Sometime last month, the folks from Multiply gave me access to the YugaTech account that was earlier registered by someone else and used as a gadget store. I thought it was also time for me to set up a store there for my used gadgets.
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Barely over a month since my Paypal account was hacked and restored, I once again encountered a disastrous incident — this time, Paypal emailed me saying they have placed the account on Limited Access.
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So my Paypal account was hacked at exactly 10:01am this morning. In the many years that I have been doing online transactions, I’ve gotten used to frauds and hacks but this one from Paypal (Unauthorized Transaction) is the biggest so far.
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In a recent announcement made last week, Xoom has finally ceased accepting Paypal-funded transactions to the Philippines.
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One of the basic security features of Paypal is the Seller Reputation Status and Philippine Paypal users are now provided with one.
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Most RSS readers of this blog would have seen the “Buy me a beer” link I recently installed as a plugin for the feeds. It uses Paypal to receive small amounts of tip from readers. Problem is, Paypal fees are still high that tips in the range of a dollar doesn’t do any good.
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Paypal members in the Philippines and Indonesia gets a very early new year’s treat with the introduction of direct local bank withdrawals made effective yesterday. I an email announcement to all users on both South-East Asian countries, Paypal will now accept funds in their respective local currencies.
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A reader emails in and points to a new site he accidentally stumbled while mis-typing Freindster instead of Friendster (a popular social networking site in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia).
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Following Michael’s tradition of publishing popular posts, here’s my own version of Top 10 Posts for 2007.
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Two of the most recent blog ideas pitched to me have become an almost instant hit in the local webosphere. When the authors of these blogs came up to me and pitched the proposal, I knew right then it would be a success. I’d like to share their stories here so to inspire others.
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Will be in Davao for the 1st Mindanao Blogging Summit this week-end. Hope to catch up with people. It will be a busy sked as we have another business agenda the same week-end. Will probably hit Cagayan de Oro City next month too for another Business Blogging series.
More on that next week. Here are some more side stories:
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Sign up for Paypal in the Philippines!. You can withdraw an amount not exceeding $500 per month to any debit, credit card or directly into your Philippine bank accounts. You will just need the bank codes and savings account number.
At long last, Paypal’s promise to allow receiving funds into Philippine accounts have been fulfilled. Just today, reports have been circulating in the previous post here about the development.
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There’s gonna be a new player in town and it’s called Revolution Money. It’s being touted as the next Paypal-killer and do better than the non-performing Google Checkout.
But what is this Revolution Money really all about?
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I’d like to welcome my new visitors and readers coming from MSN Live, Yahoo! & Google looking for my blog after watching the feature at Mel & Joey last night. I was surprised that for a 2-hour footage, they managed to squeeze it in a 2-minute feature.
Just to guide our new visitors, I’d like to point you out to some readings. I wasn’t really anticipating to be inundated with emails so apologies if I didn’t come up with a welcome page to guide all of you along and answer the more obvious questions beforehand.
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They say that if you have a proven and tested way of solving things, get on with it and don’t deviate from the usual approach. But what if that doesn’t solve it? Well, think outside the box. Just don’t re-invent the wheel.
See more tidbits after the jump.
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I started getting direct advertisers on this blog about two years ago. The other blogs just followed suit. It was an exciting prospect because the growing interest in blog advertising was something that popped out of nowhere. One of the best ways to prepare yourself for direct advertisers is to come up with an ad rate card.
About 13 months ago, I shared a sample of my rate card here. You can still download a copy of the file here. It’s an old one and I’ve actually updated that one into a new PDF file (which needs another round of updates because of the redesign). Essentially, there are 3 basic parts that you should include in your rate card and we’ll tackle each one of them.
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I’ve been a Feedburner Ad Network (FAN) member since February. That’s after I hit the 500 subscriber mark last December. Looks like 500 is the magic number to get a FAN invite.
Since then, I’ve been running RSS ads thru Feedburner. The ads do not appear automatically but you get notifications that your blog is included in an ad campaign, of which you need to approve. Using Feedflare, ads will either appear on your RSS feeds or on your blog (ever saw one of those Flash ads about the Blackberry Curve?)
In the last 6 months though, my total FAN revenue is a mere $42.23.
Yeah, a true low-earner — very close to Adbrite’s performance. However, there could be several reasons for this, some, very inherent on the fact that your advertising to the rss-reader crowd:
- Low CTR. Very evident on the chart above. RSS readers are not click happy. That’s why they’re using feed readers, right?
- Geo-targetted? Probably. Some of the ads will only display for feed readers from certain regions.
- No email ads. Feed subscriptions via emails do not contain ads, which should be rightfully so.
As it is now, do I think it’s worth it? I think it’s too early to say — let’s see on the 12th month. On the other hand, since FeedBurner is now part of Google, are we expecting some changes in the payment options aside from the Paypal-only delivery? I do hope cheque deliveries will be available soon or maybe Google will just include that in our AdSense cheques?
When e-commerce activities aren’t supported by Paypal, throngs of other alternatives thrive to get a piece of the pie. I’ve tried StormPay before though some of my old friends have been using e-Gold as well. However, e-Gold may face the possibility of shutting down soon:
Three owners of online payment processor E-Gold and an affiliated company have been indicted for money laundering and related crimes for allegedly allowing sellers of child pornography, operators of investment scams and other types of criminals to send and receive payments related to their misdeeds. The company vigorously denied the charges and accused prosecutors of fabricating testimony.
In addition to E-Gold, the four-count indictment names Gold & Silver Reserve and company owners Douglas L. Jackson of Satellite Beach, Florida; Reid A. Jackson of Melbourne, Florida; and Barry K. Downey of Woodbine, Maryland. They are charged with one count each of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law and money transmission without a license under the District of Columbia.
According to prosecutors, E-Gold’s status as the preferred payment method from some of Earth’s lowest life forms was for good reason. The online service was purportedly backed by stored physical gold, and all that was needed to open an account was a valid email address. No other contact information or background information was necessary.
The service is allegedly being used by child pornographers and similar activities. Full story from the Register.
I can now imagine all of my friends withdrawing their e-Gold or trading them with real-life or tangible currencies.
I’ve just been invited to the Feedburner Ad Network the other day so you guys subscribing on my feed may get some sort of ads at the bottom of each entry.
Not really sure how I was qualified but from what I’ve heard, you need to get at least 500 RSS subscribers to be able to join. Another thing is that they only make payments thru Paypal which is a bummer but I’m hoping we could get some more Paypal functionalities before I get my first payment. 
To those of you who are running Performancing Ads, you might have already noticed that a couple or two square banner ads are now showing instead of the default ad.
Just so you don’t mistakenly take them as directly paid ads, they are actually Network CPA ads. It means that you only get paid if someone or any of your visitors will sign-up for whatever the ad offers. It could be some free membership or subscription or something.
Only then you get some sort of commission or fee for that action (Cost Per Action). This is basically almost similar to Amazon Associates or other affiliate programs. I’m not sure what the rate per action are and there’s nothing indicated in the Performancing Partners page either.
P.S.
Again, they indicate that they only pay via Paypal but it’s possible to ask them to also provide cheque remittances. We’ll see how that goes.
