Probing PayPal

Baby boomers and Luddites excused, who among us has not heard of PayPal - especially with the near saturation of e-commerce in many markets?

Before delving into the technicalities of PayPal, it's best if we understand a bit about the company's history.

PayPal's history begins with the inception of the internet financial services company X.com founded by Elon Musk among others around 2000. By March of that year, X.com acquired Confinity (founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin) and the rights to its PayPal system (the gateway was launched only in October 1999). The company renamed itself as PayPal on June 2001 to focus exclusively on internet transactions - particularly on the popular e-shopping portal eBay.

In February 2002, PayPal became the first tech company to go for an IPO after the 9/11 attacks. On 3 October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for a brisk $1.5 billion - thereby consolidating eBay's hold of online payments and seamlessly integrated the preferred payment means into its shopping portal (as early as April 2000, over 1 million eBay users were already using PayPal for transactions).

Today, the gateway boasts an astounding 100 million active accounts with coverage in over 190 countries around the world. However, the availability of accounts, payment options, fees and other particulars varies from country to country. For that, do refer to their official policies: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide

For starters, PayPal is the internet's largest and most popular payment gateway. Payment gateways, or e-commerce payments systems, are essentially online portals that facilitate electronic transfers of money for online transactions. Gateways serve as alternatives to traditional payment methods like cheques, credit/debit cards and have even swallowed some of the pie away from internet and mobile banking.For companies like PayPal, they act as intermediaries between those who buy (whether individual consumers or businesses) and those who sell (individual or business). PayPal and other gateways (don't forget banks) use sophisticated encryption software involving "tokens" to facilitate money transfer.

Back from Sabbatical

After a month-long break, I feel it's high time to get back to blogging and start enlightening others (myself included).

So from today onward, I shall commit to once again writing about fresh and relevant internet marketing and freelance-related articles for your viewing pleasure!

Until then, bon voyage!

Top 5 Social Networks to Boost Your Business

Social networks today are an inseparable part of our lives. Whether it's for socialization or commercial purposes, the reach of social networks is virtually limitless. They constitute one of the essential modern inbound marketing techniques used by businesses to increase web traffic and internet sales.

In this article, I'll outline some of the major social networking sites and how they can be most effectively leveraged by businesses big and small to drive traffic and sales through social media marketing.

The last few years have witnessed an explosion of social networking sites crop up online. Today, there are literally thousands of social networks each vying to cater to a different audience and/or provide differentiated services to members. However within the increasingly saturated pool of existing social networks, there are only a few dozen that have genuine mainstream commercial potential and can be utilized by businesses to significantly boost traffic and sales.



Below is a list of the top 5 social networks that can boost your business*:

Freelance Finances - Getting Down to Business

Hi everyone,

When it comes to managing your payments while freelancing, sometimes it can get quite confusing and frustrating to deal with. You have to figure out what type of job you're looking for (job category, fixed vs. hourly), job skill requirements, the amount/rate, the hours, the output expected, turnaround times and how exactly your going to receive payment. For the novice freelancer, it can be a lot to handle in the first few months.

In this article, I will humbly outline some of the major online financial payment systems available to both freelancers and clients alike which facilitates the transfer and receipt of earnings.

Freelancing Payment Methods

Once you have nabbed a job or two, you are then ready to establish a payment gateway to receive your funds. Before diving in and highlighting the major freelancing payment methods available to you, you should first understand the differences between fixed jobs and hourly jobs, work schedule and work week and marketplace guarantees and liability exclusions (for payments, performance, dispute resolution, etc.)

The Wonders of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a truly wonderful concept. It's so potentially powerful and effective to leverage for businesses that it can easily outperform traditional outbound marketing methods with a fraction of the cost. So then why don't all businesses harness this tool and why are most people unfamiliar with the term? I'll try to demystify this priceless concept in this article.

For starters, let's first look at what constitutes the 'old way' of how companies market their products:

• Traditional marketing (also called outbound marketing) is a 'push-based' system that uses paid methods like TV ads, direct mail, cold calling (synonymous with telemarketing) and trade shows to bring attention to the minds of potential leads. 
• It's often costly, out of the control of the paying company and generally hard to measure in terms of effectiveness and response.
• Communication is usually one-way
• Customers are sought out (often without permission)
• Marketers are not motivated to educate and entertain

In contrast, the 'new way' of marketing products deals with:

• The careful use of online tools and technologies like SEO marketing, content management, email marketing, video/podcast management, RSS feeds and social media engagement.
• It's cheap, easily to implement and can be more readily measured and tracked
• Communication is interactive and two-way
• Customers approach YOU through search engines, social media and referrals
• Marketers are more motivated to educate and entertain

So what are some of the tools used in inbound marketing and how can they improve your site's traffic/online sales?

1. SEO methods aim to improve a site's visibility on the pages of a search engine with inbound marketing companies actively seeking to rank their pages higher based on their keyword sets. 
2. Content management deals with generating fresh, unique and interesting content for visitors to the site in the form of web articles, blog posts, infographics, ebooks or other value-added content. It's often meant to educate and entertain and is also the best way to organically improve your SEO ranking.
3. Different from the more traditional cold selling email blasts, I'm talking about the careful use of newsletters and bulletins within your site. It's a great way to ensure that visitors are constantly returning back to read new and relevant content, establish relationships as well as potentially convert leads into customers.
4. Nowadays it seems that people are more interested in learning through watching than by reading. Therefore, by embedding relevant videos (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) into your site or by uploading regularly-updated podcasts, you can reach out to the new generation and keep them hooked and coming back for more.
5. Probably the cheapest and most effective means of inbound marketing today is the use of social networking sites to drive traffic to your site. By regularly updating your Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, Pinterest or Reddit accounts, you can better solidify relationships with both existing and potential customers and clients.

As I've outlined, in stark contrast to traditional outbound marketing that relies heavily on 'pushing' goods and services to the customer's doorstep, inbound marketing is subtle and requires the customer to be 'pulled' to the company. The very foundation is reversed on its head.

Today the very paradigm of how businesses do business is different. Before, companies were in control, but now, it's the user that has greater control and are themselves actively involved in content creation and publication. The lines are becoming increasingly blurred.

Inbound marketing is here to stay and is rapidly becoming an essential tool for any business with an online presence. It's a brave new world in the marketing arena where change is the only constant, so if you are a budding blogger/webmaster/freelancer that can't adjust to the changing dynamics, then you'll find yourself quickly eating everyone else's dust and losing steam.

Don't fall behind, embrace the inbound marketing wave!