Paypal Adaptive Payments and Ebay giving at checkout

Dear Readers,

We are now half way May, and my new year's resolution to  raise funds for charity this year hasn't exactly kicked off yet.

If this is your first visit to this blog, my new year's resolution in January was to raise funds for charity on-line.

How you might say? Well, I love shoes, and my plan is to sell little leather babyshoes ( prewalkers with a suede sole) which will be designed by my husband, who is a graduate of NCAD .

The idea would be that - at checkout - 2 Euros of the selling price will go to charity, and the buyer can decide which charity gets the funds. This way I give the buyer choice who they wish to support and secondly ( which is equally important to me) I don't actually handle the charity donation, as it would go straight to the chosen charity.

So I have done some research, and very quickly I came across Paypal's adaptive payments.

I am sure most of you have heard about Paypal, and most of you would be familiar with simple payments as it's a single payment to a single receiver.(like when you buy on Ebay, and you pay with Paypal, it's just to one recipient, namely the seller)

My scenario is different, as I wanted to find a way that there would be 2 recipients, myself and the chosen charity. The example below would allow for multiple charities to benefit.

For now I will do just primary receive( being myself) and then receiver 2 being an Irish charity.

In the adaptive payments there two types, chained payments and parallel payments.

Both allow to send payments to multiple recipients, and depending on the requirements, either the payment goes directly from the payer to the various recipients ( parallel), or the payment goes to a primary recipient , who then redistribute it to a second /third recipient ( chained).

It's all getting pretty complicated at this stage, and I am not a programmer, so the likely hood I can implement  and integrate this in an ecommerce platform is pretty slim.... but then I found EZchain.

I have been playing with it for a while now, and it seems exactly what I am looking for.

I can create a button ( it's really an URL pointing to Paypal), specify the recipients, the % of the total amount or the exact amount I want each recipient to receive.  I have been testing it in Sandbox, and it's working fine, so now I need to submit the application  to www.x.com as to get an APP ID so I can turn my sandbox into live method..

I have been dealing with Nate Jensen from http://www.zerogravpro.com/  ( the creators of this app)and he's been extremely helpful. ( Thanks Nate!)

I have been testing it on a  Magento Go website , you can find my Ecommerce website here.

(Feel free to test, but remember it's in Sandbox, so it's only going to work if you are using a Paypal Sandbox email, it won't work if you are trying this with a live Paypal account as you'll get some error message at checkout) 

Also ,I haven't created that many buttons yet, so just use quantity 1 and choose the BeeforBattens Logo:) If you are not familiar with Paypal Sandbox, check out this kbase article on Magento Go.

I'll explain in my next post how I got it to work, as it's not quite a full integration, but it works, and that's what counts in my books!

I had really hoped I could sell on Ebay Ireland for charity , but unfortunately that's not going to happen any time soon, if ever it will. 

Currently Ebay has a feature for sellers in UK and the USA, whereby the seller ( non charity) can give a % or a certain amount  of the selling price to charity or offer the buyer of their product on Ebay the option to donate to their favourite charity at checkout.

The other feature is that charities in their own right in the UK and the USA, can sell on Ebay , and raise much needed funds. Unfortunately this option is not available to Irish seller or Irish charities.

Have a great evening and feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions or suggestions!

My email is katleenworkinginireland@gmail.com

Thanks!

Katleen

How to add a mailing list, types of mailing lists

Hello,

Adding the option of a mailing list ( or an opt-in list to your blog or your website, is a great way of collecting data of your (future) customers and also allows you to communicate with your followers.

So how to go about adding "follow by Email" on http://www.blogger.com

If you want people to give the option to follow your blog by email via  http://www.blogger.com 

as shown below( you'll see in the right column of this blog )

You can do this by selecting layout and then add a gadget. The gadget you want to add is the Follow by Email Gadget, and you can decide where you want to add it.

If you place it in the right panel, and quite high up, you have a higher chance that people will enter their Email address.

Once they enter their email address, they'll come to a screen where they need to enter a verification code to check that you are human being. Once you have passed that test, you'll receive an email that contains a confirmation code.

Once you click on that link, your subscription is confirmed and every time I publish an article, you'll get an email with the content of my article.

I'd recommend you subscribe to a few different blogs with different subjects, to get an idea what people are writing about.

So now that you have added your follow by email to your blog, it's time to set up the same for your website and your facebook page, this time collecting people's email addresses for the purpose of sending them updates by means of a newsletter, special offers, discount codes etc.

There are a couple of different providers, most of them offering a free plan.
I have found http://mailchimp.com/ to be the most active in educating its users, however there are other ones, such as http://www.constantcontact.com  ( USA), http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com ( Belgium) , and one  called www.newsletter.ie ( Ireland).

The integration with facebook is quite easy, I found these explanations to be pretty straightforward
These explanations give you instructions on how to add a sign up form to your website.
There is an option in Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns, and you can find the instructions here.

Relevant to my own project, I have set up a facebook page, www.facebook.com/www.littlebabysteps.eu , so please feel free to befriend me.
I added the mailchimp newsletter sign up..
( I 'll need to come up with a plan of action, but that's not for today)

I have submitted the boy's designs and I am hopefull I'll be submitting the girls designs during the week.

Somehow I received an email out of the blue of a lady who was enquiring where she can buy my litttebabysteps, so I was very chuffed! I was quite amazed, as I haven't done any kind of press release yet( as I don 't have the shoes yet), I have only been writing this blog, set up the website and set up the facebook page.

I have also been looking at packaging of the littlebabysteps, but haven't quite finalized that either.. I think I'll go with Organzabags for now, but realize that if I am selling them to shops, an Organza bag may not be ideal, so I am awating different samples.

I have also been digging deeper in the financial part of splitting the payment, and I think I have found a suitable solution.

More about that in my next post.

Hope you enjoyed reading this, and look forward to your comments/ questions or feedback.

All the best.
Katleen

Free Logos /banners for your website/blog

Hello,

If you have just stumbled upon this blog, I'll give you a quick synopsis what this blog is about.
It's about raising funds for Irish charities, how to go about it and in the meantime, also working out my own fundraising ideas.

My main plan is to raise funds by selling little leather soft leather babyshoes, whereby a part of each sale goes to the buyers favourite charity. The buyer can be a retailer who would buy from me, or just a consumer who buys online on my website.
My website ? http://www.littlebabysteps.eu

I am not quite ready yet, as I need to work out a few things, both on a design level of the shoes  and packaging & marketing, but, and that's probably the most important part - the payment method that I will use , as I would like to find a way that me as the seller, only really functions as facilitator between the consumer/shop and the charity, but I don't actually want to handle the charity funds. More about this in another post.

Raising funds is hard, so I believe it's very important to have a good webpresence and use the web as a tool to  promote the  fundraising idea and engage with charities, and other business who are on line, to make this effort as for carrying as possible.

So this week I wanted to talk about creating a logo for my website.
I have been looking at various "Free" websites, but often you'll find that it is free to create the logo, but then when you want the actual logo, you need to pay for it. Other ones are free, but you'll find a watermark on the logo, so it doesn't look very professional, or maybe not as professional as I would like it  to be. I'd recommend you Google Free Logo, create a free logo, logos for free and every other variotion of that, and you'll find plenty of choice.

One site that's definately free is http://www.cooltext.com
I have created the below banner/logo there:

 

Logo created via www.cooltext.com

There are quite a few websites that will let you create a logo for free, and give you a low resolution jpeg of your logo. In my case, that's fine for now, so I created the following logo via
http://www.tweak.com

 

Logo created by www.tweak.com

I found this link that gives you 33 Logo design services of creating a  business logo, you'll see some are entirely free, others aren't.

My next blogpost will be about adding a mailing list to your website, blog, Facebook page.
Thanks for passing by!

Katleen

Step 2 : How to set up a Gmail account & Google Analytics,Google Webmaster and Go

Hi all,

As promised, it's now time to set up an email account.
There are lot's of different free services you can use, but the one that has a lot more to offer than just email, is a gmail account.
Check out this Youtube Clip that explains how to set up a Gmail account.



Once you have done that, you are ready to open up a Google Analytics account,
watch the below video  that explains how to set up Google Analytics.


Once you have done that, you can enter your Google Analytics code on your website, that is hosted by Blacknight, through the control panel.
Just login via cp.blacknight.com and select the Google tab and fill in the code

The above are just the bare essentials, but I would recommend you also learn about Google Webmaster tools.


Once you have created your Google Webmaster account, you can enter your code in your account.
See attached image

In the Google tab on Blacknight, you'll also find a FREE 100 Euros voucher for Google Adwords.

I found the below Video very explanatory but only covers the very basics.
Google Adwords is a very powerfull online advertising system.


However, one word of advice!!! 100 Euros is a great amount of money that is given to you for free by Google, but if you don't study the ins and outs of Google Adwords,  your 100 Euros will be gone before you know, so I would recommend you focus on your website, and once the website is finished, can you start contemplating starting a Google Adword campaign.
The 100 Euros is a one off freebie, and as you want to make sure you get the most benefit of it, please make sure you spend some time reading on how it all works.
I'll cover Google Adwords at another stage.

So so far we have covered
Step 1. Choosing a domain name and setting up a website
Step 2. Set up a Gmail account, set up Google Analytics, set up Google Webmaster, set up Google Adwords.

During the week I'll give some tips on creating/finding a logo, and how to set up a mailing list.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and please feel free to comment on it!
Oh yes, so far, money spent = o!

Regards from cloudy Galway..
Katleen

Step 1. Get a website name and get it for free.

Dear Reader,

So as I mentioned in my first post, I am in the process of setting up a website  in Ireland and all other associated social media channels to promote my new idea.

I suppose since my last post I have done quite a bit: :)  ( little tap on my own shoulder, it's good to see I have made a bit of progress:) yiha!

I know not all things that are free are really free, there usually is a catch, or you ultimately ( may) pay the price later, but I am glad to report that the following is not a scam, it work perfectly well, and I would highly recommend it. ( and yes, it's FREE for a year..) 

So what I am talking about..
So if you are going to have a business, regardless what business, it's good to have an online presence too. Some business these days only operate online, for very good reason, as it's very cheap to set up and is even there when you are asleep( or on holidays:)  ( Note to self, would love a break...beach, water and a nice cocktail please..) Other dont't see the need, and I would recommend that those don't have a presence give it some thought, as these days if you are serious about your business( or idea) it's good to have online presence( more about that later).

There is a few parts to getting a website, the most important is coming up with your business name and then have a website with that name. If you are based in Ireland, there is ongoing project that gives you both a name AND a hosting account absolutely FREE ( for a year)
I was going to tell you all about it, but  no need for me to re invent the wheel,  the below video really tells you all..
Just visit this website http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie/  and for those who weren't online
I am hoping that you'll follow the simple steps, and you'll be up and running in no time.



Which kind of brings me to another (very usefull resource) http://www.youtube.com
It's one of these places I have started to hang out a bit more frequently, as it has a wealth of knowledge, just about anything! Just go to http://www.youtube.com and type in the search box something like say knitting, and you'll find an unlimited amount of videos of people who will be eager to tell you the latest and greatest about their knitting pattern, and teach you step by step how to do a particular knitting style.. equally you'll find a wealth of resources about websites, blogs etc..

So I set up http://www.littlebabysteps.eu and it didn't cost me penney! I am all chuffed!

The blog you are reading is created via www.blogger.com which is a Google program
Cost = O Euro

Things to do next week :
1. Set up a gmail addresss
2. Set up other Google things like Google Analytics
3. A logo for my site
4. Facebook/Twitter

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and encourage you to comment on this blog or provide more information that will be helpful to others..
Thanks!
Katleen

First Blogpost

oh my.. I have done it again.... second blog... this one is about raising funds for charity.
My newsyears resolution was to raise funds for charity.
Not only is that a tough task, I also want to do this on a budget , and show other businesses that they can get their message across, on line, and not spend a penney..
So this blog covers this journey, on how to get a business up and running, on line, without spending a penney..
Let's see if I can do it!!
Thanks!
Katleen