Google Local Business Center

Video of me explaining why you need to put your business on Google Local Business Center now!

I just learned that 60-70% of all searches are local!

So now that we know that what should we do about it?

Advertise locally via Google. Go to Google Adwords and target your ads to a local area and in your ad copy write the city name.  Most local based business don’t advertise online so you can definitely use this to your advantage.

Feel free to ask me any questions on this strategy in the comments.

1. Go to Google’s www.Blogger.com

2. Click “Create a Blog”

3. Thats it.

Here is a video of me giving you the top 3 reasons on why you need to start a blog.

Google Checkout has just changed their fee structure.  Yes it is going to be more expensive

You can still sign up for free and they have no monthly costs.  However they now take a larger cut on each sale (pretty much the same as PayPal).

Here is the new fee structure:

You can read more about the changes on the Google Checkout Seller Fees page.

For those of you that use Google Checkout, you can now offer coupons to your customers! Google allows you to create coupons for a percentage off the order total or for a specific dollar value discount.

Here’s how you set up a coupon in Google Checkout:

1. Log in to your Google Checkout account and go to “My Sales”.
2. Click on the “Tools” tab at the top, then click on “Coupons” on the left side.
3. Click on “Create a new coupon”.
4. Fill out steps 1-3 to create your coupon and click “Create”.

When customers make a purchase with Google Checkout in your store, they will see a place on the order page to enter the coupon code. The discount will be applied right there and the person can pay as usual.

The coupon code and the discount will be shown on the order page in Flying Cart.

You can mail out your coupon codes to customers with a fan mailing or offer them to all shoppers by posting the code on your site. You could even mail a special coupon code in your shipping notifications to try to get repeat business. You can get pretty creative with your promotions.

You have to use Google Checkout for this, as the service is not offered for PayPal users.  Here are some directions on how to switch to Google Checkout.

Facebook is a great place to gain more awareness about your brand.  You can create a Fan Page for your product or company and have facebook users become fans of it.  Everytime a new fan joins your fan club all their friends are alerted giving more exposure to your product.

Nutella has over 2.7 MILLION fans on facebook.  That is a lot of people that said they love Nutella (disclosure: Nutella is soooo good and I have it with my toast every morning).  Do you think Nutella saw a rise in business?  I think so.  Even getting 25-50 Facebook fans is a HUGE acheivement in mind.

Here is how you can create your Facebook Fan Page:

1. Go here http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

2. Click on “Create A Page”

3. Pick a category.  For our customers I would suggest the “Brand or Product” category.

4. Pick a specific category in the drop down

5. Enter in the name of your product or online store (For example in our case we put Flying Cart, if you sell resistance bands I would put in “Resistance Bands” this way you can attract a wider audience of people into fitness).

6. Click on “Create Page”

7. Login to Facebook.  (You don’t have an account?  OMG … ARE YOU SERIOUS? just kidding… you can create one easily for free)

8. Upload pictures of your products

9. Add videos of your products and you!

10. Invite all your facebook buddies to your fan club

Also note that Facebook Fan Pages are indexed by Google so its another great SEO trick.

Check out the Flying Cart fan page. Become a fan of us too!

Feel free to invite me to your fan page, I’d love to join.

You can now take care of all Google payment management from within Flying Cart. Look for the Google Payment Manager link on the bottom of each order page in the Headquarters. You can view the order payment history, monitor the payment status, send refunds, send messages, cancel an order, and view the risk level of the customer’s payment method.  The data shown on this screen matches what is in your Google Checkout account in real-time so this new feature can save you the trouble of going back and forth.

Google Product Search is a shopping database that puts your products in front of a huge worldwide audience. By following these directions to create a product feed and a Google Base FTP account you will be able to submit your products to Google Product Search from within your Flying Cart Headquarters.  We will also submit your products automatically every 30 days so they never expire from Google. Here’s how to do it.

1. Log in to your Flying Cart Headquarters and navigate to Marketing > Advanced Tools. Find your “Product Feed Filename” and write it down.

2. Go to Google Base and sign in with your Google account. Your Gmail email address will work. If you don’t have a Google account they will take you through the necessary steps for you to sign up for one.  During the sign up process you will need to specify your location, agree to the Google Base Terms of Service, and enter in your account info (Business Name, Address, eMail, etc.)

3. List your website URL in the settings.  If you use a custom domain enter in your custom domain (not your .flyingcart.com domain).

4. Click on “Data feeds” and then the “New Data Feed” button.

5. Pick your Target Country, select your data feed type as “Googlebase”, and enter in your product feed file name (the one your wrote down in step 1).

6. Next you will need to create a Google FTP Account. Click on “Settings” and then “FTP account”.

7. Create a FTP username and password.  Write it down. Wait several hours for Google to activate your account. (Google says that it takes 15 minutes, but we have noticed that it usually takes 8 hours)

8. Log in to your Flying Cart Headquarters.  Go to Marketing > Advanced Tools.  Enter in the Google FTP username and password that you created in the previous step. Hit “Save Settings”.

9. You are now ready to submit your products. Click “Submit Products to Google”.

Add your store to Google Maps. A 2 minute thing you can do today to put your store on the map! woohoo

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!