Satish | Technotip.org

PayPal Button for Accepting Payment For Multiple Products

John,

Q: I want to add a PayPal button to my
Coaching Programme page wherein I
have 3 services to offer. I want to use
PayPal and get payment’s automatically
into my paypal account and get notified whenever
some one pays.

Note:
For this to work, you must have a Business account with PayPal.

Log into PayPal, click on Profile under My Account tab. In the “Selling Preferences section” click on “My Saved Buttons” link or “Create New Button” link.

In the right hand side, click on “Create new button” link.

Now it’s a simple 3 step process:
Step 1: Choose a button type and enter your payment details
Step 2: Track inventory, profit & loss (optional)
Step 3: Customise advanced features (optional)

Under “Customize button” in Step 1, you can customize the PayPal button to have those drop downs. Ex: If you have 2 or 3 products to sell, you can use this option.
Multiple prices
If you need more than one price for an item (e.g. you are providing 3 services with 3 different fee), leave this price field blank. Instead, in the Customize button box, check ‘Add drop-down menu with price/option’, and then enter your prices in the price fields that appear.

All these above steps are self explanatory and depends on your needs. You may be interested in onetime payment, someone may be interested in monthly subscription model and so on..there are options to customize the PayPal button based on your needs.

Getting Notification When Someone Pays
If you are not getting payment notification, then go to profiles, under My Account tab. Click on “Website Payment Preferences” under “Selling Preferences” section and configure it to get the notifications.
Change these settings only if you are not getting the notifications.

After configuring these simple 1-2-3 steps, you will get a HTML code, that you have to paste into your blog page, wherever you want this button to appear.

Caution:
Make sure you check the button before launching your product. I hope PayPal doesn’t allow you to make a test payment using your own PayPal account, so you will either have to get help from a friend or use your wife’s PayPal account! Testing is crucial.

Advantages
Customers can pay with Visa/Mastercard without joining as PayPal members.
PayPal has millions of users, so you can provide another option for them to buy your product or service.
Setup Shopping cart, buy now button, subscription option etc for free.
It’s secure. And people trust PayPal, most importantly because, they will not be giving Credit Card information whenever they buy a product or service.
You can set up the options in PayPal, so that you get the exact profit and lose stats.
You can automatically calculate Tax(if the option is enabled while creating the button).
You can get extra payment from your customers, by showing a second payment option for shipping.

A Demo Button(that actually works!)

Withdraw Money From PayPal To Bank Account

There are only 2 options to withdraw money from your PayPal account.
1. Withdraw funds to your bank account
2. Request a cheque from PayPal

Requesting cheque is straight forward, it takes 2 to 4 weeks to reach you, after you have requested it.

So the quickest way is, withdrawing to your bank account directly. Below we show the exact steps to do this.

Adding Bank account
First add your bank account to your PayPal account.
My Account -> Profile -> Bank Accounts

Now add your bank account here. Get the IFSC code from your bank or from the bank’s website or bank’s customer care. It’s very easy to get, I din’t know it until I actually tried it.

IFSC stands for Indian Financial System Code .
You can go to www.BanksTracker.com and search for IFSC code for all the banks and branches in India.

Note: Make sure your name at PayPal and your Bank account matches character by character. The sir name is fixed, so it’s possible to add your relatives bank account and then withdraw it to their account.

After successfully adding your bank account, you can easily withdraw the money.

Withdraw Money
Goto My Account -> Withdraw -> Withdraw funds to your bank account

Happy News: The cost of transaction will be 0.00, if you withdraw Rs. 7, 000.00 or More. And a minimum of Rs. 50.00 for Rs. 6, 999.99 or less.

There is a currency converter tool, using which you can know the exact conversion rate you will get for your money.

The conversions are not same with PayPal and the standard conversion that you see with all other tools. If you see the actual curreny conversion of the day and then decide to withdraw your PayPal money, then you better wait and see the PayPal conversion rates before proceeding.

Google “1 USD in INR”

How does PayPal calculate currency conversion / exchange rate?

PayPal receives a quoted wholesale rate twice a day. We then add a 2.5% spread above this rate to determine the retail foreign exchange rate that is applied to transactions involving a currency conversion.

Keep in mind that some of the rates quoted in the media are the inter-bank rates that are available only to the largest international banks, which purchase currencies in quantities of US $1,000,000 or more. A more applicable comparison for consumers is the exchange rates quoted at airports or other consumer currency exchange shops.

In the purpose of withdrawal, you select the proper reason for getting the money. I choose, “freelance journalism”.

You can see the status of the transaction in your PayPal dashboard.

Now sit and wait for the money to come to your bank account, if you have provided all valid/correct information.

It usually takes 6 to 8 days for the Money to be transfered to your bank account.

Caution: If for some reason your transaction is not successful, then all your money will be transfered back to your PayPal account by deducting any bank charges and the return fee, usually Rs. 250

It took just 2 days to get the money to my local bank account from PayPal. And there’s no extra bank charges.
Usually when Google Cheque is processed, bank will deduct Rs. 50 as transaction fee. So, electronic transfer is the way to go!

Not Able To Login After Enabling 2-step Verification: Google Account

If you are not able to log into your YouTube, Android, iPhone, GoogleTalk/Pidgin client, POP/IMAP, Outlook – home computer, Thunderbird, Google TV, Picasa desktop client etc accounts after enabling 2 – step verification for your Google Account, then here are simple 1-2-3 steps to solve your problems. Step 1: It’s very simple, so stop worrying!

Log into your Main Google Account.
Goto “My Accounts”.

If you are inside GMail, at the top right corner there is a link for “Settings”. Inside Settings -> “Accounts and Import” tab -> Under “Change account settings:” -> Click on “Other Google Account settings”.

Now follow the screen shots below:
Click on “Authorizing application & sites”

Verify your Google Account once again use your regular Google username and password.

Some applications that access your Google Account (such as Gmail on your phone or Outlook) cannot ask for verification codes. To use these applications, you will not use verification codes. Instead, you’ll enter an application-specific password in place of your normal password. Common applications and devices that require an application-specific password include:

1. Enter the application name, that you are not able to login. Hit “Generate Password“.

2. In the next screen you will get a password and you can use this application specific password and log into your account.

3. You can click on revoke link to remove the application specific password previously generated.

If you check the “remember password for this computer” check box, then you need not remember this complicated password.

Secure Your Google Account

Most of us are so much dependent on Google services: Google Search, YouTube, Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa, Analytics, Google Places, Google Apps, Checkout , Google Friend Connect , Orkut, Feedburner, Adsense, Adwords, Google Webmasters Tools etc etc to name few.

Some people who use Adsense, Adwords etc might have sensitive business data. And with Orkut and Picasa you may have your private pictures. Hence, securing it makes sense.

Google has comeup with 2-step verification, similar to that you have for your online bank accounts and shares(demat) account.

Basically, you have two steps for successfully signing into your Google Account. First, you need your regular username and password. Second step, you need to generate a verification code from your mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. If you use any other device to login, then you can simply request a verification code which will be sent to your primary phone number or secondary phone(backup) number as an SMS OR you can request for a quick voice call to get the code.

Here are some screen shots which illustrate the process of setting up the security:
For login:
login-sms-gmail

For activating this security:
Log into your Google Account, click on “Account Settings”.

If you choose “Remember verification for this computer for 30 days” option while logging in, you won’t need to re-enter a code for another 30 days on that computer. You can also set up one-time application-specific passwords to sign in to your account from non-browser based applications that are designed to only ask for a password, and cannot prompt for the code.

You also get 10 back up verification codes, which can be used to log in once in case you do not have access to your primary or secondary mobile number that you have connected to your Google account. So it’s advised to have a print copy of these backup verification codes and keep it safely.

All these may take 10 minutes to set up, but I think its worth it especially if you are using Google Account for storing any of your business or private information/data.

View 12 New File Formats On Google Docs

Not everyone uses Google Docs, but most of us use Gmail. Now Google Docs supports 12 new file formats. This is not a good news for just professionals who use Google Docs, but also to those of us who use Gmail for file sharing.

Now you can send
Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
Apple Pages (.PAGES)
Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
TrueType (.TTF)
XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

via email and it can be viewed directly on your web browser and need not be downloaded to your hard disk drive.

You can even upload all the files with above mentioned format to your Google Docs account and share the link across the web.

Source: Gmail Blog

if you have a file on your desktop with above mentioned file format and don’t have proper software to open it, then simply goto your Google Docs account, upload it, view and/or edit it.

Play Snake Game On Any YouTube Video!

On this cool Sunday evening I started playing some awesome online games: The 100 Best, Free Online Flash Games

After 30min, I don’t know how, but I was on YouTube watching a video! Procrastinating 🙂
It was a huge video and it needed some time to load. With this and my gaming mood, I remembered this old trick of playing Classic Snake game on YouTube. It still works!

What I do is, pause and mute the video and activate the game.

If it is something new to you
Once you are on YouTube and on the video page, simply press the arrow keys on your keyboard, and the game will be activated.
[Make sure that the focus is on the YouTube Player.]

Game Rules
This is similar to most classic Snake Games that you can find on mobile phones. The snake has to eat the twinkling dot and the snake grows(in length). The game will end if you hit the wall(edge of the YouTube player!) or if the snakes mouth touches itself!

Troubleshoot!
If you don’t see any snake after you hit the arrow keys on the keyboard, then make sure the focus is on the YouTube player. To bring the focus on the Player, click on the YouTube video Player once and press the arrow keys. This should bring up the snake game.

This doesn’t work on embedded videos, so you need to be on YouTube to play this “Snake Game”.

Snake Game can only be activated while the player is loading the video. See the above screenshot for a clue.

Page Not Found Error While Trying To Edit And Save ?

Arvind,

Q: I have a problem where every time
I edit a post, 1 out of 2 times when
I save it, I get the message that
the page is not found!

This is strange and most annoying, if you had written a lengthy article and lost due to such weird behavior! If you encounter such a situation, then hit the back button on your browser and most of the time(if you are using Chrome and Firefox) your data will be safe. Thanks to browser cache.

Normal Reason For This Problem
The reason for such problem maybe the URL slug. Never have those weird characters in the URL slug. If you have double quotes or single quote or some special characters in the Title, make sure you remove those characters special code from the URL slug. Because some browsers may interpret these characters differently, hence behave in different manner.

The “slug” is the URL-friendly version of the name. It is usually all lowercase and contains only letters, numbers, and hyphens

SEO Wise
Best practice is to remove unwanted words and characters from your URL slug.
Ex: My Title is “Page Is Not Found Error While Trying To Edit And Save ?”

Here remove My, Is, While, To, And etc and retain only the main keywords which you think are most relevant to the article.
So my article’s URL looks : http://technotip.org/page-not-found-error-edit-save/
My title is still Page Not Found Error When Trying To Edit And Save ?

More sophisticated problem
If you don’t have any special characters in your URL slug and still have this problem, then your next suspect should be plugins.
Deactivate one plugin at a time and try to edit and save. By repeatedly doing this trial and error method you can detect what plugin might be in conflict.

Also make sure you have all latest plugins and have upgraded your WordPress installation to the latest version. Most of the times these bugs will be fixed, but we forget to update the software and face the consequences!