Make Money And Work At Home .com
The name says it all.
How many content marketers struggle to be prolific all year round? Nearly all? Many of us content creators misunderstand how to be prolific. This creative infographic can help you build the right habits to boost both creativity and productivity. Read the full article at MarketingProfs
The web has made it incredibly easy for anyone to sell digital products directly to customers through websites, social media, and email newsletters. You can sell PDF ebooks, MP3 music, photos, software apps, gift cards, license keys, coupon codes, website templates, fonts, graphics, video courses, and many more downloadable files.
While there are quite a few e-commerce platforms that help you sell digital products – Gumroad, E-junkie, Paddle, FastSpring, Shopify, Instamojo and WooCommerce, to name a few, here’s a do-it-yourself solution that will help you build your own digital store in under 5 minutes using PayPal and your Google account.
Before we get into the implementation, here’s a big-picture view of how the payment and digital delivery workflow works.
You can head over to the live demo page and experience the 1-step checkout experience on your desktop or mobile phone.
The workflow uses Google Drive for securely hosting files, PayPal for processing payments, Google Sheets for generating professional PDF invoices and Gmail for delivering the order to the buyer as file attachments.
There are no limitations on the size of files or the number of products that you can sell. There are no bandwidth or storage restrictions. There’s no transaction fee except for the payment processing fees that are charged by PayPal and Stripe.
Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial that explains how you can easily sell digital products with PayPal and Google Drive.
Go to developer.paypal.com and sign-in with your PayPal account. If you don’t have one, sign-up here for a new Business account.
Inside your PayPal dashboard, go to My Apps & Credentials > Rest API Apps and create a new app. You can give your app any name as it is for internal use only. PayPal will now create client credentials for testing and live transactions that we’ll need in the next step.
When a buyer completes the purchase and makes the payment, PayPal will send your app a notification by calling a specific URL and this is known as a webhook.
To create a webhook, go to digitalgoods.dev/copy and copy the Google Sheet to your Google Drive. Inside the sheet, go to Tools > Script Editor, the choose Publish > Deploy As Web App and click the Update button to create your PayPal webhook. Copy the URL to the clipboard.
You will have to authorize the script once since it has to do all the operation – send emails, attach Drive files, generate PDF invoices – on your behalf.
Switch to the “Configuration” sheet inside the Google Spreadsheet and paste the webhook URL inside the “webhook” field. Next, copy-paste the Client ID and Secret generated in step 1 inside the corresponding fields of the Google Sheet.
There are few other mandatory fields in the sheet. Choose your default currency, the shipping preference (whether you want to capture the address on the buyer), specify your brand name and the soft descriptor (this will show in the credit card statement of the buyer).
Go to the Digital Goods menu in the sheet (it is near the Help menu) and choose Test PayPal Configuration to verify the PayPal-Google Sheets connection.
Switch to the “Items” sheet and enter the default tax rate in the cell E1. Next, add one or more products in the sheet. You only need to specify the price of the item in column D, the Tax and Total Amount is automatically calculated based on the tax rate set in E1.
To attach files to your digital product, highlight the Files column, then go to the Digital Goods menu and choose Attach Drive Files. It opens the Google File picker and you can select one or more files from your Google Drive that will be sent to the buyer after they purchase the corresponding product.
Switch to the “Invoice” sheet and customize the invoice template. You can use formulas, add your logos, apply styles to match your brand and the template would be converted to a PDF file and sent as a file attachment in the order confirmation emails.
The invoice template can include placemarkers, similar to the ones you have used inside Document Studio. For instance, the Name variable will be replaced with the full name of the customer as found in the PayPal order. The Email variable is replaced with the buyer’s email address while the Invoice Id adds a unique invoice number to your invoice.
Switch to the “Email” sheet and create the HTML template that will be sent to customers after they complete the payment. The email will automatically include the files and invoice as attachments but you can customize the email message and subject.
The first row in the sheet is the subject and everything else will go in the message body. The emails, like Mail Merge, can be personalized and you can also use HTML tags to add images, links and rich content in the emails.
Now that you have added the products to the Google Sheet, it is time to test the integration in sandbox mode before you embed the buttons on your live website.
Go back to your PayPal dashboard, and choose Credit Card Generator in the right sidebar. Here you can generate random credit card numbers with expiration date and CVV for testing your buttons in sandbox mode.
Inside the Google Sheet, choose Digital Tools > Embed PayPal Buttons to generate the HTML embed code for your digital products. The screen offers embed codes in both the live mode and the sandbox mode.
Click the Try button next to the Sandbox mode and you’ll be able to test the buttons right inside the Google Sheet. Click the credit card icon, enter the mock credit card number and click “Pay Now” to complete the test transaction.
PayPal invokes the Webhook and it triggers the order workflow. Switch to the “Logs” sheet and you’ll soon find a new entry for the transaction that you just completed. Open your Gmail Sent items folder and you’ll find a copy othe f email that was sent the buyer’s email.
If your integration is working as expected, go to the Embed PayPal menu in the sheet and this time copy the embed code for the “Live” mode and paste it in your website. Your product is now live and anyone in the world can buy your product with a single-step checkout.
Here’s a sample email that will go out to customers after the purchase.
All the incoming orders can be tracked in real-time inside the “Sales” tab of the Google Sheet. The sheet includes the customer’s name, email address, the order summary and the buyer’s postal address. The address is only available if you have set the shipping preference in the configuration sheet to “GET_FROM_FILE”.
You can directly run Mail Merge with Gmail inside this sheet to easily send product updates to existing customers. If you have been using PayPal prior to switching to Digital Goods, put all the PayPal emails under a new Gmail label, extract the email addresses inside the sheet and use that list for your merge.
In some businesses, you may want to send unique codes to the customer. These may include license numbers to unlock software apps (like we do at Digital Inspiration), passwords to access streaming video courses, discount coupons, gift cards, event registration numbers and more.
This is easy with Digital Goods. Open the “Codes” sheet in the spreadsheet and the pregenerated list of codes in one of the columns. Give this column a title as shown in the screenshot above. Next, include the column title in your email mesage and a unique code will be added in place of the marker.
Internally, the app looks at the last row of the Sale sheet (the current order), fetches the codes from that same row in the Codes sheet and adds them to your email / invoice.
The video tutorial explains the entire workflow in great detail but if you are still facing any issues, here are some tips:
If you are unable to resolve the issue, write to me at amit@labnol.org or tweet @labnol.
The post How to Sell Digital Products Online with Google Drive and PayPal appeared first on Digital Inspiration.
Email marketing may not be a new marketing tactic. In fact, the first electronic mail was sent in 1971, the first email marketing blast was sent in 1978, and in 2018, it was estimated that 124.5 billion emails were sent out.
Yes, email marketing is an established tool in your toolbox. But should not assume that what worked a few years ago will work today.
A new research study I worked on, Email Marketing Survey Summary Report, finds that email marketing professionals are learning new techniques to improve their email marketing results.
The Email Marketing Survey Summary Report provides insight into difficult questions like:
Increasing engagement and improving brand awareness are primary objectives for 67% and 59% majority of marketing influencers, respectively. Engagement is now a frequent topic of conversation as companies strive to increase waning email open and click rates.
Increasing engagement and improving brand awareness are primary objectives for 67% and 59% of marketing influencers.
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Engagement continues to be a strategic objective for marketing professionals, whether it is email, social media, content marketing, customer experience, personalization, etc.
Here is a strategy to help you increase engagement:
Increasing engagement requires a commitment by you to invest the time to outline your strategy and allocate the financial resources (start small) implement your strategy.
Through years of testing and experimentation, we’ve found that research is an excellent way to increase engagement with our audience. Everyone is interested in research because it helps them do their job better by giving them ideas on what to do based on results from their peers. Because the research helps our audience, they engage with us by downloading reports, sharing the research, commenting on research findings, asking questions, etc.
Do you have a similar strategy on how you are going to increase engagement? Now is the time to outline your strategy and start engaging your audience!
What are the most effective types of email used for marketing purposes? A majority of marketing professionals believe that a combination of personalized messaging and single-topic/dedicated email creates the most effective type of email used for marketing purposes. Meanwhile, only 17% consider plain-text email effective.
A majority of marketing professionals believe that personalized, single-topic/dedicated emails are the most effective type of email.
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Do you see how knowing your audience, great content, and data are critical to creating a personalized message for your email marketing? So by creating your strategy to increase engagement, you will also have the tools necessary to deliver effective personalized email campaigns.
The good news is that while email marketing has been around for a long time, marketing professionals are finding ways to increase effectiveness. While nearly two-thirds (64%) of marketing professionals say email effectiveness is improving moderately, only 21% consider email effectiveness to be worsening to some extent.
Good news! 64% of marketing professionals say #email effectiveness is improving moderately.
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While difficult types of email (like personalized messaging driven by artificial intelligence) are driving the need for outsourced specialists, 39% of marketing professionals say they still only use in-house resources to deploy the types of email used.
Get more research insights by downloading the entire study, Email Marketing Survey Summary Report, and put it to work in your own email marketing strategy.
The post 2019 Email Marketing Research: 4 Key Findings to Improve Your Results appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.
The Financial Times has bought a controlling stake in consumer publisher The Next Web, marking its first acquisition in continental Europe.
The FT didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, which will see it take ownership of the Amsterdam-based media company’s website The Next Web and the TNW Conference, an annual event that draws 17,500 attendees from around 3,500 companies a year, according to TNW. The move will beef up the publisher’s own live global events business, FT Live, which produces 150 different events a year across categories ranging from the FT Innovation Summit in New York to Managing Assets for UK Insurers. Ticket prices range from €149 ($169) to €799 ($905) for the TNW Conference.
The FT’s subscriptions model is typically more business-to-business focused than most national publishers, which will mean some adjustment is needed to cater to TNW’s editorial tone and mandate which has been more consumer-facing. Events are a popular method for publishers looking to diversify their revenue base.
Around 70 percent of TNW’s revenue comes from events, advertising and its Amsterdam start-up tech hub, and each area accounts for a similar-sized proportion of revenue, according to TNW CEO Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten. “That shows the strength of the brand the way we have structured the business. It’s not one thing that keeps us all floating,” he said. The remaining 30 percent comes from smaller parts of the business such as its consultancy unit and business-to-business data products.
“This completely fits with the FT’s strategic development, said Douglas McCabe, CEO of media research firm Enders Analysis. “Though TNW’s broad remit, and very different tone from the FT, will not be entirely without its challenges.”
TNW was founded in 2006 and has 86 employees in its Amsterdam office. The next event, TNW2019, will take place in May. The FT will program part of the event and will co-host TNW’s The Assembly, a gathering of technology leaders, industry figures and key policymakers, according to the FT.
TNW is an open-access site with a global audience of over 3 million monthly unique visitors spanning markets including the U.S. and U.K., according to comScore. The TNW site will remain open access, and there are no plans to put it behind the paywall, said Veldhuijzen van Zanten.
TNW began acquisition inquiries two years ago but wasn’t tempted to court any venture-capital funding, according to Veldhuijzen van Zanten. “VC money, in general, comes with a sense of urgency, and not in a good way. You can’t take VC funding and not have a clear plan to an exit in the foreseeable future. We weren’t interested in it. We wanted to find a partner who could help us grow.”
The TNW Conference and operations will continue to run separately, and will not be integrated within FT Live.
“TNW is an established and profitable business that produces one of the largest and most critically acclaimed tech startup events in Europe,” said Angela Mackay, global publisher of FT Live. “There are clear synergies between TNW and FT Live, in sharing audiences and delivering the FT’s world-class journalism on live stages in Europe.”
The FT has made a string of acquisitions over the last few years, including research and thought-leadership-based firm Longitude, and media company Alpha Grid. In January the FT invested in digital media publisher Sifted, a site which focuses on technology innovators and entrepreneurs, as part of ongoing plans to expand its technology-themed editorial products.
The post The Financial Times buys The Next Web to beef up live events business appeared first on Digiday.
With File Upload Forms (demo) for Google Sheets, you can receive large files from anyone directly in your Google Drive. You can automatically send email confirmations to the notify the form respondent. The forms can be created inside Google Sheets using the built-in drag-n-drop form builder and the forms can CAPTCHAs, e-signature and more.
A school teacher may want to build forms for students to upload assignments and the files are automatically saved to her Google Drive but in separate student folders. The HR team may want an online form where job applicants can upload their resumes in PDF or Word format. Business can build forms with eSignatures that respondents can sign on their desktops and mobile phones.
Google Forms do allow file uploads but the respondents need to be signed into their Google accounts before they can upload files. File Upload Forms impose no such limitations – anyone can upload files to your Google Drive. They may not have a Google account and they’ll still be able to use your Drive uploader forms.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can build your own File Upload Forms in a few minutes. Or watch the YouTube video to get started.
The File Upload Form is written in Google Scripts and the code needs to be attached to your Google Sheet for it to work.
To get started, go to forms.studio/copy and click the “Copy” button to create a copy of the Google Sheet template to your Google Drive. This sheet includes the form builder, email designer and it will also be storing your form responses just like Google Forms responses are stored inside Google Sheets.
Inside your Google Spreadsheet, go to Tools -> Script Editor to open the Google Script editor. Don’t worry, you don’t have to write a single line of code, you only have to deploy this script as a web app so anyone can access your form via a simple web URL.
Go to Publish -> Deploy as Web App, choose Me under Execute the app as, choose Anyone, even Anonymous under Who has access to the web app and click the Deploy button.
You may have to authorize the script once since it has to do all the operations – like sending emails, uploading files – on your behalf.
Also, if you get the “App Not Verified” screen, just click on the Advanced link and choose “Go to File Upload Forms” to continue. While this step is optional, you can submit your app to Google for verification and they’ll drop the ‘not verified’ warning.
Switch to the Google Sheet, expand the File Upload Forms menu (near Help) and choose Edit Form. It will launch a simple but powerful drag-n-drop form builder right inside your Google Sheets.
Your forms can have multiple file upload fields, eSignatures, date, time picker, and all the standard form fields. Use the Rich HTML field to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps, SoundCloud MP3s, Google Slide presentations, Images or any HTML content.
You can also add data validation rules to various form fields using simple regular expressions. The file upload fields can be configured to accept single or multiple files. You can also limit uploads to specific types like images, videos, zip, and more.
After your form is designed, go back to the File Upload Forms menu and choose Configure Form. It will open a sidebar in your Google Sheet where you can customize the form and Google Drive settings.
The confirmation message can include place-markers – form fields enclosed inside double curly braces like name – for personalized messages. You can also place a URL inside the Redirect option and respondents would be redirected to that website after submitting the form.
In the advanced settings section, click the Select Folder button to choose the parent folder in your Google Drive where all the files would be saved. You can also specify a sub-folder path for storing files and this path can be dynamic – CountryCity – based on form answers.
You can also change color schemes, track visits to your form with Google Analytics and protect your forms with Google CAPTCHA and passwords.
With File Upload Forms, you can send email notifications when people submit the form. The emails can be personalized by including the form fields in the email subject and message body.
Use the special All Answers place marker in the message body to include a summary of the form response in a neat table. The TO, CC or BCC field can include the question title where you ask for the email address and it will be replaced with the actual value in the form response.
That’s it.
Your form is now ready for the world. Expand the Share section and you’ll be given the URL to directly access the form and also the embed code for adding that form to any website.
You can use Gmail Mail Merge to send the form link to all your contacts in a personalized email. The Document Studio add-on can help you create beautiful, pixel-perfect PDFs from the form response and they are auto-saved in Google Drive.
File Upload Forms for Google Drive require a license for extended use. The basic version is free, however.
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| Form Responses | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of Forms | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
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| Technical Support | Phone | ||
| Price per year | $29 (Buy) | $49 (Buy) | $199 (Buy) |
The post How to Create Forms that allow File Uploads to Google Drive appeared first on Digital Inspiration.
Burger King is becoming famous for throwing its an annual Halloween promo. Last year they turned a store into the ghost of McDonalds. And for 2017 they’ve created #ScaryClownNight. So On Tuesday, October 31st, from 7PM to close, the first 500 guests that head to select BURGER KING® restaurants in Miami, Boston, LA, Austin and […]
This is a list of essential tools and services from my coding workflow that I think should be part of every web programmer’s toolkit. Whether you a building a simple “Hello World” app or a complex web application, these tools should make your coding easier and increase productivity.
1. devdocs.io — API documentation for all popular programming languages and frameworks. Includes instant search and works offline too.
2. glitch.com — create your own web apps in the browser, import GitHub repos, use any NPM package or build on any popular frameworks and directly deploy to Firebase.
3. bundlephobia.com — quickly find the import cost (download size) of any package in the NPM registry. Or upload your package.json file to scan all dependencies in your project.
4. babeljs.io/repl — Write your code in modern JavaScript and let Babel transform your code into JavaScript that is compatible with even older browsers.
5. codeply.com — quickly build frontend responsive layouts with frameworks like Bootstrap, Materialize CSS and SemanticUI.
6. httpie.org — a command-line tool that is useful for making HTTP requests to web servers and RESTful APIs. Almost as powerful as CURL and Wget but simpler.
7. regexr.com — A good tool for testing your regular expressions in the browser.
8. jex.im/regulex — Write any regular expression into the editor and get a visual representation of how the pieces work.
9. buildregex.com — Construct regular expressions visually.
Also see: The Most Useful Websites on the Internet
10. explainshell.com — Type any Unix command and get a visual explanation of each flag and argument in the command.
11. tldr.ostera.io — Unix man pages are long and complex. This site offers practical examples for all popular Unix command without you having to dive into the man pages.
12. mockaroo.com — quickly generate dummy test data in the browser in CSV, JSON, SQL and other export formats.
13. jsdelivr.com — Serve any GitHub file or WordPress plugin through a CDN. Combine multiple files in a single URL, add “.min” to any JS/CSS file to get a minified version automatically. Also see unpkg.com.
14. carbon.now.sh — create beautiful screenshots of your source code. Offers syntax highlighting for all popular languages.
15. wakatime.com — know exactly how long you spend coding with detailed metrics per file and even language. Integrates with VS Code, Sublime text, and all popular code editors.
16. astexplorer.net — paste your JavaScript code into the editor and generate the Abstract Syntax Tree that will help you understand how the JavaScript parser works.
17. hyper.is — A better alternative to the command line terminal and also iTerm. Use with the Oh My Zsh shell and add superpowers to your terminal.
18. curlbuilder.com — make your own CURL requests in the browser.
19. htaccess.madewithlove.be — easily test the redirect and rewrite rules in the .htaccess file of your Apache server. See useful .htaccess snippets.
Also see: The Best Places to Download HTML Templates
20. trackjs.com — monitor errors in your JavaScript based web projects and get instant email notifications when a new error is detected.
21. ngrok.com — Start a local web server, fire up ngrok, point to the port where the localhost is running and get a public URL of your tunnel.
22. codeshare.io — An online code editor for pair programming, live interviews with video conferences or for teaching code to students remotely.
23. webhooks.site — Easily inspect the payloads and debug HTTP webhooks in the browser. All HTTP requests are logged in real-time. Another good alternative is RequestBin.
24. surge.sh — the easiest way to deploy web pages and other static content from the command line. Supports custom domains and SSL. Also see Zeit Now.
25. visbug — A must-have add-on for web developers that brings useful web design tools right in your browser. Available for Google Chrome and Firefox.
26. puppeteersandbox.com — Puppeteer is a Node.js framework for automating Google Chrome. Use the sandbox to quickly test your scripts in the browser. Also see try-puppeteer.com.
27. prettier.io/playground — Beautify your JavaScript and TypeScript code using Prettier, the favorite code formatter of programmers.
28. json.parser.online.fr — The only JSON parser you’ll ever need to analyze and beautify your complex JSON strings.
29. scrimba.com — Create your own programming screencasts in the browser or watch other developers code.code.
30. katacoda.com — A training platform for software developers where anyone can create their own dedicated and interactive training environments.
31. codesandbox.io — A full-featured online IDE where you can create web applications in all popular languages including vanilla JavaScript, React, TypeScript, Vue and Angular. Also see StackBlitz.com and Repl.it.
32. apify.com — Write your own web scrapers using JavaScript and schedule your scrapers to run at specific intervals automatically.
33. vim-adventures.com — The Vim text editor is hugely popular among programmers. The site will help you master the various key commands through a game.
34. insomnia.rest — A desktop based REST client that lets you create HTTP requests and view response details all in a easy-to-use interface. Advanced users may consider Postman.
Also see: The Most Awesome Teachers for Learning Web Development
The post The Essential Tools for Programmers appeared first on Digital Inspiration.
Here is OK Go’s latest music video extravaganza; Obsession. The innovative video (another magical piece!) is a collaboration between the band and paper company Double A, and utilises stop-motion, precise choreography and 567 high-speed printers to create the “world’s first paper mapping” project. And just so you know, the band added the disclaimer that all […]
So “Destiny 2″ has it’s own Alexa Skill. A Ghost Skill if you will… that is embedded into Amazon Alexa devices, to give players some help from the famous A.I. assistant, synced and integrated directly into the game in real time. The Ghost Skill enables a series of brand new ways to interact with the […]
The advertising: Why does it work? Appeared on Marketing Land.
Developing provides for products that are high quality and a feeling of exclusivity can be a means to market services or your products. However, you can do it things.
Please see Marketing Land to the article.
