PayPal Donations is a very nice way to let people donate a small amount of your site, usually as a thank you for providing quality information, tips or advice.  You can use this to collect donations from a PayPal Donation button on your website, or even using it as a link in your email. PayPal won’t automatically place the button code on your website, but it’s very easy to copy and paste the code into your blog or website’s code. The PayPal Create Button designer screen also lets you customize the look and field of the button, set-up  donation amounts, currency types, and other options. You can also create a library of buttons and re-use these rather than starting from scratch every time.

How To Add a PayPal Donation Button To Your Blog?

Benefits

• Easy to implement – no programming experience necessary. Just copy and paste the code.
• No up-front costs – same low fee schedule as other PayPal payments
• No hidden charges – PayPal don’t charge for this service. There are no hidden costs
• Reports – PayPal maintains detailed transaction records so you can track your donations
• Flexibility – your donors can choose to give an amount of their choice
  (recommended) or you can set a fixed amount

To add PayPal Donations to your website, follow these steps:

The webpage you use to design the buttons has three sections. You only need to use the first one: the others are optional.

1. Choose the button type and enter the payment details

2. Save your button (an optional step)

3. Customize the advanced features (also optional)

Let’s get started.

1. Log in to PayPal or setup a new account.

2. Click the Profile tab.

The Profile Summary page opens.

3. Under Selling Preferences, click the My Saved Buttons link.

The My Saved Buttons page opens.

4. Click Create New Button.

The Create Payment Button page opens. This is where you will create the actual button.

How to Choose the button type and enter payment details

Let’s get started and choose the button type we want to use.

1. In the Accept payments for dropdown menu, select Donations.

2. In Organization name/service, enter the name of your organization

3. In Donation ID (optional), enter a unique number if you want to track the donation.

The next step is to customize the button. In other words, do you want a simple image with only the word ’Donation’ or do you want to add credit cards to it?

You can also upload your own image, which can be useful if you want to blend it into your site’s color scheme.

4. Click the blue triangle next to Customize appearance.

5. Click the PayPal button box.

You now have two options:

• Customize the PayPal button or
• Upload your own.

6. If you want to customize the PayPal button:

6.1 Click Use smaller button – if you want a Donate button without any branding or credit card logos.

6.2 Click Display credit card logos – if you want display credit card logos such as Visa and MasterCard.

6.3 Select the Country and language for button.

FYI: I recommend United States – US – English.

When you change the settings, a preview of your image appears in the Buyer’s View pane.

7 If you want use your own image.

7.1 Click Use your own button image.

7.2 Enter the URL of where your image is located on the web. At the moment, you can’t upload an image to PayPal directly.

Note: PayPal will not show your image onscreen when you use this option. But, when you create the code later on, it works fine. You can always go back and change it, by the way.

Next you’re going to select the currency.

8. Choose a Currency from one of these:

USD AUD GBP CAD CZK DKK EUR HKD HUF ILS JPY MXN NZD NOK PLN SGD SEK CHF.

Again, most of you will select USD (US Dollars but you can choose what you want).

Tip: If you choose a currency other than USD you run the risk of people not making a donation. People don’t want to get tricked into paying with a currency they don’t understand. If you make them go check the currency rate, they might have second thoughts on paying.

Keep it simple. Use the USD option.

Next up is the contribution amount.

9. In Contribution amount, select one of the options:

9.1. Click Donors enter their own contribution amount.

Let people choose to donate 1 dollar of 1 million. It’s their choice. Never under-estimate how generous people can be if you provide really useful content (like this!)

9.2. Click Donors contribute a fixed amount.

I’d avoid this. It’s a bit ham-fisted and forces people to pay when you think they should, under-mining the principle of making a donation.

To me, this looks more like a pseudo-payment. I’d suggest you avoid it. But, hey, it’s your site. Don’t let me stop you.

10. Next, enter the email address where the donations are sent to. Usually you’re PayPal account email address.

Step 2 and 3 are optional, so you can ignore these for now. Take a peek if you want or you can skip ahead and create the button.

The final step is to get the code for the button.

11. Click Create Button at the end of the screen.

This opens the Button Code page.

12. Click Select Code to select the HTML code.

13 Copy the code (CTRL+C for Windows and CMD+C for Mac)

14. Paste the code into your blog or webpage (Ctrl + V)

We’re not finished yet!

15. PayPal also gives you the option to add the button to emails. Fantastic if you’re selling things via email or are big into good ol’ web marketing.

Just copy and paste the link into your email. Send a few tests to yourself to check that it works. Also try the link in Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail to check that everything works fine with these.

Now you’re finished!

Other things you can do on this page

• Click Create Similar button if you want to use the button you just create as a template for your next button. Nice time-saver as you can use the same configuration settings.
• Click Create a new button to create a new button from scratch.
• Click Create Similar button if you want to create another button, with all the same/similar configuration settings as this button

I hope you enjoyed this article and that is made the whole process of creating PayPal buttons a little easier.

Next week, I’ll show you how to use more advanced features in PayPal, like setting up a Thank You page or sending customers to a download page automatically.

PS: Click Here to Setup a Free PayPal Account

You can now use Paypal directly from inside Yahoo. Why bother you might ask? Well, before we get into that, let’s see how it works. Or does it work?

Where is the Paypal button in Yahoo?

It’s hard to find at first but here’s where it is.

1 Open Yahoo Mail.

2 If you look in the lower left corner of your Yahoo Mail, you’ll see a box called Applications.

3 Scroll down this list and, hey presto, there it is!

4 Click on the PayPal icon and it will tell you all nice and wonderful things, some of which are true.

How does it work?

There are a few ways to use PayPal. For example, if you see an item on the Yahoo site which has this blue shopping cart on it, then you can click on this and pay directly with PayPal or through your Yahoo account. That’s the idea anyway, but I didn’t see it happening in the examples I found on the Yahoo site.

The simplest way to use it is to send me directly to your friends while logged into Yahoo.

I want to Stay on Yahoo – You can Request money without having to leave Yahoo.

I want to Leave Yahoo – You have to go to the PayPal site if you want to Send money.

Click the PayPal icon to get started and when it asks you to Agree to the terms and conditions, click Yes.

Then click Continue. This opens the main screen from where you can send and receive payments.

To request money:

1 In the To field, enter your friend’s name and email address. Double check that it’s correct.

2 In the From fields, enter your name and email address. Double check that it’s correct.

3 Enter the Amount. Check that you selected the currency you wanted.

Tip: The default is US Dollars. Change this if you want to.

4 Enter a brief message and click Request Money.

To send money:

Basically, it’s just the other way around, except that you have to go to PayPal as well, which defeats the purpose of using it inside Yahoo. Either it’s one or the other surely.

1 In the To field, enter your friend’s name and email address.

2 In the From fields, enter your name and email address.

3 Enter the Amount.

4  Click Continue to PayPal.

And this takes you over to PayPal where you complete the transaction. Note that another web browser or tab will open. You should be brought here automatically but in case you’re not, check for any new browser windows.

Does it work?

1 This is a test payment that I sent to myself.

2 When the receiver, Ivan, gets this email, he has to click the Pay Now button to make the payment.

When I did this test, I had some issues. As I was not in the US, it redirected me to a foreign language version of the PayPal site.

This was understandable (as PayPal thought I was in that country) but it didn’t offer any way to return to the US site without closing the session.

If I simply went to the US PayPal site, I wouldn’t have had this problem.

What are PayPal Fees via Yahoo?

If you send money within the US:

• It’s FREE if your payment is fully funded using your bank account or your PayPal balance
• Credit or debit card fees are 2.9% plus 30 cents and you can choose who pays those fees-either yourself or the person you’re sending money to

If you send US dollars outside the US:

• 0.5-2% if your payment is fully funded using your bank account or PayPal balance. The fee depends on where you send the money
• 3.4%-3.9% plus 30 cents if you pay with a credit card or debit card

• Currency exchange rate includes a 2.5% fee

When you send money, the basic payment sources for your PayPal account will be used.

The following order is where funds will be withdrawn when you send money:

• PayPal balance
• Bank account
• Debit Card
• Credit Card

What currencies does it support?

You can send money to 65 countries. PayPal supports the following currencies:

• Australian Dollars
• British Pounds
• Canadian Dollars
• Czech Koruny
• Danish Kroner
• Euros
• Hong Kong Dollars
• Hungarian Forints
• Israeli Shekels
• Mexican Pesos
• New Zealand Dollars
• Norwegian Kroner
• Polish Zloty
• Singapore Dollars
• Swedish Kroner
• Swiss Francs
• US Dollars
• Yen

Technical Support

I regret to say that Yahoo and PayPal didn’t really cover themselves in glory here.

The PayPal Help site shows no answers for Yahoo. So, they don’t know about Yahoo. Again, I have some sympathy with PayPal as they’re probably writing the tech docs as we write and getting them online.

Yahoo were worse though. I emailed them twice and even sent screenshot. Nothing came back. I also posted some comments on their development blog – where they asked for feedback – and got no response.

I’m a big fan of PayPal, so I wrote on the blog that this Yahoo experiment was damaging the credibility of the PayPal brand.

Here is what I wrote:

Hi Folks,

First, can I say well done to you all! It looks like you guys/girls have turned a corner, esp with the WordPress integration last week.

Anyway, here’s my question and forgive my ignorance re tech terminology.

Is there a security risk if I log into Yahoo, log into PayPal, make a payment – but do not log back out of Yahoo?

In other words, is there any connection between my Yahoo and PP sessions?

I assume not but as these are so closely integrated, I had some concerns that the login/logout aspects could undermine the process, eg if someone used the Back button when logged into Yahoo and tried to ‘retreat’ into my PP account.

Thank you,

Ivan Walsh

http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2009/06/paypal.html

Posted by: Ivan Walsh at June 14, 2009 7:47 AM

I added those comments in June and here we are in Sept and no-one from Yahoo bothered to reply…  So much for wanting customer feedback.

Why bother to use Paypal inside Yahoo?

Wouldn’t it be simpler just to go to Paypal, I hear you say.

To be honest, that’s what I’d do.

1 I don’t see too many benefit to Yahoosers (yahoo users) if they have to use this clunky and buggy application.

2. Having to use both systems defeats the purpose and the rush to integrate both these technologies seems to have been too fast, resulting in glitches that you usually don’t find in Yahoo and especially PayPal.

3. Yahoo needs to reconsider what it’s doing here. Rather than throwing features and new apps at users just to get headlines and media coverage is a waste and frankly erodes the credibility of the company.

4. Likewise, PayPal need to get closer to Yahoo as these type of partnership diminish both companies.

5. Maybe an alternative approach would be to send users directly to the PayPal site, but somehow, fast-track them through the payment process. In a similar way that Amazon has with its 1 Click buy option.

A 1 Click pay option would be great.

Can these companies do it?

What do you think?

Clickbank’s analytic data is refreshed multiple times per day. You can view the last time your analytics data was updated by checking the Data Last Updated box. This contains the date and time your data was last refreshed.
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1. Daily information for your account is available for 120 days.

2. Hourly data is available for 40 days.

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The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to compare specified dates hour by hour.
You can setup marketing campaigns for specific times in a day.

All of the charts we discussed in the previous articles provide information for a whole day.

However, ClickBank can also let you view your information hour by hour.

The hourly charting control is located above the trend chart, as a button; toggle the trend chart between daily and hourly to update it.

The hourly trend chart lets you compare any selected day to another selected day hour by hour.

For example, you can configure it to see your sales for today versus yesterday, or compare different days of the week.

You can use this to determine how your web business is performing during a time period and examine which marketing or business tactics are performing the best.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to compare stages of the sale.
Clickbank offers a further degree of sophistication in its comparison charting. Comparison charting lets you chart two metrics over the same time period.

For example, say you were viewing Gross Sales by customers in India.

You can gain more insight into customer tends by overlaying the Hops received in that same time period and gain insight into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns targeted at customers in a different country.

To do this:

1. Select a different country.

2. You can have the same insight into any other campaign you are performing at the country level.

3. All of the metrics available in the data table are available in comparison charting. The control for comparison charting is located above the trend chart in a dropdown menu.

Anyone familiar with Google Analytics will understand the user interface very quickly.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to compare the different stages of a sale.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to explore by attributes of a sale.
When checking the performance of your Clickbank sales, there are many attributes for each sale or prospective sale.

To manage your business with ClickBank, you need to examine the performance (i.e. in terms of sales and click-thrus) of your products or marketing campaigns by many or all of these sale attributes.

The ClickBank analytics tool let’s you explore and view sales trend for these attributes.

These attributes are as follows:

Vendor: The nickname of the vendor whose product has been promoted (available for affiliates only)

Affiliate: The nickname of the affiliate who promoted the product (available for vendors only)

Product: The vendor nickname and product item number promoted

Billing Type: The type of product promoted – Single Sale or Recurring

Customer Country: The customer’s country based on IP Address or the country the customer selected on the Order Form

Customer Province: The name of the province the customer selected on the ClickBank Order Form

Currency: The currency the customer chose to pay in for their purchase

Language: The language assigned to the product sold

Tracking ID:  The tracking code used by affiliates to classify campaigns for HopLinks (affiliates only)

Category: The ClickBank category and sub-category assigned to the promoted vendor (affiliates only)

You can report on these attributes by selecting them from the left-hand navigation menu once you login to your Clickbank account.

You can drill-down into the trends of each item by clicking on the item in the data table.

For example, when viewing Gross Sales By Customer Country, click on the America item in the data table and the trend chart will show Gross Sales by customers located in America.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to compare the different stages of a sale.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to analyze sales by stages of a sale.
As an affiliate in the ClickBank Marketplace, you probably know that prospects work their way through several stages in the sales process.

For example: a prospect (potential customer) might start by clicking on a Hoplink from an affiliate.

This may result in the customer visiting the vendor’s web page, placing an order, and then moving on to the ClickBank Order Form.

Note: Clickbank refer to this first visit to the order form as an ‘Order Form Impression’.

Once on the Order Form, the customer fills in the required fields and clicks the Pay Now button.

This is the Order Form Submit.

If the submitted order form has no errors, passes fraud detection, and is accepted by the payment processor, it becomes a Sale. Technically, this is a Gross Sales as the customer can refund the product in which case you lose the sale.

After a Sale, the customer can return the product for various reasons. Depending on the action the customer takes, these returns can be processed as a Refund or Chargeback.

Refunds and chargebacks are removed from Gross Sales.

The new ClickBank Analytics tool lets report on and measure success through these stages of the order process.

The stages are as follows:

• Hop: prospective customer clicking on a HopLink
• Order Form Impression: prospective customer visiting the ClickBank Order Form
• Order Form Submit: prospective customer clicking the Pay Now button on the ClickBank Order Form (reporting counts up to one order form submit per customer visit to the order form)
• Gross Sale: A successful customer purchase of a ClickBank product
• Refund: A return of a customer purchase
• Chargeback: return of a customer purchase initiated by the customer contacting their payment processor or their bank
• Net Sale: A customer purchase (Gross Sale) that has not been returned

Additional metrics measure the success of converting a customer from one stage of the process to the next.

These are:

1. Earnings per Hop: Dollars earned for each Hop that a customer clicks. Calculated by dividing Gross Sales Amount by the Hop Count for a specified time period.

2. Hops per Order: The number of Hops it takes to generate a sale. Calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Gross Sale Count.

3. Hops per Order Form Impression: The number of Hops it takes to get through the vendor pitch page and generate a visit to the ClickBank Order Form.

Calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

4. Order Form Sale Conversion: The rate at which a visit to the ClickBank Order Form generates a sale.

Calculated by dividing Gross Sale Count by Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

5. Refund Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a refund. The metric is calculated by dividing Refund Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period.

Note: Each refund is assigned to the date of the original sale, so the refund rate is an accurate indicator of performance of sales on a given day.

6. Chargeback Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a chargeback.

Calculated by dividing Chargeback Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to analyse by attributes of a sale, for example, emerging trends.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll look at FAQs regarding this tool.
Q:  Why does the number of Order Form Submits not match my Gross Sale Count?

A: There are several reasons: (1) the customer didn’t enter all fields correctly (2) the customer’s method of payment was declined.
Q:  Where is the Trend Chart? Has it been hidden?

A: If it disappears, you can always find the trend chart on the Hide Chart link in the upper-right of the page.

Q:  Why is the Gross Sale Count higher than the Order Form Submit Count?

A: Subscription sales have a recurring billing element that initiates a sale without the customer visiting the ClickBank order form at each recurring time-period.
Q:  Why are improper Customer Countries in my reports?

A: In certain instances, a Customer Country is determined by the IP address the customer is using. Each IP address belongs to a country, Satellite Provider, or generic region like Europe or Anonymous. However, most IP addresses are assigned to a country.

Q:  Why does the automated Internet robot impact Hop and Order Form Impression data?

A: ClickBank filters automated visits from its reporting so you get a better picture of real human traffic.

Q:  Why are sales not showing in the Analytics tool?

A: Check the Last Updated Data box on the left-hand side of the reporting page. This shows when information was last loaded into the Analytics tool. The sale may be too recent to be available at this time.

Q:  Why will the trend chart not display the selected time period?

A: Select a time period and then click the Go button in order to change the time period.

Q:  Why do the Original Analytics metrics not match the new Analytics tool?

A: Original Analytics and New Analytics do not collect data on the same schedule and will likely not be in sync with each other as they calculate Hop traffic differently.

Q: Why did Net Sales data change since the last time I ran the report?

A: Net Sales may change because of refunds or chargebacks that were not included in the first report.

Q: Why are sales totals by Category greater than by Product?

A: A site listed in two Marketplace categories will include sales totals for each category, which causes your sales metrics to double.

ClickBank has just released a new tool (ClickBank Analytics) that helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. This series of articles explains how ClickBank’s new and improved analytics reporting works, how it differs from its original reporting system, and answers questions related to this reporting. Also includes FAQs on analytics, metrics, reporting, trends, digital goods, affiliates, online payments, and credit cards.

ClickBank Analytics:

1. Lets you produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges.

2. It gives you charts and data tables so you can see sales trends.

3. You can manipulate the charts in different ways, so you can see emerging trends.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to explore sales by stages of a sale.

ClickBank has just released a new tool (ClickBank Analytics) that helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. This series of articles explains how ClickBank’s new and improved analytics reporting works, how it differs from its original reporting system, and answers questions related to this reporting. Also includes FAQs on analytics, metrics, reporting, trends, digital goods, affiliates, online payments, and credit cards.

ClickBank Analytics:

1. Lets you produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges.

2. It gives you charts and data tables so you can see sales trends.

3. You can manipulate the charts in different ways, so you can see emerging trends.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to explore sales by stages of a sale.

According to a new study, 12% of the overall population has bought virtual goods in the last 12 months. A closer look at the digital entertainment habits of virtual goods buyers reveals that virtual world visitors are the heaviest virtual goods buyers, with 46% of these consumers buying virtual goods (from virtual worlds, games or social networks) and nearly one third of iPhone owners buying from the same platforms.
Other results were reported as follows:

Largest demographic of consumers who have reported buying virtual goods:

1. 17% of Females ages 25 to 34

2. 15% of Males 12 to 17 and 18 to 24

3. 15% of Females 12 to 17

4. 15% of Females ages 35 to 44

Where consumers are buying from:

1. Marketplace of the virtual world or game that a user is playing in (29%)

2. The official Web site of the virtual world or game (29%)

3. A web site of an authorized reseller of the virtual items (25%)

4. A web site of an unauthorized reseller of the virtual items (8%)

5. Another player (7%)

6. Other (5%)

7. Not sure (27%)

Ethnic breakdown of virtual goods purchasers:

1. 16% of Asian Americans

2. 14% of Latinos

3. 12% of Caucasians

4. 10% of African Americans

While the greatest number of consumers (51%) that bought virtual goods said they were not sure how much they spent last year, those who did recall (27%) said they spent less than $50 in the last year on virtual goods, with the average price of all transactions averaging $30. Another group of consumers (15%) said they spent $100 or more, driving substantial annual revenue per user.

“The fact that lots of people are reaching into their pocket to buy virtual goods is impressive, but even more impressive is that some of those consumers are spending considerable dollars,” said Mike Vorhaus, President, Magid Advisors. “As this market grows, Magid believes that the majority of consumers will continue to spend $50 or more on virtual goods every year, and this will grow to be a multi-billion dollar market.”

“This data reinforces the high growth potential of microtransactions and digital goods for online games and virtual world developers,” said Eric Hartness, Chief Marketing Officer of PlaySpan. “Our internal data and client conversations also corroborate the findings, and we’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of customers who now spend several hundred dollars per month on digital goods.”Revenue from virtual goods now stands at a $200-250 million dollar market in the U.S. alone, with firms such as Strategy Analytics reporting that microtransactions are expected to grow from slightly over $1 billion today worldwide to $17.3 billion in 2015.

“As this market grows, Magid believes that the majority of consumers will continue to spend $50 or more on virtual goods every year, and this will grow to be a multi-billion dollar market.”

Note: Virtual goods, according to the study, were defined as non-physical objects that are purchased and exchanged on the Internet in games, virtual worlds and social networks. The actual description of virtual goods can be simple items such as virtual points or tokens or more complex items such as avatars.

The survey was conducted between April 20 and April 25, 2009. It was a nationally representative online survey of 1,927 people, of whom, 1,697 were between the ages of 18 and 64 and 230 were between the ages of 12 and 17.

Copies of the research may be requested via email at gus.perez@playspan.com

E-junkie is a shopping cart and digital products delivery system. In a recent poll on www.ivanwalsh.com, we found that E-Junkie was one of the few shopping cart solutions that users had consistently high feedback.

It’s designed for those who deveop digital products, such as podcasts, software applications, mp3s, ebooks and ringtones, and want to sell these online. Clickbank and Payloadz are other alternatives.

Why use E-junkie?

1. You can store files on their secure servers

2. Customers are sent an e-mail (customized by you) to download the product after a successful purchase.

3. Shopping cart buttons are available for a different payment systems including PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize. Net.

4. E-junkie can also be used to sell tangible (ie physical) products on your site.

For these products, E-junkie lets include shipping and packaging, sales tax, color and size options, and more.

Pricing

E-Junkie pricing starts at $5 per month. This gives you the ability to list up to 10 products within a 50-MB space limit. The pricing list is here: E-Junkie pricing list

What’s the best – or worse – thing you like about eJunkie?

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

E-junkie is a shopping cart and digital products delivery system. In a recent poll on www.ivanwalsh.com, we found that E-Junkie was one of the few shopping cart solutions that users had consistently high feedback.

It’s designed for those who deveop digital products, such as podcasts, software applications, mp3s, ebooks and ringtones, and want to sell these online. Clickbank and Payloadz are other alternatives.

Why use E-junkie?

1. You can store files on their secure servers

2. Customers are sent an e-mail (customized by you) to download the product after a successful purchase.

3. Shopping cart buttons are available for a different payment systems including PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize. Net.

4. E-junkie can also be used to sell tangible (ie physical) products on your site.

For these products, E-junkie lets include shipping and packaging, sales tax, color and size options, and more.

Pricing

E-Junkie pricing starts at $5 per month. This gives you the ability to list up to 10 products within a 50-MB space limit. The pricing list is here: E-Junkie pricing list

What’s the best – or worse – thing you like about eJunkie?

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous