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There are a lot of people who make a lot of money by selling items directly from their websites. Whether they are selling actual items, downloadable items or products that can be attached to an email (such as an e-book for example), they know the amount of cash that can be generated from a website which racks up plenty of hits on its web counter.

But if you are thinking about treading this path yourself, there is the tiny question of whether your site is secure enough as it stands to accept payments over the internet. There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how safe your personal information is when you go online, and there is no area more pertinent to this discussion than the safety of your credit or debit card details.

The bottom line is that if you pay the money to make your site secure, you will get more business. It will cost you money to do it, but the level of perceived professionalism that your customers will see – not to mention the fact that they know their data is safe with you, since they are ordering over a secure connection – has the potential to bring in far more orders and send your hit counter spinning as a result.

But there are disadvantages as well. If you only have a basic site that you have put together using a free template from the internet, then there is every possibility that you will be unable to update it in this way. By far the best bet is to get a professional to design your website for you, so that it has a secure server connection and all the relevant order pages already built in.

But are there any alternatives if you can’t stretch to the cost of getting this done, and you still want to sell items from your website?

Certainly – and they are known as external payment processors. Instead of taking the payment through your own website, you direct your customers through to a secure connection provided by an external site such as PayPal or WorldPay. You will need to have a business account with one of these providers, but it can be a good way to solve all your problems, satisfy your customers’ need for security and keep the costs down as well.

If this is the way you want to proceed, it’s a good idea to compare the different payment processors before you decide which one will best meet your needs. The fees involved can be very different and there may also be some difference in how much you can customize the payment pages. Some providers allow you to integrate your own business logo into the pages your customers see, which helps to blend them in with your own website.

In the end the decision you make comes down a lot to budget. You just have to make sure you go for the best – and the safest - solution you can afford.