The Article Writer

Oops, to Google Checkout!

Yesterday, I made mention of the Google Checkout a program, but I failed to realize one thing: you can only use this program if you have tangible items to sell. Thus, if you are like me and you sell a service — in my case resume subscriptions — then you aren’t eligible to use Google Checkout. I should have read Google’s guidelines a little bit closer…

So, I am back to using Paypal until the time I decide to set up an ecommerce site. Since I don’t have any plans for that, I guess I’ll kiss Google Checkout goodbye. Drat!

Paypal has a competitor!

Finally, it looks as if Paypal has a decent and affordable competitor. A few months ago Google announced that they were jumping in on the online payment bandwagon by offering Google Checkout a program that has all of what Paypal has to offer, but at a lower cost for merchants.

Indeed, Google charges 2.0% + 20 cents per transaction while Paypal charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Furthermore, if you are a Google Adwords user you can reduce your fees further: for every dollar you spend on Adwords, Google will allow you to process ten dollars in sales for free!

I plan on continuing to offer Paypal for my customers, but I will also be encouraging customers to use Google Checkout. Although my sales figures aren’t all that high, I could see myself saving $50 to over $100 per year by opting for Checkout v Paypal.

Visit Google’s Checkout blog for some helpful tips and information too.

Today, I decided to install Sitemaps, the program from Google that helps webmasters push site content onto the web instead of waiting for it to be pulled from the search engines. Supposedly, when the program is installed, search engines have an easier time finding and indexing site pages. Well, with over 6500 URLs on my CFAC site — I run a forum too — the job is still going strong six hours later. I am not sure if it’ll even be done within the remaining one and one half hours that the program says it will still take. Yet, I don’t have much choice: I can’t cut things off midstream as I have too much time invested in the job.

Fortunately, I am able to do other work while this process drones on. No, I won’t do Sitemaps for The Article Writer site for quite some time now; it’ll have to wait until I find another day where I can get things set up and going.

Interested in installing Sitemap? Visit SOFTplus GSiteCrawler for more information.

GSiteCrawler: Google Sitemap Generator for Windows