tremayne

Hi Cynthia!

Others on this thread who have had their accounts frozen would be able to give better advice than me; I have never suffered that problem.

My understanding, though, is that it can take up to six months. One case reported here in the millions was for just one week but he has an enormous IM reputation.

If you are able to do what I suggested in my last post and establish direct communication by phone with a specific individual in advance I think you should be able to avoid the problem. After all, $5,000 a month is less than $200 a day.

One other way to ease the problem, I suppose, would be to offer more than one payment processor. The difficulty with that is multiple choices confuse some people who may simply click away.

Your best bet, imho, is to speak with someone at PP, tell them what you are up to, tell them your concerns, and listen to what they have to say. Always aim to establish easy and direct contact with one person. Big hitters are appointed a special PP representative. Perhaps you could get such a person for yourself.

Not to do this, from what I have read elsewhere in this thread, means you may have difficulty getting answers to emails and questions. Be proactive!

Sydney

Cynthia Mosher

Being proactive makes sense. Thanks Sydney!

milan

Sydney, thanks for the invitation to visit you I guess one would need to search for mail forwarding service in Panama and new Skype number in Panama..and end up with an unusable Paypal...
Hm...I'll probably go with a US LLC, but please keep us informed.
p.s. ...and go to Panama simply for pleasure

tremayne

Hi you old hippie!

I didn't necessarily mean you should move here (though you could do worse), but a visit would be fun - especially now that you are buried under snow while there are clear blue skies in the mountains here and temperatures like your spring!

Here's an update to my own plans: Panama is now a non-starter! There is no way my contact in the U.S can match a Panamanian company with a merchant account!!! [If I knew how to insert a growly smiley here there'd be one, especially since he didn't tell me that before!]

Since the U.S is out for tax reasons, they tell me I must set up a company in the EU. I propose to establish one in the UK (where at least I speak the language). Before I do that, the merchant account people want to do what they call a pre-app...and for that they need to see the new website my marketing people are still playing with! [More Grrr!]

I am promised I will not be taxed in the UK and that U.S dollars will remain in that currency and not be converted to British pounds or Euros. I will occasionally have to pay bank transfer fees to bring the money here or to the U.S. Later, I will look into setting up a bank account in the U.S and having the bulk of the money go there directly from the UK bank.

Moments ago, I completed - as far as I know - the final task on this project other than admin. Now, a glutton for punishment, I move onto an even more salable CPA / continuity offer (at least, I think it is more salable and the continuity program will be perpetual!). At least this one should take only months rather than years to complete and launch.

My journey through this thread and the great advice I have had from so many along the way is almost complete. I'll let everyone who is interested know what the final result is. I am very grateful for all the help I have received.

All the best,

Sydney

tremayne

Hi Cynthia!

As you see from my own posts and others in this thread, the road is not necessarily smooth or what we expect when we set out. I think the answer is to go carefully (meaning check everything out for yourself after getting advice from those who have already made the trip) before committing to a particular action. Do this, have a worthwhile product, good service and marketing - plus a bit of luck - and how can you fail?

Have a wonderful launch!

Sydney

rbr451

I'm also looking for an alternative to PayPal. After reading through this thread, I checked out Amazon. Based on branding, etc., I figured they might be one of the better ones, but after reading through their TOS I found the following in the "Prohibited Items and Activities" list:

They don't actually mention digital products, from what I can find, but I don't think I would take the chance. They say they can hold or freeze accounts if they think any TOS has been violated.

tremayne

Hi Randy!

I hope someone who uses Amazon can advise you; I use their s3 servers only for distributing digital product. That's cheap and easy.

I agree that the brand should be useful; so many people already have Amazon accounts. Why don't you ask them to look at your product(s) and give you an opinion - then make a decision?

Please keep us all up to date with your progress. My own path, barring further surprises, is pretty well set but I know others are looking for simpler methods to replace PayPal.

Good luck,

Sydney

Cynthia Mosher

I looked over PayDotCom's policies and found this.

The "click here" was not hyperlinked so I couldn't look at the information on withholdings for foreign persons or entities. But wow - they have to remit a portion of your earnings to the IRS and then you have to apply to the IRS to get it back? Has anyone experienced this?

tremayne

Hi Cynthia!

My guess is this is a government requirement for all processors. The IRS is not going to turn a blind eye to all the billions of potential tax dollars on the 'Net. It would be interesting to know if the same wording is in the ToS for all processors.

PayDotCom is not going to sort out which are U.S payments and which are not so they send their estimate of taxes owed to the IRS and then leave it to you to prove what share was not from U.S soil.

My understanding is that the proper setup with a merchant account avoids this...so far.

It would be interesting to hear from other non-U.S residents on this score.

Sydney

eaglechick

Paypal, 2CO & clickbank are out. Nanacast looks great. Thoughts?

Hi Sydney

Check out the above thread and the comments by Josh Anderson about a system called Nanacast - maybe that can also help! Great info supplied here as well.

nickey512

ive been waiting recharge my paypal account and waiting for the 4 digit, so slow. i asked my credit card bank, saids its still floating.huh..

tremayne

Hi Eaglechick!

Do you have any idea how many eagles there are where I live! They are as thick as crows in the north. Once, just one mile apart, I saw two flocks each of at least 200 birds. But back the the subject...

Looks like an interesting site that others might be interested in. I did not watch the videos (a matter of time) but he seems to be very thorough - and people get a seven day free trial without submitting credit card info. That's good (and shows confidence in his product).

My own course is set but this looks like something others should take a look at.

Thanks for telling us about it.

Sydney

Steve Ranger

If you're targeting a UK market I can't
recommend NoChex enough. It's easy to
set up, they don't take a huge cut, and
if there's any problems they will e-mail you
rather than 'freezing' your account.

Cynthia Mosher

I didn't find a thread linked in your post and a search turned up nada. Do you have a link to share please?

I skimmed over Nanacast's site but I'm not sure how it will help me with my situation.

CoolWebStuff

Sydney ur comments were very valuable and informative.
I like using paypal primarily bcoz most of my clients like to use it however, for our hosting stuff we accept MoneyBookers and AlertPay. Havent used Liberty but hean that it has a good repo.

tremayne

I understand what you mean about PayPal; it is popular with buyers. One of two significant problems with it is that they are prone to freezing seller's accounts for up to 6 months. No one can afford that when doing a big launch - which is why I started this thread. The other problem is that they will not transfer money to Panama, where I live.

I have learned a lot from this thread and the research resulting from people's comments and I am sure other readers have, too. That was my second reason for starting the thread. It is also the reason I keep providing to those who are interested a blow-by-blow description of what I am discovering and doing - a description that should end in the next couple of weeks!

What has been taking place in the two weeks since I last posted has shown me how important it was to enter into this research and how much more complicated - in my own case - the final process would be.

As I indicated before, I have decided to go the merchant account route so I can accept credit cards directly. (While PayPal is popular, not all customers who have credit cards also have a PayPal account.) I will also accept bank payments and, I hope, telephone bill payments given that many people these days no longer have credit cards.

Setting up a merchant account in the U.S is easy. Everything you need is there. If you are a U.S resident you expect to pay U.S taxes, and you will.

But I am not a U.S resident and fortunately I live in a country where tax is not paid on foreign income. That presented more surprises along the path!

I'm dealing with a merchant account provider in the U.S. It would have been easy to set up everything - merchant account, company, bank - in the U.S but then I would have been subject to U.S taxes. I thought I could establish a company (you must have a company to be able to deal directly with credit cards) in Panama, a country that uses the American dollar as its currency.

Simple!

Oh no! There is no way a company in Panama can get a merchant account! The U.S merchant account provider has suggested I set up a company in the European Union!

What a convoluted maze!

I have decided to form a company in the UK where, at least, I speak the language.

The merchant account provider suggested delaying that until he could do a pre-application review. He rejected the draft page the marketers had proposed and which, for different reasons, I had also rejected.

The reason for his rejection was that it offered a free ebook and this would not be acceptable under the new MasterCard rules. (That is not how I read those rules, because the ebook was to be free, not free plus shipping.)

But those rules also seem to ban upsells, so IM is on its ear right now. (I have an initial standalone product followed by an optional continuity program.)

The site as it had been proposed also played havoc with FTC and SEC (it's an investment teaching product) rules so the other day I scrapped the suggested page and drafted my own. The marketers, if they think it needs it, can change it from a marketing perspective.

We are now trying to get everyone together for a teleconference so the revised page can go through the merchant account pre-application process. Once that is done, I can go ahead with setting up the UK corporation and a UK bank account. I am assured (and surprised to hear) that because income will be passed through to my account in Panama I will not be subject to UK taxes.

The 60-plus page ebook? That, too, has been rewritten and improved, will be brandable, and will be offered to affiliates to distribute and hopefully make viral. It will not appear directly on the new website - though it will be offered freely on social networks.

From concept until now has been a five-year ride, sometimes exasperating, sometimes fun. I believe having your own product is ultimately the way to go - but if I had known five years ago what I now know I would have gone about it entirely differently.

You see, until very recently this has been a solo ride. I knew nothing other than word processing about computers, web site design software, marketing, video production, audio recording and editing, PowerPoint...the list goes on and on. As a loner, I had to teach myself all that stuff and much more along the way. Living on a small pension, I couldn't afford to hire others who already had the expertise. The result has been a five-year journey when the book that started it (and is available in bookstores worldwide!) took just three months to write.

In hindsight, what I should have done was learn how to be an affiliate marketer first. I would still have needed to learn a lot but it would have been far less than what I did learn doing things the way I did. With the income from affiliate marketing I could then have hired experts in the areas I knew nothing about. My guess is that five years would then have been reduced to two.

I hope this insight helps a few people.

Sydney

yukiyenster

Sydney,

You sir are a true gentleman. Thank you so much for sharing all of this information, and taking the time summarize and update everyone else on this post. I was going through similar payment merchant problems as I travel through Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Phillipines, Vietnam) pretty much 90% of the time due to my full time job. (I'm a consultant)

I would also like to thank other contributors like James, Milan and Cynthia for adding so much value to the thread. In fact this thread should be stickied to help all the non US and UK residents out there.

I have a few ideas that might help though,

How about using more than 1 payment merchant, Sydney. If you choose to split payment options into Paypal, 2CO AND have your own merchant account, etc. It will benefit your customers greatly by giving them more payment choices. In fact, it will also increase your credibility to them by having so many payment partners.

Yes it will be more troublesome on your end having to handle more than 1 payment merchant but for me it's possibly worth the trouble. At least if for some unfortunate reason, your funds still get stuck with 1 merchant you can still access your funds from the other 2 merchants. Never put all eggs in 1 basket right?

Someone mentioned epassporte earlier, I caution ANYONE against using them. They are very unprofessional and shady and looks like it was put up by a drug dealer using it to launder their money. (Ok, well maybe not, but that's the feeling I get from them) You can find more scam reports on epassporte easily on google.

If anyone has experience with good payment merchants that work well with Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam please do let me know. Any help will be truly appreciated. I'm currently still using Paypal only but I've been lucky as my balances have been more on the low side but I'm launching a product in less than 2 months and would like to explore all options available.

I will do the due diligence and share everything I've learnt along the way back on this thread too...

Thanks,

Yuki

Cynthia Mosher

Thanks for the thanks Yuki.

Those of you recommending a merchant account, I assume you use a shopping cart for processing. I'm still trying to sort this out and still not sure which way to turn. My product is a membership site using Simple Member Pro and I don't think there is shopping cart connectivity in the software. So, short of manual processing each payment, is a merchant account not a possibility for me?

tremayne

Hello Yuki!

I also than you for the thanks!

My journey is almost over but it has not been cheap and likely works for very few others.

First of all: cost – and in part this may answer Cynthia's question. By the time I am finished in the next week or two (these things always seem to take at least twice as long as we are told!) I figure to have spent about $10,000.

1. The design/management company (I don't really know how to describe them) chosen on the basis of a recommendation from a fellow WF member and for their very close association with a number of the large affiliate networks. $6,500. Cynthia seems to be going it alone which is waaaay beyond my capability. Congratulations and good luck, Cynthia!
2. Because I live in Panama where merchant accounts don't appear to exist* and where foreign income is not taxable, I could not set up a merchant account here. *Another WF member wrote a private message to say he was able to do so through a Panamanian bank.
3. If I had set up a merchant account in the U.S, I would have been taxed in the U.S.
4. I was advised by my merchant account provider in the U.S to establish a company in the EU. Coincidentally, after all the other delays, this was done today in the UK and I am now waiting for documentation. I used UK company formation & incorporation services provided online by Formations House UK which is specialists in company formations UK, incorporate registered readymade companies, starting new companies, creating new limited companies, shelf list, off th for the registrar carefully picking out what I needed from their menu. I deleted some things because they would have meant duplication. This knocked the bill down about £100 but still came to over $1,000.
5. Once I have the company documentation, I then need to set up a bank account in the Channel Islands (it could also have been in Liechtenstein), a tax haven. Researching that was interesting though not difficult. One bank wanted a deposit of $50,000 minimum (also the maximum insurable amount for banks there)! Then I found LloydsTSB and spoke to someone on the phone there at 2 a.m. their time! Service totally unlike Panama! Cost: zero; deposit, zero; seems simple so far.
6. The pre-application for the merchant account is approved. They need to see the website to make sure all the new credit card rules are applied, especially for continuity programs. (Hey! There's one step actually completed!)
7. The merchant account folks in the U.S sent me seven pages of forms that needed lots of banking research and cannot be finalized until I have documentation back from the Channel Islands. The gateway setup fee is $1,500.
8. Once all this is done, pricing and advertising is tested before everything gets sent to the affiliate networks to decide how they want to play – if they do!

A launch I expected in February or, at the latest, March might now get done in May!

Slightly off topic (but it may give others ideas), I spent yesterday filling out a ton of stuff for Elance. I need to earn some cash in a hurry. I haven't enough cash to pay all the bills so I will do some freelance writing. I expect to be able to earn $3,000 a month for each of the next two months. That will ease a lot of problems; I am going the LA in June to meet my intended bride. Can't go in rags!

Meanwhile, to keep sane through all the waiting and delays, I have written another book that will be accompanied by a perpetual and very sticky continuity program. There have been a lot of sleepless nights as the nocturnal ideas churned. Over the next year, there will be books for at least 11 countries, together with continuity programs, and I figure I will need a virtual staff of somewhere near 60 people spread all over the world.

It is amazing what can come from an ebook idea five years ago and looks like growing into an international financial publishing house! It all depends on how much cash this next venture produces.

Let me finish this with a question. I badly need some advice about the new 300+ page book. I am pretty sure it can be sold for $47 or more, allowing affiliates $40 and most of the rest for expenses. In other words, I don't expect to make anything from it – and that's fine. Its purpose is to promote a weekly newsletter at $9.95 a month – less than $2.50 a week.

The U.S version, which back-tests the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks for 25 years and will give strong proof of safe returns currently guessed to average about 30%, will be ready to market in June or July of this year. My aim is for it to have the widest possible circulation among people interested in stocks.

Here's the question: should I sell it or give it away? The ultimate aim is to have 10,000 U.S subscribers within six months of the book's launch.

After a three-month delay to allow a team in the UK to do a website, promotion and all the other things needed for a launch there, there will be a new version every two weeks in nine other countries, each country with its own team. My work on each new version is about two solid weeks but the teams will be overlapping production in their own countries.

If I give the book away (meaning no one earns anything), how should I promote it. Obviously, I want it to go viral in a big way. Are there proven and trusted specialists who do this sort of thing and if so how do they get paid?

You know, someone should take this thread and others, do a bit of rewriting, and make an excellent IM ebook from A to Z.

Thanks for all your help!

Sydney

oceanic

Hi Tremayne!

I use Paysafecard! They are easy to purchase, easy to handle and safe!

tremayne

I am not familiar with it but hope your comment may be helpful to others.

All the best,

Sydney

vishalduggal

Why don't you use swerg.com. I think this can be a good alternative to PP.
And Google Checkout is good but they don't accept PayPal as much as I know. And they are only available in US and UK.

tremayne

Thanks for the heads up! We have decided to form an offshore company in England and to use a merchant account. We launch next week.

All the best,

Sydney