Thursday 26 April 2007

Paypal.com, Paymate.com.au and Credit Card Fraud

A few years back I was running a little ecommerce service as part of my Magic: The Gathering trading card site MTGParadise.com. Back when I was in the thick of things playing the game I used to win a lot of cards and did a hell of a lot of trading and selling at every tournament. More often I enjoyed the trading and selling more than the tournament itself.

Once my site became huge and I realised that there really wasn’t a good online card shop for Australians I decided to try and be that card shop. I had the audience and that’s usually the hard part. I managed to locate some wholesalers and went to work creating what I called MTGParadise Mail Order. I listed a lot of my personal collection which I had built up over the years from winning, buying and selling. I also listed sealed new product which was sold in boxes and booster packs which I located from the wholesalers. Because I had no wish to expose myself to too much stock investment I would almost “drop ship” before drop shipping became common for the public to do, in the sense that I would buy sealed product as sales came through rather than maintain a new stock inventory. Unfortunately it wasn’t real drop shipping since I had to still order the products, have them shipped to me, and then ship them out to the client which slowed things down.

The service did reasonably well. It was a horribly manual process because I would have to update card lists and inventory counts all by hand and I spent a lot of time running to the post office. I didn’t plan the service to be a proper business so I wasn’t considering systematising my inventory and having an online shopping cart like overseas card stores (which I would for sure do now, manual updates are a pain!). Another problem was that card selling has tiny margins and if it wasn’t for the fact that I managed to win cards I don’t think I would have made much profit. I did enjoy it for the most part though so I kept it going for a good year or so while studying at university.

One day I got a query from a person in Thailand wanting to buy boxes of cards. The profit wouldn’t be much because of the aforementioned tiny margins, but it would be significant enough that I was very keen to get his business.

He wanted to pay with credit card.

I asked my father about taking credit cards since he did for his business. My dad offered use of his “click-clack” manual credit card processor for the order. The customer emailed his credit card number and details and we checked the number against the ‘reported stolen’ list and it was fine. I processed the order, shipped the cards and was pleased with my first big sale.

Over the next few months I continued to have increasingly significant orders from this client which I carefully processed through my father’s credit card processor. Since I was doing such a regular amount I decided to get my own merchant account and after some looking around a bank was willing to provide me with the account. I then started to process orders through my own account.

One day many months after the first Thailand order I got a call from my father’s wife about a chargeback that had been initiated on the first credit card order I had processed from this customer in Thailand. I was worried, but not too worried because I thought that since we had verified the card for every purchase and it checked out that it just must be a mistake. I emailed the client and he told me it was just a mistake at his end so I relaxed a bit.

Unfortunately it wasn’t, the customer was a credit card fraudster and I had been very stupid. Over the next few weeks I came to grips with the fact that many thousands of dollars of sales would be ‘bouncing’. Initially I was angry with the banks that they didn’t offer more protection but as I slowly investigated the whole merchant account system I realised that the merchant is usually always the one taking the risk and that when no signature from the customer is present, which for web based orders is not really feasible, then the customer has all the power. I also read over the communications from the months of dealing with this client and realised that there were plenty of warning signs that I just refused to take notice of. I was caught up in the ‘business’ of it all and being very naive.

It was a lesson learnt. I learnt about credit card fraud, merchant accounts and the risk involved with selling over the Internet. I learnt to be more cautious and not jump with eagerness at every significant order that comes through. Call me paranoid, but it’s from experience. Note that I am complaining from the point of view of a merchant but there are instances where the customer has problems too.

When I then went on to setup credit card payment options for my clients at BetterEdit.com I was very careful. By this time I had discovered paypal and later I would also learn about Paymate, an Australian version of Paypal. These services were reasonably good solutions to provide online payment options and to this day BetterEdit processes many transactions online through them.

I have not had one problem with credit card fraud for any Betteredit essay editing service order (touch wood) but on many occasions I have been contacted by the staff at Paymate regarding suspect orders. After my experiences I really appreciate the extra layer of protection provided by Paymate. They protect you before an order is processed and offer personalised protection. As an Australian running an Australian based business I can recommend Paymate as one of the safest ways to accept credit cards and I don’t mind paying the fees for that extra level of security. Sure there are features I’d like to see and things I’d like changed at Paymate, but for the moment they offer the best option available.

I would also like to say I feel secure with Paypal but to be honest I do not. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from other Paypal users. I’ve read through the chargeback policies at Paypal and while they do have a ‘department’ to deal with fraud, they make every effort to argue the case on behalf of their sellers and have an ‘industry leading’ low fraud rate I don’t feel 100% confident. They seem very reactive rather than proactive when dealing with credit card fraud. Their system doesn’t talk much about how they protect you from first taking fraudulent credit card orders, rather they help you to argue your case after a chargeback occurs. I know from experience that for online orders the merchant has little hope because the credit card company almost always is in favour of the cardholder.

The Paypal website seems designed to make it difficult to contact a person. I’ve tried to contact them over the phone and spent an annoyingly long time waiting and trying to navigate a phone system clearly designed so they don’t have to employ too many phone staff. Their web support is much the same. Their whole system tries to avoid providing any personal support. They point you to look for an answer online via their FAQs which is great for the easy questions but often leads to a wild goose chase if you want to find answer to your very particular question. Even just timely and helpful customer service email support would be good but I always seem to find myself waiting a few days for a response that only half answers my question. Paymate on the other hand has a simple ‘Contact’ link which pops up an email that goes direct to a real live person that responds within 24 hours with a good answer. What more could you ask for.

All the problems at Paypal seem symptomatic of a business that got too big too quickly and I hope over time their customer support will improve as it ‘catches up’. All in all though I should note that Paypal has been good for my business and since it is the market leader in online payment processing it will most likely remain as a payment option at BetterEdit.com.

TroyBank Doesn’t Exist! Scam!

TroyBank is a new hyip which gaining more popularity nowadays due to their heavy advertisement strategy. A hyip which claims to be a real online company and has been established ten years ago and offers 2% daily for 100 days or 4% daily for 6 months (since when bonds become an aggressive type of investment and not volatile that could afford to give you that much?).

I managed to contact the Centre of Registers and Information Systems Of Estonia to help me to verify the existence of TroyBank. They were very helpful that I actually received two responses from them which as follow:

“In the central database of registration departments of courts there is NO information about registration of the company called TroyBank Management Department. You can see it on the website of the central database of registration departments of courts https://ar.eer.ee/lihtparing.py

Best regards,

Maie Õunpuu
Centre of Registers and Infosystems
www.eer.ee”

“Dear fairyjadoo,

I got information from Simona that you have question about one website that is registered in Estonia. Unfortunately I don’t have much information about it except that this website has been done on year 1996 by Markko Vainikko, who is not connected to any companies in Estonia. Also there is not any company like Troybank or Troy… with such address in Estonian Commercial Register.

If you have further interest then you may write to the webmaster of that site (webmaster@troybank.com) but I’m not sure whether this address is in use anymore.

I hope the information is useful.

Kind regards,

Gerli Hämmal
Project manager of European Business Register
Centre of Registers and Infosystems
Lõkke 4, 19081 Tallinn, Estonia
tel: +372 6 837 508
www.eer.ee
gerli.hammal@just.ee”

A3Union Operating Since 2003

A3Card.com & A3Union.com

A3 Union now can provide their clients with state of the art facilities to use Egold, Ebullion and Gold, they are really leaping ahead of their competition. The amazing part is using the Master Card logo, this is truly a global company, take a look at what we here at the Journal have noticed.

Once at A3Union's site you get the feeling of professionalism and high ethical standing in the world of High Investment Yielding Portfolios. We already know of their exception service.

FEATURE

Global Presence

9 Representing offices in 7 countries worldwide!

Today A3Union consists of dedicated and experienced investment professionals in Europe, the United States and Asia. A3Union analyses transactions using its knowledge of both the local and international high yield investment markets, and also relationships with over 20 global high yield investment partners. Having an international presence allows us to understand our customers not just remotely, but personally.

The website is ranked as in good standing on over 50 rating websites, forums, magazines, blogs and other websites.

Truly now we are seeing a global market venturing into countries where HYIP has been misunderstood and considered unworthy. Now with companies like A3 Union they are setting the trend and a high standard for the industry. We here at Ecommerce Journal Applaud their strong integrity.

This company in its first year of trading had a turnover of over $4 Million USD dollars this was viewed as a major milestone in the life of this company and promises to be a very prosperous new year. The total recognised gain was over 3 Million Dollars USD dollars.

We have seen nothing but Strong Management, Strong Professionalism and cannot wait to see what happens next.

The A3 Card is an exceptional feature to add to their company structure providing both a offline and online presence. The fact you can fund the card with so many of our current HYIP friendly banks this is exceptional. This card is on a par with the one outlined with Paypal, Safepay and many exclusive to HYIP. The encryption and security is state of the art along with the services. That means a lot as we don’t want anyone else getting our investments.

We are proud supporters of this company and the milestones this truly professional company has reached in a very short time, Excellent!

This company we can recommend and wish to see the new News arriving that seems very exciting times for this company.


Troybank Red Sign Arises - HEAVY INVESTORS BANNED

We have warned you about the TroyBank scam. And now we received complaints from a few of our readers about what TroyBank had done to them and their accounts.

Those members can be considered as big depositors in TroyBank। According to them, TroyBank has started to block their accounts and accused them sending spam. And TroyBank failed to provide proof for their 'spam accusation'.

Here we summarize the falsifications and facts:

- Fake physical address
- Fake telephone numbers
- Not in Estonian Commercial Register
- No license on the territory of Estonia
- Uses anonymity network to hide its real IP addresses
- Very high possibility that owner is from Lithuania
- Fake copied texts around the web.

Example: look this
and this.

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Offshore merchant account - The benefits and potential scams

If your business is located offshore and you are looking for a credit card processing solution consider applying for an offshore merchant account. An offshore merchant account will help you financially should the US banks and processors find you unsuitable. An offshore merchant account normally has higher processing rates and longer hold-back periods but this type of account requires its deposits.

The Benefits of an Offshore Merchant Account

Once you’ve obtained an offshore merchant account you will find its advantages to be very appealing. Easy access, credit card processing and decreased taxes are only some of the benefits you will be enjoying. Having your business offshore is an advantage on its own but, being careful when selecting the merchant account provider you decide to do business with is important.

Be Aware For “Unbelievable” Offshore Merchant Account Offers

Some offshore merchant account providers will give you a great offer at times when you are having trouble getting an account at others. I strongly recommend keeping an eye open for scams. There are companies that try to get you to open an offshore merchant account sounding all “peachy” when in fact all they are after is your setup fee when sometimes can reach a couple of thousand dollars. Do your research and don’t be fooled.

Offshore Merchant Accounts Rates and Fees

Some offshore banks and credit card processors do charge a slightly higher processing fees and discount rates however when the merchant realizes the tax savings they are incurring by processing offshore they discover they are far better off than if they had remained processing onshore. High risk businesses like online casinos, adult, pharmacy and travel merchants prefer using an offshore merchant account as most domestic banks (US) decline these business categories, owing largely to the high volume sales, potential charge back and refunds etc. Offshore banks tend to be more liberal with their under-writing policies, tax savings and there are no sales volume restrictions.

Is An E-Commerce Merchant Service Required To Begin Payment Processing Online?

All over the internet you will hear that it is essential to get an e-commerce merchant service if you want to accept credit cards, debit cards and e-checks online for your business. To many people's surprise, there are alternative methods to receiving payment processing online. The reason e-commerce merchant service's get boasted up so highly is because of their convenience and high success rate.

Before we talk about alternatives to an e-commerce merchant service, let's talk about what you need to begin payment processing online. The first thing you need is a secure server with certification. This will allow your server to prevent data interception and ensure you that no unauthorized decoding occurs. The next two aspects are obvious in that you need an order form and a gateway to allow for authorization and processing.

The next thing you need is some form of shopping cart software. This will make life a lot less stressful during the payment processing online because it will automatically calculate purchases, taxes, and shipping and much more for you. Finally, you need an e-commerce merchant service, so let's take a look at some options now.

If you are looking for alternatives to begin payment processing online, one option is to contract with companies providing the processing on your behalf. The downside to this option is that it is more expensive than using a merchant account. The reason the prices will be higher is because the company will take a larger percentage of the ticket price off of each credit card payment you receive.

Another problem with using third parties is that you won't be able to collect your funds near as often as going through your own e-commerce merchant service. By using a third party you have to put your order form on the payment processing site, where you will probably only receive your funds two or three times a month. By using your own merchant service, you can expect to see the funds in two or three days.

If you try out third parties and just aren't satisfied, another option to begin payment processing online aside from merchant services is deferred processing. Deferred processing is when the customer inputs all data and you receive the data manually.

The advantage to using this is that you have the ability to manually look over every order form put in and correct any errors to ensure that your customer gets the right product and you truly get the payment. The downside is that it is extremely time consuming to look over every order that comes in.

As you can see, there are alternatives to using an e-commerce merchant service, but it comes with disadvantages and risks. This is not to say that you 100% positively will have failure with a different option, but the safe bet is to pay for a merchant service and begin your payment processing online on the right foot.

Google in The Midwest

Determined to keep ahead of rivals Microsoft and Yahoo in the search business, Google (Quote, Chart) today said it will build a corporate office in Ann Arbor, Mich., to prop up its online advertising program.

The sales and operations center for Google's AdWords program will create 1,000 direct and roughly 1,245 spin-off jobs in its first five years, generating more than $2 billion in personal income for Michigan workers, the company said in a statement.

Google's main revenue source, AdWords is the company's flagship product in an online advertising market the company easily leads.

Thousands of advertisers use AdWords to promote their products and services on the Web through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and site-targeted advertising for text and banner ads.

Google said Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm directed the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to convince Google to choose Michigan over other locations more than a year ago.

The MEDC even approved a high-tech single business tax credit valued at more than $38 million over 20 years to win the company's investment.

It didn't hurt that Google co-founder Larry Page grew up in the state and graduated from the University of Michigan.

Google shares were up $1.52 to $419.72 on the news in midday trading.

Google has been steadily adding new features and functionality to its AdWords platform to better compete with rivals Yahoo (Quote, Chart) and Microsoft (Quote, Chart) in the search space, a multi-billion-dollar market whose stakes are unparalleled in high-tech.

The Mountain View, Calif., company recently introduced ad scheduling, or "dayparting," for AdWords, which enables advertisers to automatically adjust their bids or pause and resume their campaigns.

In March, Google introduced local business ads, a new feature in AdWords that allows advertisers to promote location-based products and services.

Google is also looking to benefit from the online payment processing business, recently launching Google Checkout, which enables shoppers to purchase items securely from participating stores with a single Google login.

While Google is the search leader at present, neither Microsoft nor Yahoo feel they can ignore the revenue opportunity the advertising business promises in relation to search.

The subject has prompted some analysts, such as Merrill Lynch's Justin Post, to theorize that Google's ongoing traffic share gains and greater focus on building a software platform "increase acquisition probability."

Post said Yahoo or eBay are possible targets that could provide an immediate and large boost to Microsoft's search presence.

The Best Traffic Money Can Buy?

I will be honest; the title of this article is slightly misleading. You see, in my opinion, the best traffic that money can buy actually doesn't cost anything - it's free! :-)

I am talking of course about the magical traffic that we have all heard of but that only a select few have experienced.....free search engine traffic.

We all know that it is possible to get tons of free traffic from the big search engines - Google, MSN, Yahoo and so on but getting to the top of these engines has always been incredibly tough. Actually, I am being slightly dishonest again. Going back a few years, it was in fact very easy to get a high search engine ranking, you just put a page together, threw in a few meta keywords and a decent page title and scattered your keywords across the text content a bit and that was it. Wait a week or so and bingo, you've got yourself a front page ranking on Google! Ok, it wasn't quite that simple but it wasn't much harder than that.

Nowadays getting to the top of the engines is much harder and even if you do make it to the top, you can be dropped just as quickly if the search engine decides to change the way in which they rank websites.

However, whilst getting your site indexed and ranked in a decent position does take a bit of effort, it isn't impossible, especially if you know what the search engines are looking for. I am no expert on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but I have studied the subject on a casual basis since I first started online in 1998. I am really a lazy SEO'er and part of the reason for this is that I have spent the time in past optimizing sites, only to have Google (or whoever) suddenly decide that they don't like my site quite as much as they did last week and dropping me way down their rankings. All that lovely free traffic gone overnight :-( I got fed up with this a couple of years ago and vowed never to chase search engine traffic again!

That said, there is nothing quite like top quality, targeted, free traffic and the buzz of getting several hundred (or even thousand) visitors every single day without spending out a single penny can't be beaten. Just think how much it would cost you to buy 500 visitors each day using Google Adwords or similar (and this form of advertising isn't anywhere near as effective as it used to be but that's a story for another day!).

Anyway, back to the point of this article.... It is possible to get very good search engine rankings very quickly IF you follow some basic rules when you build your websites. To illustrate this (and remember, I am no expert), I noticed this week that my new site, SimplyWholesale.co.uk already has several number one (and front page) rankings on Google, MSN and several other smaller search engines! I am even beating eBay on some keywords and phrases :-) Now, bear in mind that this site was launched just two weeks ago. I haven't done any 'major' search engine optimization on it - just the absolute basics. There are hardly any inbound links to the site (seriously, like a dozen absolute maximum) AND none of the search engines have crawled anywhere near the entire site. At the time of writing, Google has indexed just 17 pages out of almost 1500!! Despite this, Google and the other engines are sending me some fairly healthy traffic everyday. Just think how much traffic I could be getting in a few weeks time once the site has been fully indexed?!

So, why am I telling you this? Simple. Because getting good search engine rankings doesn't have to be an impossible task. If you know the basics and apply them to your site, there is no reason why you shouldn't start to see some free traffic coming your way. Now of course, you can't expect to do a bit of work on your site and suddenly rank no.1 on Google for a really competitive search term such as 'earn money online' BUT you don't need to. At the end of the day all you need to do is make sure that your site ranks well for a handful of relevant keywords/phrases and as long as they are words that people are actually searching for, you will see the benefits.

Using Google Adwords To Drive Laser Targeted Traffic

The biggest well known secret in generating wealth in the internet based business or e-commerce is Traffic. Everybody knows it; every site wants it and every site needs it. The point of websites is to be visited and viewed. Many elaborate designs, money and countless hours of developing a site to make them beautiful and attractive are utilized. Without traffic, it is for naught.

With traffic comes a potential customer which basically means sales which in turn means profit. While many sites have collapsed in the past with the downturn of many internet based business, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some subniches.

This is a reason why e-commerce site laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It’s a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google’s Adwords. The surge in popularity of Google’s Adwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google's Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Aside from Google, you can also be featured in their other search networks, these includes sites like, AskJeeves, AOL Search and Netscape. These sites also show Adwords ads that react to searches done by visitors. There are also content networks, non-search engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking pr interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you're laser targeted traffic to your site.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable

Pay per click(PPC) advertising: It’s efficacy

PPC advertsing is the most popular form of online advertsising. Search engines play a vital role in PPC advertising. The businesses which want to go for PPC advertising have an understanding with a particular search engine/s. The listing on the agreed search engine page generally has a suitable title, a short heading and a promotional wording text. Whether the advertiser can amend the text, depends upon the policy of the particular search engine. The advertiser's ads get directed to related websites depending upon the website content, keywords and the advertisements text and keywords. The advertiser does not pay for the display of the ads, but pays only when a visitor clicks the ad.

So the PPC advertising has the following steps:

(1) The advertiser bids for keywords and prepares the advertisements in the required format.

(2) The advertisements are directed by the search engine to be displayed on related websites depending upon keywords and the content of the website. This is in other words called Contextual advertising. At this point the advertiser does not pay for the display of the advertisement.

(3) When a visitor enters the keywords in the Search engine, he is directed to the relevant websites. When he clicks on the ad links displayed in the website, the advertiser pays for it. If the click transforms into a business deal, then the advertiser gains. The search engine usually gets commission when the visitor clicks on the link.

Though PPC advertising is popular and at one point of time made huge profits, currently advertisers are skeptical about using it. But as of now it is still the most favored form of advertising.

The most vital element of PPC advertising is "keywords"

The content of the advertisers website should be written with reference to the particular keyword or set of keywords. Only then the advertiser can expect that the visitor to a particular search engine will get directed to the ads placed by him. This is much easier than
aiming for top search engine rankings. Achieving top search engine rankings make a number of weeks where as directing the visitor to the ads is dependent mainly upon keywords which can be changed easily.

Currently Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture are active partners in PPC campaign. There are several other small players too in this arena.

The difficult part of the PPC advertising is writing the content and optimizing the website to make it search engine friendly. The services of an Search Engine Optimizer are sometimes used to make a website search engine friendly. But the optimization can be done by the webmaster if has the right knowledge about the content of his site and the PPC program. If the web page is designed to catch the attention of the customer then PPC advertising is the most effective, choosing the right phrases and bidding on the right keywords is the secret behind success in PPC adverting.

How do I go about building an E-commerce site?

Building an ecommerce site involves three stages which are as follows.

Creating Customized Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart is like a store front where you can display your products,catalogue,price etc. The customer comes to your store through website and selects the item which he requires,after selection gets completed he will be shown with the total amount to be paid for the items he has selected.He would be given an option for paying through Credit Card and complete the transaction.

Approaching Payment Gateway Service Provider

Now the Payment Gateway Service Provider comes into picture who are authorized to accept credit card on behalf of merchant.It may be a Bank or Authorised Company who can accept and process credit card online.They Provide us with the payment gateway software that needs to be integrated with the website to enable secure transaction. The providers are been certified by Digital Certified Authorities like Verisign,Thwate etc which build trust among buyer and can transact safely.

Integrating Payment Gateway with your Website

This is very important part and the last stage of completing you e-presence.Our Team at Cyberweb Global Services Ltd will integrate the Payment Gateway software with your website to carry online transaction safely and securely.

Reinvest For Success

Many people when they start to make some money online make
the mistake of spending any profits they make. Now obviously
we all have living expenses which should of course be taken
care of, but any surplus profits left over from your online
ventures should be reinvested back into your business to
achieve long term success.

I always think your primary aim as an online business should
be to build a large database of subscribers, who you can
contact over and over again for as long as they're
subscribed to your ezine or newsletter. If you can build up
a good relationship with your subscribers, over time they
will become very receptive to your offers, and actually look
forward to receiving your emails, meaning increased
long-term profits for you.

This should be your main focus. Getting traffic to your site
is something you should aim to do, but a large percentage of
those people who leave your site without purchasing anything
may never return to your site. However, if you encourage
them to sign up to your newsletter by displaying a prominent
sign-up form, or maybe creating a pop-up form, you can send
them follow-up messages over time and increase your chances
of making a sale.

Therefore you should reinvest any profits you make, and your
time, which is also a valuable commodity, back into your
business with the aim of increasing your database of
subscribers.

What are the best ways of doing this?

Well I've always had great success with writing articles and
submitting them not only to all the major article
directories, but also directly to ezines relating to the
subject of my site. This doesn't cost anything and is
something I do regularly to generate a lot of traffic to my
sites, which usually take the form of an opt-in page where
subscribers can sign up to my newsletter, or the home page
of my site which prominently displays the opt-in form.

In addition to this, you can also guarantee inclusion in an
ezine, if they accept advertising, by paying the ezine owner
to run your advert. This can take the form of sponsor ads,
top/middle/bottom ads (top ads usually get seen the most so
they obviously cost more than middle or bottom ads), and
solo ads, which I've always found to be the most effective.

You could also invest in pay-per-click campaigns. This is
also another effective form of advertising as you can use
highly targeted keywords which ensures that any visitors are
pre-qualified and will already be interested in your site
when they click on the link to your site.

There are many other forms of paid advertising such as
buying text links or banner space on other sites, as well as
many types of offline advertising methods you could use.
However, in my opinion getting your articles and paid
adverts seen in related ezines, and using pay-per-click
advertising are the most successful forms of advertising.

Whatever types of advertising you decide to persue, just
keep reinvesting your profits (and your time) into your
business and focus on growing your online business. You will
reap the rewards in the long run.

How to Accept Payments Online

Have you created a website for your Internet business? Do you want to sell products through your website? Don’t rush out to sell your product until you have set up an online payment system. This is critical because many people falsely believe that you just set up a website and cash will instantly roll into your bank account. It doesn’t just happen automatically. You have to be able to accept payments online.

There are three crucial systems you need to setup. These systems include a shopping cart, Internet gateway, and a merchant account.

A shopping cart will take and maintain orders. A merchant account direct deposits the money you accept on your website into your bank account.

You also need a system that connects the shopping cart with your merchant account. This is where an Internet gateway comes in. The “Internet Gateway” is the link between the shopping cart and the merchant account. The shopping cart accepts the credit card information. The Internet gateway runs the credit cards and then deposits the money in your bank account.

Experienced Internet business owners know that merchant accounts can be tricky. Some merchant account providers can take advantage of you. Be careful.

For example, when you sign up for a merchant account you have to sign a contract. The contract could be as long as five years for certain merchant account providers. You also have to provide an estimate of how much money you will earn online in the year. If you low ball your yearly income then a merchant account might shut you down if you make more money then this estimate. Plus, some merchant accounts will hold your money. They may also go bankrupt.

Merchant accounts can be tricky when you make a great deal of money in a short amount of time. You need a merchant account provider that has the capabilities of running high credit card amounts each day. Verify that your merchant account provider is robust enough to provide you these services.

A merchant account only deals with VISA and MasterCard. American Express and Discover work differently. You have to contact American Express and Discover directly to set up a merchant account with them. American Express may have a higher rate, but it is well worth it. Remember, American Express card holders typically have money to spend and good credit. They are quality customers that are more likely to buy your products.

A great resource for an Internet Gateway is Authorize.net. Authorize.net is a top name in the Internet marketing industry. Authorize.net understands this specific business model. Internet marketing gurus can provide testimonials to the high quality of Authorize.net.

How long does it take money to show up in your bank account? It depends. Some merchant account providers take up to two weeks to transfer money into your bank account. However, you can find merchant accounts that will transfer money into your bank account almost immediately.

Tips & Tricks for Discovering Lowcost Keywords

Keywords are considered the lifeline of any successful pay per click campaign. If you select the wrong ones, you can zip through your entire advertising budget without getting anything in return. If you choose the right ones, you can beat your competition to the punch and get a better ROI by spending less.

As an advertiser, you can bid on as many keywords as you wish ? there are no limits. Most successful advertisers start off with 500-2,000 keywords and add on more as they go along.

There are a number of tools available on the market that can help you find these keywords. They include KeywordDiscovery.com and WordTracker.com. In addition, most search engines also offer their own versions of keyword-research tools.

There are a few things you can do to build up your keyword inventory. Start off by opening a new Notepad file and thinking of five to 10 general terms that are relevant to your business. Try to think like the customers to whom you are marketing: What terms do you think they would search for to find your products and services?

Then, take these primary terms and run them through a keyword research tool. At the same time, you can take the primary words and add keywords and adjectives to them, come up with different variations, synonyms, plural terms and even misspellings.

Keep in mind that, contrary to what many people believe, it?s actually a bad idea to target very general keywords. General keywords usually cost much more than specific ones and send large amounts of traffic, but unfortunately very few sales or leads.

As the advertiser, you have the ability to target precisely which visitors you want to come to your site, so you will want to bid on keywords that are directly related to your services. The more specific and narrow the keywords are, the more qualified traffic you will get.

When you are researching your keywords, you shouldn?t only be concerned with finding more keywords, but rather think about identifying the right keywords. Your goal is not just to get traffic to your site, but also to get targeted visitors who are more likely to convert into sales or leads.

E-Gold Introduction

E-Gold Introduction

E-Gold is gold currency. It is internationally accepted as a currency - a method of online payment. With E-Gold, you may buy things online; sell things online and accept payments in E-Gold currency; and do online investments. Other online payments are credit card, PayPal, E-Bullion, AsianPay, etc.

Like USD, E-Gold value is fluctuating too as its value is tied one-to-one to international gold value. Thus many gold investors invest in E-Gold. As the gold price drop, they buy E-Gold and as gold price drop, E-Gold is sell.

Almost all HYIPs accept E-Gold as their payment medium. HYIP is High Yield Investment Program, which offers high returns over your investment.

If you have a website, you can make that website as your cash-cow by accepting payments using E-Gold!

Creating E-Gold Account

It will take few minutes to complete an E-Gold account application.

All that you need to provide are your account name, user name, postal address, email address, contact numbers and paraphrase (a.k.a. password).

Buying E-Gold

There are many websites (companies or individuals) providing E-Gold services (buying, selling or converting).

These factors can be considered when you want to choose which one of those many websites to use:

  • Rate: choose the one that more profitable to you
  • Minimum buying or selling
  • Processing time: faster is better, based on your own experience
  • Registration
  • Some require you to become their member thus need to go through lengthy form filling
  • Some (especially selling of E-Gold) only require you to fill simple form
  • Customer support: fast or slow response
  • Procedures
  • Some requires you to contact them upon successful money transfer to their account (at your cost - SMS, call, etc)
  • Some does not require you to inform them upon successful money transfer to their account: they have a system to know who did transferred money to them
  • Payment method: choose the method which more convenient to you
  • Bank wires
  • Cash deposit through counter or Cash Deposit Machine
  • Credit card
  • Online bank services
  • Trustworthy
  • E-Gold certification

You can cash-out your E-Gold money via the website were you bought your E-Gold.

Doing Online Business: Getting Payments to Your E-Gold

You can make an online business and receive payments using E-Gold.

In your website, please include this link as your "Payment" link:

http://{your account number}.e-gold.com/

Example: http://100052.e-gold.com/

E-Gold Account Security

Never show or give to anyone your account number and paraphrase.

Referring Other People & Make Money

You can earn money by referring people to create E-Gold account. You will get commission every time your referrals received payments through their E-Gold accounts and whenever they buy E-Gold.

Place this link in your websites and emails so that your visitors or readers can create their E-Gold account:

https://www.e-gold.com/newacct/newaccount.asp?cid={your account number}

http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid={your account number}

Example:

https://www.e-gold.com/newacct/newaccount.asp?cid=100052

http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=100052


Making money with e-gold

Well, not really in the coverage I intended for this post though, just due to reader's demand. After having some money in e-gold form, either from MMO businesses or converted from live cash, there's several ways you can earn with/use it.

  • Buy & sell it and earn profit: e-gold DOES fluctuate with REAL gold, so it's possible to buy in a lot of e-gold when the gold price is low then sell it later to gain profit. People often do such business in groups, and are called "gold bugs". This costs a lot of time and efforts, so personally I haven't tried this yet.
  • Invest it in some business. I prefer online-capital of all, honest business for long-term.
  • Play casino, games.
  • Advertise with it. Obeus is just like Adsense, with an exception that it accepts e-gold. You can find Obeus ads at the bottom of this page.
  • Convert it again for serious stuff: e-gold can be used to fund some forex services.
Feel free to add to the list anything I may have missed in the forums (link to the right :P)

TRAFFIC EXCHANGES for hyip advertising

Traffic Exchanges are a big industry, just for a test put traffic exchanges in google, yahoo or msn and you will get indicated it will then go by rank on the search engines.

There is a technique to make these engines work for you, simply is it consistency. There is a brilliant free training room for just this type of marketing it’s a big industry like I said.

When you use exchanges the beauty is you can join free and click away to earn credits, in a way its like internet money. You can upgrade in many but personally I see them working daily on free traffic only if you are short on time then it may be worth upgrading at some of the bigger ones?

So how do you know if a exchange is going to be good?

Here are some tips:

Population of members (make sure its over 2000 generally)
Hits can get tracked
You can surf daily or get in your back office to proportion hits daily.

So when you are in a industry of High Yielding Investments do not be stuck with no
Advertising budget as this service is available and all you have to do is use it.

Google at the Crime Scene.

Google at the Crime Scene: Profiling Websites, Estimating Traffic, and Combating Click Fraud.

If you own a web site, Google wants your traffic details, or at least they want to be able to estimate your traffic and the behavior of visitors at your web site. It’s something that might help them uncover click fraud by discovering unusual amounts of traffic and unusual behavior by visitors to sites.

They’ve been handing out tools to let people measure their own traffic, such as Google Analytics.

They’ve also recently announced the release of Website Optimizer (beta), which is a program that lets Adwords users test different variations of their landing pages. It appears that between the two programs, and some reasonable guesses, Google might be able to use the information provided to help build traffic models that might be used to help them combat illegal clicks.

Profiling Web Sites

One of the initial steps in estimating traffic to pages is profiling those sites. Here are some things that they might include in this profile:

* The primary Language used by the site (English, French, etc.)
* A category for the site by type or intent, such as a shopping site or news site
* A category for the site by industry classification (targeted towards computer enthusiasts or home contractors, for example)
* The geographical location of the site’s host
* The average price of a product for sale (for shopping sites), or;
* Information about the HTML layout of the site (mostly text, or graphics, etc.).

Traffic to different sites may be estimated upon these profiles, and detailed statistics about the sites. If there are unusual traffic patterns uncovered at sites that display Google’s Adwords, that may be a sign of foul play (click fraud).

Estimating Traffic Based upon a Traffic Prediction Model

When Google knows about the traffic to some sites that fit a particular profile, they can estimate the traffic to other sites. A Traffic Prediction Model may also include values or tags describing:

* Expected traffic, including the behavior of the traffic, at a site.
* How long a typical user will spend at the site,
* How “deep” or how many links a typical user will click on within the site,
* The screen size of a typical user,
* The type of browser of a typical user, and;
* Demographic information of a typical user.

When someone uses Adwords, Google might use a traffic profile to estimate the amount and kind of traffic to their site. The initial traffic profile could be based on a known traffic profile of traffic at another site that has a similar set of descriptive tags as the initial set of descriptive tags determined for advertiser.

Different kinds of sites have different traffic profiles. For instance, at news site visitors tend to focus upon specific articles and read through them until they have finished. Traffic at a product comparison site usually sees behavior from users who are more likely to stop reading a particular product page once they find a product that meets their needs.

Traffic that doesn’t match the profile might be suspect.

Selling From Your Website

Greetings! Friends and relitives ask us all the time " How do sell from your website?" and no doubt you want to know as well. Over the next two issues we will be covering this very thing! We decided to divide it into two camps - tangibles and non-tangibles. Feel free to create a hybrid if you are daring, however, for the sake of simplicity - both for your visitors as well as your planning figure out which of the two is applicable and focus your efforts as needed. Tangibles: If you are selling products, it needs to be organized in some fashion. Be it by subject , or alphabet, or some other method such as price or season as an example. Lets say you're selling jewelry. You want to make it easy for your visitors to find what they're looking for first. You should have different sections i.e. rings, necklaces, watches, etc. You could have various designers alphabetized. It can also be broken down into price range aimed at a target audience. Or maybe target the sophisticed jewelry shopper who's looking for summer items or evening wear. The idea is that it's easy for them to find what they want and make a buying decision, then get on with their life. They will remember that the next time they need a particular item. Non-Tangibles: We recommend a clear organised presentation for non-tangibles as well. Because you are not dealing with a concrete product, information and services can be precived as being a bit nebulous and therefore suspect. As such, you want to make it very obvious what you are offering and how the client will benefit. Be precise. As in everything, keep it as simple as possible. The less work on their behalf, the quicker they can come to a buying decision. Examples, testimonials and references work to establish an air of trust and security, thus motivating the visitor to sign on with you. The Sale: The mechanism in wich the money goes from them to you and the product then gets into their hands, is of course of prime importance. In regards to payment, the obvious choice is of course credit cards. It's quick and easy on both you and your customers. Credit card payment is widly used and accepted. And this can be set up realitively easy by you. There are commpanies online that are happy to do this for you for a piece of every transaction. A small price to pay when considering that the sale may be lost due to too much trouble on your visitors behalf otherwise. 80% of something is better then 100% of nothing. The Support: I like to include extras. Links to other sites, pertinate information, or some other reason or benefit for the visitor to return to your site. You do a good job with your site and they'll browse around and maybe even make that impulse buy AFTER they get what they were looking for in the first place. About The Author Written by Corinna Gittens-Arnold Zalca, co-authored by Leron Gittens-Arnold Zalca, your home business resource and information site. http://www.zalca.com

Secrets of E-Commerce

Own an e-commerce site but not getting any sales? The online buyer is becoming more educated and more selective about what web sites they use. If you are getting high amounts of traffic but not enough sales, here are a few ideas to help your site increase your conversions.

Is It Easy?
Because there are so many e-commerce web sites out there, making sure your web site is easy to use is the number one goal. If it’s not, people will not use it. The first step is taking a look at your navigation. Keep your navigation simple so that visitors will not have to guess how to get through your site. It might seem cool to have a java based or flash animated navigation scheme, but is it necessary?

Is the navigation on your site consistent? Navigation should look the same on all pages so that visitors do not become confused while moving through the site. Use breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are the links that show how deep the user is into your site. An example would be if the user is looking at Ipods, the breadcrumb link could be Home > Electronics > MP3 Players. Giving the user a “sense of place” in the site can make the difference between a sale and a bounce.

How many steps does it take the user to buy from you? The rule of thumb is that it shouldn’t take more than three steps to buy online. Find the item, enter payment information, and complete the sale. It also helps to provide a graphic of the check out process and where they are currently in the process. Again, here’s the sense of place issue.

Presentation
It’s all about presentation! If you have a bad web site, you will be lucky if you make any sales. Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and colleagues from Carleton University's Human-Oriented Technology Lab in Ottawa have determined that it takes a user’s mind one twentieth of a second to decide whether they like your site or not. That’s not a lot of time. Use colors that work well together and make a good impression. If you are running advertisements on your site, keep them to a minimum so that your items are not lost in the clutter. Make sure all of your product graphics are clear and large enough to look at. If you have a search feature on your site (you should), make sure it produces the items the user is looking for. If you’re not sure how to do this, Google has free code you can use.

It you are serious about having an e-commerce site and sustaining it, hire a web developer with e-commerce experience to help out with your project. If you hire the right person, it will be well worth the money!

E-commerce, unending journey from 1994

E-commerce, a form of trading using internet as the medium, began its maiden journey from 1994 when a CD was sold on the internet by Net Market (as per a research done by Verisign). From that time onwards, there was no looking back. As of now E-commerce statistics say that, online retail sales in dollar terms occupy 2.1% percent of the total sales. If this percentage is taken into consideration, e-commerce has a long to way to go before it occupies a respectable chunk of online sales.

E-commerce involves both sale of products and services.

Sale of products is sale of tangible objects and sale of services includes online ticket bookings, online banking etc.

The progress of e-commerce revolves around two most vital factors.

(1) The customer has to get the same amount of satisfaction which he gets when he shops personally. He should be guaranteed about the quality of the product or service. If he is not satisfied about the promised quality, then channels of redress should exist.

The quality of the product/service offered depends upon the integrity of the seller. In many online trading websites like eBay, seller grading system has been introduced. This grading system helps the buyer to select the right seller. There are facilities for arbitration in case of any dispute.

This sort of grading system for sellers has to be introduced on an universal basis for all online traders.

Personally, being a web designer, I happened to purchase some web templates from an online trader. When I received the templates I was taken aback because all the templates have the same design with a slight color change.

(2) Security of the online transaction.

This is the most vital point in ecommerce. Customer Information privacy has to be maintained by online traders. Currently users are required to fill up all their payment details (like credit card numbers and expiry date etc) every time they register with a trader. So the customer information is at the hands of many traders. Instead of the decentralized maintenance of customer’s payment database, the customer’s database can be centralized, to be used by authorized traders in case of a transaction.

This system can explained further in this fashion:

Customer A has a credit card with Bank B. Normally when Customer A purchases a product or a service from traders D, E, F he has to provide his credit card details to all the traders. This might cause security breach at any point or from any trader. In order to avoid the security breach, the database should stay with the bank and when the customer wants to purchase a product from any specific trader, he will log in to the website of his bank and authorize the bank through another login process to approve the transaction to a trader.
The advantage of the above method is that the trader will not have any access to customer’s financial instrument (credit card) details but can get payment from the customer’s bank for the purchase of product or service.

Same sort of secuirty system can be divised for other digital currencies.

As of now one of the security steps in vogue is that of HSBC Bank which has issued security devices to its online banking customers. This security device generates random numbers every time, which have to be typed by the customer along with the username and password, before accessing his/her account.

So if any one, by design or by default gets access to the username and password of the customer, he cannot proceed further without the random number generating device.

E-commerce has a come a long way in the past decade and has much more long way to go in the time to come. Quality and security assured, E-commerce will definitely prosper as the main advantage is the ease of use.

Top 10 Ways to Have an Online Sale

If you need money quickly or want a surefire way to increase your cashflow, it's time to throw a sale. Having a sale is especially easy to do if you've sell electronic information products (available as an online download), as your overhead costs are very low once these products are created. However, a sale also works if you have physical products that have to be shipped, especially if you want to get rid of older versions of a product (cassette versions, for example), or if you have slightly used products that have been returned (a scratch and dent sale).

There's one key rule to remember for your sale -- make sure your audience is aware that the sale has a time limit on it. Many shopping cart programs permit you to put an expiration date on price specials for products.

Here are 10 occasions for you to have a sale:

1. Special occasion sale. Your birthday, children's birthdays, wedding anniversary, business anniversary, half birthday, etc. are all occasions in which you can have a sale. I constantly receive sale promotions commemorating the owner's birthday or business anniversary. You can even have a little fun with this and create your own special celebratory occasion -- your cat had kittens, your child walked for the first time, your daughter lost her first tooth, you repainted your house.....you get the idea.

2. National holiday sale. Those of us in the US might plan for national US holidays like Labor Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day. All you need to do is consult the calendar and determine the national holidays in your country. One of my favorite sales I offered a few years ago was one on Independence Day here in the US. I asked if my readers wanted coaching to help them declare their independence to do such things as finally starting that business of their dreams, change their career to something that gives them joy, creating a new marketing plan for their business that will get results, or reinventing themselves or their businesses. A great online resource to locate holidays around the world is http://www.earthcalendar.com.

3. Special event day sale. Do you realize that there are special days to celebrate almost every occasion? In the month of October alone there are Billiard Awareness Month, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Celebrate Sun Dried Tomatoes Month, National Cookie Month, to name just a few. The book, Chase's Calendar of Events, is published annually with the current dates for these special events. You can learn more about these days at http://www.chases.com. You can even submit information to them for a day that you'd like create!

4. Seasonal sale. Back-to-school sales are very popular, as are spring-cleaning sales, winter stock-up sales, and "get ready for summer" sales. Of course, if you have an international audience, those readers on the opposite end of the world from you may not be able to relate to getting ready for summer when it's their winter season, so you might want to use these sparingly.

5. Brick-and-mortar sales strategy. Believe it or not, what works in the brick and mortar retail world also works online. It's very common for retailers to hold tent sales, inventory clearance sales, scratch and dent sales or close-out sales, so you can model that type of sale in your online business. In one of Tom Antion's workshops I attended a few years ago, he talked about having an inventory clearance tent sale and had a graphic of a red-striped tent that went out with his promotion. The great irony, he explained, is that he has no inventory because the items he had on sale were all electronic downloads. However, it was one of the most popular sales he had held, as the concept of a tent sale is very familiar to the American consumer.

6. Across-the-board discount or coupon sale. Give your contact list 25% off or 50% off of everything you sell, or create a coupon code or special link for a sale on certain items. You can make this coupon or discount available exclusively to your VIP list, whether that's your audience at a conference, your email newsletter list, or your current client base. Everyone feels special if they're on a VIP list!

7. Pre-release sale. Do you have a product that's almost ready to launch, a subscription membership site that's about to go live, or a printed book that's about to be issued? If so, give your list members the opportunity to buy it at a special price before it's released to the public. Consumers want to be the first to have the newest information, so give your list members first shot at your newest information.

8. BOGO sale (buy one, get one free). What works for Payless Shoes can work for you, as well. You can offer a buy one, get one free for one of your products, and pitch it so that if one of your customers splits the costs with a friend, they'll each get a full product for 50% off the regular price. Or, they can give the additional copy to a client or colleague. Another way to create a BOGO offer is for all of your same-priced products, i.e. if you buy one for $29.99, you can get any other product priced at $29.99 or less, for free!

9. Payment plan sale. I see so many furniture store ads proclaiming, "Interest-free financing! No payment until some date that's 2 years from now." If you have higher priced products, you can do the same thing. Offer to let your customers divide payments over 3, 4, or more payments. Sophisticated shopping cart programs will permit you to set up recurring billing, so that your client's credit/debit card is charged automatically on the same day each month for the appropriate number of occurrences.

10. Tax-free or free shipping sale. If your state requires you to collect sales tax on your products, offer to pay the sales tax for your customers. Each August the State of Texas sets the first weekend of August as a "Tax-Free Weekend" for clothing purchases in preparation for sending children back to school. You can create a similar offering in your business, but you'll need to check with your state tax office on the legalities of offering such a sale. Or, you can offer free shipping if they buy before a deadline you've set, or if they buy a certain dollar amount from you. Instead of standard shipping, you can also offer to upgrade the shipping to express if they meet certain buying conditions.

Take a look at what types of sales make sense for you, get out your calendar, and integrate them into your marketing plan. If you have a good sense of when cashflow is tight, a planned sale should significantly boost your revenue.

Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Paid-to-Post Forum: A New Trend?

More and more people are building their own web sites and working hard to make their sites popular, so they can get revenues from advertisements. Since a forum is one of the most popular means of getting ad revenues, new forums are born here and there. How do they compete with each others to get a good share of the market?

By paying their members for posting.

Paid-to-post forum isn't a new idea. Many such forums have existed since several months ago, even in the beginning of the year we have just passed (2006). At those early days, members are usually paid between 1 to 2 cents for a post. However, since it was the beginning of paid-to-post forums, the business model of many forums were not strong enough to prevent them from collapsing after a certain time.

Now it is different. Many forum owners have come with many advertising means, starting from contextual ad systems, banner ads, signature ads, even being the official payment processor of a forum. Rates for a post have increased, and members are now more selective in choosing the forum they want to participate in. A forum that pays 'only' 1 cent per post is considered not worth joining, while a forum that pays 3 to 5 cents per post will be crowded by new members everyday. We have seen this phenomenon in the newly born Mylot and GoldAge .

Since the newer business model proved to be strong, many forums are born lately to get their own chunk of the market. Some forums that are brand new include got-paid-forum , and Betlik .

Now, only time will prove whether they will really last like the big players MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold or end up biting the dust.

Fenomenal HYIP : please-invest

Please-invest.com

They pay variable daily return (approximately 2.0% daily) which are compounded onto your account balance. All account compunds at 100% and you can withdraw a little or everything at any point.

Mentioned above sounds good standard program at any HYIP, but how about with "the other good program" that they had provide such :

- Control of fund 24 x 7

- Minimum first deposit $0.25 (so lightly for amatir HYIP player); plus for new member will get bonus $2.50 (the bonus can only withdrawed after 60 days since registered as member)

- 5% daily profit from refferal program

The first thing that HYIP player must do is investigate the "HYIP target". Let see, we can browse at guaranteedhyips.com. Please-invest had give $275 for guarantee price (sounds good). Here is how the guarantee program works : The Admin of a program lists his/her program. When listing they also spend any given amount of money they choose ($200+) to be sent to a holdings e-gold account. They will also state the date they guarantee their program for. We will then track the program for the investors, and if the program pays to the date given, the Admin will get back 90% of his Guaranteed Escrow funds. If the program is not paying by the date given then the funds are not returned to the Admin and we will Break it up as follows : 50% goes towards our costs as well as paying employees; 50% will go to Talkgold.coms Contest Fund. Talkgold has agreed to actually give away half of all the money we get from programs which do not honor their guarantee. Talkgold will have large contests in which all its members will be entitled to these large cash rewards.

The second, in the MMG forum, the Admin said that the $2.5 bonus program will closed after they reach 10,000 member (the calculate of total bonuses are $2.5 x 10,000 = $25,000 they had spend huge money just for the bonuses)....

Please-invest spent a huge money to just for the banner advertising, from $20 until $30,000 (they must be quite serious HYIP).

Techniqually, you can earn quite a bundle off that initial $0.25 plus the old $2.50 bonus. I made some test calculations for the interest, If you started out with $2.75 and allow it to keep compounding, you will have...

$16.34 in 3 months

$97.13 in 6 months

$577.27 in 9 months

$3,430.79 in 1 year. (can you imagine that?! you just start with 25 cent!)

These estimations were calculated using the current average daily return, which is approximately 2.0%

you can try this fenomenal HYIP as farm investing : Please-invest.com

Make Money Without Investing

Lots of people are trying to earn money from internet these days. The net itselfs provides so many ways of earning. Some of them are free, others need taxes/fees/investments to join. The question is - can you make money, without spending a penny?!

The first 2 levels of building a bussiness are:
1st - invest/pay with your time
2nd - invest your money

The point is you can make money for your time, you can spend all day working on Paid to Read, Paid to Click, Paid to Promote sites, you will earn money, but still not a big amount.

People say: "Money makes money" or in my country it sounds like "Money goes to money"!
It means that, if you want to earn big, you have to give something from yourself.

Lets say you have a great browser-based online game (such as darkgalaxy.com as example). It is already online and you decide that you want to earn from it. You put some advertisements on. Well the site is not promoting itself, so you have to advertise it to other sites. You promote a lot, then visitors start joining, they invite their friends. With the members comes more people that want to advertise on you site. At this point you will start working from your investment(and time of course, but image what will happen with the site if you dont promote it).

It is the same way with the Get paid to industry. Let's compare the 2 "levels"

You register in couple of PTR, PTC and PTP sites, you click work 'em few hours a day. And in the end of the month you earn 20$ - 80$ and this is only if you are constant and motivated to it!

You research the net and find some good autosurf/HYIP sites, you invest 200 bucks, you don't work hours a day for it, and at the end hopefully you earn your money. Lets say you invest in some surfsites for example in 12 dailypro, you surf 12 pages a day (10 minutes) for 12 days and you get yourself 44% of the money invested - 88$, that you can reinvest and earn even more!

Personally, i try to do it both ways, in the beginning i concentrate on investing my time. I was not able to invest. Later on i have invested what i have earned. It was risky of course, but i was happy of the results, actually i still am!

Thanks for reading!

Gold Prices: Curious new thing

Ever since the big stock market downturn a few weeks ago, I've started noticing something that seems to be completely new: The price of gold seems to be working in tandem with the US stock market instead of in opposition.

The old, opposition pattern made sense from the idea that as people pulled their money out of stocks they bought gold as a safe haven - a place to ride out the storm so they could preserve their value and come back and buy some bargains later. Then, as the prices of stocks started going up, sure enough, the price of gold would go down to reflect the selling of these
safe-haven investors.

So now I'm asking myself (and not getting any answer!), "What has changed? Why aren't these investors buying gold when they sell their stocks like they did before? What are they doing with the money? (Bonds went up when stocks went down, but I don't think the amount reflected a significant proportion of what came out of the stock market.) All that's left would seem to be
cash, and that leads to the question, "Why are investors now deciding that fiat money is a better safe haven than gold?" And, furthermore, "Why did gold investors decide that the decline of the stock market was a signal to dump their gold - and the resurgence of the stock market a signal to buy it back again?" That seems totally counterintuitive to me!

No matter how I turn this over in my mind, I can't come up with a logical explanation for it, so I'm turning to this list to see what wisdom can be pulled out of the woodwork here. I have a feeling that if we could understand this change, we could all profit nicely - both in the stock and the gold markets.

Anybody?

PS: Something else I noticed: The ratio of silver to gold seems to be tracking very closely with the movements of gold vs. USD. For example, when gold and the stock market was doing really well right before the Chinese scare, silver was about 2.12% of gold. When stocks (and gold) turned sour, silver dropped down below 2% - maybe about 1.95 or so. Then, when stocks
and gold starting coming back up, silver moved back up over 2%, where it remains at this writing. Correlation signifying something? I wish I knew what!

To Invest In HYIP Or Not - HYIP Investment Tips and Promotions

This article aims to educate people on why HYIP is right for some people and not right for others because of the risks associated with a potential for large profits.

To Invest In HYIP Or Not

Many people question why you would get involved in a high yield investment program, but really, the answer is simple. Extraordinary profit. While it's true that most high yield investment programs are high risk, they also provide the opportunity to make a large amount of money in a relatively short period of time. High yield investment programs are not for the weary or the timid as it's very high risk investing, but those who do take part are usually not sorry for the experience.

High yield investment programs, or HYIP is something that many investors simply steer clear of because they have heard horror stories or had a bad investment experience and don't want to risk losing their hard earned cash. But, being involved in an HYIP doesn't have to be a bad thing, and for most people, the results are well worth the risk that is involved in this type of investing.

HYIP is attractive for a lot of risk taking investors because they can invest with very small quantities. In addition, most HYIP programs are easy to get started in and follow even if you are relatively new to the investing world. Most HYIPs use a pyramid scheme, so that new investors actually provide cash to pay existing investors. As long as new investors keep coming on board, investors will continue to be paid. With a good high yield investment program this can work out, with poorly planned programs, you'll find that even the first payments are made fraudulently and things unravel fairly quickly.

Investors needn't worry about the fact that some high yield investment programs fall apart, because it's like any business, some succeed, and some fail. It's up to the investor to do his or her research about any one program and decide if it meets all the safe investing criteria. The thing about an HYIP program is that it can be here today and gone tomorrow if people stop investing, which is where a lot of the risk comes from when you invest in this type of program. But, if you get in on the ground level and pull out when things don't seem to be going quite as well, you can still make an extraordinary amount of money in a rather small amount of time.

High yield investment programs really took off with the introduction of electronic currencies such as e-gold. The reason for this is that investors can buy their electronic funds immediately and start investing right away. Often, these e-currencies can be purchased at a great rate as well, making them doubly attractive to investors. Once an investor begins to earn, he or she can cash out any time and will be paid in e-currency, which is then traded in for a cash value. Electronic currencies really brought the HYIP world to the investment forefront because it made the programs even easier to follow and interact with.

Like all types of investing, HYIP is not for everyone. Many investors believe that opportunities to get involved with an HYIP are just like deciding to throw your money away. Because of e-currencies, many people receive emails for various HYIP programs and consider them nothing more than spam from scammers who want to steal their money. In certain cases this may be true, in other cases an HYIP is a legitimate way to make a good return on even the smallest investment. It's all about choosing the right HYIP and knowing when to pull out if things start to get a bit shaky. If you are good at recruiting people to invest in the programs that you are interested in, than an HYIP may be perfect for you. So long as you can keep getting "referrals" or new investors, your HYIP will likely continue to pay well for a substantial period of time. It'll pay even better if the people that you recruit will also recruit, as it's a pyramid scheme that will allow you to make more money if more people get involved.

With an interest rate of around one percent per day, it's obvious that there is serious risk where an HYIP is concerned, but if you do the research, that percentage can add up quite quickly, making you a sizeable amount of money. If you aren't afraid of high risk investing, an HYIP may be the way to go. Just be sure to do your research ahead of time to take away a little bit of the risk associated with this type of investing.

Thursday 26 April 2007

Paypal.com, Paymate.com.au and Credit Card Fraud

A few years back I was running a little ecommerce service as part of my Magic: The Gathering trading card site MTGParadise.com. Back when I was in the thick of things playing the game I used to win a lot of cards and did a hell of a lot of trading and selling at every tournament. More often I enjoyed the trading and selling more than the tournament itself.

Once my site became huge and I realised that there really wasn’t a good online card shop for Australians I decided to try and be that card shop. I had the audience and that’s usually the hard part. I managed to locate some wholesalers and went to work creating what I called MTGParadise Mail Order. I listed a lot of my personal collection which I had built up over the years from winning, buying and selling. I also listed sealed new product which was sold in boxes and booster packs which I located from the wholesalers. Because I had no wish to expose myself to too much stock investment I would almost “drop ship” before drop shipping became common for the public to do, in the sense that I would buy sealed product as sales came through rather than maintain a new stock inventory. Unfortunately it wasn’t real drop shipping since I had to still order the products, have them shipped to me, and then ship them out to the client which slowed things down.

The service did reasonably well. It was a horribly manual process because I would have to update card lists and inventory counts all by hand and I spent a lot of time running to the post office. I didn’t plan the service to be a proper business so I wasn’t considering systematising my inventory and having an online shopping cart like overseas card stores (which I would for sure do now, manual updates are a pain!). Another problem was that card selling has tiny margins and if it wasn’t for the fact that I managed to win cards I don’t think I would have made much profit. I did enjoy it for the most part though so I kept it going for a good year or so while studying at university.

One day I got a query from a person in Thailand wanting to buy boxes of cards. The profit wouldn’t be much because of the aforementioned tiny margins, but it would be significant enough that I was very keen to get his business.

He wanted to pay with credit card.

I asked my father about taking credit cards since he did for his business. My dad offered use of his “click-clack” manual credit card processor for the order. The customer emailed his credit card number and details and we checked the number against the ‘reported stolen’ list and it was fine. I processed the order, shipped the cards and was pleased with my first big sale.

Over the next few months I continued to have increasingly significant orders from this client which I carefully processed through my father’s credit card processor. Since I was doing such a regular amount I decided to get my own merchant account and after some looking around a bank was willing to provide me with the account. I then started to process orders through my own account.

One day many months after the first Thailand order I got a call from my father’s wife about a chargeback that had been initiated on the first credit card order I had processed from this customer in Thailand. I was worried, but not too worried because I thought that since we had verified the card for every purchase and it checked out that it just must be a mistake. I emailed the client and he told me it was just a mistake at his end so I relaxed a bit.

Unfortunately it wasn’t, the customer was a credit card fraudster and I had been very stupid. Over the next few weeks I came to grips with the fact that many thousands of dollars of sales would be ‘bouncing’. Initially I was angry with the banks that they didn’t offer more protection but as I slowly investigated the whole merchant account system I realised that the merchant is usually always the one taking the risk and that when no signature from the customer is present, which for web based orders is not really feasible, then the customer has all the power. I also read over the communications from the months of dealing with this client and realised that there were plenty of warning signs that I just refused to take notice of. I was caught up in the ‘business’ of it all and being very naive.

It was a lesson learnt. I learnt about credit card fraud, merchant accounts and the risk involved with selling over the Internet. I learnt to be more cautious and not jump with eagerness at every significant order that comes through. Call me paranoid, but it’s from experience. Note that I am complaining from the point of view of a merchant but there are instances where the customer has problems too.

When I then went on to setup credit card payment options for my clients at BetterEdit.com I was very careful. By this time I had discovered paypal and later I would also learn about Paymate, an Australian version of Paypal. These services were reasonably good solutions to provide online payment options and to this day BetterEdit processes many transactions online through them.

I have not had one problem with credit card fraud for any Betteredit essay editing service order (touch wood) but on many occasions I have been contacted by the staff at Paymate regarding suspect orders. After my experiences I really appreciate the extra layer of protection provided by Paymate. They protect you before an order is processed and offer personalised protection. As an Australian running an Australian based business I can recommend Paymate as one of the safest ways to accept credit cards and I don’t mind paying the fees for that extra level of security. Sure there are features I’d like to see and things I’d like changed at Paymate, but for the moment they offer the best option available.

I would also like to say I feel secure with Paypal but to be honest I do not. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from other Paypal users. I’ve read through the chargeback policies at Paypal and while they do have a ‘department’ to deal with fraud, they make every effort to argue the case on behalf of their sellers and have an ‘industry leading’ low fraud rate I don’t feel 100% confident. They seem very reactive rather than proactive when dealing with credit card fraud. Their system doesn’t talk much about how they protect you from first taking fraudulent credit card orders, rather they help you to argue your case after a chargeback occurs. I know from experience that for online orders the merchant has little hope because the credit card company almost always is in favour of the cardholder.

The Paypal website seems designed to make it difficult to contact a person. I’ve tried to contact them over the phone and spent an annoyingly long time waiting and trying to navigate a phone system clearly designed so they don’t have to employ too many phone staff. Their web support is much the same. Their whole system tries to avoid providing any personal support. They point you to look for an answer online via their FAQs which is great for the easy questions but often leads to a wild goose chase if you want to find answer to your very particular question. Even just timely and helpful customer service email support would be good but I always seem to find myself waiting a few days for a response that only half answers my question. Paymate on the other hand has a simple ‘Contact’ link which pops up an email that goes direct to a real live person that responds within 24 hours with a good answer. What more could you ask for.

All the problems at Paypal seem symptomatic of a business that got too big too quickly and I hope over time their customer support will improve as it ‘catches up’. All in all though I should note that Paypal has been good for my business and since it is the market leader in online payment processing it will most likely remain as a payment option at BetterEdit.com.

TroyBank Doesn’t Exist! Scam!

TroyBank is a new hyip which gaining more popularity nowadays due to their heavy advertisement strategy. A hyip which claims to be a real online company and has been established ten years ago and offers 2% daily for 100 days or 4% daily for 6 months (since when bonds become an aggressive type of investment and not volatile that could afford to give you that much?).

I managed to contact the Centre of Registers and Information Systems Of Estonia to help me to verify the existence of TroyBank. They were very helpful that I actually received two responses from them which as follow:

“In the central database of registration departments of courts there is NO information about registration of the company called TroyBank Management Department. You can see it on the website of the central database of registration departments of courts https://ar.eer.ee/lihtparing.py

Best regards,

Maie Õunpuu
Centre of Registers and Infosystems
www.eer.ee”

“Dear fairyjadoo,

I got information from Simona that you have question about one website that is registered in Estonia. Unfortunately I don’t have much information about it except that this website has been done on year 1996 by Markko Vainikko, who is not connected to any companies in Estonia. Also there is not any company like Troybank or Troy… with such address in Estonian Commercial Register.

If you have further interest then you may write to the webmaster of that site (webmaster@troybank.com) but I’m not sure whether this address is in use anymore.

I hope the information is useful.

Kind regards,

Gerli Hämmal
Project manager of European Business Register
Centre of Registers and Infosystems
Lõkke 4, 19081 Tallinn, Estonia
tel: +372 6 837 508
www.eer.ee
gerli.hammal@just.ee”

A3Union Operating Since 2003

A3Card.com & A3Union.com

A3 Union now can provide their clients with state of the art facilities to use Egold, Ebullion and Gold, they are really leaping ahead of their competition. The amazing part is using the Master Card logo, this is truly a global company, take a look at what we here at the Journal have noticed.

Once at A3Union's site you get the feeling of professionalism and high ethical standing in the world of High Investment Yielding Portfolios. We already know of their exception service.

FEATURE

Global Presence

9 Representing offices in 7 countries worldwide!

Today A3Union consists of dedicated and experienced investment professionals in Europe, the United States and Asia. A3Union analyses transactions using its knowledge of both the local and international high yield investment markets, and also relationships with over 20 global high yield investment partners. Having an international presence allows us to understand our customers not just remotely, but personally.

The website is ranked as in good standing on over 50 rating websites, forums, magazines, blogs and other websites.

Truly now we are seeing a global market venturing into countries where HYIP has been misunderstood and considered unworthy. Now with companies like A3 Union they are setting the trend and a high standard for the industry. We here at Ecommerce Journal Applaud their strong integrity.

This company in its first year of trading had a turnover of over $4 Million USD dollars this was viewed as a major milestone in the life of this company and promises to be a very prosperous new year. The total recognised gain was over 3 Million Dollars USD dollars.

We have seen nothing but Strong Management, Strong Professionalism and cannot wait to see what happens next.

The A3 Card is an exceptional feature to add to their company structure providing both a offline and online presence. The fact you can fund the card with so many of our current HYIP friendly banks this is exceptional. This card is on a par with the one outlined with Paypal, Safepay and many exclusive to HYIP. The encryption and security is state of the art along with the services. That means a lot as we don’t want anyone else getting our investments.

We are proud supporters of this company and the milestones this truly professional company has reached in a very short time, Excellent!

This company we can recommend and wish to see the new News arriving that seems very exciting times for this company.


Troybank Red Sign Arises - HEAVY INVESTORS BANNED

We have warned you about the TroyBank scam. And now we received complaints from a few of our readers about what TroyBank had done to them and their accounts.

Those members can be considered as big depositors in TroyBank। According to them, TroyBank has started to block their accounts and accused them sending spam. And TroyBank failed to provide proof for their 'spam accusation'.

Here we summarize the falsifications and facts:

- Fake physical address
- Fake telephone numbers
- Not in Estonian Commercial Register
- No license on the territory of Estonia
- Uses anonymity network to hide its real IP addresses
- Very high possibility that owner is from Lithuania
- Fake copied texts around the web.

Example: look this
and this.

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he first place finisher each month wins a ShareBuilder Investor Starter Kit!

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1. Register as a youngmoney.com member(FREE)
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Offshore merchant account - The benefits and potential scams

If your business is located offshore and you are looking for a credit card processing solution consider applying for an offshore merchant account. An offshore merchant account will help you financially should the US banks and processors find you unsuitable. An offshore merchant account normally has higher processing rates and longer hold-back periods but this type of account requires its deposits.

The Benefits of an Offshore Merchant Account

Once you’ve obtained an offshore merchant account you will find its advantages to be very appealing. Easy access, credit card processing and decreased taxes are only some of the benefits you will be enjoying. Having your business offshore is an advantage on its own but, being careful when selecting the merchant account provider you decide to do business with is important.

Be Aware For “Unbelievable” Offshore Merchant Account Offers

Some offshore merchant account providers will give you a great offer at times when you are having trouble getting an account at others. I strongly recommend keeping an eye open for scams. There are companies that try to get you to open an offshore merchant account sounding all “peachy” when in fact all they are after is your setup fee when sometimes can reach a couple of thousand dollars. Do your research and don’t be fooled.

Offshore Merchant Accounts Rates and Fees

Some offshore banks and credit card processors do charge a slightly higher processing fees and discount rates however when the merchant realizes the tax savings they are incurring by processing offshore they discover they are far better off than if they had remained processing onshore. High risk businesses like online casinos, adult, pharmacy and travel merchants prefer using an offshore merchant account as most domestic banks (US) decline these business categories, owing largely to the high volume sales, potential charge back and refunds etc. Offshore banks tend to be more liberal with their under-writing policies, tax savings and there are no sales volume restrictions.

Is An E-Commerce Merchant Service Required To Begin Payment Processing Online?

All over the internet you will hear that it is essential to get an e-commerce merchant service if you want to accept credit cards, debit cards and e-checks online for your business. To many people's surprise, there are alternative methods to receiving payment processing online. The reason e-commerce merchant service's get boasted up so highly is because of their convenience and high success rate.

Before we talk about alternatives to an e-commerce merchant service, let's talk about what you need to begin payment processing online. The first thing you need is a secure server with certification. This will allow your server to prevent data interception and ensure you that no unauthorized decoding occurs. The next two aspects are obvious in that you need an order form and a gateway to allow for authorization and processing.

The next thing you need is some form of shopping cart software. This will make life a lot less stressful during the payment processing online because it will automatically calculate purchases, taxes, and shipping and much more for you. Finally, you need an e-commerce merchant service, so let's take a look at some options now.

If you are looking for alternatives to begin payment processing online, one option is to contract with companies providing the processing on your behalf. The downside to this option is that it is more expensive than using a merchant account. The reason the prices will be higher is because the company will take a larger percentage of the ticket price off of each credit card payment you receive.

Another problem with using third parties is that you won't be able to collect your funds near as often as going through your own e-commerce merchant service. By using a third party you have to put your order form on the payment processing site, where you will probably only receive your funds two or three times a month. By using your own merchant service, you can expect to see the funds in two or three days.

If you try out third parties and just aren't satisfied, another option to begin payment processing online aside from merchant services is deferred processing. Deferred processing is when the customer inputs all data and you receive the data manually.

The advantage to using this is that you have the ability to manually look over every order form put in and correct any errors to ensure that your customer gets the right product and you truly get the payment. The downside is that it is extremely time consuming to look over every order that comes in.

As you can see, there are alternatives to using an e-commerce merchant service, but it comes with disadvantages and risks. This is not to say that you 100% positively will have failure with a different option, but the safe bet is to pay for a merchant service and begin your payment processing online on the right foot.

Google in The Midwest

Determined to keep ahead of rivals Microsoft and Yahoo in the search business, Google (Quote, Chart) today said it will build a corporate office in Ann Arbor, Mich., to prop up its online advertising program.

The sales and operations center for Google's AdWords program will create 1,000 direct and roughly 1,245 spin-off jobs in its first five years, generating more than $2 billion in personal income for Michigan workers, the company said in a statement.

Google's main revenue source, AdWords is the company's flagship product in an online advertising market the company easily leads.

Thousands of advertisers use AdWords to promote their products and services on the Web through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and site-targeted advertising for text and banner ads.

Google said Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm directed the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to convince Google to choose Michigan over other locations more than a year ago.

The MEDC even approved a high-tech single business tax credit valued at more than $38 million over 20 years to win the company's investment.

It didn't hurt that Google co-founder Larry Page grew up in the state and graduated from the University of Michigan.

Google shares were up $1.52 to $419.72 on the news in midday trading.

Google has been steadily adding new features and functionality to its AdWords platform to better compete with rivals Yahoo (Quote, Chart) and Microsoft (Quote, Chart) in the search space, a multi-billion-dollar market whose stakes are unparalleled in high-tech.

The Mountain View, Calif., company recently introduced ad scheduling, or "dayparting," for AdWords, which enables advertisers to automatically adjust their bids or pause and resume their campaigns.

In March, Google introduced local business ads, a new feature in AdWords that allows advertisers to promote location-based products and services.

Google is also looking to benefit from the online payment processing business, recently launching Google Checkout, which enables shoppers to purchase items securely from participating stores with a single Google login.

While Google is the search leader at present, neither Microsoft nor Yahoo feel they can ignore the revenue opportunity the advertising business promises in relation to search.

The subject has prompted some analysts, such as Merrill Lynch's Justin Post, to theorize that Google's ongoing traffic share gains and greater focus on building a software platform "increase acquisition probability."

Post said Yahoo or eBay are possible targets that could provide an immediate and large boost to Microsoft's search presence.

The Best Traffic Money Can Buy?

I will be honest; the title of this article is slightly misleading. You see, in my opinion, the best traffic that money can buy actually doesn't cost anything - it's free! :-)

I am talking of course about the magical traffic that we have all heard of but that only a select few have experienced.....free search engine traffic.

We all know that it is possible to get tons of free traffic from the big search engines - Google, MSN, Yahoo and so on but getting to the top of these engines has always been incredibly tough. Actually, I am being slightly dishonest again. Going back a few years, it was in fact very easy to get a high search engine ranking, you just put a page together, threw in a few meta keywords and a decent page title and scattered your keywords across the text content a bit and that was it. Wait a week or so and bingo, you've got yourself a front page ranking on Google! Ok, it wasn't quite that simple but it wasn't much harder than that.

Nowadays getting to the top of the engines is much harder and even if you do make it to the top, you can be dropped just as quickly if the search engine decides to change the way in which they rank websites.

However, whilst getting your site indexed and ranked in a decent position does take a bit of effort, it isn't impossible, especially if you know what the search engines are looking for. I am no expert on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but I have studied the subject on a casual basis since I first started online in 1998. I am really a lazy SEO'er and part of the reason for this is that I have spent the time in past optimizing sites, only to have Google (or whoever) suddenly decide that they don't like my site quite as much as they did last week and dropping me way down their rankings. All that lovely free traffic gone overnight :-( I got fed up with this a couple of years ago and vowed never to chase search engine traffic again!

That said, there is nothing quite like top quality, targeted, free traffic and the buzz of getting several hundred (or even thousand) visitors every single day without spending out a single penny can't be beaten. Just think how much it would cost you to buy 500 visitors each day using Google Adwords or similar (and this form of advertising isn't anywhere near as effective as it used to be but that's a story for another day!).

Anyway, back to the point of this article.... It is possible to get very good search engine rankings very quickly IF you follow some basic rules when you build your websites. To illustrate this (and remember, I am no expert), I noticed this week that my new site, SimplyWholesale.co.uk already has several number one (and front page) rankings on Google, MSN and several other smaller search engines! I am even beating eBay on some keywords and phrases :-) Now, bear in mind that this site was launched just two weeks ago. I haven't done any 'major' search engine optimization on it - just the absolute basics. There are hardly any inbound links to the site (seriously, like a dozen absolute maximum) AND none of the search engines have crawled anywhere near the entire site. At the time of writing, Google has indexed just 17 pages out of almost 1500!! Despite this, Google and the other engines are sending me some fairly healthy traffic everyday. Just think how much traffic I could be getting in a few weeks time once the site has been fully indexed?!

So, why am I telling you this? Simple. Because getting good search engine rankings doesn't have to be an impossible task. If you know the basics and apply them to your site, there is no reason why you shouldn't start to see some free traffic coming your way. Now of course, you can't expect to do a bit of work on your site and suddenly rank no.1 on Google for a really competitive search term such as 'earn money online' BUT you don't need to. At the end of the day all you need to do is make sure that your site ranks well for a handful of relevant keywords/phrases and as long as they are words that people are actually searching for, you will see the benefits.

Using Google Adwords To Drive Laser Targeted Traffic

The biggest well known secret in generating wealth in the internet based business or e-commerce is Traffic. Everybody knows it; every site wants it and every site needs it. The point of websites is to be visited and viewed. Many elaborate designs, money and countless hours of developing a site to make them beautiful and attractive are utilized. Without traffic, it is for naught.

With traffic comes a potential customer which basically means sales which in turn means profit. While many sites have collapsed in the past with the downturn of many internet based business, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some subniches.

This is a reason why e-commerce site laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It’s a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google’s Adwords. The surge in popularity of Google’s Adwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google's Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Aside from Google, you can also be featured in their other search networks, these includes sites like, AskJeeves, AOL Search and Netscape. These sites also show Adwords ads that react to searches done by visitors. There are also content networks, non-search engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking pr interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you're laser targeted traffic to your site.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable

Pay per click(PPC) advertising: It’s efficacy

PPC advertsing is the most popular form of online advertsising. Search engines play a vital role in PPC advertising. The businesses which want to go for PPC advertising have an understanding with a particular search engine/s. The listing on the agreed search engine page generally has a suitable title, a short heading and a promotional wording text. Whether the advertiser can amend the text, depends upon the policy of the particular search engine. The advertiser's ads get directed to related websites depending upon the website content, keywords and the advertisements text and keywords. The advertiser does not pay for the display of the ads, but pays only when a visitor clicks the ad.

So the PPC advertising has the following steps:

(1) The advertiser bids for keywords and prepares the advertisements in the required format.

(2) The advertisements are directed by the search engine to be displayed on related websites depending upon keywords and the content of the website. This is in other words called Contextual advertising. At this point the advertiser does not pay for the display of the advertisement.

(3) When a visitor enters the keywords in the Search engine, he is directed to the relevant websites. When he clicks on the ad links displayed in the website, the advertiser pays for it. If the click transforms into a business deal, then the advertiser gains. The search engine usually gets commission when the visitor clicks on the link.

Though PPC advertising is popular and at one point of time made huge profits, currently advertisers are skeptical about using it. But as of now it is still the most favored form of advertising.

The most vital element of PPC advertising is "keywords"

The content of the advertisers website should be written with reference to the particular keyword or set of keywords. Only then the advertiser can expect that the visitor to a particular search engine will get directed to the ads placed by him. This is much easier than
aiming for top search engine rankings. Achieving top search engine rankings make a number of weeks where as directing the visitor to the ads is dependent mainly upon keywords which can be changed easily.

Currently Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture are active partners in PPC campaign. There are several other small players too in this arena.

The difficult part of the PPC advertising is writing the content and optimizing the website to make it search engine friendly. The services of an Search Engine Optimizer are sometimes used to make a website search engine friendly. But the optimization can be done by the webmaster if has the right knowledge about the content of his site and the PPC program. If the web page is designed to catch the attention of the customer then PPC advertising is the most effective, choosing the right phrases and bidding on the right keywords is the secret behind success in PPC adverting.

How do I go about building an E-commerce site?

Building an ecommerce site involves three stages which are as follows.

Creating Customized Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart is like a store front where you can display your products,catalogue,price etc. The customer comes to your store through website and selects the item which he requires,after selection gets completed he will be shown with the total amount to be paid for the items he has selected.He would be given an option for paying through Credit Card and complete the transaction.

Approaching Payment Gateway Service Provider

Now the Payment Gateway Service Provider comes into picture who are authorized to accept credit card on behalf of merchant.It may be a Bank or Authorised Company who can accept and process credit card online.They Provide us with the payment gateway software that needs to be integrated with the website to enable secure transaction. The providers are been certified by Digital Certified Authorities like Verisign,Thwate etc which build trust among buyer and can transact safely.

Integrating Payment Gateway with your Website

This is very important part and the last stage of completing you e-presence.Our Team at Cyberweb Global Services Ltd will integrate the Payment Gateway software with your website to carry online transaction safely and securely.

Reinvest For Success

Many people when they start to make some money online make
the mistake of spending any profits they make. Now obviously
we all have living expenses which should of course be taken
care of, but any surplus profits left over from your online
ventures should be reinvested back into your business to
achieve long term success.

I always think your primary aim as an online business should
be to build a large database of subscribers, who you can
contact over and over again for as long as they're
subscribed to your ezine or newsletter. If you can build up
a good relationship with your subscribers, over time they
will become very receptive to your offers, and actually look
forward to receiving your emails, meaning increased
long-term profits for you.

This should be your main focus. Getting traffic to your site
is something you should aim to do, but a large percentage of
those people who leave your site without purchasing anything
may never return to your site. However, if you encourage
them to sign up to your newsletter by displaying a prominent
sign-up form, or maybe creating a pop-up form, you can send
them follow-up messages over time and increase your chances
of making a sale.

Therefore you should reinvest any profits you make, and your
time, which is also a valuable commodity, back into your
business with the aim of increasing your database of
subscribers.

What are the best ways of doing this?

Well I've always had great success with writing articles and
submitting them not only to all the major article
directories, but also directly to ezines relating to the
subject of my site. This doesn't cost anything and is
something I do regularly to generate a lot of traffic to my
sites, which usually take the form of an opt-in page where
subscribers can sign up to my newsletter, or the home page
of my site which prominently displays the opt-in form.

In addition to this, you can also guarantee inclusion in an
ezine, if they accept advertising, by paying the ezine owner
to run your advert. This can take the form of sponsor ads,
top/middle/bottom ads (top ads usually get seen the most so
they obviously cost more than middle or bottom ads), and
solo ads, which I've always found to be the most effective.

You could also invest in pay-per-click campaigns. This is
also another effective form of advertising as you can use
highly targeted keywords which ensures that any visitors are
pre-qualified and will already be interested in your site
when they click on the link to your site.

There are many other forms of paid advertising such as
buying text links or banner space on other sites, as well as
many types of offline advertising methods you could use.
However, in my opinion getting your articles and paid
adverts seen in related ezines, and using pay-per-click
advertising are the most successful forms of advertising.

Whatever types of advertising you decide to persue, just
keep reinvesting your profits (and your time) into your
business and focus on growing your online business. You will
reap the rewards in the long run.

How to Accept Payments Online

Have you created a website for your Internet business? Do you want to sell products through your website? Don’t rush out to sell your product until you have set up an online payment system. This is critical because many people falsely believe that you just set up a website and cash will instantly roll into your bank account. It doesn’t just happen automatically. You have to be able to accept payments online.

There are three crucial systems you need to setup. These systems include a shopping cart, Internet gateway, and a merchant account.

A shopping cart will take and maintain orders. A merchant account direct deposits the money you accept on your website into your bank account.

You also need a system that connects the shopping cart with your merchant account. This is where an Internet gateway comes in. The “Internet Gateway” is the link between the shopping cart and the merchant account. The shopping cart accepts the credit card information. The Internet gateway runs the credit cards and then deposits the money in your bank account.

Experienced Internet business owners know that merchant accounts can be tricky. Some merchant account providers can take advantage of you. Be careful.

For example, when you sign up for a merchant account you have to sign a contract. The contract could be as long as five years for certain merchant account providers. You also have to provide an estimate of how much money you will earn online in the year. If you low ball your yearly income then a merchant account might shut you down if you make more money then this estimate. Plus, some merchant accounts will hold your money. They may also go bankrupt.

Merchant accounts can be tricky when you make a great deal of money in a short amount of time. You need a merchant account provider that has the capabilities of running high credit card amounts each day. Verify that your merchant account provider is robust enough to provide you these services.

A merchant account only deals with VISA and MasterCard. American Express and Discover work differently. You have to contact American Express and Discover directly to set up a merchant account with them. American Express may have a higher rate, but it is well worth it. Remember, American Express card holders typically have money to spend and good credit. They are quality customers that are more likely to buy your products.

A great resource for an Internet Gateway is Authorize.net. Authorize.net is a top name in the Internet marketing industry. Authorize.net understands this specific business model. Internet marketing gurus can provide testimonials to the high quality of Authorize.net.

How long does it take money to show up in your bank account? It depends. Some merchant account providers take up to two weeks to transfer money into your bank account. However, you can find merchant accounts that will transfer money into your bank account almost immediately.

Tips & Tricks for Discovering Lowcost Keywords

Keywords are considered the lifeline of any successful pay per click campaign. If you select the wrong ones, you can zip through your entire advertising budget without getting anything in return. If you choose the right ones, you can beat your competition to the punch and get a better ROI by spending less.

As an advertiser, you can bid on as many keywords as you wish ? there are no limits. Most successful advertisers start off with 500-2,000 keywords and add on more as they go along.

There are a number of tools available on the market that can help you find these keywords. They include KeywordDiscovery.com and WordTracker.com. In addition, most search engines also offer their own versions of keyword-research tools.

There are a few things you can do to build up your keyword inventory. Start off by opening a new Notepad file and thinking of five to 10 general terms that are relevant to your business. Try to think like the customers to whom you are marketing: What terms do you think they would search for to find your products and services?

Then, take these primary terms and run them through a keyword research tool. At the same time, you can take the primary words and add keywords and adjectives to them, come up with different variations, synonyms, plural terms and even misspellings.

Keep in mind that, contrary to what many people believe, it?s actually a bad idea to target very general keywords. General keywords usually cost much more than specific ones and send large amounts of traffic, but unfortunately very few sales or leads.

As the advertiser, you have the ability to target precisely which visitors you want to come to your site, so you will want to bid on keywords that are directly related to your services. The more specific and narrow the keywords are, the more qualified traffic you will get.

When you are researching your keywords, you shouldn?t only be concerned with finding more keywords, but rather think about identifying the right keywords. Your goal is not just to get traffic to your site, but also to get targeted visitors who are more likely to convert into sales or leads.

E-Gold Introduction

E-Gold Introduction

E-Gold is gold currency. It is internationally accepted as a currency - a method of online payment. With E-Gold, you may buy things online; sell things online and accept payments in E-Gold currency; and do online investments. Other online payments are credit card, PayPal, E-Bullion, AsianPay, etc.

Like USD, E-Gold value is fluctuating too as its value is tied one-to-one to international gold value. Thus many gold investors invest in E-Gold. As the gold price drop, they buy E-Gold and as gold price drop, E-Gold is sell.

Almost all HYIPs accept E-Gold as their payment medium. HYIP is High Yield Investment Program, which offers high returns over your investment.

If you have a website, you can make that website as your cash-cow by accepting payments using E-Gold!

Creating E-Gold Account

It will take few minutes to complete an E-Gold account application.

All that you need to provide are your account name, user name, postal address, email address, contact numbers and paraphrase (a.k.a. password).

Buying E-Gold

There are many websites (companies or individuals) providing E-Gold services (buying, selling or converting).

These factors can be considered when you want to choose which one of those many websites to use:

  • Rate: choose the one that more profitable to you
  • Minimum buying or selling
  • Processing time: faster is better, based on your own experience
  • Registration
  • Some require you to become their member thus need to go through lengthy form filling
  • Some (especially selling of E-Gold) only require you to fill simple form
  • Customer support: fast or slow response
  • Procedures
  • Some requires you to contact them upon successful money transfer to their account (at your cost - SMS, call, etc)
  • Some does not require you to inform them upon successful money transfer to their account: they have a system to know who did transferred money to them
  • Payment method: choose the method which more convenient to you
  • Bank wires
  • Cash deposit through counter or Cash Deposit Machine
  • Credit card
  • Online bank services
  • Trustworthy
  • E-Gold certification

You can cash-out your E-Gold money via the website were you bought your E-Gold.

Doing Online Business: Getting Payments to Your E-Gold

You can make an online business and receive payments using E-Gold.

In your website, please include this link as your "Payment" link:

http://{your account number}.e-gold.com/

Example: http://100052.e-gold.com/

E-Gold Account Security

Never show or give to anyone your account number and paraphrase.

Referring Other People & Make Money

You can earn money by referring people to create E-Gold account. You will get commission every time your referrals received payments through their E-Gold accounts and whenever they buy E-Gold.

Place this link in your websites and emails so that your visitors or readers can create their E-Gold account:

https://www.e-gold.com/newacct/newaccount.asp?cid={your account number}

http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid={your account number}

Example:

https://www.e-gold.com/newacct/newaccount.asp?cid=100052

http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=100052


Making money with e-gold

Well, not really in the coverage I intended for this post though, just due to reader's demand. After having some money in e-gold form, either from MMO businesses or converted from live cash, there's several ways you can earn with/use it.

  • Buy & sell it and earn profit: e-gold DOES fluctuate with REAL gold, so it's possible to buy in a lot of e-gold when the gold price is low then sell it later to gain profit. People often do such business in groups, and are called "gold bugs". This costs a lot of time and efforts, so personally I haven't tried this yet.
  • Invest it in some business. I prefer online-capital of all, honest business for long-term.
  • Play casino, games.
  • Advertise with it. Obeus is just like Adsense, with an exception that it accepts e-gold. You can find Obeus ads at the bottom of this page.
  • Convert it again for serious stuff: e-gold can be used to fund some forex services.
Feel free to add to the list anything I may have missed in the forums (link to the right :P)

TRAFFIC EXCHANGES for hyip advertising

Traffic Exchanges are a big industry, just for a test put traffic exchanges in google, yahoo or msn and you will get indicated it will then go by rank on the search engines.

There is a technique to make these engines work for you, simply is it consistency. There is a brilliant free training room for just this type of marketing it’s a big industry like I said.

When you use exchanges the beauty is you can join free and click away to earn credits, in a way its like internet money. You can upgrade in many but personally I see them working daily on free traffic only if you are short on time then it may be worth upgrading at some of the bigger ones?

So how do you know if a exchange is going to be good?

Here are some tips:

Population of members (make sure its over 2000 generally)
Hits can get tracked
You can surf daily or get in your back office to proportion hits daily.

So when you are in a industry of High Yielding Investments do not be stuck with no
Advertising budget as this service is available and all you have to do is use it.

Google at the Crime Scene.

Google at the Crime Scene: Profiling Websites, Estimating Traffic, and Combating Click Fraud.

If you own a web site, Google wants your traffic details, or at least they want to be able to estimate your traffic and the behavior of visitors at your web site. It’s something that might help them uncover click fraud by discovering unusual amounts of traffic and unusual behavior by visitors to sites.

They’ve been handing out tools to let people measure their own traffic, such as Google Analytics.

They’ve also recently announced the release of Website Optimizer (beta), which is a program that lets Adwords users test different variations of their landing pages. It appears that between the two programs, and some reasonable guesses, Google might be able to use the information provided to help build traffic models that might be used to help them combat illegal clicks.

Profiling Web Sites

One of the initial steps in estimating traffic to pages is profiling those sites. Here are some things that they might include in this profile:

* The primary Language used by the site (English, French, etc.)
* A category for the site by type or intent, such as a shopping site or news site
* A category for the site by industry classification (targeted towards computer enthusiasts or home contractors, for example)
* The geographical location of the site’s host
* The average price of a product for sale (for shopping sites), or;
* Information about the HTML layout of the site (mostly text, or graphics, etc.).

Traffic to different sites may be estimated upon these profiles, and detailed statistics about the sites. If there are unusual traffic patterns uncovered at sites that display Google’s Adwords, that may be a sign of foul play (click fraud).

Estimating Traffic Based upon a Traffic Prediction Model

When Google knows about the traffic to some sites that fit a particular profile, they can estimate the traffic to other sites. A Traffic Prediction Model may also include values or tags describing:

* Expected traffic, including the behavior of the traffic, at a site.
* How long a typical user will spend at the site,
* How “deep” or how many links a typical user will click on within the site,
* The screen size of a typical user,
* The type of browser of a typical user, and;
* Demographic information of a typical user.

When someone uses Adwords, Google might use a traffic profile to estimate the amount and kind of traffic to their site. The initial traffic profile could be based on a known traffic profile of traffic at another site that has a similar set of descriptive tags as the initial set of descriptive tags determined for advertiser.

Different kinds of sites have different traffic profiles. For instance, at news site visitors tend to focus upon specific articles and read through them until they have finished. Traffic at a product comparison site usually sees behavior from users who are more likely to stop reading a particular product page once they find a product that meets their needs.

Traffic that doesn’t match the profile might be suspect.

Selling From Your Website

Greetings! Friends and relitives ask us all the time " How do sell from your website?" and no doubt you want to know as well. Over the next two issues we will be covering this very thing! We decided to divide it into two camps - tangibles and non-tangibles. Feel free to create a hybrid if you are daring, however, for the sake of simplicity - both for your visitors as well as your planning figure out which of the two is applicable and focus your efforts as needed. Tangibles: If you are selling products, it needs to be organized in some fashion. Be it by subject , or alphabet, or some other method such as price or season as an example. Lets say you're selling jewelry. You want to make it easy for your visitors to find what they're looking for first. You should have different sections i.e. rings, necklaces, watches, etc. You could have various designers alphabetized. It can also be broken down into price range aimed at a target audience. Or maybe target the sophisticed jewelry shopper who's looking for summer items or evening wear. The idea is that it's easy for them to find what they want and make a buying decision, then get on with their life. They will remember that the next time they need a particular item. Non-Tangibles: We recommend a clear organised presentation for non-tangibles as well. Because you are not dealing with a concrete product, information and services can be precived as being a bit nebulous and therefore suspect. As such, you want to make it very obvious what you are offering and how the client will benefit. Be precise. As in everything, keep it as simple as possible. The less work on their behalf, the quicker they can come to a buying decision. Examples, testimonials and references work to establish an air of trust and security, thus motivating the visitor to sign on with you. The Sale: The mechanism in wich the money goes from them to you and the product then gets into their hands, is of course of prime importance. In regards to payment, the obvious choice is of course credit cards. It's quick and easy on both you and your customers. Credit card payment is widly used and accepted. And this can be set up realitively easy by you. There are commpanies online that are happy to do this for you for a piece of every transaction. A small price to pay when considering that the sale may be lost due to too much trouble on your visitors behalf otherwise. 80% of something is better then 100% of nothing. The Support: I like to include extras. Links to other sites, pertinate information, or some other reason or benefit for the visitor to return to your site. You do a good job with your site and they'll browse around and maybe even make that impulse buy AFTER they get what they were looking for in the first place. About The Author Written by Corinna Gittens-Arnold Zalca, co-authored by Leron Gittens-Arnold Zalca, your home business resource and information site. http://www.zalca.com

Secrets of E-Commerce

Own an e-commerce site but not getting any sales? The online buyer is becoming more educated and more selective about what web sites they use. If you are getting high amounts of traffic but not enough sales, here are a few ideas to help your site increase your conversions.

Is It Easy?
Because there are so many e-commerce web sites out there, making sure your web site is easy to use is the number one goal. If it’s not, people will not use it. The first step is taking a look at your navigation. Keep your navigation simple so that visitors will not have to guess how to get through your site. It might seem cool to have a java based or flash animated navigation scheme, but is it necessary?

Is the navigation on your site consistent? Navigation should look the same on all pages so that visitors do not become confused while moving through the site. Use breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are the links that show how deep the user is into your site. An example would be if the user is looking at Ipods, the breadcrumb link could be Home > Electronics > MP3 Players. Giving the user a “sense of place” in the site can make the difference between a sale and a bounce.

How many steps does it take the user to buy from you? The rule of thumb is that it shouldn’t take more than three steps to buy online. Find the item, enter payment information, and complete the sale. It also helps to provide a graphic of the check out process and where they are currently in the process. Again, here’s the sense of place issue.

Presentation
It’s all about presentation! If you have a bad web site, you will be lucky if you make any sales. Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and colleagues from Carleton University's Human-Oriented Technology Lab in Ottawa have determined that it takes a user’s mind one twentieth of a second to decide whether they like your site or not. That’s not a lot of time. Use colors that work well together and make a good impression. If you are running advertisements on your site, keep them to a minimum so that your items are not lost in the clutter. Make sure all of your product graphics are clear and large enough to look at. If you have a search feature on your site (you should), make sure it produces the items the user is looking for. If you’re not sure how to do this, Google has free code you can use.

It you are serious about having an e-commerce site and sustaining it, hire a web developer with e-commerce experience to help out with your project. If you hire the right person, it will be well worth the money!

E-commerce, unending journey from 1994

E-commerce, a form of trading using internet as the medium, began its maiden journey from 1994 when a CD was sold on the internet by Net Market (as per a research done by Verisign). From that time onwards, there was no looking back. As of now E-commerce statistics say that, online retail sales in dollar terms occupy 2.1% percent of the total sales. If this percentage is taken into consideration, e-commerce has a long to way to go before it occupies a respectable chunk of online sales.

E-commerce involves both sale of products and services.

Sale of products is sale of tangible objects and sale of services includes online ticket bookings, online banking etc.

The progress of e-commerce revolves around two most vital factors.

(1) The customer has to get the same amount of satisfaction which he gets when he shops personally. He should be guaranteed about the quality of the product or service. If he is not satisfied about the promised quality, then channels of redress should exist.

The quality of the product/service offered depends upon the integrity of the seller. In many online trading websites like eBay, seller grading system has been introduced. This grading system helps the buyer to select the right seller. There are facilities for arbitration in case of any dispute.

This sort of grading system for sellers has to be introduced on an universal basis for all online traders.

Personally, being a web designer, I happened to purchase some web templates from an online trader. When I received the templates I was taken aback because all the templates have the same design with a slight color change.

(2) Security of the online transaction.

This is the most vital point in ecommerce. Customer Information privacy has to be maintained by online traders. Currently users are required to fill up all their payment details (like credit card numbers and expiry date etc) every time they register with a trader. So the customer information is at the hands of many traders. Instead of the decentralized maintenance of customer’s payment database, the customer’s database can be centralized, to be used by authorized traders in case of a transaction.

This system can explained further in this fashion:

Customer A has a credit card with Bank B. Normally when Customer A purchases a product or a service from traders D, E, F he has to provide his credit card details to all the traders. This might cause security breach at any point or from any trader. In order to avoid the security breach, the database should stay with the bank and when the customer wants to purchase a product from any specific trader, he will log in to the website of his bank and authorize the bank through another login process to approve the transaction to a trader.
The advantage of the above method is that the trader will not have any access to customer’s financial instrument (credit card) details but can get payment from the customer’s bank for the purchase of product or service.

Same sort of secuirty system can be divised for other digital currencies.

As of now one of the security steps in vogue is that of HSBC Bank which has issued security devices to its online banking customers. This security device generates random numbers every time, which have to be typed by the customer along with the username and password, before accessing his/her account.

So if any one, by design or by default gets access to the username and password of the customer, he cannot proceed further without the random number generating device.

E-commerce has a come a long way in the past decade and has much more long way to go in the time to come. Quality and security assured, E-commerce will definitely prosper as the main advantage is the ease of use.

Top 10 Ways to Have an Online Sale

If you need money quickly or want a surefire way to increase your cashflow, it's time to throw a sale. Having a sale is especially easy to do if you've sell electronic information products (available as an online download), as your overhead costs are very low once these products are created. However, a sale also works if you have physical products that have to be shipped, especially if you want to get rid of older versions of a product (cassette versions, for example), or if you have slightly used products that have been returned (a scratch and dent sale).

There's one key rule to remember for your sale -- make sure your audience is aware that the sale has a time limit on it. Many shopping cart programs permit you to put an expiration date on price specials for products.

Here are 10 occasions for you to have a sale:

1. Special occasion sale. Your birthday, children's birthdays, wedding anniversary, business anniversary, half birthday, etc. are all occasions in which you can have a sale. I constantly receive sale promotions commemorating the owner's birthday or business anniversary. You can even have a little fun with this and create your own special celebratory occasion -- your cat had kittens, your child walked for the first time, your daughter lost her first tooth, you repainted your house.....you get the idea.

2. National holiday sale. Those of us in the US might plan for national US holidays like Labor Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day. All you need to do is consult the calendar and determine the national holidays in your country. One of my favorite sales I offered a few years ago was one on Independence Day here in the US. I asked if my readers wanted coaching to help them declare their independence to do such things as finally starting that business of their dreams, change their career to something that gives them joy, creating a new marketing plan for their business that will get results, or reinventing themselves or their businesses. A great online resource to locate holidays around the world is http://www.earthcalendar.com.

3. Special event day sale. Do you realize that there are special days to celebrate almost every occasion? In the month of October alone there are Billiard Awareness Month, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Celebrate Sun Dried Tomatoes Month, National Cookie Month, to name just a few. The book, Chase's Calendar of Events, is published annually with the current dates for these special events. You can learn more about these days at http://www.chases.com. You can even submit information to them for a day that you'd like create!

4. Seasonal sale. Back-to-school sales are very popular, as are spring-cleaning sales, winter stock-up sales, and "get ready for summer" sales. Of course, if you have an international audience, those readers on the opposite end of the world from you may not be able to relate to getting ready for summer when it's their winter season, so you might want to use these sparingly.

5. Brick-and-mortar sales strategy. Believe it or not, what works in the brick and mortar retail world also works online. It's very common for retailers to hold tent sales, inventory clearance sales, scratch and dent sales or close-out sales, so you can model that type of sale in your online business. In one of Tom Antion's workshops I attended a few years ago, he talked about having an inventory clearance tent sale and had a graphic of a red-striped tent that went out with his promotion. The great irony, he explained, is that he has no inventory because the items he had on sale were all electronic downloads. However, it was one of the most popular sales he had held, as the concept of a tent sale is very familiar to the American consumer.

6. Across-the-board discount or coupon sale. Give your contact list 25% off or 50% off of everything you sell, or create a coupon code or special link for a sale on certain items. You can make this coupon or discount available exclusively to your VIP list, whether that's your audience at a conference, your email newsletter list, or your current client base. Everyone feels special if they're on a VIP list!

7. Pre-release sale. Do you have a product that's almost ready to launch, a subscription membership site that's about to go live, or a printed book that's about to be issued? If so, give your list members the opportunity to buy it at a special price before it's released to the public. Consumers want to be the first to have the newest information, so give your list members first shot at your newest information.

8. BOGO sale (buy one, get one free). What works for Payless Shoes can work for you, as well. You can offer a buy one, get one free for one of your products, and pitch it so that if one of your customers splits the costs with a friend, they'll each get a full product for 50% off the regular price. Or, they can give the additional copy to a client or colleague. Another way to create a BOGO offer is for all of your same-priced products, i.e. if you buy one for $29.99, you can get any other product priced at $29.99 or less, for free!

9. Payment plan sale. I see so many furniture store ads proclaiming, "Interest-free financing! No payment until some date that's 2 years from now." If you have higher priced products, you can do the same thing. Offer to let your customers divide payments over 3, 4, or more payments. Sophisticated shopping cart programs will permit you to set up recurring billing, so that your client's credit/debit card is charged automatically on the same day each month for the appropriate number of occurrences.

10. Tax-free or free shipping sale. If your state requires you to collect sales tax on your products, offer to pay the sales tax for your customers. Each August the State of Texas sets the first weekend of August as a "Tax-Free Weekend" for clothing purchases in preparation for sending children back to school. You can create a similar offering in your business, but you'll need to check with your state tax office on the legalities of offering such a sale. Or, you can offer free shipping if they buy before a deadline you've set, or if they buy a certain dollar amount from you. Instead of standard shipping, you can also offer to upgrade the shipping to express if they meet certain buying conditions.

Take a look at what types of sales make sense for you, get out your calendar, and integrate them into your marketing plan. If you have a good sense of when cashflow is tight, a planned sale should significantly boost your revenue.

Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Paid-to-Post Forum: A New Trend?

More and more people are building their own web sites and working hard to make their sites popular, so they can get revenues from advertisements. Since a forum is one of the most popular means of getting ad revenues, new forums are born here and there. How do they compete with each others to get a good share of the market?

By paying their members for posting.

Paid-to-post forum isn't a new idea. Many such forums have existed since several months ago, even in the beginning of the year we have just passed (2006). At those early days, members are usually paid between 1 to 2 cents for a post. However, since it was the beginning of paid-to-post forums, the business model of many forums were not strong enough to prevent them from collapsing after a certain time.

Now it is different. Many forum owners have come with many advertising means, starting from contextual ad systems, banner ads, signature ads, even being the official payment processor of a forum. Rates for a post have increased, and members are now more selective in choosing the forum they want to participate in. A forum that pays 'only' 1 cent per post is considered not worth joining, while a forum that pays 3 to 5 cents per post will be crowded by new members everyday. We have seen this phenomenon in the newly born Mylot and GoldAge .

Since the newer business model proved to be strong, many forums are born lately to get their own chunk of the market. Some forums that are brand new include got-paid-forum , and Betlik .

Now, only time will prove whether they will really last like the big players MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold or end up biting the dust.

Fenomenal HYIP : please-invest

Please-invest.com

They pay variable daily return (approximately 2.0% daily) which are compounded onto your account balance. All account compunds at 100% and you can withdraw a little or everything at any point.

Mentioned above sounds good standard program at any HYIP, but how about with "the other good program" that they had provide such :

- Control of fund 24 x 7

- Minimum first deposit $0.25 (so lightly for amatir HYIP player); plus for new member will get bonus $2.50 (the bonus can only withdrawed after 60 days since registered as member)

- 5% daily profit from refferal program

The first thing that HYIP player must do is investigate the "HYIP target". Let see, we can browse at guaranteedhyips.com. Please-invest had give $275 for guarantee price (sounds good). Here is how the guarantee program works : The Admin of a program lists his/her program. When listing they also spend any given amount of money they choose ($200+) to be sent to a holdings e-gold account. They will also state the date they guarantee their program for. We will then track the program for the investors, and if the program pays to the date given, the Admin will get back 90% of his Guaranteed Escrow funds. If the program is not paying by the date given then the funds are not returned to the Admin and we will Break it up as follows : 50% goes towards our costs as well as paying employees; 50% will go to Talkgold.coms Contest Fund. Talkgold has agreed to actually give away half of all the money we get from programs which do not honor their guarantee. Talkgold will have large contests in which all its members will be entitled to these large cash rewards.

The second, in the MMG forum, the Admin said that the $2.5 bonus program will closed after they reach 10,000 member (the calculate of total bonuses are $2.5 x 10,000 = $25,000 they had spend huge money just for the bonuses)....

Please-invest spent a huge money to just for the banner advertising, from $20 until $30,000 (they must be quite serious HYIP).

Techniqually, you can earn quite a bundle off that initial $0.25 plus the old $2.50 bonus. I made some test calculations for the interest, If you started out with $2.75 and allow it to keep compounding, you will have...

$16.34 in 3 months

$97.13 in 6 months

$577.27 in 9 months

$3,430.79 in 1 year. (can you imagine that?! you just start with 25 cent!)

These estimations were calculated using the current average daily return, which is approximately 2.0%

you can try this fenomenal HYIP as farm investing : Please-invest.com

Make Money Without Investing

Lots of people are trying to earn money from internet these days. The net itselfs provides so many ways of earning. Some of them are free, others need taxes/fees/investments to join. The question is - can you make money, without spending a penny?!

The first 2 levels of building a bussiness are:
1st - invest/pay with your time
2nd - invest your money

The point is you can make money for your time, you can spend all day working on Paid to Read, Paid to Click, Paid to Promote sites, you will earn money, but still not a big amount.

People say: "Money makes money" or in my country it sounds like "Money goes to money"!
It means that, if you want to earn big, you have to give something from yourself.

Lets say you have a great browser-based online game (such as darkgalaxy.com as example). It is already online and you decide that you want to earn from it. You put some advertisements on. Well the site is not promoting itself, so you have to advertise it to other sites. You promote a lot, then visitors start joining, they invite their friends. With the members comes more people that want to advertise on you site. At this point you will start working from your investment(and time of course, but image what will happen with the site if you dont promote it).

It is the same way with the Get paid to industry. Let's compare the 2 "levels"

You register in couple of PTR, PTC and PTP sites, you click work 'em few hours a day. And in the end of the month you earn 20$ - 80$ and this is only if you are constant and motivated to it!

You research the net and find some good autosurf/HYIP sites, you invest 200 bucks, you don't work hours a day for it, and at the end hopefully you earn your money. Lets say you invest in some surfsites for example in 12 dailypro, you surf 12 pages a day (10 minutes) for 12 days and you get yourself 44% of the money invested - 88$, that you can reinvest and earn even more!

Personally, i try to do it both ways, in the beginning i concentrate on investing my time. I was not able to invest. Later on i have invested what i have earned. It was risky of course, but i was happy of the results, actually i still am!

Thanks for reading!

Gold Prices: Curious new thing

Ever since the big stock market downturn a few weeks ago, I've started noticing something that seems to be completely new: The price of gold seems to be working in tandem with the US stock market instead of in opposition.

The old, opposition pattern made sense from the idea that as people pulled their money out of stocks they bought gold as a safe haven - a place to ride out the storm so they could preserve their value and come back and buy some bargains later. Then, as the prices of stocks started going up, sure enough, the price of gold would go down to reflect the selling of these
safe-haven investors.

So now I'm asking myself (and not getting any answer!), "What has changed? Why aren't these investors buying gold when they sell their stocks like they did before? What are they doing with the money? (Bonds went up when stocks went down, but I don't think the amount reflected a significant proportion of what came out of the stock market.) All that's left would seem to be
cash, and that leads to the question, "Why are investors now deciding that fiat money is a better safe haven than gold?" And, furthermore, "Why did gold investors decide that the decline of the stock market was a signal to dump their gold - and the resurgence of the stock market a signal to buy it back again?" That seems totally counterintuitive to me!

No matter how I turn this over in my mind, I can't come up with a logical explanation for it, so I'm turning to this list to see what wisdom can be pulled out of the woodwork here. I have a feeling that if we could understand this change, we could all profit nicely - both in the stock and the gold markets.

Anybody?

PS: Something else I noticed: The ratio of silver to gold seems to be tracking very closely with the movements of gold vs. USD. For example, when gold and the stock market was doing really well right before the Chinese scare, silver was about 2.12% of gold. When stocks (and gold) turned sour, silver dropped down below 2% - maybe about 1.95 or so. Then, when stocks
and gold starting coming back up, silver moved back up over 2%, where it remains at this writing. Correlation signifying something? I wish I knew what!

To Invest In HYIP Or Not - HYIP Investment Tips and Promotions

This article aims to educate people on why HYIP is right for some people and not right for others because of the risks associated with a potential for large profits.

To Invest In HYIP Or Not

Many people question why you would get involved in a high yield investment program, but really, the answer is simple. Extraordinary profit. While it's true that most high yield investment programs are high risk, they also provide the opportunity to make a large amount of money in a relatively short period of time. High yield investment programs are not for the weary or the timid as it's very high risk investing, but those who do take part are usually not sorry for the experience.

High yield investment programs, or HYIP is something that many investors simply steer clear of because they have heard horror stories or had a bad investment experience and don't want to risk losing their hard earned cash. But, being involved in an HYIP doesn't have to be a bad thing, and for most people, the results are well worth the risk that is involved in this type of investing.

HYIP is attractive for a lot of risk taking investors because they can invest with very small quantities. In addition, most HYIP programs are easy to get started in and follow even if you are relatively new to the investing world. Most HYIPs use a pyramid scheme, so that new investors actually provide cash to pay existing investors. As long as new investors keep coming on board, investors will continue to be paid. With a good high yield investment program this can work out, with poorly planned programs, you'll find that even the first payments are made fraudulently and things unravel fairly quickly.

Investors needn't worry about the fact that some high yield investment programs fall apart, because it's like any business, some succeed, and some fail. It's up to the investor to do his or her research about any one program and decide if it meets all the safe investing criteria. The thing about an HYIP program is that it can be here today and gone tomorrow if people stop investing, which is where a lot of the risk comes from when you invest in this type of program. But, if you get in on the ground level and pull out when things don't seem to be going quite as well, you can still make an extraordinary amount of money in a rather small amount of time.

High yield investment programs really took off with the introduction of electronic currencies such as e-gold. The reason for this is that investors can buy their electronic funds immediately and start investing right away. Often, these e-currencies can be purchased at a great rate as well, making them doubly attractive to investors. Once an investor begins to earn, he or she can cash out any time and will be paid in e-currency, which is then traded in for a cash value. Electronic currencies really brought the HYIP world to the investment forefront because it made the programs even easier to follow and interact with.

Like all types of investing, HYIP is not for everyone. Many investors believe that opportunities to get involved with an HYIP are just like deciding to throw your money away. Because of e-currencies, many people receive emails for various HYIP programs and consider them nothing more than spam from scammers who want to steal their money. In certain cases this may be true, in other cases an HYIP is a legitimate way to make a good return on even the smallest investment. It's all about choosing the right HYIP and knowing when to pull out if things start to get a bit shaky. If you are good at recruiting people to invest in the programs that you are interested in, than an HYIP may be perfect for you. So long as you can keep getting "referrals" or new investors, your HYIP will likely continue to pay well for a substantial period of time. It'll pay even better if the people that you recruit will also recruit, as it's a pyramid scheme that will allow you to make more money if more people get involved.

With an interest rate of around one percent per day, it's obvious that there is serious risk where an HYIP is concerned, but if you do the research, that percentage can add up quite quickly, making you a sizeable amount of money. If you aren't afraid of high risk investing, an HYIP may be the way to go. Just be sure to do your research ahead of time to take away a little bit of the risk associated with this type of investing.

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