Why isn’t everyone selling on the net accepting paypal yet?

Jim Kukral says:

I don’t get why every online store doesn’t have a PayPal option? I mean, if you’re going to accept credit cards, and even checks, why not have a PayPal option?

I couldn’t agree more. from an e-retailer’s point of view, especially if you are selling cheaper goods, you are making a huge mistake if you are not accepting payments via paypal.

There is a reason paypal has as many as a hundred million users worldwide - it’s probably one of the first media of online transactions for internet users (they are after all, the primary method for paying on ebay!).

Paypal is also VERY easy to use. Sometimes I’m just too lazy to take out the credit card and type in the credit card number, expiry date and CVV2 number, along with my name, address and telephone number to pay for something on the internet. It’s just easier to type in the paypal username and password, press next and finish the transaction.

Jim writes that he uses Paypal as “Fun money” to make impulse purchases, and buy stuff he’d rather not use his credit card for.

If your e-retail website isn’t a huge brand yet, it makes a lot of sense to accept payments via paypal. A buyer doesn’t have to think 10 times before buying from you. if a store doesn’t deliver, it’s super easy for buyers to lodge a complaint with paypal, and paypal will make sure that fraud isn’t happening on it’s platform - a lot of buyers know that.

If you aren’t accepting paypal on your web-shop, I have a two words of advice for you - ACCEPT PAYPAL!

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oh, and talking about paypal, I recently filled out a survey for CJ, one of the questions there was if publishers would like CJ to make payments via paypal. - if they do that, that’d be super-awesome.

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Amazon.com - THE Web 2.0 success story

Not Google, not Facebook, I nominate Amazon for the best Web 2.x Success story award.

The betting before Amazon.com posted second-quarter earnings was that it couldn’t live up to the 80% uptick in its stock price so far this year. But the rising number of short-sellers who have been hoping for Amazon’s comeuppance took it in the shorts instead. Amazon’s stunning 257% jump in profits on a 35% rise in sales surprised even the bulls. Its stock is up more than 8% almost 12% in the initial minutes after the market closed.

Amazon Blows ‘Em Away Again - BusinessWeek

Of course, the reason Amazon is my favorite web 2.x -enabled company because it adapted itself so quickly and so perfectly to the changing internet, that it would have gone unnoticed if their earnings didn’t reflect all this growth. They have been into open web services, affiliate marketing, user generated content, and all the web 2.x buzzword things since even before those words were first used.

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Avantlink offering API

Relatively new affiliate network with some cool merchants, Avantlink, just pushed out this press release.

Online marketers that qualify for AvantLink have free access to the tools, which are standardized across all merchant programs. Affiliate API modules currently include AffiliateReport, AffiliateReportRss, GetLinkCampaigns, ProductPriceCheck, and ProductSearch.

Which means they’re basically offering everything in the api that an affiliate could ask for!

Congratulations to avantlink on the launch.

As of right now, we have CJ in the top tier of affiliate networks with a functional API, Avantlink, a mid-tier network has one. Who’s next? Shareasale, I’m hoping…

I’m mostly certain linkshare is going to not upgrade what it calls an api to what an affiliate network’s api should be.

More on the avantlink api here.

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Blogging turns 10 today!

That’s According to the WSJ:

The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And before them there were “proto-blogs,” embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life-form.

Happy Blogiversary!

(from the six month old blog - FinalTag.com to all Bloggers and Blog readers worldwide!)

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Shoppero.com - A Social Shopping Network that Pays Back

This is the new PPC - Pay Per Contribution.

I talked about NuVy.com here a few days ago, a social shopping network that pays users to upload video product reviews. Mashable, Today announced the launch of another social shopping network with a similar concept - to reward it’s users for contributing to the network - with cash.

Shoppero enables its users to write product reviews which get centrally bundled through the platform and can be advertised by users implementing adgets [widgets] in their own sites[and social network profiles, blogs, etc]. The resulting advertising revenues are being split among Shoppero.de and the users — The latter receiving 20% of the ad-revenues from the pages created by themselves and 60% of the ad-revenues generated by linking to the Shoppero portal. Reaching the minimum total of 25 Euros will trigger a payout to the user via PayPal at the end of the month.

This is (maybe not these particular websites, but the concept in general) the future of social networking - The basis of any economy, including what is being called the “Attention Economy” is, ultimately, Money. If users of a social network help them make money, the users MUST have a share in the revenues of the network.

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Affiliate marketing 2.0 needs innovation - not clones

TechCrunch Reports that a web 2.0 digg clone for deals - Trezr.com is selling on eBay.

Trezr has a rather clever way of making money, by monetizing outbound links through affiliate programs with Commission Junction, Linkshare, Amazon, and Performics. However, the site hasn’t generated significant traffic since launch at the end of last year.

The reason why they haven’t generated traffic enough to be able to run the website - is because there are TONS of such similar websites on the internet. There’s dealigg, chitika just launched a website that does exactly the same thing, there are at least 4 or 5 such other “digg clones for deals” that I won’t even try and remember the names of - have come and gone in the last two years. These things can’t work - certainly can’t be superhit ventures unless something that is very unique and very useful that is being offered.

Web 2.0 success is based on one rule - Innovate, don’t clone.

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Happy Freedom Day

It’s 4 AM in the morning on the 4th of July here in India as I type this.

So, From a citizen of a free country to the citizens of a country that has defined for others the meaning of freedom - Happy Independence day!

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Commission Junction releases new APIs

CJ Announced yesterday via email, the availability of two brand new APIs and upgrades to existing ones.

Developers can now access CJ’s (almost) real time transaction reports and daily sales reports via the new APIs.

From the email:

Along with this release, Commission Junction has updated the widely used product catalog and link search APIs. The Product Catalog API now offers new request parameters and response fields that match the Product Catalog datafeed. The Link Search API now delivers the ability to query promotional links similar to those found in the CJ Account Manager. With these updates, you can expand your applications to further enhance your customer experience, increase conversion rates and drive higher transaction volume.

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