PayPal Archives - Diane Hamilton

The PayPal Mafia: What is a Serial Entrepreneur?

The PayPal Mafia refers to a group of individuals who created multiple companies that created a frenzy of growth in the Silicon Valley. The entrepreneurs created PayPal before they set out to develop other multiple successful technology-based companies. These men are serial entrepreneurs or individuals who, “continuously come up with new ideas and starts new businesses. As opposed to a typical entrepreneur, who will often come up with an idea, start the company, and then see it through and play an important role in the day to day functioning of the new company, a serial entrepreneur will often come up with the idea and get things started, but then give responsibility to someone else and move on to a new idea and a new venture.”

To learn more about some of the individuals associated with the PayPal Mafia check out the following members and how their initial success led to other serial successes:

Peter Thiel – aka the “don” of the PayPal Mafia – was the founder of PayPal. Investments in Facebook also helped to sky rocket his earnings. Thiel urges young people to skip school and create companies instead.
Max Levchin – was the CTO for PayPal and continued with his success investing in Yelp, a company co-founded by Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman.
David Sacks – was the COO for PayPal and later founded Yammer and Geni.
Roelof Botha – was the CFO for PayPal and invested in Youtube, Facebook, Xoom and other profitable ventures.
Steve Chen and Jawed Karim (engineers for PayPal), and Chad Hurley (web designer) – founded YouTube.
Elon Musk – was forced out of PayPal but found success with Tesla Motors.
Eric M. Jackson – wrote The PayPal Wars and became CEO of WND Books,
Premal Shah – was a product manager at PayPal and later founded Kiva.org.
Reid Hoffman – was an Executive VP with PayPal before later creating Linkedin.

For a more complete list of the PayPal Mafia members and their accomplishments, click here.

Related Articles:

How to Market You or Your Product Using Social Media

Today’s Ask Dr. Diane: I just wrote a book that is available through Amazon. I’m just not sure about the best way to market it? Any suggestions?

That is a good question. The tips I’m about to give can also be used to market things other than a book.

You could market it through several ways. I would create a link to it on your site like I have links on my main website to Amazon. If you don’t want to do that, you could offer it directly from you as a PDF through your site and charge them using PayPal.

You might want to make a video (3-4 minutes at most) and put it on Youtube. At the end of the video make mention of a free offer or newsletter and where to go for more information. If they go to that site, it should be a capture page to get people signed up to receive free newsletters (through a site like aweber.com) to get them interested in you and your book.

You definitely need to be on Facebook and create fan pages like the ones I have for each of my books there. See:

How to Reinvent Your Career Facebook Page

It’s Not You It’s Your Personality Facebook Page

The Online Student User’s Manual Facebook Page

I would be on Twitter as well. You can tie all of your Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc. accounts into one area on sites like Hootsuite . . . but I like to use Posterous a lot. It is like a blog but it has a great share information toolbar that you can get that and it also allows you to share your updates on multiple sites like Hootsuite does.

If you want to learn about social networking and “how to do it” . . .for a reasonable price you can go to Letsgetsocial and sign up to get their videos. I watched them and they are really very informative. They are designed to teach people how to be media managers but people who don’t want to do the job of media management can learn how to do their own media management from them.

I gave a presentation yesterday to a local group here where others were presenting to career-seekers … they all agreed that Youtube is one of the biggest things you can do to get noticed.

I watched a video a while back on Pitchengine.com about videos and they had some good information. They are more costly though. You might watch their video for information. If you are going to spend that kind of money, you need to have a major product to promote. Books probably won’t have the return to support that.

Talks are another great way to promote your book . . . so are radio interviews. You can go to radioguestlist.com or other sites like that to find people looking to interview you.

Blogging is one of the best ways to get your name out there. I like to use WordPress because it is free and uncomplicated.

You can also release press releases on prweb or other such sites. I am on wooeb who also has press releases that are not as expensive. You can send out free releases on pitchengine.

You might check out some books . . . .I liked a book called Career Renegade . . . had some good ideas. (on a different side topic . . .I liked the book The Happiness Advantage written by ex Harvard professor – very entertaining)

PitchEngine Launches Newsroom for Facebook (mediabistro.com)
Social Media Marketing: 5 Lessons From Business Leaders Who Get It (mashable.com)
Advice: How Do I Get People To Read My Blog? (drdianehamilton.wordpress.com)

What is Google Checkout? How Does it Compare to PayPal?

According to their site, Google Checkout allows you to:

• Stop creating multiple accounts and passwords. With Google Checkout™ you can quickly and easily buy from stores across the web and track all your orders and shipping in one place.

• Shop with confidence. Our fraud protection policy covers you against unauthorized purchases made through Google Checkout, and we don’t share your purchase history or full credit card number with sellers.

• Control commercial spam. You can keep your email address confidential, and easily turn off unwanted emails from stores where you use Google Checkout.

If you want to hear testimonials from Google Checkout customers, click here.

Some of the things they are saying about Google Checkout is that it is:

Fast and Easy
Safe and Secure
Protects Personal Information
Helps Buyers Resolve Issues
Allowing Shopping With Confidence

If you would like to take a tour of or see a short video about Google Checkout, click here.

Once you sign up, they offer a deals page where you can find discounts from many different stores.

How does Google Checkout compare to Paypal?

Check out this excerpt article from an article on bestshoppingcartreviews.com:

Basic overview of Google Checkout vs. PayPal

There are some areas that can be used to determine which payment processor is best for you. This is a comparison of how they stack up in Google Checkout vs. PayPal:

How customers can make payments. With Google Checkout, customers can only use the credit or debit card. It is possible for customers to store this information in order to avoid entering it every time. PayPal, on the other hand, allows for credit card payment or deduction from a bank account. eCheck capability is also available. In this way, PayPal is more diverse.

Rate merchant reliability. For many online shoppers, it is important to know that you are reputable. Both Google Checkout and PayPal rate merchants.

International shopping. PayPal has a definite edge in this area. Google Checkout is only available for U.S. purchases. PayPal, on the otherhand, is accepted in 55 countries. In addition to the U.S. dollar, PayPal also accepts the euro, the pound, the Canadian dollar, the yen and the Australian dollar. Currency exchange is also available (for a fee).

Security. Both Google Checkout and PayPal offer SSL security on the same level that banks do.

Fraud protection. PayPal only offers fraud protection for sales of more than $50. Google offers 100% refund, but you must report within 60 days. There have been complaints about PayPal’s payment resolution process as well.

Fees for accepting payments on your business Web site. Depending on the level of you account with PayPal, you pay 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent of your sales, and sometimes you pay 30 cents per transaction. Google Checkout is 2% of sales, plus 20 cents per transaction. However, with Google, you can use your AdWords account to reduce the cost of your transaction fees. This arrangement does not exist with PayPal.

Customer service. It is worth noting that PayPal offers a customer service line with live people (you can call a phone number). It can be difficult to contact Google Checkout customer service in any way besides the forum provided or email.

One of the main advantages that Google Checkout has is its integration with AdWords. This means that you can get preferred pricing on a number of services – and even automatically pay transaction fees with earnings from your AdWord account. Additionally, when your ad is displayed on other Web pages and in search engine results, a shopping cart icon appears so that it is easy to see that you accept Google Checkout, offering a possible way to increase sales.

With PayPal business merchant account, a great many of the advantages come in the fact that more people use PayPal, and that there is a range of services and features available that include invoicing, statements, shipping and tax calculations and customer options.

You should carefully consider your needs before deciding on whether or not to go with Google Checkout or PayPal. How you run your business, and the kinds of features and services you want should be factors in which payment processor you use.

via bestshoppingcartreviews.com

Common Problems with Google Checkout (brighthub.com)
eBay to exclude Google Checkout in favor of PayPal (thenextweb.com)
Ebook Sales Easy with Google Checkout and DigitalContentCenter.com (prweb.com)
Could Google Checkout go the way of Wave thanks to PayPal? (inquisitr.com)