Merchant Accounts for eBook Sales

[puppy]

I sell my own dog training eBook from my Futurequest-hosted web site.

I'm currently using Clickbank to process my customers' credit cards. However, the Clickbank site went down today and I cannot even contact them about it. Their voice mailboxes were full (no doubt with complaining merchants), they weren't responding to emails, and they have no server status page so we can find out when the problem might be fixed. I strongly suspect no one is even "there" on the weekend. I've lost all my potential sales for the day.

I'm selling several thousand dollars worth of eBooks per month and believe it is time to get off Clickbank and get my own merchant account. I need a company that will do real-time verification of customer credit cards and then send them straight to my download page. With only one eBook, I don't need a shopping cart or anything fancy. Any recommendations for best merchant account?

All best,
Michele
http://www.yourpurebredpuppy.com/ebooks/TYD.html

[Rich]

You can change processors but this will not prevent the problem you are having from happening again. It seems that all processors have outages from time to time.

The only way I have seen to minimize the impact of processor downtime is to have two separate accounts from different providers and time-slice between them. Then, when one goes down, you can switch all traffic to the functioning one. This solution requires a custom forms/checkout process.

There are literally thousands of merchant account providers available which you can find with a Google search. You will want to find a provider that uses one of the three largest processors: Cybersource, Verisign, and Authorize.net.

Using one of the largest processors won't guarantee you don't have any downtime but it does help to insure that customer service is available when you need it since these providers have 24x7 support.