We read about it all the time, how newspapers are consolidating and going out of business and the few with pockets deep enough to hang on – are all struggling with how to compete in a world which no longer expects to pay for a subscription, to access the news.

In the past, it made sense to readers to pay a nominal fee to have something as visceral and as versatile as real wood-pulpy newspapers, delivered to their door. After all, even if you did not like the news that was printed – you still would have something to wrap your fish in, not to mention the delightful delivery boy who trudged through the rain and snow, even on Saturday and Sunday mornings, who was worth paying for a job well done!

However, when moving online these same traditional newspapers have trouble charging people to look at their website.

Often when news services have tried to collect money (by setting up payment gates to their informational services), it usually resulted in a backlash, wherein loyal readers would jump ship, to seek out alternative sources to get their “online” news fix.

In almost all cases when a news service attempted to collect subscriptions fees for online news, they not only failed to collect the toll they hoped to get, but also lost readership, market share, and advertising revenue in the attempt.

Even the biggest names in news rarely provide an “exclusive product or story” which is worth paying them exclusively to receive. In fact, often the major news networks do nothing more than the average blogger does.

Take for instance the case of major networks simply crediting the Twitter account of Mr. Janis Krums and his re-tweets for their “up to the second” reporting throughout the saga of US Airway’s Flight 1549 crash landing on the Hudson river, back in Jan 2009, and during the following rescue.  In this instance, it made more sense to shut off the news and go right to the source, which was Twitter!

Therefore, for the reasons I have pointed out thus far, (and a few more) it is clear that making money in the news business, just isn’t in flat rate subscriptions.

Well then…Where is the money?

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Credit cards, as we know, can be a blessing and a curse.

Insurmountable credit card debts aside, most of us embrace credit cards for the convenience and security that they provide in making transactions.

Carrying cash is dangerous, checks and checkbooks can be cumbersome and time consuming to balance, while credit cards are generally accepted everywhere and help us to process transactions almost instantly.

In fact, accepting credit card payments is an integral part of running almost all online businesses.

Unfortunately, credit card fraud and theft is a fact of life. Therefore, as business owners, we need to protect our customers and ourselves, from those who would try to cause us harm.

One important measure that we can take to protect everybody is to ensure that at no point in the course of conducting business, do we store any sensitive credit card information, on unsecure websites or anywhere vulnerable.

Some membership-software inadvertently allows business owners the ability to still collect and store customer credit card information insecurely. This can expose you and your members to extraordinary risk!

Note: MemberSpeed does not expose you to this risk.

Early in our development stages, we foresaw the increasing risks that business owners would be exposed to, and the complicated procedures they would need to follow if they accepted credit cards on their websites and stored the data locally.

Even having a valid SSL certificate does not necessarily mean that your website and business is Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standard compliant.

This is why our membership software is designed to function with secure payment processors such as PayPal, 2Checkout, ClickBank, etc. These payment processors are PCI compliant, and help business owners achieve PCI compliance more easily.

There are many reasons you will want to make sure that your website and business are PCI compliant.

For instance, not being compliant puts at risk your ability to accept credit cards and you can be held financially responsible for losses caused by any lapses in your security, if personal credit card data is stolen.

By using MemberSpeed software, and integrating only PCI compliant payment processors, properly – you will transfer much, if not all, of the risk and responsibility for security, to these third party payment processors!

Below are some of the best and worst credit card data handling procedures that you should be aware of, when running any online business.

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