Every week I highlight a Lynda.com tutorial. Lynda.com offers a wide range of resources for the very low price of $25 a month.

The Maculator lets you compare two merchant accounts and payment processors to find the best fee structure that serves your products and business.

Here is the problem: there is NO one size fits all merchant account for ALL kinds of businesses.

The hidden secret: most merchant account and 3rd party payment processors have very different rates for different sales volumes. Some vary not only on volume but on the actual cost of the widget being sold. So if you sell 1000 one dollar widgets, the best processor for you will be VERY different then the one for a business that sells 10 widgets @ one thousand dollars each.

Solution: Knowledge is power! As referenced above, I have done some of the homework for you. However, you can use the Maculator to do the very same thing. They keep track of 40 plus providers and their current pricing structures. If you sell ANYTHING, you owe it to your business to do a comparison of providers to ensure you are not leaving money on the table.

How to use the Maculator:

First, determine your monthly sales volume and monthly total sales. For my example, I will say that monthly sales is $10,000 and monthly sales volume is 1000. This means I am selling a product or products that averages for around $10.

Second, know your current provider. For this example, I will use ClickBank. (or choose one you are THINKING about using).

Now go to the The Maculator.

From the dropdown labeled “Maculator Pre-Loaded Providers List”, choose “All Providers”:

This will produce a long list of all the providers they have in their database. You can also choose by sub-category. For example, you can choose only those with Free Setup or those who do Digital Only. Scroll down and find ClickBank.

You can see that they provide the detail of the current fee structure.

In the lower right hand corner, click “Maculate Me”. This will take you to the comparison screen.

Below the big green box is section labeled “Your Expected Business Volume”. Fill in the numbers you figured out in steps 1 and 2.

Below this, in the section labled “Merchant Accounts and Alternatives Rates To Compare”, there are two columns. In the left column, labeled “Provider A”, you should see that ClickBank is the chosen provider.

At this point, click the Update Rates button that is found in the “Your Expected Business Volume” section. (Yes, the usability here is a little wonky, but if you do not do this step, you won’t be able to select the alternative provider.

After you click Update Rates, the column labeled Provider A will look like this:

You should now be able to select the provider in Column B for comparison. For this example, I am selecting one of the Payquake choices.

Now for the big moment. Click the Maculate button.

You will get the comparison results:

Disclaimer: I chose these providers at random. This in no way represents a recommendation of a particular provider over another. Besides cost, businesses have to estimate value and features. It could very well mean that a more expensive option is the best route to go if they provide a level of service and features that you require.

With all that said, this is an EXTREMELY important step for anyone considering a 3rd party payment processor. Get your facts on the table before you make a decision. There are a LOT of options out there. While the list available on Maculator is quite large, I noticed that there are a few options missing.

I hope your find this information helpful. If so, please consider tweeting it to your audience from the Wibiya toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

Every week I highlight a Lynda.com tutorial. Lynda.com offers a wide range of resources for the very low price of $25 a month.

There was a time when tables ruled websites. A time where a given page was STRUCTURED by a table. (yes, I know, such websites still exist today!)

While standards make have kicked tables from their place as a structural page element, they can and should be used to organize certain kinds of table on your web page. Any data that you would have used a spreadsheet to organize, would be best displayed on a page using a table.

Creating tables can be a pain though. It is not hard, not really. If you pop open your old HTML 4.1 book there is probably a whole chapter or two devoted to tables. The biggest pain about tables is not so much their creation but their styling. Frankly, I hate it. Then again, I hate any form of CSS that requires more than a basic level of complexity.

There is a cure for your pain. Well, if you use WordPress that is. The WP-Table Reloaded Plugin!

What can the WP-Table Reloaded Plugin do for you?

It will let you create and manage tables from your WordPress dashboard. Like many WordPress plugins, WP-Table Reloaded has its own settings page. From that page, you can create a new table and manage the ones you have already created.

To create a table, click Add New Table:

From there, it wants you to define the table.

Once defined and added, it gives you the opportunity to fill in your table. It provides a grid-like interface:

From there you can begin to fill in your data.

As an example, my registrar price comparison page uses a table created with WP-Table Reloaded. See the interface grid below:

Putting a finished table into a post or page is simple. All is needed is the shortcode. You can change the shortcode to anything you want.

This is how the above table looks on the actual web page:

Now, for the astute observer, who notice the little up and down arrows next to the column names:

This is part of the WP Table Reloaded Secret Sauce: The tables generated are interactive: i.e. they can be sorted! Awesome stuff.

The plugin includes quite a number of features, but I will not spend the time going into them here. Below are screenshots of the features within the plugins and you can easily discern all its capabilities:

If you want to add tables to your posts and pages, then this plugin is a must have. It eases the pain of creating and styling tables, making it incredibly easy to display data in a very clean and eye pleasing fashion.

Every week I highlight a Lynda.com tutorial. Lynda.com offers a wide range of resources for the very low price of $25 a month.