A merchant account is not for every online seller to run his web store (it mostly depends on the scale of your business - most individual online entrepreneurs are more than happy with PayPal services).

I have been using PayPal for years and was happy with their service all this time. Yes, PayPal had some issues 5 or so years back, but they have resolved them.

I was always interested to get some extra features that were not available in their ‘Help’ section:

- give my customers discounts
- sell gift certificates
- provide shipping options
- paypal coupons

I know of O’Reilly’s ‘PayPal Hacks’ manual and this forum

One more way to find PayPal solutions is PayPal Help website – one page with a selection of tips and tricks that will help you to extend the limits of PayPal as a payment solution for your online business.

Summary: now everyone talks of GBuy and how it will take away PayPal customers. But PayPal was the first company who paved the way to this sort of services for small and middle online businesses. I am sure it will help them to stay in the game. Google is a great company, but it tries to be everything and everywhere online.
[tags]paypal, merchant account, gbuy, affiliate marketing, home based business, online business, work from home, google, links, seo, website promotion, e-commerce[/tags]

I have recently posted about my experience of link building. In continuation of my article, ideas on the future of link building expressed by Abhilash just prove my own conclusions - link building is and will be just a waste of time, you will not achieve the desirable effect by adding your website to directories, submitting press releases, contacting webmasters for a link exchange and leaving your signature in forums and blog comments.

To summarize the observations in the article: websites will have no way to gain links, but buying them (and taking into the account many things to make that link work for you) and getting natural links. Yes, Google has progressed greatly and is very good at spotting and closing any flaws that webmasters are lucky to find when working at the link popularity.

SEO is not likely to last long since now. It simply does not work. Webmasters can work at their websites improving the quality of content, but I think ‘big companies’ will take niches one by one leaving individual webmasters no space for activity.

Summary: I have an impression it is time to change the industry. Or at least it is time to look around for other kinds of projects.

Those webmasters who started 5-7 years back have advantages over those who joined the game 1-2 years back. They have more online property and space for manoeuvre.

[tags]link popularity, links exchange, affiliate marketing, home based business, work from home, dmoz, google, links, seo, website promotion, e-commerce[/tags]

Sixteen cities where 6FigureJobs.com and TheLadders.com have had the greatest number of six-figure job listings, and the gross salary required to replicate $100,000 after adjusting for cost-of-living.

While being in the 6figurejobs list can be a marker of a certain level of success, it is not always a marker of buying power.

In many cities, a $100,000 salary only sounds a lot better than it really is because the cost of living is high, taxes are high and even the rate of inflation runs higher than in other parts of the country.

Consider inflation. Over the past 12 months through May, overall inflation in New York was 4.8%. In Cleveland, the rate was 3%. The rate of inflation on rent was 5.6% in New York, while in Cleveland it was just 0.8%.

Consider taxes. State and local taxes make a big difference in how much you net, but so, too, does the federal income tax. Earning a nominally higher salary puts you in a higher tax bracket.

If you adjust for cost of living differences, that $205,000 salary would be worth $102,000 in Cleveland or Denver. The effective federal tax rate on that amount would be just 20.4%, so you would pay $20,868, with $81,480 left over.

It is evident that the greatest number of six-figure jobs tend to be in the most pricey and populous cities, but there are also plenty of opportunities in more affordable ones.

New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. are in the top 10.

Besides being less costly, there is another big advantage these cities offer if you’re in the running to make six figures. To attract talent, companies often will offer the same big salaries that you could earn in New York or San Francisco.

Here is the list of top Cities:

New York            $205,426
San Francisco      $179,034
Los Angeles        $156,106
San Diego           $149,384
Washington, D.C.$141,894
Boston               $137,649
Chicago              $126,929
Seattle               $117,037
Atlanta               $102,805
Denver               $102,348
Cleveland           $101,986
Milwaukee           $101,478
Phoenix              $97,976
Dallas                 $93,665
Charlotte            $92,991
Houston             $88,977