For newbie internet marketers, the notion of creating a paypal buy now button can be extremely intimidating. I confess that it took me a VERY long time to make the attempt myself. I have to laugh now because my first attempt at ecommerce involved installing the ‘Opencart’ software through Simple Scripts in Cpanel. The installation and setup for that cart was vastly more complex than setting up a paypal button… Oh well, live and learn!

If your site is an online shopping mall then you would be best to use shoppingcart software. However, if you only sell a small range of products or individual items like downloadable information products then a paypal buy now button is perfect. Paypal buy now buttons are especially perfect for digital download products because once you set them up you will earn on autopilot. Just imagine waking up in the morning to discover you’ve sold ten $17 products during the night… and they’re already delivered! NICE!!! The best thing is that people TRUST paypal so using paypal buttons actually increases sales (especially if the payment section of your page contains a paypal logo and states that payments are via paypal and are therefore 100% secure).

Before you start, you will need a success or thank-you page for paypal to direct customers to after checkout completion. If you are selling information products this page could contain the download link. Alternatively, you could harvest the buyers email address and send the download link to them via email in which case your success page would contain an optin form. A good way to ensure that people stay on that list is to offer some kind of tutorial or bonus product that comes in instalments.

So how do you create a paypal buy now button?

You will notice that Paypal has the process set up in three steps; Button type and payment details, inventory tracking and customizing checkout pages. Just follow the step-by-step instructions below to make a paypal buy now button. After you have created your first buy now button you can create additional buttons using the ‘create similar button’ function.

1. Log in to paypal and click ‘Merchant Services’ and ‘buy now buttons’ as per the image below
2. Step 1: Creating Button type and payment details
• Specify the type of product you are selling. Choices include; Products, Services, Subscriptions/recurring billing, donations and gift vouchers. Once you have created your first paypal button you can click the ‘go to my saved buttons’ under this option to edit an existing button or create similar buttons. To create a similar button click the ‘action’ link beside the chosen button and select ‘create similar button’.
• Select whether you want an ‘add to cart’ button or a ‘buy now’ button. Add to cart buttons are for sites that offer multiple products whereas buy now buttons are for those that sell individual items.
• Specify the name of the product you are selling – Use something logical as this becomes the name the button is saved under for future reference. That way you will recognize it later. Under this option you can also add an item ID if you are selling physical products and want to use Paypal’s inventory management system to track your inventory
• Enter the item Price in the next field and which currency you want to receive payment in (eg. US dollars)
• Next you customize the appearance of your paypal buy now button and the options associated with it. You can add drop down menus for size, color or any other option. You can customize the appearance of the button. You can even specify your own button graphic.
• The next option is Postage. If you are selling a physical product that you can charge a flat postage rate on (i.e. small, lightweight items like CDs) then you can fill this field in to specify the postage rate. To activate this option you will need to go to myaccount>profile>selling preferences>postage calculations and check the ‘override postage methods per transaction’ box.
• The last option under this section is the type of Merchant identification you wish to use. You can use plain text where your email address is visible in the button code or you can select to use ‘secure merchant account ID’ which replaces the plain text email with a merchant number that only paypal can connect to your email address. Using this option stops spammers being able to harvest your email address so it’s a excellent option to choose.
3. Step 2: Inventory Tracking
• There are only a couple of options under this section. The first option is to save your buttons at paypal. This protects buttons from fraudulent changes (eg. switching your paypal account for someone elses), Saves buttons in your paypal profile. Allows you to easily create similar buttons and lets you edit buttons with paypal tools
• Inventory tracking for physical products – Allows you to specify item quantities and stop additional sales of sold out items
4. Step 3: Customizing checkout pages
• If you are selling physical products you can select to allow customers to update the order quantity under this section.
• You can also add a field to allow customers to leave special instructions.
• Request customer address if required for postage purposes
• Specify a URL to forward to in the event of order cancellation.
• Specify a URL to forward to after successful payment – As mentioned earlier, if you are selling downloadable products this page can contain your download link OR an optin form to harvest customer emails and send them the download link via email.
• Ebay power users can also add other variables
5. Finally – just click the ‘create button’ button and your paypal buy now button will be saved to your profile and you will be taken to a page containing the code to add to your webpage. You have two choices, either use the button or a link.

If you want to know how to increase conversion rates by up to 300% then check out The Conversion Kode!

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Unfortunately, one of the most common issues faced by internet marketers that seriously cuts into profits is the issue of unauthorized downloads from their download pages and download directories.

Just imagine your irritation when you discover that the $97 product that you have sold 50 times has actually been downloaded 78 times (all from different IP addresses)… that constitutes a loss of $2716… Yipes, that’s one heck of a loss!

And how did it happen?

Well, there are several ways it can happen.

1. Search engines indexing your download page and people finding it
2. People finding your download directory
3. Legitimate customers bookmarking your download page with online bookmarking services

I’ll deal with these one by one.

Search engines indexing your download page

Because search engines regularly crawl your site, if you add a download page they are going to find it. But how do you stop them from indexing that page? Aha, that’s actually simple… all you need is the little meta tag below added to the head section of your download page.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

This tag causes search engines to ignore your download page and not include it in their index. If it isn’t in their index then no unscrupulous rip-off artist can find it and download your products without authorization

People finding your download directory

Some unscrupulous people will visit an ecommerce site then add a simple /download or /downloads to the end of the URL and if the owner hasn’t been a little smart then the result will be a page containing hyperlinks directly to the downloadable files

The way to stop this is to add a simple index.htm or index.html file to the directory. Browsers automatically look for these files and load them if they are present. That way, if someone goes to the directory, whatever you have put on that page will appear rather than the directory contents… mine has a blank page. It’s probably also a good idea to name the directory something completely obscure, you could give the directory some completely screwy name like ad9cy45jm or whatever that no-one would ever guess would be a download directory. A combination of these two is probably a good idea just in case someone has a way of working around the index page.

Note that the index.html page works even with a directory inside a blog… for example, visit http://automatedblogpostingsoftware.com/downloads and a page with some stupid text intended as a joke will be generated… that is my index.html page (Note: This is NOT my download directory, it’s a complete decoy LOL)

Legitimate customers bookmarking your download page with online bookmarking services

This is the third way that unauthorised people can access your product downloads. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest one to combat. People are allowed to bookmark their download page and it’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do just in case something goes wrong with the first download.

To overcome this problem you need software that issues a temporary download link that is only active for a certain period of time or a certain number of downloads. One such software program is Smartdd (short for ‘smart digital download’). Click here for more info on SmartDD now!

I hope this post has helped you understand how unauthorized downloads occur and how to protect your products from the methods used… Here is to profitable online ventures!

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How many times have you clicked on a link only to find a ‘dead’ page?

That dreaded 404 message comes up, telling you the link is wrong and to visit the main page.

Frustrating? You betcha!

So you can imagine how frustrating this is for YOUR visitors. They want information from your site, but for some reason it’s no longer available. Or maybe they typed the URL incorrectly.

They get the 404 message and click away. You just lost money.

Instead of losing a potential sale, and losing a browser / surfer / buyer from your site, why not earn money by making good use of your VRE (virtual real estate)?

Did you know you could do this? Or maybe you did but you were told it was complicated.

Yep, me too. First I was told I needed to buy an ebook, then I was told I needed software. I swear, I am so sick of the lies being told by marketers who just want to rip me (and you) off!

A little over a year ago I stumbled onto a site. I surfed for a while and was about to click away when something caught my interest – how to easily set up 404 pages. No technical knowledge required, and definitely no software.

For this techno-dummy, that was majorly interesting, and within minutes I’d learned the simple technique to turn my dead or non-existent pages into cash.

And here it is:

Create a blank webpage and name it www.yoursite.com/404.shtml

Add the products you want to promote and upload the page.

That’s it. Seriously.

I earn very good residual income from my 404 page, just by people landing there. How do I know? I started off with only one product on that page; a product I wasn’t promoting elsewhere, and was selling several copies each month. So I knew it was selling via the 404 page.

Okay, take a look at this 404 page and you’ll see for yourself:

Go to: www.writer2writer.com/xyz.htm — this will bring up the 404 page. (You may need to type it manually.)

I discovered this formula doesn’t work for sub-site pages, but did some testing and found that using the sub-site URL and the same extension as before, it will work. Like this:

http://freelance.writer2writer.com/xyz.htm (again, you may need to type this manually to see the results.)

If you happen to have a WordPress blog, editing your 404 page is super simple. Just navigate to ‘Appearance > Editor’ (in version 2.7 up) and click on 404.php at the right hand side then insert your html into the field and save the template. It should be noted that not all WordPress themes contain a 404 template. In which case you would simply follow the above instructions for creating a standard html page (named 404.shtml).

Alternatively, on some blog themes the html for a 404 page is found in the index.php template. If a 404.shtml doesn’t work then navigate in your dashboard to your templates, select index.php press ‘ctrl f’ and enter the words ‘not found’ in the search box that appears (without quotes). Make sure the insertion point is inside the editable field then click ‘find next’ to find that text within the template. Replace the text that appears in that section with whatever html you want to appear on the page and click the update file button to save.

In all cases, make sure the products you are promoting are closely targeted to your audience.

Now that you know how easy it REALLY is, go set up your 404 pages. This truly is a great way to earn a passive income with affiliate products, your own products, or a combination of both.

About the author: Cheryl Wright has been an internet marketer for over five years. She delights in helping others achieve their dreams of turning a profit. To receive more value-packed information on earning an online income, go to Resources4Marketers

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If you are serious about internet marketing, one of the most important decisions you need to make is whether to have a mailing list of subscribers that you can market your products and services to. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression The money is in the list! This is very true. Maintaining a list allows you to build a relationship with subscribers who are specifically interested in what you are offering.

Sure, you can rely on adwords or organic search visitors for your income, but the amount of effort required lowers your ROI (return on investment). It’s much better to maintain a list of subscribers who are interested in what you have to offer than to perform the online version of ‘cold calling’! That pre-existing relationship inspires trust and therefore increases the likelihood that those people will purchase your products and services.

So, you’ve made the smart decision that you need a mailing list! CONGRATULATIONS!!! How are you going to build and maintain that list? What autoresponder company or organisation will you trust your livelihood to? In the internet marketing arena there are only TWO autoresponder companies for serious marketers. Those two companies are Aweber and Getresponse.

Certainly you could use a free autoresponder service like freeautobot.com or one attached to your hosting account, but as the saying goes… You get what you pay for! Lack of features and reliability end up costing more than the potential earnings. Thankfully, Aweber and Getresponse both offer FREE trial versions for people who want to try before they buy!

So which service is the the most reliable email marketing service? Which one is the most affordable email marketing service?

The first of these questions is totally up for debate. As mentioned before, there are only two viable autoresponder services. Aweber is popular with professional internet marketers, they have the better reputation… just barely. Both services claim top notch email deliverability. These days however, you’ll notice an increasing number of marketers are using Getresponse email marketing services. Possibly because in the current economic climate people are tightening their belts and Getresponse offers the most affordable email marketing services. On July 6, 2009 Getresponse introduced a brand new interface and pricing structure along with some new and exciting features including the ability to create subscriber surveys. Check the table below for a cost comparison between the two services.

Note: The prices above are monthly subscription costs. Significant savings are available by subscribing for longer periods. For example a 12 month subscription with Aweber costs US$190 for up to 500 subscribers (save $38), GetResponse costs US$177 for 12 months for up to 500 subscribers (save $38). Once again, Getresponse has the upper hand on price since they allow you to pre-pay for up to 1 year for larger lists. Unlike Aweber who only allow you to pre-pay for up to 500 subscribers. Take a look at the table below for the yearly costs for each size list.

As you can see, using Getresponse for email marketing needs is considerably cheaper. For this reason I recommend Getresponse for less experienced marketers because… well, because personally I don’t believe in spending more money than I have to! Admittedly, Aweber is reputed to be the Rolls Royce of autoresponders… but why buy a Rolls Royce when a Chevy will do the job?

Ultimately, it is your choice which email marketing service you use. I hope this post has helped clarify the options available to you.

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Have you ever wondered how to earn money writing online?

If you’re the sort of person who loves to socialise and share your opinions and just chat online I may have the perfect suggestion for you.

I’m a member of a site that pays me to contribute to discussions aswell as start discussions, upload photos and perform tasks. The site is Mylot.com

Okay, I won’t be ridiculous and claim you’ll earn hundreds of dollars a month with this because unless you are a super marketer that can refer thousands of other users the amount earned isn’t going to provide an alternative to your job. But it can make good pocket money. The minimum payout is $10 per month and it’s really not hard to acheive that amount. Mylot pays direct to your paypal account and you can use it from there.

HOW DOES MYLOT WORK?

Mylot is a profit sharing site. They run ads on the site from google, ebay etc. What they earn from those ads they share with users who contribute to the site. They also have affiliate products that are promoted through the site.

HOW MUCH CAN YOU EARN?

Okay, in general you will earn 1-2 cents per post you make. If you post a discussion you will also earn around 1 cent for every response to that post. If you refer other users you earn 25% of whatever their earnings are.

In April 2009, mylot introduced ‘tasks’. One task involves writing brief posts of four paragraphs around a specified topic and including specific words. This task earns $2. Another task that earns 20 cents involves performing a search in google and looking for websites that meet certain criteria in the results. Up to now these are the only the only tasks I have seen but I’m sure other tasks will be made available in the future.

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO EARN WITH MYLOT?

From my experience the best ways to earn on mylot are;

1. Tasks
2. Posting discussions-you get paid for other people responding
3. Promoting your affiliate link and earning 25% of what your referrals earn
4. Earning a ‘best response’ to a discussion
5. Resolving discussions you start (awarding best response)

You probably notice that these are mostly things that take a limited amount of time to perform. That is why they are the best earning options, because they take the least amount of effort on your part.

To visit mylot click How to earn money writing online

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