I love Gmail!  I think it is the best email service.  I go through at least 300 or so emails a week and Gmail makes my life easier.  Ok… I am done with my Gmail plug.

If you own your own domain, you can use Gmail technology to use your own email address (like bob@BobCeramics.com) with Google Apps - best of all it’s free for the standard edition!  All you need to do is sign up for the Google Apps Standard Edition and follow their steps.

FYI: The standard edition is all you need if you have less than 20 people in your company and you don’t mind the unobtrusive advertisements.  Feel free to checkout the premium edition if you need it.

Google Checkout allows you to accept credit card payments using a (free) Google account. In our experience, it is easier to use and more reliable than PayPal for a nearly identical functionality. Read more about Google Checkout here.

Follow these steps to use Google Checkout on your store.  Feel free to download and print these instructions out.

1. Sign up for a Google Merchant account.  It is free and easy.

Please Note: Google will make a small deposit in your bank account and you will need to verify the amount in order to complete your sign up.  This will take a day or two.

2. Login to your Google Checkout account and go to “My Sales”. Click on the “Settings” tab and then click on “Integration” on the left.

3. Make sure “My company will only post digitally signed carts.” is unchecked.

4. Locate your Google merchant ID and Google Merchant Key on the right side of this page.

5. Login to your Flying Cart store headquarters (in a new browser window).  Go to your “Store” -> “Settings” tab.  Scroll down to the Payment section and enter in your Google Merchant ID and Google Merchant key that you got from Step #4.

6. Highlight your API Callback URL from the Google Checkout section and go to Edit > Copy in your browser to copy it. Scroll down the page and click “Update Settings” at the bottom.

7. Go back to the window with your Google Settings and paste the API Callback URL into the field on that page.  Select “HTML (name/value pairs)” as the callback method.  Hit “Save”.

8. Go to your store, put something in your cart and notice that Google Checkout is now an option. Enjoy!

In the United States you do not need to charge a sales tax to customers out of your state.

Here are some examples:

Running your business from your home:

Q: I live in Wisconsin and have a home based business (no warehouse or office space).  Do I need to charge sales tax?

A: No. You don’t have to charge any sales taxes.

Running your business from an office/warehouse:

Q: I live in Florida and have a small warehouse where I sell my products out of.  Do I need to charge sales tax?

A: You only need to charge a sales tax to Florida residents.

Running your business from multiple locations:

Q:  I have offices/warehouses in California, Illinois, and Nebraska.  Do I need to charge a sales tax?

A: You need to charge a sales tax to California, Illinois, and Nebraska residents.

MORE INFO:

Internet sales are actually regulated by the federal government because it reaches across state borders. Under current law, states cannot reach beyond their borders and compel out-of-state vendors to collect the tax owed by that state’s residents. What happens is those who buy online are supposed to report it and pay “use tax” in their state, even though it’s not heavily regulated.

Disclaimer: Please check with your state and local tax bureaus.  Local laws change all the time and I’m not a Tax expert.

If you want to charge tax to customers in your state only OR if you want to charge different tax rates depending on the customer location, we suggest using your PayPal Tax Settings option.  Here are step-by-step instructions:

1. Login to your store headquarters

2. Navigate to “Store” -> “Settings”

3. Scroll down the page  to the “PayPal Checkout” section and select “Use my PayPal tax settings”

4. Hit “Update Settings” at the bottom of the page to save your changes

5. Login to your PayPal account

6. Click on “Profile”

7. Click on “Sales Tax”

8. Click on “Add New Sales Tax”

9. Follow the PayPal instructions, repeat to setup more than one location

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Please Note: If you are using Google Checkout and/or PayPal Express, your PayPal Tax settings will not be applied when a customer makes a purchase via PayPal Express.  We highly reccommend deleting all Google Checkout and PayPal Express information on your store settings page.  Your customers will still be able to pay with PayPal or any major credit card.

If you need advanced shipping options, using your PayPal shipping settings is the way to go.  Here are step by step instructions on using your PayPal Shipping Settings.

1. Login to your store Head Quarters

2. Navigate to “Store” -> “Settings”

3. Scroll down the page  to the “PayPal Checkout” section and select “Use my PayPal tax settings”

4. Click “Update Settings” at the bottom of the page.

5. Login to your PayPal account

6. Click on “Profile”

7. Click “Setup Shipping Calculations”

8. Follow the PayPal setup instructions to setup your shipping settings

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Please Note: If you are using Google Checkout and/or PayPal Express your PayPal Shipping settings will not be applied when a customer makes a purchase via Google Checkout or PayPal Express.  We highly reccommend deleting all Google Checkout and PayPal Express information on your store settings page.  Your customers will still be able to pay with PayPal or any major credit card.

Occasionally someone might post something negative on you fan club that you don’t want your customers to see. When you are logged in to your own fan club, you have the authority to delete fan postings by clicking on the red x’s that appear next to each one.

If you have a Flying Cart store account, you automatically have a Flying Cart fan account. Your store login and password can be used to log in to any Flying Cart store fan club including your own.

To unfeature an item follow these steps:

1. Login to your store headquarters

2. Click on the Products tab

3. Click on the product you wish to remove from the homepage

4. Scroll down the to varaiations section on the edit product page

5. Click on the “Yes” or “No” next to “Featured”.  If it is marked as “Yes” the item will be featured on your homepage.

Wanna change passwords?  Great idea!

1. Login to your headquarters

2. Click on the “Store” tab in the menu

3. Type in your new password twice

4. Make sure you save it by scrolling to the bottom and hitting “Update Settings”

5. Remember your new password (FYI: ex girlfriend names do not make good passwords because you keep remembering them)

This is the easiest way to make sure Google knows you exist:

1. Go to Google Webmasters Tool website

2. Click on “Sign Up Now” and either sign in with your existing Google account or create a new account

3. Type in your store url and click on “Add Site”

4. Click on “Verify Your Site”

5. In the drop down chose “Add a Meta Tag” as your verification method

6. Copy the entire line of code they give you. SPECIAL NOTE: Copy the end brackets “<” “>” as well or your store will be seriously messed up

7. Login to your store Headquarters

8. Click on the “Marketing” tab

9. Click on the “Meta Tag” sub tab

10. Scroll down to the “Google Verification Code” Section and paste in the entire line of code you obtained in step #6

11. Click “Update Meta Tags” in your store headquarters

12. Click “Verify” in your Google Tools account

We just added a feature for all you bloggers out there (something we highly recommend to do).  Easily add your blog to your store navigation menu.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Login to your store Headquarters

2. Click on the “Store” tab

3. Click on the “Homepage sub tab

4. Enter in the link text (i.e. Blog, MySpace Page, Main Site, More Info, etc.)

5. And your link.  Make sure you include the “http://:” in the URL

Here are some sites you can use for this new feature

Blogging Sites:

1. Wordpress (What we use)

2. Google’s Blogger

Social Network sites:

1. MySpace

2. Create a Facebook Page for your store

3. Ning