About this blog and me

About this blog: Credit Cards Online 101 is an effort to explain simply to busy people how a small online business manager should understand payment processing. By "small", I mean companies that have between $250,000 and $25,000,000 in revenue. By online, I mean "card not present" at the time of transaction. Should I explain what I mean by the word busy and manager? Let me tell you about my world and why I'm writing this post at 4 in the morning.

I will zero in on the sale of "intangible services" such as membership or educational services or downloads of ebooks or software. I will also cover the sale of products such as books and and other products that get shipped. I'll probably stay away from electronics or other items that have a "resale" value since that's a different set of problems.

I will also zero in on "recurring billing" which doesn't just mean trying to make money every week and month and year from customers that keep buying from you. It means that you set up a transaction with customers that runs periodically (often monthly). Again, it means that you bill the same customer over and over.

I am trying to explain it since I am trying to understand it. I invite you to come learn with me.

About me: I am a small business owner. I started in my living room in 2003 and by the end of 2004, I was in business, had revenues, and was way short of the stated minimum focus of this blog of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in revenue. At the end of year two, I was still short of the number. In fact, I had not broken into six figures. In year 3, I broke into six figures and in year 5, I broke into figures. Looking back, it was in year 3 that I could have gotten out of survival mode and would have liked to better understand how my lifeblood - online payment processing - worked. And why it was consuming about 4% of my revenues.

I find that to study something, since I am busy, I need to have a way to record my thoughts and questions. Hence this blog. My operations manager will work with me on this project.