By Craig Mather

Home based businesses have been around longer than dirt itself. As a matter of fact, I think the first home based business was selling some dirt for the landscaping around the caves. However, home based businesses have been on the rise with downturn in the economy.

The tide makes complete sense as many are becoming caught in the wave of employment, salary reductions, and cut back in hours. However, this also does not make much business sense at this time for the same reason. Fewer people have money to spend and those that still have money to spend have less of it and are being far more cautious.

With fewer people in a position to make purchases, those going into home based businesses will need to be smarter than in years past in how they approach the market. One glaring area of business they will need to get right is in accepted payment methods. Being able to process credit cards will be a huge advantage over those who accept only cash and checks.

Merchant service providers have made it much easier over the last 5 years or so for home businesses to collect payment for their goods and services via a credit card. Paypal is a prime example of this. Owned by Ebay, they have made it much easier for the person at home selling things online to collect credit card payments.

There are plenty of solutions beyond Paypal, many of which were spawned out of the shortfalls found by home based businesses that were not a strictly online business. Today you can find nearly all of the equipment that you would use in a traditional brick and mortar business for your home based business. From point of sale equipment (including wireless for you to take to those home shows) to software to pinpads.

If you have a separate merchant account as a home based business as well as Paypal, you will find that your flexibility will make you more attractive to potential buyers. It is not so much that you are more attractive as much as it is that you will not lose sells because a customer cannot pay you in your way. As a customer, I have become frustrated in the past when I placed an order and then could pay for it. I found that I did not go back there as often.

Before getting a merchant account for your home business, you should make sure that you do all of your homework on this one. It can be a bit mundane, but it also can save you a lot of money as well as make you money because you are offering the right things for potential customers. Homework, as we tell our kids, is a necessary evil of getting it right.

When researching home based merchant accounts, you may be think to yourself, ?is this really necessary?? If you think that, just remember that most people are impulse buyers. If they cannot buy at the time of the impulse, then they will likely not buy. People are buying a bit more cautious in today?s economy, but they are still making purchases. Spending may be down right now, but that is all the more reason you should have the ability to accept all forms of payment. If you do not, you may lose out on sales and the money you can make from that.

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