be careful of start ups and new companies. While they may grow and become a valuable business partner for you in the future, they could also go out of business unexpectedly. There are numerous complaints in webmaster and online marketing forums about affiliate programs that have shut down and left hundreds of people without any payment. This is why you should give priority to partners that have already built up a solid reputation online and who have shown they’re doing well for at least a few months.

• Don’t re-use the same log in information for every online account that you use

When you do business online, chances are you will have a few dozen logins to keep track of, such as email services, hosting services, affiliate network accounts, payment processor accounts, etc. The smart thing to do is to avoid using the same user name and password for every single account that you use at different websites. The reason behind this is quite simple. Let’s say the database of an affiliate network is hacked and all the log in information is posted on public websites by the hackers. If you used the same log in information everywhere, there is a much bigger chance that hackers could access your other accounts and cause more damage. Therefore, your login credentials should be unique for every site that you use, even if this means that your password on each site is only slightly different by a few characters from those that you use on other websites. You should also avoid writing down passwords or even worse, creating a text file on your computer with all the user names, passwords and site names written in plain text.

While there are many ways to promote your business online, email marketing remains one of the least expensive options and can be one of your best ways to keep in touch with those who are interested in your products. Even though social media marketing has gained a lot of ground in recent times, email marketing is still going strong according to surveys of online marketers and entrepreneurs. This is why building a strong email campaign is seen as a good step towards success for anyone that sells something through the internet. However, in order for a campaign to be successful, there are certain things that would need to be kept in consideration. A lot of the people that are having problems getting email marketing to work for them simply aren’t doing certain things right. Here are some tips which are used by the top online marketers out there that will help you achieve a good degree of success with it.

• Get a List Filled With Quality Subcribers

This is one of the most important pieces of advice that anyone could give regarding the topic of email marketing. If you don’t have anyone to send your emails to, obviously you won’t make any sales from email marketing. List building is the first step towards building your campaign. The best people that you can market to are the ones that have already purchased from you. The simple fact is that people, both in their personal lives and when doing business of any kind, are more comfortable dealing with those that they already know. Once a person has already established a relationship with you by buying from your site, chances are they will trust you if they were happy with the product or service that they got from you. During the purchase page, have a check mark that is on by default that would subscribe the buyer to your newsletter. That way, you can send them email with news about your new products and offer, or to promote some affiliate offers that may be useful to them.

Even if somebody doesn’t purchase anything from your site at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they won’t return in the future. This is why you should have an email capture box featured prominently on your site as well and not just use those who buy something from you as subscribers.

Avoid buying potential customer data from lead sellers if you can. Yes, there is a whole industry out there which sells leads in many niches, such as MLM programs, debt consolidation, finances, etc. The issue with these is that they are often of poor quality. Many of the people on these leads have already been contacted by other businesses. Some have opted in to have their information shared when they were signing up for a contest or filling out a paid survey of some sort, without truly having an interest in the product that you’re going to offer them. This doesn’t mean purchased leads are never profitable, just that they may not be as high quality as those you acquire yourself.

If you are going to be dropshipping and selling items on eBay, then you need to be really careful as to the dropshipper that you choose. Selecting the wrong one could rapidly ruin your reputation and cause untold problems. Even if the dropshipper that you are looking at claims to have the products that you want to sell to your buyers at great prices, there is still more that you need to do in order to be sure they will be able to deliver. Here are some tips to avoid any problems when dropshipping on eBay:

• First, start out slowly

When they notice an opportunity to make money online by selling things or by any other means, a lot of people go all in from the very beginning. This might be good in some cases, but with eBay selling this is not the best idea that you could go with. Why is that? After all, isn’t it good to make as much money as fast as you can? You can always try, but if you later find out that you have chosen the wrong supplier for your products, then you have just created a big mess for yourself.

What is a better way to get started? Actually, it’s simple: first make a test order for yourself. Buy one of the products and have the dropshipper send it over to you. You will then be able to see whether you have received the right item in the right condition and whether you have received it within the specified time frame. If you want to be even safer and make sure that the supplier will perform just as well when shipping things to your clients, then you can always list just 1 or 2 items for sale and then see if your buyers have received the item and were satisfied with it. In this scenario, in the worst case you would simply refund your buyers if they did not receive the item as promised or if they didn’t get exactly what you put up for sale.

Once you have determined that the supplier for the goods that you are selling is reliable, you can then start doing business at full scale with them.

• Try to find more than one dropshipper for your items

This will serve as a good backup in case one of your suppliers experiences problems or has run out of the items that you normally sell. It is much better to do business with more than one supplier, as your own business will not be disrupted too severely if you can’t use one of them anymore. Being in a situation where you have lost one of your suppliers and need to scramble to find another one is not good, as very often sellers fail to do their due diligence in this case and will choose a replacement without even bothering to check their reputation and whether they are any good.

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.

Well now that you have your product, required funding as well as a merchant account, there will be something else that you need: some staff. While at first, you may think that you can manage this business all by yourself. Sure, this might be true if you only make a dozen or so sales a day. However, when your business quickly begins to grow, it will also rapidly become too overwhelming for one person to handle every aspect of it.

One of the most important parts of owning a rebill CPA offer is customer service. You need to be able to answer your customers should they want to cancel their subscription, have not received their product, or have some other problem. If you have just one phone number that is always busy and it takes you a week to answer your emails, this will leave your customers dissatisfied. And if they want to cancel, or have not gotten their product, they will simply end up charging back through their credit card company.

There are alternatives to actually having an office and hiring staff locally. You can outsource many functions of your business, including the customer service to a 3^rd party. There are plenty of call centers which can handle queries from your customers and treat requests such as cancellations. All you have to do is set up a web based interface to let them do the transactions and a knowledge base with answers to questions that customers may ask.

As for many administrative tasks, such as dealing with the vendor that is shipping out your merchandise and doing general admin and accounting functions, this can be outsourced to a virtual assistant. You can find many offshore outsourcing companies doing business on internet marketing forums. It is usually possible to have a dedicated, full time virtual assistant working for you for $200 to $400 a month.

While this short guide has given you the general framework needed in order to build and operate this kind of business, it is far from complete. After all, a truly detailed guide covering every aspect of this topic would probably be several hundred pages long. Therefore, you need to go out and seek the necessary information on this business.

There are a few ebooks and guides which deal about this topic that you can read, which will give you more detailed guidance. But don’t forget that there is something a lot more valuable than any written guide: actual human interaction. Even though this is your own business and you are the sole person responsible for its success it doesn’t mean that you have to do everything all by yourself. Network with other marketers who are running this kind of business or planning to set one up. Exchange information, practical advice and ideas with them. Ask questions on marketing forums. The better prepared you are, the less likely you will be to make costly mistakes and the more profitable your business will be.