The stoopid mistake that cost Yours Grinchy a bundle recently
Published: Sat, 12/09/17
What happened was, I was getting a lot of declined American Express cards coming through, and wasn’t sure what the problem was. The customers would call their Amex and they’d say everything should be working. I’d call my people and they would say they couldn’t figure it out, either.
So, what did I do?
I let it go, figuring it’d work itself out.
(Most online glitches do with these things, I have noticed.)
But, this glitch was a bytch.
And, wasn’t going away.
Finally, I isolated part of the problem — it was with my second merchant account. For some reason, Amex and them weren’t working. It took a while, but the merchant account guys figured it out (it had to do with my gateway).
Now, here’s where Yours Grinchy needed to be strangled with Christmas tree lights:
I could have salvaged all of those sales.
And, without needing to even know what the problem was (or wait).
How?
Because, I was already doing what’s called “load balancing.”
This means, your gateway (which is the “gate” between your shopping cart and your merchant(s), is set up in such a way where you can have it auto-rotate between merchant accounts. So, for example, you can have some sales go through merchant account A, others go through merchant account B, others merchant account C, etc. And, if I’d taken time out of obsessing over finishing my 7th novel (the only thing on my mind for the past month and a half) I’d have simply went in to my gateway, and turned off merchant account B from the load balancing until the glitch was solved. (I did do this, but not until literally the day before it was solved.)
More:
Load balancing multiple merchant accounts has other perks, too.
Specifically, giving your merchant accounts peace of mind.
Their biggest fear is chargebacks.
(Can’t say as I blame them, either.)
They are very risk averse.
And, that is why they have entire departments looking over their customers’ accounts constantly, looking for any unusual activity — including a charge for a price they aren’t used to (such as when I sold back issues to my Email Players newsletter recently, I’d get sales spikes well over what they were used to seeing — a red flag they are wise to look for, and that they contacted me about).
So how does load balancing help this?
Two ways:
(1) You are “balancing” your sales between multiple merchant accounts, so no one gets a rush of too many sales they aren’t used to seeing at once (unless you’re doing HUGE numbers suddenly — which is why it’s always wise to call them before doing a launch, etc, to let them know you’re about to release the Kraken).
(2) If a merchant account decides you’re too high risk (for any reason, or no reason at all — which happens, and happens way more than the average schlub who only hangs out all day with other schlubs on facebook playing business knows — and shuts you down, you still have back ups waiting in the wings, and you won’t even miss a beat.
Listen up, listen good, and never forget:
You can never have too many merchant accounts.
And, you can never get too low of rates with merchant accounts, either (they are like insurance companies — with varying rates, some of which can add up to huge savings or huge waste).
You can also never have too much peace of mind.
All of which is why I’ve been thundering away about Glenn Livingston’s merchant account services lately.
Not only does his network have great rates.
(Extremely good!)
But, he can hook you up with more than one, and he matches you with the right merchant accounts for your particular kind of business. And, it’s all pretty painless as merchant accounts go. I was up and running in a week with this last one I got.
They also help you with chargeback problems, too.
And, have your back with a lot of these things.
More:
If you contact Glenn’s merry band of elves using the link below (my naked affiliate link — and no, you won’t pay a penny more in rates any more than you pay more in rates with an insurance agent), and if you send me your first merchant account statement… old Saint Trick here will give you a valuable present:
A free copy of my newest product called “The Email Players Lifestyle”.
It won’t launch until some time next year.
And, I doubt I’ll launch it to my main list, either way.
(Just my “Email Players” subscribers.)
It will probably run about $300 or so.
And, it shows you how to “adapt” your current business (you must have an actual business, or it will do you no good — newbies will get zero benefit from it) to my business model in the fastest and easiest way I know.
Anyway, enough build up.
Here’s the link:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com/merchant
Ben Settle