Since PayPal announced earlier this week that it has surpassed 100 million users worldwide, I thought this would be a good time to discuss the merits of Paypal from a business perspective.

Many online buyers feel Paypal is a safe, easy and convenient way to pay online because they do not need to share their financial information with every online merchant. But I’ve come across several merchants who seem leary of setting up Paypal as their credit card processor, perhaps because the Paypal name has been used by spammers and phishers to try to con people out of account information. This would be like uninstalling Microsoft Windows because so many hackers target viruses to Windows users (why? because so many people USE it).

Paypal is one of the most economical way for merchants to gain the ability to take credit cards over the internet. Paypal accounts have no start up costs and you are only charged when you make a credit card sale. Most merchant accounts charge ongoing statement fees and annual or monthly fees whether you make a sale or not.

Of course, there are times when another merchant service or full merchant account may better suit your business. I will try to cover more options and various scenarios as I can.

More information about Paypal can be found at https://www.paypal.com.

Well, I took the opportunity on a quiet Sunday afternoon to take my Adwords professional exam and…. I passed!  I am now an authentic “Qualified Google Advertising Professional“.

You can see my Professional Status page at Google.

I hope to help many more businesses take advantage of this unique and effective advertising venue.  Be ahead of the curve! Try it out!  If you’re worried whether it will have a good ROI for you, give me a call. I can give you some examples of effectiveness and sometimes find a way for you to get a free trial.

Google has a new major update started that will affect the ranking of many web pages in Google’s index. This update is reported to be?much bigger -?so big that Google has given the update the name “Big Daddy”.

What is the Big Daddy Update?

Google uses?multiple data centers in various parts of the world to respond to search queries. These decentralized servers balance the workload of indexing web sites.

The upcoming Big Daddy update?changes?this network infrastructure so Google can?handle potential spam problems; index different content types such as images, JavaScripts or Flash files; and allow them to develop more advanced algorithms and a larger index.

According to Google engineers, Big Daddy will be live in February or March.? As more reports come in, I’ll post information about how this may affect web site rankings.

I’ve been seeing an increasing trend in a phishing technique used to trick you into giving your eBay login account information.

The email comes disguised as a “Question from eBay Member”. eBay allows bidders and sellers to communicate somewhat anonymously by offering this tool for legitimate use. The spoofers are creating a lookalike email to the ones created using the legitimate mail. Often they say something like “I’m still waiting the package to arrive What happened? Please mail me ASAP or I will report you to ebay.” or simply “What happened with that item?. Please respond I’m desperate!”

Basically, they are just trying to get you to use the “Respond Now” button in their email which takes you to what looks like an ebay login page but is a forgery of ebay on the senders own server (in a country like Taiwan). Instead of logging you into ebay, they are just collecting your ebay user account and password if you type them in on this forged page.

The phishers send this to any email address they have in their spam database, they are not necessarily the address someone has used for ebay (that makes it easy to spot). They may send it to people who never use eBay. The point is, if they spread a wide enough net, they will get it sent to someone who DOES sell on eBay and who would WANT to respond to someone who is threatening to report them as a ‘bad seller’.

Always check the true domain name of any links or buttons in an email message (if you hold your cursor over a link in Outlook, it will often pop up the URL destination.) Or better yet– create and use your own bookmarks for online services you use– whether its eBay, Paypal, your credit card company, etc. Then if you receive a message that appears to be from a company you have dealings with, just don’t use the link in the email. Go out to your browser and use your OWN bookmark to access the login page, etc. Any notices or messages that were legitimately sent to you by the company should be available within your account.

Well today is the day I select two winners (randomly) from the list of clients that have either written testimonials or referred other people to me for services in the last year.

Both Winners will receive a month-long Google Adwords campaign for free! This is over a $300 value which includes both a substantial ad budget and my time and expertise to set up a specialized ad campaign to reach the winners’ targeted markets.

And the winners are:

Thanks to all our YNot Web clients for making the last year a success!