How to create eBay Buy it Now buttons

Use the Buy It Now price for an item if you want your buyers to pay you immediately using PayPal.

Why use Buy It Now?

You might use this feature if you’re selling a time-sensitive item (for example, concert tickets).

Note that you have to meet seller and postage requirements; the listing must include any related costs, so your buyer knows exactly how much to pay.

How to setup Buy It Now?

How it works

1. A buyer who clicks the Buy It Now button in your listing is directed to pay immediately for the item using PayPal.

2. Until the buyer completes payment, the item remains availableto other buyers to purchase for the duration of the listing. The first buyer to complete their PayPal payment officially wins your item.

3. Once a buyer completes payment, the listing ends and you are directed to post the item.

via pages.ebay.co.uk

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Squidoo Tools and Lensmaster Tips – How To Search for Lenses and Groups

I’ve started to use Squidoo, mostly as an experiment regarding traffic generation and social media application development. I also like Seth Godin’s philosophy, so decided to take this for a spin. Seth’s blog is a must-read. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

The Squidoo Utils site says that ’searching for Squidoo lenses on a search engine can be a real pain sometimes, as the results are very often filled with non-content pages. Finding the best groups for your lens to join can also be very tricky.

SquidUtils provides two custom searches that are optimised to only return the searches that you want to see. Click on the ‘Squidoo Search‘ link on the homepage, and enter the keywords you wish to find.

This functionality can also be found on the browser toolbar for Lensmasters »
Simply click on the down arrow next to the search icon to select lenses or groups, and type in a search query.

For advice on finding the right groups to join, visit A Lensmaster’s Guide To Groups.

via squidutils.com

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Blog Ping for Squidoo Lenses

This Ping Tool will notify a number of blog search services that your lens has been updated, and
is specially optimised for Squidoo. It is not certain whether or not this has any benefit or not for existing lenses, but it is probably good for getting new lenses indexed quickly by search engines.

Access to this ping tool is also available from the Advanced Dashboard.

Note: You are only permitted to ping a lens that has been recently updated.

via squidutils.com

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AdSense Tip – Why Your Content is Critical For Targeted Ads?

Google provide some very useful guidelines on fine-tuning your AdSense campaigns. 1. AdSense works by crawling your web pages for content. 2. It delivers ads based on that content.

Help Google Crawl your site

So, if your content is limited, its crawler may have difficulty identifying the information on the page. This means that you may see ads that are not directly relevant to your page or public service ads. You need to create more compelling, focussed content.

How to get Google ads that match your site

Do this: 1. Ensure that your pages are full of compelling content. 2. The more targeted, text-based information you provide, the easier it will be for Google to determine what your pages are about — and the greater the relevance of the Google ads. Here’s a simple equation from Google:

1. A content-rich page = Highly-targeted ads
2. Highly-targeted ads + Interested users = Healthy click-through & conversion rates
3. Healthy click-through & conversion rates = Success!

Remember – you can also use page section targeting to focus our crawler on certain sections of your page that may be more content-rich than others.

via google.com

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Google AdSense – How to get paid by cheque in your local currency?

You can have your cheque sent by secure delivery if you want.

To do this:

1. Sign in to your account at www.google.com/adsense
2. Click My Account
3. Click the edit link next to the Payment Details header
4. Select the Cheque Standard Delivery button
5. Click Continue
6. Select your currency from the drop-down list.
7. Click Save Settings to save your payment type. 

Note: there is a 29 USD fee Secured Express Delivery ($29.00 Processing Fee)

Secure Delivery

When your cheque is ready to be sent, Google give it to a courier service (eg DHL) for delivery. They say you can expect to receive your cheque within 5-10 business days after it’s been sent.

I’d suggest checking this with your local carriers and see if they deliver to your address, especially if you live outside the US. 

Update: From the AdSense site “If you wish to receive payments by secured express delivery, please contact DHL to confirm that they will provide service to your address and that it is in the proper format.”

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AdSense Tip – How do I get my payment re-issued?

 

If you lose your AdSense cheque or if it never arrived, you can ask Google to re-issue you with a new check. 

Here is how it works:

1. Regular Post

If you receive payments by standard delivery cheque (i.e. regular post), you can ask for a re-issue of the payment made after the 25th of the following month.

For example, to request a re-issue of a cheque originally dated 15th of March, you would need to write to Google after the 25th of April.

2. Secured Express Delivery

If you receive cheques by Secured Express Delivery, you can request a re-issue after the 5th of the following month.

For example, to request a re-issue of a cheque originally dated Feb 15th, you would need to write to Google after March 5th.

To request a new cheque, please contact Google here and specify the number, date and amount of the cheque that you would like re-issued.

You can also find this information by visiting your Payment History page and clicking on the details link related to the payment for the appropriate month.

Let me know if you’ve had any issues getting re-payments sent to you.

 

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Investments Rated By Agency | Federal IT Dashboard

Agency Code Agency name Total Major Investments Major Investments Rated % Investments Rated DOT Department of Transportation 48 48 100 % VA Department of Veterans Affairs 41 41 100 % USDA Department of Agriculture 36 36 100 % DOJ Department of Justice 16 16 100 % USACE Corps of Engineers 11 11 100 % NARA National Archives and Records Administration 8 8 100 % NSF National Science Foundation 6 6 100 % Smith Smithsonian Institution 11 10 91 % DHS Department of Homeland Security 79 0 0 % HHS Department of Health and Human Services 65 0 0 % DOD Department of Defense 62 0 0 % Treasury Department of the Treasury 59 0 0 % DOC Department of Commerce 52 0 0 % Interior Department of the Interior 46 0 0 % Labor Department of Labor 39 0 0 % Energy Department of Energy 27 0 0 % ED Department of Education 26 0 0 % GSA General Services Administration 25 0 0 % NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration 23 0 0 % EPA Environmental Protection Agency 22 0 0 % State Department of State 17 0 0 % NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission 16 0 0 % SSA Social Security Administration 14 0 0 % HUD Department of Housing and Urban Development 11 0 0 % SBA Small Business Administration 9 0 0 % OPM Office of Personnel Management 8 0 0 % USAID U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID) 4 0 0 %

via it.usaspending.gov

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Mobille Payments via Cellphones Gather Pace & Funding

The Wall Street Journal report that the race is on to develop new payment systems and to percentage points in fees from each transaction.

“A lot of big players with big bucks are investing a lot of money in this,” said J. Gerry Purdy, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm. “We know it’s going to be there,” he said of the technology. “The question is how to make it easy for people.”

Here are some recent examples:

1. Obopay lets you send money via text message.

It raised $35 million from Nokia’s investment arm in March. That was the single largest investment in a financial services start-up this year, according to the National Venture Capital Association.

2. MasterCard has introduced a service called MoneySend that uses some of Obopay’s technology.

3. A mobile payments start-up, Boku, received $13 million in venture capital financing.

Boku, which is the product of a merger of the start-ups Paymo and Mobillcash, says it views itself as the mobile phone’s answer to MasterCard or Visa. But instead of relying on credit card numbers, Boku asks users to type in their phone numbers.

Obopay has raised $104 million from investors including Nokia; the investment firm of James D. Wolfensohn, a former president of the World Bank; and Citigroup, which uses Obopay to run its mobile payment service. PayPal, which is owned by eBay, is promoting its own mobile tools.

More at Wall Street Journal http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/22pay.html?_r=1

 

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Any social networking system will eventually fail because people are always looking for the next big thing. True?

Embed and Share Images with Ovi Share

The Ovi Share site has been totally redesigned. It has also released a hotfix which re-enables existing slideshows embedded in web sites. Older photos have been reconverted to new quality and sizes, and rotation issues are resolved. In addition, the upload mulfiple files dialog problem in Firefox has been fixed.

The Fishbowl

Media glides by straight from your activity feed on the home page. Embed this into your own web site to share your experience.

What’s New?

• Better Sharing – You can now share photos and videos individually without having to create an album first. Plus, comments on an item show to all viewers.
• Higher Quality Images – A new photo transcoding platform produces higher quality images. The larger size on the media page shows more detail.
• Improved Media Page – The media page has more room for your photos and videos–see with whom they are shared, the comments and the capture time and place.
• Album Page – Channels have been renamed to Albums and the most recently used albums display on the home page for quick access.
• Easier Experience – Tasks such as sharing, commenting and organizing are now easier to find and use with simpler menus and in-place actions.

Quality Upgrade for Existing Photos
Because of the large number of photos stored in Ovi, it may take a few days to upgrade all media to the new quality and sizes. In this time you will see some issues with the rotation, location data, and others.

Other Features
As part of this transformation, they have disabled some features.

Also, Ovi Share now only allows uploading image and video file types. With support for over 100 file types it works with the most popular media formats used for capturing and sharing your life.

To upload other file types you can now use the Ovi Files service.

Try: http://share.ovi.com/

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