I made my first sale! Now what?

For ongoing monthly payment you can use paypal subscriptions.

Congrats and like Velant said Paypal is the best option.

Unless you want to setup so billing agreement with your client. For that you'll to need a contract and a way to record payment being made (Microsoft Excel). After that he/she can send mail you those checks in every year.

Just curious. You don't have to share but how
Much was the sale?

Up this to $15/month for future sales.

There are many ways to get receipts:
you go to a store an buy a receipt book
if you have microsoft word, you open a new document, select receipts (or Google microsoft templates, choose receipts)
or use software (quickbooks)
or an online accounting site (I hear freshbooks is good; I hear, I did not use)
or write one from scratch: all it's got to have is your info, the item name, quantity, price, amount charged, amount received, amount owed.

What happens if something goes wrong with the site and you end up spending a few hours bringing it back up? $3.99/month is way too low.

Payapl is good for recurring.

Some great information. Please keep it coming.

Also, I need to document all of these sales and payments that will be made. Any software people usually use for this?

EDIT:

Not all of my customers use Paypal. How can I make this work if they have a credit card and I want to charge them monthly via Paypal?

1. Your name or company name doesnt matter right now. The client had purchased because he likes you and your service. You can sort later when the site is finished.

2. Receipt, in the uk we call it invoice. Just throw it up in word doc.
Your name and address, clients name and address, date, your item sold ie the website and hosting cost 1st year.

3. You need to be jacking the hosting fees up to $50 per month which gets them 1hr support per month. It's ok to mark your services ie hosting if your providing a good service. You can invoice monthly or get to pay in full, $50 is nothing to business owners. Know your worth.

Bank Account - You will not only need one in your business name, but you will most likely want to get a tax ID for your business. Check your local and state laws for requirements on doing business under a business name.

Receipts - I have not used Freshbooks and you can give it a Try, but you might also want to look at Quickbooks. I have used Quickbooks for years and it will allow you to track income/expenses and also create invoices and receipts. I think it is the pro version that let's you do estimates, but I am not sure how helpful that is for web design, I have never used that feature.

I agree with the others that your hosting fee is way t0o low. Re-label it as hosting and maintenance and implement an agreement that this covers x hours of maintenance per month and does not roll over from one month to the next. I also don't like going with a monthly hosting amount since it can start to take a lot of effort to collect each month. I spell out the monthly fee, but I charge it annually. If they want to go semi-annual, quarterly, or monthly then the per-month fee should go up.

Last and definitely NOT least, do you have a signed agreement on what exactly is to be delivered and when? Does it outline what the business needs to provide you for you to make your deadlines? One of the biggest pitfalls I see is that if it isn't in writing the business may expect more from you then you deliver or may be mad when you don't deliver on time, even if it is because they didn't get logos, copy, pictures, information to you soon enough.

Congrats Volux

I would second using paypal subscriptions to charge monthly. Its the easiest way out there, i guess.
From my experience, started my business a year ago and still using my personal account for payments. No one complained so far.
For receipts/invoices, just create some nice looking template in word, with your logo, address, invoice number, banking details, disclaimer etc. and reuse it again and again.

Good luck

Been using FreshBooks for some time now, and it works great.

I would say go with Freshbooks. You'll be able to bill monthly, send out professional invoices by email (or print as a PDF). Your clients can pay online. Way simpler. It will give them a paid invoice once it's all done. It will also double as your accounting software, too. It's not as robust as QuickBooks, but I actually prefer it. Since you are just starting, you can go with the free edition (up to 3 clients) and afterwords it's $25/mo for unlimited.

Just signed up for Freshbooks and will give it a try!

Right now the CSS isn't loading for my personal homepage, so I'll have to wait until later to check it out.

Hopefully, once I get to check it out, this will cover my annual/monthly costs for clients which will be a big weight off of my shoulders!

I think I'm going to use Freshbooks, it seems very nice.

It's a little confusing, though. I think this is how it works, and if I am wrong, please correct me.

If a client wants to pay online, they can; I just add them as a client and send them an invoice which goes to their email. From there they can pay through Paypal in the link in their email. After this, they will receive their receipt via email from their Paypal payment.

If they want to pay via check, I can use Snail Mail (provided through FreshBooks). I create their invoice which is sent to them via mail. From there they can pay online by going to the link in the mail sent to them, OR they can send the check through to return envelope Snail Mail sends them.

Is this correct?