Nate Moller teaches how to start an online business for eCommerce using Wordpress.

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For some this may be old news, but on August 1, 2007 my PayPal Affiliate account in CJ.com was terminated. I hadn’t been using that affiliate much but noticed it today as I was trying to resolve a dispute with HostGator.com.

With further research, I found that PayPal has decided to do their own affiliate program.

Each time a new merchant signs up for a PayPal Business or Premier account via the link or banner that you provide, you’ll be eligible for a Merchant Referral Bonus. Your referral bonus is tied to the amount the merchant receives via PayPal’s Website Payment Tools or Send Money.

You’ll immediately start earning 0.5% of the new merchant’s revenue — up to $1,000.00 USD — for the first 12 months that the merchant has his PayPal account.

Note: The Merchant Referral Bonus program is designed to reward referrals of non-eBay merchants. As a result, payments received for eBay items will not contribute toward the Merchant Referral Bonus.

Does anyone know why they decided to go this route?

Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Cost Effectiveness: I know it costs a pretty good chunk of change to be an advertiser with CJ.com.
2) More Direct Control: As PayPal uses their own code and own resources, they have more control over what happens with their accounts.
3) Increased Bottom Line & Link Building: I’ve been reading a lot lately about affiliate programs and why they can be a great resource for your own eCommerce business. Not only are you motivating others to sell your product, but you are also building direct links to your site on other quality sites. It’s called “link love”!

So, although i may be a day late and a dollar short on this discovery, I thought readers would like to know that PayPal has their own affiliate program now.

Comments welcome!

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Per a recent post about BlueHost Hosting, I have started doing some research on other hosting options.  What I’ve found has been quite interesting.  I’ve discovered, and re-discovered, how important it is to select a proper hosting service for your website.  Here are some of the things to look for in a good hosting company:

• Customer service: How easy is the company to contact?  Do they use live chat, phone, or just email? The more ways there are to contact and communicate, the better.
• Extensive and easy to understand FAQ’s: most hosting companies have this but how easy are they to follow?
• Bandwidth or Data Transfer of 50gb+/month
• Storage: 50gb+
• 99.9% Up-time Guarantee
• Email:
  POP3 accounts
  Preferably unlimited email addresses
  Mail forwarding
  SMTP
  Spam filtering

For blogs and content management systems (CMS):

• All of the above features
• PHP 5.0+
• Fantastico: the best thing about Fantastico that I’ve seen is easy installation of WordPress
• Unlimited domains allowed
• How many MySQL databases are allowed? Preferably unlimited
• FTP access to your hosting space

One that I’ve found that I’m exploring more is Host Gator.  It meets all the requirements above and seems pretty user-friendly.

I’ll be interviewing them soon to find out more…Stay tuned!

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Yesterday I was on the phone with Bluehost.com for over an hour and a half trying to get things cleared up with a couple sites.  I’ve been working with Bluehost for over 2 years and until about June of this year things seemed to be working fine.  However, in late June I started getting CPU errors multiple times per day.

One of the problems has been that I had a programmer build one of my sites who is now on a two year sebaticle.  He did some great things with my family vacation destination site but now those “great things” are out of date and really screwing things up.  I’m getting CPU errors over and over again, which is effecting business who knows how much.

What to do…?

I’ve submitted a project at Elance.com for a programmer who can help but it’s been really hard to find one I trust or can communicate with.

I’ve thought about changing to a different hosting company but am not sure how to do that or which are most reliable.

Does anyone know anything about the following:

Hostgator.com

MediaTemple.net

Thanks for the feedback - I’m so frustrated!

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I was interviewed recently on the Prosper eCommerce Blog by a colleague, Michael Stone, about starting my online business.

Prosper is the most trusted name in one to one personalized education. If it weren’t for my education at Prosper Learning, I would probably still be trying to sell copiers and printers, which is NOT what I want to do.

Here are some of the things that were covered:

What did you do before you got started in eCommerce?

- After college, worked in sales, originally door-to-door sales.

Why did you want to get started in eCommerce?

- Had some friends who had done the program and had seen results. I had never done anything online before beyond basic surfing. Wanted to know about options about how ecommerce worked. I worked at places that did not have an online presence.

How did you get started in eCommerce?

- Looked at things that he was interested in. Started with mentor. Brainstormed ideas of things that he was interested in “ hobbies, etc, including sports and clogging. Wrote down clogging as a possible interest….

Read More…
(contact the resource line for the password)

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Pardon the french but Come On People!  If you think you’re not going to succeed at something, congratulations, YOU’RE NOT!

A colleague of mine just showed me a listing his client produced that I thought was a PERFECT example of how you can make money quickly online.  This client listed a product that seemed like junk to him; however, to others it was worth hundreds of dollars.  Check out this listing:

Notice this cool tip as well: List Low, Sell High (go figure!) They listed this old school Apple computer for 99 cents and it sold for over $100.

So, do you think YOU can do this too?

eBay Selling Tips:

1. List Low: by listing low you do a few things - first, you save money on eBay listing fees; second, you encourage people to make a bid, especially if you are really new with a low feedback rating.  I’ve actually seen Power Sellers use this same strategy of listing everything at 99 cents and then selling products for over $600.
2. Be Creative - find brand name products for low costs, old and/or funny looking stuff, products with a funny story - all these things can sell.  Also, when you list, include funny stories, pictures, quotes, or things that get people reading.  Pokemon cards have sold for tons of money because the listing was so creative that it went viral and got viewed by thousands of people.

Best of luck in your quest for internet success!

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So who does Mom love more, the 1st born son or the poor daughter below?

I’m still trying to figure out a creative way to tie this in to Starting an Online Business.

How would you associate this picture with online marketing or starting a business online?

More content to come on this post - stay tuned for updates - Comments Invited!

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