It’s often said, “One is the most dangerous number in business.”
There’s horror stories of nervous banks shutting down merchant accounts in the middle of promotions.
Just because they decided a business was “high risk.” (Whatever that means).
No warnings. No clear explanation why. Just… shut down. Out of the blue.
If you only have one merchant account. Then that’s it. No more sales!
Having two, three, or more accounts… well that’s a solid plan.
This exact scenario happened for master marketer, Doberman Dan.
He’d been selling his product for a while — no problem at all. Then he wakes up one morning to find no sales going through.
Gets on the phone to the bank. To be told that his merchant account had been shut down.
He’d been deemed too “high risk”.
So he switched to another merchant account… but the same thing happened.
Fortunately, all was well by the time he was on to the third backup merchant account.
So…
Can you see why “one” is the most dangerous number?
You can imagine the anguish of only having one account. And when that’s shut down… so are all your sales.
Just in the last couple of days I experienced the reality of this risk in my business.
Not quite the same level of seriousness as losing a merchant account.
But money-related. And serious enough if I didn’t have a backup plan in place.
The short story is…
The ordering system I was relying on for selling my first ebook… just didn’t work properly!
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me having a brain fart.
I’d tested most of it a few months back.
But this time, there was a serious issue.
The payments were going through fine. And it would tell me I’d made sales.
But the invoice emails weren’t going to customers. And the automations weren’t firing off.
So no one would get the email with details on how to access the order!
Oh damn!
Fortunately, I had a sort-of back up…
At least with the payments side of things.
Good old Stripe to the rescue!
So I could process payments, no worries.
And it was just a matter of changing where the “Buy Now” button went to.
Downside is…
I’m stuck with manually adding people to the list of buyers. To make sure they get sent the info about how to download the book and other goodies.
Not a good long-term solution, though. And frustrating for buyers, as they have to wait for me to do it.
But it works. It’s a workaround.
But if my first option was my only option… then I’d be up the creek with no propulsion devices in sight.
Now my plan is to soon switch to an ordering system that BerserkerMail has an integration for. So things will work nice and smoothly.
And I can cut out the middleman (make.com)… that sits between my ordering system and my customer management/email system.
For now…
I’m just happy to have my book out there. And some way for you to be able to get hold of it! 😄
You can get all the details here:
https://milham.me/easy-content
Have a great start to the week!
P.S. Where in your business could “one” prove to be a dangerous number?
What alternatives should you get in place to help reduce your risks?
Ready to build your email list? Go here…
EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham