I’ve just upgraded a clients payment system to use the Paypal API. One new feature that I like is the API signature option for verification.

Previously you had to download and install a server side certificate to verify payments through the API. This was quite easy to do but you have quite a number of things to do to get the certificate installed etc. There are certainly some management issues when you are dealing with a number of sites.

With the API signature, you call the web service with an signature string that PayPal generates for you and you can do all your verification on the client side. It’s easy to setup multiple sites using this method.

If you’re thinking of upgrading, download the 4.2 api sdk files and use the paypal_base.dll and log4net.dll files. Then simply modify your Profile code to call createAPISignature.

Then set your username, password, environment and signature and away you go!

The only thing I’ve found time consuming with configuring and using the PayPal api is setting up the sanbox accounts and some of the documentation could be better.

On the whole its pretty darn good though and the Payments Pro solution only costs $20 per month plus transaction fees.

Good stuff!

I’ve developed a system that plugs into my sites to provide adsense revenue. The system forms part of my overall strategy for Web Money Magnets, which I will be releasing later this year (if I ever get the time due to my hectic workload).

The system is, as always, brain dead simple to use and will allow my customers to take pretty much any document, convert it with an easy-to-use tool and voila! You have (n) pages with a couple of adsense blocks and search built in! I’ve already had some good results and a pretty high click through rate on the ads, and I haven’t even really got it setup for testing yet as I’ve been so busy.

Here are a few examples though, so you can get the idea;

900 Pound Gorilla Bum Marketing Method How To Get Top Rankings in Goooooogle Flipping Content For Profits

I could slap content up all day long and build an adsense empire! Now there’s an idea! Wehey!

I’ve written somewhere on my website how I try to provide solutions that give a good return on my clients investment.

Unfortunately with Information Technology you don’t generally get any kind of feedback on the good stuff. You only hear when things are going wrong. That has a tendency to happen because the results are often difficult to quantify. Also, in a lot of cases, the client has no mechanisms in place for measuring any return or tracking results. So a lot of the time, we’re fighting an uphill battle.

However, I’ve recently been informed that software development projects that I’ve designed and built with one of my customers is producing MASSIVE growth within the company. This has been proved by the fact that they have rolled the system out for 5 new clients in the last few months. They have also committed to a large spend on new hardware and software upgrades and they are moving to new, bigger office complex where they will be leasing an entire floor. So their investment in IT solutions is paying off handsomely for them.

I’m so happy that they are seeing these benefits. Not just because it’s good for my reputation, but because it will hopefully inspire them to try more things with technology that will give them an even greater advantage over their competitors, provide more jobs at the company and allow them to help more people who user their business services too.

They are a student loan consolidation company based in Pinellas Park. We’ve rolled out some fairly leading edge technology using .NET, ASP.NET, web services, SQL server, SQL server reporting services and encryption.

The new client roll outs take less than 4 hours and they can effectively offer their services in this way, providing great leverage in their business with additional revenue streams built on what was initially a one off internal development project. However, as always, I tried to provide a reusable solution that could be pretty easily adapted and developed and that paid off too. That’s really a great benefit of developing for the Windows platform and using the .NET framework and related technologies.

So everyone’s happy! Neat!

I’ve seen a lot of posts recently about web 2.0 and it seems there are a lot of different ideas about what it is exactly.

I guess this is not surprising as it is marketers and marketing departments in companies that are trying to define it. If that’s the case I think those camps will have as much success defining web 2.0 as they did defining the .NET Framework. They are related any way right?

I’ve seen Web 2.0 described as social networking. Community sites that allow people to create profiles and share information and resources. Well, though we do now have some huge social networking sites like mySpace and it seems like everyone and their brother needs to get online and slap up a profile and some pics, that’s hardly a new concept is it? Readily accessible to the masses now yes, but we’ve had bulletin boards for donkeys years and forums too.

I’ve seen it described the merging of web with video to an online experience more like TV (Oh God Noooo, we can’t allow that to happen). But if video and streaming media is becoming more prevalent now, isn’t it bandwidth that has allowed that to happen? With 2/3 + US users having broadband internet access according to a recent report by Nielsen-Netratings.com. � I’ve seen it described as this fabulous new technology called AJAX but little or no discussion of how this works etc (mainly marketing talk remember).

Here’s my take on web 2.0 just for the record. Web 2.0 is the merging of the www with the desktop of your computer. Eventually, you won’t really know if you are online or not. Your user experience will be the same when you are using installed programs or using a website (to the untrained marketers eye anyway). So AJAX and related technologies will play a large part in making Web 2.0 happen.

Yes web 2.0 will include streaming video and audio and chat and email and signups and downloads etc. The key thing is it will all be pretty transparent to the end user. You won’t be aware of being online (we aren’t so much anymore with broadband now right)

Maybe it will be Web 3.0 before its truly transparent…

It’s been difficult to do any development work for TRS Technology because I’ve been so busy with customer account work. However, I’ve worked like a dog evening and weekends in order to be able to make this system available for myself and, of course, my beloved customers.

So, what’s it all about then?

My new ecommerce platform encompasses the following components / systems.

1. Sales and marketing
2. Payment processing
3. Product delivery and fulfillment

Systems used or integrated are;

1. Email marketing using auto responder
2. List building with special reports or free downloads
3. Affiliate marketing
4. Customizable offers using sales pages
5. Ability to track visitors and conversion on those sales pages
6. Offer cart for payment processing of the offer items
7. Ability to up sell and or cross sell
8. Invoicing after payment
9. Collection and storage of all customer data in sql server
10. Product delivery immediately if digital downloadable product
11. Ability to deliver a mix of digital and retail products that require shipping
12. Emailing invoice to customer at payment
13. Adding customer to a specific customer list for each product to allow follow-up after purchase and follow on sales / repeat sales
14. Ability to request download links for a product if lost
15. The customer can remove themselves from any or all product list if they want to

That’s an approximate outline of the system. I’ll post an update soon about the technology used in the cart (AJAX), which is very cool.

I’ll also post a rationale as to why I developed this rather than using other systems that are available. There are a lot of reasons…

This project is going to be really interesting! It encompasses all of the following technologies and will no doubt be quite a challenge!

1. Windows .NET development (Windows Forms) 2. Encryption (3DES) 3. FTP 4. Website ASP.NET development 5. SQL Server Reporting Services 6. Secure Sockets Layer 7. XML Web Services

I don’t think i’ve missed anything. This is going to be a doozy!

Here is the newly designed page layout, created by Gigi Ortwein. Looks nice. The original is below.

A customer has decided that they want to completely change their new website design. Even after signing off on the design phase of the project. This is proof that you really must have a game plan and sign-off milestones in any project. Even web site designs can be re-called and new designs requested.

Had I not had the sign-off, I would be in a difficult position now, but as I have a signed document, I can go back and redesign all day long and it is a rechargable item. This is good as I try not to work for free unless I’m working for a non profit organization!

Ah well, back to the drawing board!

You’ve got to admire the way Microsoft has given us the ability to easily and quickly create system that span the internal network, internet and allow us to join together processes with other vendors and suppliers. What’s this all about? Web Services.

I’m working on a proposal for an existing client (yes, they keep coming back for more ) that will utilize the .NET framework and Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, SQL Server Reporting Services, SSL and 3DES encryption technologies to provide a solution that will join customers with service providers and integrate seemlesly into the existing network and database.

Should be quite a challenge!

I’ve been promoting two software tools that I use to do keyword research. They are Keywords Analyzer and Keyword Elite. Both are excellent tools and I use them both regularly.

I am promoting them on what is known as a ‘Squeeze Page’. This is a page that is setup to collect a name and email address before passing the visitor to their desired destination.

Anyway, the point for this post is that the survey box uses an AJAX callback using the ASPXLAB callback control. So if you want to see how that works try it at Keyword Analyzer or Keyword Elite.

If you do fill out the form on the website linked to above you may be redirected to either one of those products. I’m doing a ‘split test’ of each to see which one is more popular.