Users with packages to track begin by following PackageTrack on Twitter (@packagetrack), causing the free application to follow them in return. They can then direct message PackageTrack with the nickname of a package they’d like to track along with its tracking number, separated by a colon—”Red Dress: 23345631243,” for example. PackageTrack then notifies them by Twitter each time the package’s status changes, including a Google Map illustrating its route.

Launched earlier this year, PackageTrack currently tracks only UPS, USPS and FedEx packages, but it says it will be adding more carriers soon.

springwise.com

Package tracking via Twitter is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

eBay launched the eBay Sellers Challenge, a unique initiative with a simple goal: empower and inspire entrepreneurs to grow existing businesses – or start new ones – on eBay. The Sellers Challenge asks entrepreneurs to answer a simple question: “How would you use $25,000 to grow – or start – an eBay business?” Four winners will each receive a $25,000 business grant, along with marketing advice and assistance from eBay.

Entrants are encouraged to submit a business plan and an accompanying video in one of four categories:

1. Current or former members of the Unites States armed forces;
2. Individuals or small businesses who have not sold on eBay;
3. Part-time sellers who want to go full-time on eBay; and
4. Full-time eBay sellers who want to grow their business further.

Submissions will be evaluated by eBay and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship.

Each of the four challenge winners will receive a $25,000 business grant from eBay, as well as marketing services and support from eBay; runners-up will each receive a $5,000 grant.

Both established and aspiring entrepreneurs are encouraged to visit http://sellerschallenge.ebay.com, through July 7, 2009, to submit their business idea and review the Official Rules applicable to the contest. Winners will be announced on August 11. The eBay Sellers’ Challenge is open to registered members of eBay who are legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and 18 years of age or older. Winners must use grant funds to start or grow a business on eBay.

eBay Inc.

Bay Sellers Challenge to Spark Entrepreneurial Spirit is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

In return, all they need to do is claim and verify their listings at the Google Local Businesss Center. It takes about as much time as setting up a new email account, maybe a little more. Google gets clean data (and, thus, better results), businesses get free analytics and an opportunity to train Google’s search engine. Right now only a few hundred thousand businesses in the U.S. have been claimed out of approximately 20 million.

techcrunch.com

Google Local Lures Small Businesses With Their Own Web Dashboard is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

It has a simple drag and drop interface and you can use all of the features absolutely free. As Onyaka is online application that’s why you can use it from everywhere without any restriction on standard web browser.

Onyaka, The Simple And Free Staff Scheduling And Planning Software is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The Internet is the prime example. Sure, you may (or may not) have to pay to access the Internet, but once you’re there, you expect to get information, entertainment, advice all free. Good for you. Good for companies that sell technology to Internet companies. But is it good for companies that create the information, entertainment, provide the advice?

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, explained the economics of giving stuff away in his keynote address. Anderson’s a proponent of the concept of giving things away free, and his next book, “Free: The Economics of Abundance and the Price of Zero,” is likely to further spread the gospel of that business model.

Moreover, people don’t value what they get free. Even Anderson recognizes this, “When the price of something falls to zero, you get waste.” People value what they pay for. A person who pays $100 for a ticket to an event is likely to show up; when they get it free, they’re just as likely to be a no-show. That’s why I advise entrepreneurs that even when you give your products or services away, especially to a prospect or current customer, you should always indicate the price, then waive it. It shows the true value.

Small companies are not in the same position to give stuff away free — whether it’s a physical product, intellectual property (content, music, art, consulting), or time. Their resources, both of money and time, are far more limited.

But the reality is that the “free” movement will continue, and small companies are going to have to grapple with this challenge. New business models are going to have to emerge for small entrepreneurial companies to survive.

By RHONDA ABRAMS @ Gannett News Service

Freebies Pose Challenge For Small Biz is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Just register to attend this free seminar from Target Marketing on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 2pm eastern and they guarantee you will learn how to diagnose weak points in your campaign before you deploy and what to change in under-performing campaigns to make them deliver. Plus,

• How to evaluate and hone your media and offer strategies to pump up response rates, lead-quality rates or conversion rates.
• •How to assess each part of your demand generation system to optimize your marketing ROI.

This session is for both B2C and B2B marketers, at companies of all sizes. A live Q&A following the presentation will allow you to get feedback from the experts on your toughest campaign challenges.

Mark your calendar and register now, just go to the Target Marketing site.

Free Webinar, Revive Your Direct Marketing Techniques is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

That’s the case with the online resource offered by Hewlett Packard Small Business.

Granted, they hope you’ll eventually buy something when the need arises, but the information and services can be a boon to business owners—and all of it’s free.

Hewlett-Packard Small Business has a wealth of free tools, tutorials and templates on its site geared toward small business customers.

One of the main attractions of the site is the Business Templates area (not surprising for a printer company), which offers about 700 pre-built designs for Microsoft Office, CorelDRAW, QuarkXPress and more. Most interesting to small business owners is the collection of agency-quality graphic design templates from StockLayouts, where you’ll find great-looking brochures, letterhead, flyers and so on.

But templates are just part of the story. Beneath the Learn & Use banner is a link to free online classes in HP’s learning center. These have the feel of genuine online college or post-graduate courses — complete with lesson breakdowns and even recommended prerequisites — and are taught by well-qualified instructors. You need to register and enroll for a given course, but all are free of charge.

HP offers a few dozen courses in all, broken down into specific areas such as Software & Technology, Business Skills and In-house Marketing. Recent additions include an introduction to using Adobe Photoshop CS2 and understanding Microsoft Vista Business Edition.

You’ll want to bookmark the page and check back often, as HP conveniently flags which lessons are new or updated and shows which new courses are coming soon.

Small Business Computing

Free Online Resource Helps Small Bizs is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. Firefox
http://www.getfirefox.com/
Replaces Internet Explorer
If you haven’t switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one thing’s for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

2. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it’s free, it’s full featured, it’s lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If you’re not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

3. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring functions
Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation’s calendaring program. It’s extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if you’re using a laptop, and this is no different.

4. Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
Replaces Microsoft Word
Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word. It’s lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

5. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint
If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.

6. ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/
Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee
ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software that’s quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. That’s pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time?

7. Gaim
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc.
This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

8. BitTorrent
http://www.bittorrent.com/
Original but essential
From their website, “BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple: to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world.” In other words, BitTorrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download ‘em.

9. GIMPShop
http://www.gimpshop.net/
Replaces Adobe Photoshop
This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop – a regular user of Photoshop (like me) can adapt to it quite quickly. It’s very richly featured and runs quite well – in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free.

10. Gnucleus
http://www.gnucleus.com/Gnucleus/
Replaces LimeWire, BearShare, etc.
Sure, LimeWire and BearShare are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware? Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages – but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer.

11. VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.
If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type you’ll run across without breaking a sweat.

12. Juice
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with PodNova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using iTunes itself.

13. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential (for some)
If you’re interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. I’m not much for podcasting (let’s just say I don’t have a radio voice), but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes.

14. RSSOwl
http://www.rssowl.org/
Unique but essential
RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs; if you read a lot of blogs, it’s the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, it’s preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if you’re on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.

15. Filezilla
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Replaces WinFTP
Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

16. Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html
Unique but essential
Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. It’s not good at quality word processing, but that’s not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility.

17. MusikCube
http://www.musikcube.com/
Replaces iTunes
If you’re not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

18. Handbrake
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
Unique but essential
Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road.

19. X-Chat 2
http://www.silverex.org/
Replaces mIRC
X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, it’s a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

20. KeePass
http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place; KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

21. TrueCrypt
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Unique but essential
TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case.

22. PDFCreator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Replaces Adobe Acrobat
PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

23. Freemind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Unique but Essential
Freemind is a “mind mapping” software program. In essence, it enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating “maps” of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. I find it incredibly useful when putting together ideas for new posts or planning small projects or assembling the backbone of a writing project.

24. NASA Worldwind
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Replaces Google Earth
WorldWind is very similar to Google Earth in that it allows you to browse the globe. While it isn’t strong for creating maps (but why not just use Google Maps for that?), it is utterly incredible for viewing three-dimensional landscapes of any place on earth.

25. Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Replaces Notepad
Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags. In fact, I’m using Notepad2 as I draft this post (after using Freemind to organize it).

26. HealthMonitor
http://healthmonitor.zucchetti.com/
Unique but useful
HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

27. Workrave
http://www.workrave.org/
Unique but useful
Sometimes late into a writing session, my wrists get sore from too much repetitive movement. Workrave basically jumps in before this happens and locks down the computer for a while, preventing me from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury. Since I’ve started using it, it hasn’t significantly hurt my productivity at all and my wrists are thanking me!

28. GanttPV
http://www.pureviolet.net/ganttpv/
Replaces Microsoft Project
If you do any project management (or have a need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, you’ll likely have no reason to use Project.

29. GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken
GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features I want for managing my money. The interfaces are incredibly simple – it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer – but there’s a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

30. True Combat: Elite
http://www.truecombatelite.net/
Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc.
After all this downloading, you’re going to need to blow off a little steam, and I’ve yet to find a more enjoyable free game than this one. It’s basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

If you’ve downloaded and installed all of these, you’ve got access to all the productivity software you’ll likely need, clean and open and best of all free.

thesimpledollar.com

30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

If you’re a mom who has a great idea for a new invention, you can enter to win. One grand prize winner will receive $10,000 plus a 5 percent royalty from the net sales of the invention. See full official rules below for complete details.

All entries must be postmarked by March 24, 2007, and must be received by April 2, 2007. Please see contest rules below for complete information and entry requirements.

abcnews.com

2007 Mothers of Invention Challenge is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

This is one of the hot opportunities in new new media: hyperaggregation. If aggregation is what we’ve seen so far on YouTube and Flickr, hyperaggregation is aggregating the aggregators. The way of the Web is to go meta – a website is born and covers politics, then another, and another, and that leads inexorably to … a blog that covers all the websites that tackle politics.

Growing in Google’s shadow — Smart sites evolve, that is, from aggregators to hyperaggregators. To see what I’m talking about, take a look at another hyperaggregator, ViralVideos.com, which simply lists the most watched videos from the most popular sites, such as YouTube and Metacafe.

A more sophisticated example is Original Signal, which takes a dozen of the biggest Web 2.0 tech blogs and puts their headlines on one customizable page. On the site each blog is known as a “signal.” You can change the order of the signals displayed, have any signal delivered to your cell phone or RSS reader, or even hyperaggregate the signals on an Original Signal widget that you can add to your own blog.

CNN Money

How to create your own TV channel is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

A new Web-based service, ZaZaCHAT, allows e-retailers to provide live help to website visitors via online chat. The tool lets customer-service representatives communicate directly with customers, answering questions about products or making recommendations.

The service also provides website owners with tools to monitor their traffic and examine the demographics of their visitors in real time. When customers visit a site, ZaZaCHAT gives the retailer their location, IP, host name, and the URL of the site from which they were referred.

A beta-version of ZaZaCHAT is available for free. Once the product is out of beta, a limited version will be offered for free, while a PRO version will cost $24.99 per month per operator.

inc.com

Want to Close the Deal? Try Chatting Up Customers is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

2. Sell your Services — You’ve got information that other people can use, and with the Bitwine Skype add-on you’ll be able to leverage that information into an income stream. Whether you’re a lawyer, a mechanic, or a talented collector, there are people willing to pay for the information you have, and using Bitwine makes selling that information easy. Through Bitwine, you set up your hourly rate, then customers approach you about the topic they would like to discuss, you set up a meeting time, and at the end of the meeting Bitwine tallies up the time and will even coordinate payment via PayPal through another add-on, Bitwine extra.

3. Collaboration — If you’re running a small business or working as part of a team on a single project, real-time collaboration is essential. There’s no better way to supplement your Skype conferencing than with a collaborative desktop provided by Skype add-on Unyte. Unyte lets you choose which applications or documents to share with the other people on your conference call. Then everyone can be looking at the same documents at the same time, and when changes are made they appear on everyone’s screen so that there is no confusion. Pricing depends on the number of people you want to bring in on the conference, but you can give two-person collaboration a try for free.

25 Tips to Improve Your Skype Experience

voip-news.com

Three ways to use Skype in your small business is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

However, in most cases, the party offering the free information or bait is actually interested in charging for it. Even if that charge is the exchange of a name and email address. So, for some, free isn’t free and may be too expensive. Take the “free” evaluation. Free in this case might mean that the recipient must take time, accept an appointment and sit through veiled sales presentation.

Free is one of the most powerful marketing words on the planet but, what makes free really free is trust. In order to use this tactic effectively the recipient must trust that you won’t abuse their permission. If you have no previous relationship with a prospect you cannot go overboard assuring them that you won’t misuse their information. You must actively sell your free information by communicating just how valuable it really is.

Taking steps to build trust with testimonials and referrals, providing great free information with no strings attached and being consistent is how you lower the barrier to free. Once this is done effectively, and you haven’t abused the trust you’ve earned, you can move to steps that provide greater education and demand greater involvement.

In fact, now your free information might actually be something they would pay for.

Duct Tape Marketing

When Free Is Just Too Expensive is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Paying your rent playing videogames sounds fun, but the reality can be far more tedious, says Kaos studios associate producer Dennis Allard Crow. When he started his career as a game tester, he played the game Tony Hawk’s Underground for days at a stretch, searching for errors. It might sound mind-numbingly monotonous, but the job is one of the few left in the industry for inexperienced youngsters. The problem: The secret is out, and studios are inundated with applications. Crow says that for every tester at his studio, they have 10 applicants. To get your resume noticed, write summaries of 10 games you played, detailing what you liked about the game and what you didn’t. “Demonstrate a love for videogames,” says Crow.

forbes.com

How To Play Videogames For A Living is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

In The Netherlands, Elkhuistekoop.nl (Every House for Sale) encourages people to fill in an online form if they’ve spotted the house of their dreams and it isn’t yet for sale. Elkhuistekoop then contacts the property’s owners to find out whether they have short or long term intentions to sell. If an owner’s dormant desire to sell is awakened, Elkhuistekoop hooks up the buying party with a real estate agent, and the agent pays a finder’s fee. The service is free for house seekers. Elkhuistekoop is definitely less elaborate than Igglo, which took pictures of every building in Helsinki. On the other hand, it offers consumers an easy and discreet alternative to knocking on dream house doors themselves.

In the U.S., online real estate service Zillow lets home owners take the initiative, by allowing them to set a Make Me Move price without actually putting their house on the market. Once owners set a price (“that magical number you just can’t refuse”), potential buyers can contact them anonymously via email. It’s then up to the owner to decide whether they really want to sell.

Zillow identifies a few different reasons for owners to use Make Me Move. If they’re thinking about selling in the near future, the service helps to start gathering interest. Or they may have long term plans to sell, but could be motivated to do so sooner if the right offer comes along. Zillow launched Make Me Move a week ago, and already has 3,682 prosperities listed with MMM prices.

springwise.com

Real estate 3.0 is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. Who makes it?
2. Who supports it?
3. What are ALL the costs?
4. What other technology is required to make it work?
5. What services are required to make it work?
6. How long has it been around?
7. Who else is using it?
8. How will it generate profits for my company?
9. Can I take a test drive?
10. Will it speak to my other systems?

businessknowhow.com

Top technology questions you should ask is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Founded in 1996, Craigslist.org gets an estimated 10 million unique visitors per day. With an online classified ads format organized by either region or city, Craigslist connects buyers and sellers in more than 300 communities; for the most part, posting on the site is free.

• What Sells Best on Craigslist — From services like tutoring, car repair and real estate to products such as wholesale furniture, consignment goods and retail e-commerce, Craigslist is the ultimate destination for online marketers.
• Identifying Your Market — Like any other advertising medium, Craigslist requires some strategy. To start, you need to determine which city or cities you’re going to post an ad.
• Building Ads — Posting an ad on Craigslist can be as simple as typing in some text, or you can incorporate html and images. Typically, what works best is the direct approach. Be sure to include important search words so that people who search for specific items find you in the search results.
• Tracking Results — If you plan to post in multiple cities and offer specific promotions, tracking which ads produce the best results is important. You can track a Craigslist ad by e-mail, phone number or website referral. Each tracking mechanism should feature a unique component like a custom e-mail address, telephone extension or website referral code. Craigslist does not provide you with any demographic or tracking data.

Craigslist continues to experience rapid growth–additional cities have come online in recent months and more are expected to launch throughout the next year.

The buzz about this great resource is sweeping the nation, and every day people from all over the world are visiting the site, looking to buy from trusted sellers and service providers.

entrepreneur.com

Marketing Your Business on Craigslist is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

http://www.ClarkChamber.com/golf/ScholarshipApplication.pdf

Completed applications must be received by February 1, 2007. For further information, call 360-258-1181 or email info@ClarkChamber.com.

Twelve Scholarships Seeking Applicants is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

What’s really needed is a simple, elegant solution that harnesses the power of the internet to shunt files around, but makes the procedure quick, easy and foolproof. Carson Systems might have just provided the answer and it’s called DropSend.

DropSend is a service that provides answers to the two main issues of dealing with large files: emailing them, and storing them online so that you can transfer work home or for use as a backup.

Using a simple web interface (or the small downloadable applications for OSX and Windows) you can navigate to a file on your computer, enter an email address, click send and your file, which can be up to 1GB (and you can send more than one file) begins its journey to the recipient. Once the email lands in their inbox, they simply click the link to download the file. It couldn’t be easier!

The best thing about DropSend is that it doesn’t try to do too much: it concentrates on sending and storing files, but does it extremely well using clearly thought out steps and a pleasing, crisply designed interface.

pixelsurgeon.com

DropSEND is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The regular fees for Google Checkout vary. If you’re a merchant participating in the company’s lucrative AdWords program, you may process up $10 in payments for free every dollar they spend on AdWords. Non-AdWord merchant, or those who exceed the limit, pay 20 cents per transaction plus 2% of the payment being processed.

PayPal’s fees start at 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.

According to reports, rumors of Google’s announcement had been floating around for at least a week. Notably, PayPal, owned by eBay, announced on Monday a holiday incentive program of its own aimed at consumers. “Millions of PayPal customers will be eligible to receive cash rebate offers up to $20 when paying with PayPal on qualifying merchant Web sites in North America … . Additionally, consumers will find free shipping from some of the Web’s most popular brand names when they pay with PayPal this holiday season,” according to a release from PayPal.

InfoWorld Tech Watch

Google Checkout free for the holidays is a post from: Top Business Opportunities