Here’s an experiment you can do next Sunday.

Every week, millions of folks head to Mass on a Sunday. We go most weeks too, though we’re not hardcore fans in the traditional sense.

photo credit: anitakhart

How The Catholic Church Generates Funds Thru Small Payments

One of the occupation hazards of running your own business, it that you see everything else through the lens of starting, running and developing a business. Even when your neighbors are lining up to receive the Eucharist.

And it was while they were receiving the Eucharist that I began to count the different ways the church was receiving funds.

1. Collections basket – First, by accident, I knocked over the Collections basket. This is passed around during Mass and everyone chips in. The amount you donate is up to you. Most donate a few Euros and their children, who want to be involved, are also given some loose change to drop in.
2. Special Events – At special times of the year, the Collections basket is circulated twice during Mass raising the small dilemma of how much to give to each cause without others thinking that you’re stingy. Running out of small change can be slightly embarrassing.
3. Post Box – Next, I saw the Collection Post Box behind me. It’s like a traditional post box and let’s folks drop in an envelope with their donations, for example, during the week or if they can’t get to Mass on Sunday. Collection Boxes are placed in different parts of the Church.
4. Partners – Outside, there are two other collection baskets: one for when you enter (it’s actually on the steps) was for St Vincent’s De Paul (helps children in Africa, I believe) and a second inside the doors (for another cause, I didn’t get the name).
5. Candles – You can buy a candle and pray for the souls of those who have passed away. There is no fixed amount, though most give one or two euros.
6. Newsletter – During the Mass, the priest also reminded us about the Newsletter. I’m not sure if it’s free. I think there was a small subscription fee.
7. Refreshments – After Mass, we went to the Little Flower Hall for a chat with our friends. The coffee and biscuits are free, though a small donation is expected.

What I want to share here is the multiple ways the church, as a business organization, helps it’s members make small payments.

Small payments add up, especially if you can create a large customer base.

Applying the Small Payment Model to Your Business

The takeaway is this. Instead of trying to hit your customers with single large payments, look for ways to break out the payments into smaller, more affordable options.

Look at how others do it both online and offline.

Why?

The focus of this site is to help you setup an online business and develop passive income streams.

Most blogs haven’t figured this out. But, offline, traditional businesses have. And these are the best place to look for examples of business models that have been setup, tested, and refined.

Do these sound familiar?

• Pay 0% today.
• 10 easy payments.
• No interest until 2012.
• 100% Refund.
• Try it for 30 days.

All of these are designed to convert you (no pun intended) from a prospect to a customer. The size of the payment doesn’t really matter. It’s getting you to make the commitment to use the product that matters.

And that’s what you need to do with your online business. Find ways to get your product on the customer’s PC, iPhone or in their home. Once you have them as a micro-customer you can offer them more incentives and get to to try more of your products.

How the Church does it is one example.

Can you think of others?

This article shows you can increase your Google AdSense earnings by at least 12%. I’ve started to use video-based ads in Adsense (not the text ads) and the results have been impressive.  Split testing showed us that websites with video ads 1) keep viewers onsite longer, 2) increase repeat visits and 3) generate significantly higher AdSense payments than standard plain text ads. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to setup AdSense video, look at different sizes and formats, test the ads, examine the risks and benefits, and also show you how it increased our earnings.

Why Use Google AdSense Videos Format

The first benefit that videos offer is that they increase Google Adsense payments. In our tests, it increased earnings by more than 12%.  When you’re designing your site layout, consider dropping the text ads and insert one large video ad instead. Do some split testing and check the results. Video ads, or video units as Google likes to call them, lets you enrich your site with relevant video content, which can be embedded in a customizable player.

What is Google AdSense Video?

Google AdSense videos are user initiated ads that run on sites that are part of the Google content network. These ad formats provide users with a rich and engaging advertising experience.

How to get Adsense Videos

Sign in to your AdSense account and open the AdSense Setup tab. Click the video units link and setup up your video unit. Add it to you site and see if it compliments your content.

Risks of Using Video Ad Formats

• Risk #1 – the ads may not compliment your product offerings
• Risk #2 – the ads may be too slow when downloading (not everyone has broadband), which will leave the reader with nothing to see but a blank space, i.e. where the ad should be
• Risk #3 – your AdSense earnings will drop. In our tests, they don’t but your experience may be different.
• Risk #4 – while using video ads should lead to increased sales, especially in the short term, web users may try the video ads and then reject the regular text ads resulting in lower sales.
• Risk #5 – video ads may have a negative impact on your Adsense earnings if do not match your sites look and feel, i.e. the overall color scheme. You can’t control the appearance of video ads as you can with text ads.

Which Video Ad Formats are available?

Video ads are currently available in several ad formats:

• 336 x 280 (Large Rectangle)
• 300 x 250 (Medium Rectangle)
• 250 x 250 (Square)
• 200 x 200 (Small Square)
• 728 x 90 (Leaderboard)
• 120 x 600 (Skyscraper)
• 160 x 600 (Wide Skyscraper)

How to Get Started

To display video ads on your site, make sure you are using one of these supported formats and that you are opted in to image ads for that ad unit. If not, the video option will not be displayed.

How to Enable Image Ads

There are two ways to enable image ads. You can:

1. Enable image and text advertising for all of your pages or
2. Enable image ads for individual pages

Warning - Enabling image ads for individual pages overrides account-wide level selections.

To enable image ads across your account:

1. Sign in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the My Account tab
3. Click the edit links next to the Ad Type Preference header
4. Select Display text and image ads in all ad units

If you’ve already generated the code, you can change the ad type of your AdSense unit using the ad management feature:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab.
3. Select the Manage Ads sub-tab.
4. Click Edit settings for the ad unit you’d like to update.
5. Under Format pick your desired ad type.
6. Click Save settings.

Adding YouTube Ads – How it works

If you’ve embedded video from YouTube into your site before, you’ll know what to do. Once you’ve configured the options in Adsense, embed the code as per usual, which display the relevant YouTube content to your site. When selecting content, you can:

1. Choose video categories to target to your site or blog
2. Select content from individual YouTube partners
3. Get video targeted to your site content

Configuration options allow you to blend the YouTube player into your site, customize the color scheme and layout, and choose different player sizes.

How to Test Video Ads on Your Blog

You can test the ad from inside AdSense as follows:

• Enter the URL of a page where this ad unit currently appears to see what the ad unit that you have designed will look like.
• Click Preview on this page
• The test add appears and you can see what it looks like. Pretty impressive!

Tip: If you enter a URL that does not display the code for this ad unit, you will not see any ads in the preview.

Why Can’t I See Video Ads on my Site?

You might not see video ads for a number of reasons.

1. Are you using one of the ad formats that support video ads?
2. Have you opted in to image ads for that ad format - otherwise, your ad unit will not display video ads.
3. Even if you are using supported ad formats, and you are opted in to image ads, video ads may not be targeted to your content for the time being.

Make sure that you are opted in to both text and image ads for these ad units to maximize competition for your ad space.

Split Testing & How Video Increases Your AdSense Earnings

This table shows the AdSense earnings before I added the videos units. Note that 210 clicks generated $77. This is an average for the site performance in March 2010.

Page Impressions – 99,219
Clicks Page 210
CTR – 0.23%
Page eCPM – €0.77
Estimated earnings – €77.14

This is $77 per day across all of March, which is approx $2,310 for the month.

Google AdSense – Search Earnings Without Video ads

This shows the AdSense Search results before I added the videos. Search always pay better. We had 80 clicks which generated $20. Again, this is the average return for the site in March 2010. The eCPM is $26.

Queries – 830
Clicks – 80
CTR – 9.64%
eCPM – €26.51
Estimated earnings – €20.20

This is $20 per day for each day in March, which is approx $600 for the month. Google AdSense earnings for both Page Impressions and Search was $2,900 approx. We also had some small payments from the RSS feeds, but not much.

Google AdSense – Page Impressions Earnings With Video ads

We added the video ads formats across three sites in April. So, these figures are for the first 15 days of the month. Earnings increased by 12%.

Page Impressions (15 days)- 46,986
Clicks Page 118
CTR – 0.24%
Page eCPM – €0.79
Estimated earnings – €43.01

Google AdSense – Search Earnings With Video ads

This shows the AdSense Search results after I added the videos. Its earnings increased by approx 10%.

Queries – 410
Clicks – 39
CTR – 9.84%
eCPM – €27.15
Estimated earnings – €11.88

Conclusions

There are a few things to note. Adding the video formats to Google AdSense made no difference to traffic or at least not yet. We didn’t expect it would. It did increase the earnings though, but about 12%.

1. Page Impression earnings increased by 15%~.
2. Two ads formats performed very well. The first was the Skyscraper video down the right side of the page. However, we also placed Google Ads (with video) embedded inside the article near the top-left. Looking at the heatmaps, it’s clear that visitors ‘enjoyed’ these ads as they clicked on more of them as the month progressed. More testing over the next 6 weeks should give us better feedback.
3. Search earnings increased by 7-10%~. This increase may be related to the close proximity of the video ads to the search box.
4. The Search box is placed in two places on the site. At the top right of the page and also in the Footer. Tests have shown that many users scroll to the end of the page (seeking more information, perhaps) and use this Search box to look for the information rather than scroll back up to the top or hit the Back button.
5. Total earnings for both page impressions and Search increased by 12% approx. Is this good enough? Well, our tests were for a 15-days period in April. As we use video more, our earnings should improve
6. 12% over twelve months should generate an extra $4,000 revenue, which isn’t a bad return for 30 minutes work!

Over to you.

Have you tried the AdSense video formats? If so, what results did you see? If you didn’t, what was the obstacle or issue that stopped you for using video? Let us know below.

PS – Remember to sign up for our free newsletter and give us a Tweet!

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?

OneText, an online Payment platform provider, has released ORCA a new social-commerce transaction processing system.ORCA, Optimized Real-Time Currency Application, is an the open-source platform that provides online companies with tools to process payments, manage loyalty programs, and schedule advance orders of real and virtual goods.

The software behind ORCA can be used by social networks, online games, and other social media.

While 5 companies have already signed up to us the service, including a TV network, social gaming network, offline retailer, and an interactive digital publisher, oneTXT does not see iteslf competing with PayPal or other e-commerce platforms.

According to a recent study commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan, the virtual goods and currency market will reach $1.8 billion in 2009; 12% of Americans have bought virtual goods i n over the last 12 months,

According to Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, boys tend to buy virtual swords for their MMORPGs, while women buy virtual flowers on Facebook.

Ukash, the online payment specialist, closed a deal with epay, a division of Euronet, to make its online cash vouchers available in Italy. The expansion of Ukash into Italy will see Ukash vouchers available at 1,250 epay locations across the country. The deal lets internet users in Italy pay, play and shop online using cash for free without having to pay for a prepaid card.

Internet shopping in Italy turned over 4,868 billion euros in 2007 and continues to grow.

This deal allows Italian online merchants to tap into the growing customer base of consumers who prefer to use cash as a safer way to complete transactions online.

How it works

1. Ukash vouchers do not attract a service or convenience fee.

2. Customers exchange their cash for a unique 19-digit code to use online.

3. This provides them with a secure payment system where they don’t need to reveal any financial information, enabling those without access to credit or debit cards – or those with fears of online fraud – to shop online.

Mark Chirnside, chief executive officer of Ukash, adds, “Italy is a key growth market for Ukash, where ecommerce is on the up and consumers are becoming savvy about the safer ways to pay online. By partnering with epay we are able to reach a broader scope of potential new customers and expand our global footprint.”

“This deal also opens the virtual door for many online retailers as they can now offer alternative payment methods and attract the cash consumer, as well as eliminate any risk of online fraud.”

Ukash vouchers are now available at 1,250 physical point of sale terminals operated by epay at independent supermarkets, petrol stations, call shops, drug stores and convenience stores in Italy.

The vouchers will be available in €10, €20, €50 and €100 and can be combined, split and/or converted.

Ukash is undergoing a period of rapid global growth and this year has expanded into Germany, Poland, Australia and Spain with epay.

Buyers making purchases on iOffer can open an mPayy personal account to make secure payments from their checking accounts with just a cell phone number and password.
mPayy technology lets iOffer’s sellers to take their stores “on the road” by transforming their cell phones into mobile point of sale systems.

“We’re very encouraged by the month-over-month growth in sellers selecting mPayy as one of their online payment solutions on iOffer,” said Conrad Sheehan, founder and CEO of mPayy.

More details at www.mpayy.com

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous