There are many ways of accepting payments online, some are easier, some more expensive, and some which offer ways to take online payments, and pay affiliates without tracking them yourself.

Accepting payments online can be a minefield and as the amount of online payment processors grows, the choice becomes more difficult as to which online payment processor to use. Here we weigh up the pros and cons of 3 of the top online payment processors.

One of the biggest and most widely accepted ways of accepting payment online is to use Paypal. Anyone who has used Ebay is likely to have already come accross Paypal even if they haven't signed up for an account. Paypal allows the online merchant to accept instant payments from customers either directly from the customers Paypal funds or from a credit card. This combined with its high profile, and use by Ebay makes it a useful payment processor to the new marketer online.

Paypal also gives you easy ways to create buttons and sales links to sell your products, and in the case of digital or downloadable products can be set to send a customer straight to the download page so your delivery work is done automatically. The thing to bear in mind is the fees associated with Paypal, as they take a percentage of every sale paid through them. The fees can soon add up and knock a hole in your profits.

Another favourite payment processor with online marketers is ClickBank.com who also accept credit cards on your behalf.

Clickbank is preferred to Paypal by some vendors due to its built in affiliate program which also has many affiliates searching for products to sell for commissions.

Clickbank makes it easy to setup an affiliate program and pays your affiliates for you directly, and can also offer the instant downloads the same as Paypal. As it already has a huge army of affiliates and people making search scripts to find products in the Clickbank marketplace it seems to be the answer to all your online sales needs, but unfortunately Clickbank have made it difficult to sell more than one product, so you need another account each time you want to sell something, or all your products on one page for affiliates to send their potential clients to.

Another thing in Clickbanks favour is that they have recently started allowing payment from Paypal, so that makes the payment options more varied for your customers, and affiliate customers.

Clickbanks one drawback is that you can only sell digital products through its system, so if you want to sell physical products such as books etc. then you need to look elsewhere.

Another option is to use an online credit card processor such as 2 Checkout (AKA 2CO) which offers the user the ability to accept all kinds of credit cards, and is able to be "plugged into" many shopping cart scripts for use on websites. Although it offers no affiliate program itself, 2Checkout doesn't stop you using multi level affiliate scripts, unlike Paypal, and Clickbank which are limited in this respect. Where 2Checkout doesn't compare so favourably is in the fees charged for each transaction, but you do only pay a one off fee to get an account unlike most credit card processors which charge fees and a monthly or yearly membership fee.

These are just some of the choices available to the online marketer who wants to accept payments online, all have pros and cons, but you need to look at what you want to do, and choose one or two of these services to start selling your products online. Use the one which best fits your business model, and budget, you can always look at other ways to accept payment later, but these will get you started.