In most cases our customers use a free PayPal business account to handle their credit card and other payment transactions online. It’s the fastest to setup, cheapest to use (only pay when you make a sale), and most secure way we know of to get up and running fast with a new web store or e-commerce setup.
For most cases we need to associate your PayPal account to your web app or web store. We do this by associating your PayPal account with a unique PayPal “Signature” that identifies you to the PayPal System, and directs the money into your account.

Below are the simple steps to create a unique PayPal Signature:

Creating an API Signature

First off, please make sure your account is a PayPal Business account. You must have a PayPal business account for this to work.

An API signature is a credential that consists of an API username along with an associated API password and signature, all of which are assigned by PayPal.

To create an API signature

1. Log into PayPal and click Profile.

2. Click API Access from the Profile menu.

3. Click Request API Credentials.

4. Check Request API signature and click Agree and Submit.

5. To complete the process, click Done.

After launching new websites for our clients, we often get asked questions that are along the lines of “What’s the next step?” or “How do I get some traffic”. Both big questions with many different solutions.

Today we will focus on how to get your website indexed into search engines and put into local business directories. Follow the action steps in this article and you’ll be off to a great start.

1. Add Website to Local Business Directories

If you’re only business is local, then this section is especially important. Here are the steps you need to take to get into the local directories, search engines and other pages:

Register for Google local

Local customers already search Google for the products and services you offer. Google local helps create a listing for you so that your site will come up. It’s free and powerful. Create a business listing to be sure they find you.

ShopCities (applies only if your in the Simcoe county and surrounding areas county area)

ShopCities.com is a very popular local business directory. You may have seen the signs promoting shopmidland.com, shopbarrie.com and the like around your local business area. If you haven’t, you soon will. These guys are serious about helping local business.

They offer free and paid packages. At the very least, get yourself on the free package. You don’t actually need a website to be here but it’s highly recommended. Chances are, if someone is using the Internet to find you, they’ll want see a website backing you.

There is an excellent video introduction on there website that will explain things in greater detail.

Kijiji.ca

Post a free ad on kijiji. They have both paid and free options. This is a great way for some initial traffic and leads. We have received great results from doing ads on kijiji.

2. Search Engines

A search engine is simply a website where people type in “key words” about the topic they are searching for in order to get a list of websites and information. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. A search engine works by sending out what’s called a “spider” program to fetch as many documents (website files) as possible and then index them and serve results to people that are looking for the information. Your goal is to get your website indexed in these search engines. Let’s do that now.

Google

Ahh Google! This is one guy you’ll want to co-operate with. Google has an approximate market share of over 70%. Yes.. over 70% of the people searching online are using Google to find what they are looking for. For this reason alone, it’s vital you get listed or “indexed” with them. Here’s how you do that:

There are a number of ways to enhance your rank (position in search results) but are beyond the scope of this article. However, here are a couple more things you can do to get a better rank in the index.

• Create compelling, valuable content for your customers via a blog, video, or other means and post it on your website. Also make sure it’s web readable. Learn more about making your content “web ready”
• Follow and study the webmaster guidelines at www.google.com/webmaster

Yahoo

Yahoo is a great search engine to be indexed in. But it works a little bit differently then google. What you can do is suggest that your site be included. Yahoo will then review and decide.

MSN / Bing

This is an easy one.

3. Posting your URL Anywhere you can

Another great free way to expose your site is to
post your URL (www.example.com) anywhere you can.

Here are some suggestions:
• Social media sites such as (facebook, myspace, twitter)
• Your email footer or signature
• If you post on forums, put your link in your signature
• Business cards, brochures, receipts, checks
• Anywhere you can think of!

If you’ve done all the action steps in this post, your site will eventually be indexed. This can takes a few days up to a few weeks. Keep rolling out valuable content on your website. If you do this on a consistent basis, traffic won’t be a problem for you.

In future posts we will go over some more advanced concepts of SEO (search engine optimization) and other marketing techniques such as building a list.

How Your Visitors Read Your Website

Writing content for your website is very different to writing for other mediums. Your visitors will read your website text much differently then they might read a novel or newspaper. Research suggests that about 85% of people will “scan” your website text. Only about 15 percent of people will read your website text word by word. The research done is accurate and is done by using “heat maps” that tracking eye movement as well as other testing measures.

How to Make your Text “Scannable”

In the words of Albert Einstein:

Most people don’t have time to read your website text word for word. They need you to provide the key concepts as fast as possible.

To achieve this, follow these guidelines:

• Avoid slang or jargon. You want to keep your text as free from nomenclature or technical babble as possible. If you need help with this, use a Thesaurus. http://thesaurus.reference.com/
• Shorter words. Use “Begin” instead of “Initiate”. Use “used to” vs “accustomed to”
  Again, a thesaurus can help with this.
• One Idea per paragraph. Avoid complex sentences and keep your paragraphs down to one idea.
• Headings that make sense. Avoid “creative” headlines.
• Bold keywords in a paragraph. This helps with scan-ability.
• Use Lists (like this one). Slows reader down, makes complex concepts less intimidating.
• Your article word count should be kept around 500-700 if possible.

Next

Have a look over your website content now and keep these guidelines in mind.

Remember, the attention span on the web is very low. We want to do everything we can,
to help our visitor reach their goal as fast as possible. Our competitor is often one click away.

What is Twitter & Why You NEED to be Using it!

You have no doubt heard of Twitter. But what the heck is Twitter? Twitter is a micro blogging service that enables you to send and receive small text messages, known as “tweets”.

It could be anything from personal messages to business-oriented messages. Some examples:

You can follow other users and other users can follow you. You will receive all tweets from the people you are following and the people who are following you will receive your tweets.

Each message that you can broadcast has a limit of 140 characters. There is a history behind this, but we wont get into that now. You would be surprised how much you can say in 140 characters though.

The content of twitter varies. Some of the most common Twitter messages involve:

• News
• Trending, Pop Culture topics
• Self or Business promotion
• Pointless babble
• Conversational
• Pass-along value

Why Twitter is Useful for Business

Twitter is a communication platform that helps you stay in touch with current and potential customers. It can be used to broadcast company news, deals, blog posts, and events. It also helps with branding to a new tech savvy audience.

From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service, people are finding the value from the connections they make in Twitter. It can seem overwhelming at first, and you may not understand the value right away, but you really just need to signup and start using it to really “get it”.

Getting Started

To get started, visit www.twitter.com/signup . Once you are signed up, use you can start using and learning Twitter.

At the start, you will not have any followers. You can build followers by starting to follow other people in the market you are in. You can use the search box on the right hand column of twitter to help search out topics that interests you and/or your business.

Applications for Twitter

You can use your cellphone, or other third party apps to send and receive tweets. One of the most popular applications to manage Twitter is called TweetDeck. It’s free, and you can find it at www.tweetdeck.com

Resources

Here are some resources to help you:

• What is Twitter
• Twitter 101
• Learn the Twitter Lingo

Twitter ROCKSTAR