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Back in 1995 Craig Newmark had a revolutionary idea. Why not use this new thing called the internet to launch an email distribution list? Inspired by friendly social sites like WELL, MindVox and Usene, Newman used his email list to inform people in the San Francisco Bay area about upcoming local events. Word of mouth quickly spread and the number of subscribers grew unexpectedly. Eventually, people began using the list for non-event postings. By 1996, chúng tôi went live.
Within its first 5 years, Craigslist expanded to 14 cities in North America. As more categories and cities were added, Newmark left his job as a software engineer to work at the site full-time. Today, Craigslist is in over 700 “cities” in 70 countries with over 50 billion page views per month, putting it in 37th place overall among web sites worldwide and 10th overall among web sites in the United States.
Throughout the years, people have found ridiculous bargains, employment, and a great way to get rid of items taking up space in their homes.
But, for all of its potential and good, is the site actually killing your business? Here’s how that may be the case.
ScamsThe internet is no stranger to scams. It happens on a daily basis. For most of us, internet scams have become so frequent that we’re usually cautious when something sounds to good to be true. Unfortunately, when you visit a well-known site, you expect it to be scam-free. That’s not the case with Craigslist.
This type of scam can really damage your brand’s reputation. Instead of focusing on actual sales and improving you business, you could be forced to do damage control for months to repair your brand.
LawsuitsDespite its appearance of being a “do-gooder” Craigslist has a nasty history of suing or issuing cease-and-desist letters to a number of startups. As noted on the New York Times technology blog in 2012, Craigslist “has dug an effective moat by cultivating an exaggerated image of ‘doing good’ that keeps its customers loyal, while behind the scenes, it bullies any rivals that come near and it stifles innovation”.
This means that any company wanting to improve on the Craigslist concept probably won’t have the opportunity. It seems that Newmark and company don’t want any competition. This doesn’t just harm innovating start-ups, it could also prevent future sales for your business.
AdvertisingImage Credit: Samantha Marx
It’s no big secret that Craigslist has harmed local chúng tôi is because local newspapers have lost about $5 billion dollars in potential revenue from classifieds, according to a study in August 2013. Since newspapers can’t compete with the free postings on Craigslist, there was a 20 percent drop in ad rates. There are two reasons why this could be detrimental to your business.
In many cities, Craigslist doesn’t allow you to customize an ad that uses third-party HTML tags in listings. This means your ad will no longer stand out because it won’t have have brand recognition (no logos, for example), instead showing only low resolution images.
Why Buy Something New?Yes, there has always been a way for people to save money by purchasing a used product. However, the popularity of Craigslist has made it much easier. Users have been able to find all sorts of items and services via Craigslist for years. They don’t have to go anywhere else to find an apartment, new kitchen table, working grill, or whatever else they may want or need. With an almost endless supply of listings, why purchase something new?
Obviously, Craigslist hasn’t closed the doors on every shop on ‘Main Street’, but it’s helped create a new type of economy: one where trades, barters, and selling used items to bargain hunters are the norm. This must have had an impact on local businesses who were profiting from good American throw-away mentality. It’s a brave new world of reselling, and that could weaken your sales.
Are there any other reasons that you can think of on how Craigslist is killing you business? If so, tell us how! Or, have you found Craigslist has helped your business?
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How Your Business Can Accept Apple Pay
Apple Pay is a fast, easy, secure digital payment method growing more popular with consumers and businesses. If you’re a small business interested in accepting Apple Pay, we’ll break down everything you need to know about its benefits and costs, how it works for your business, and how to start accepting Apple Pay.
Editor’s note: Looking for the right credit card processor for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.
If you don’t accept credit cards yet:
If your business doesn’t already accept credit cards or your current processor doesn’t support Apple Pay, follow these steps:
Find a credit card processor that supports Apple Pay. Most top card processors enable Apple Pay for their clients. Check out our review of Helcim, our Square review, our Chase Payment Solutions review, and our review of Stax to learn more about credit card processors that support Apple Pay.
Sign up for an account with your credit card processor. After selecting a credit card processor with the pricing and features you need, set up your account. Ensure Apple Pay is enabled.
Order NFC-enabled credit card readers. Obtain your NFC-enabled credit card readers and set up and test your system.
Train your staff on accepting Apple Pay. Your staff must instruct customers to hold their phones near the NFC reader to pay. Your team must also know how to select Apple Pay as the payment type in your POS system.
Post signage about accepting Apple Pay. Signs letting customers know your business accepts Apple Pay can help boost sales, especially among younger customers.
Tip
If you need to accept credit card payments using your phone, you must ensure your credit card processor provides mobile card readers and supports mobile payments. Many mobile card readers are also NFC-enabled, so you can also accept Apple Pay.
How does Apple Pay work for businesses?To implement Apple Pay, your business must already accept credit cards. You’ll need a credit card processor or facilitator to accept and process customer payments for online and in-person purchases made with Apple Pay. That processor or facilitator must also accept Apple Pay and enable Apple Pay on your account. For in-person payments, you’ll need a card reader that accepts NFC payments.
When a customer purchases using Apple Pay, the credit card processor or facilitator processes the transaction and deposits the money into your account, minus any fees.
Tip
If you’re looking for a payment facilitator, it’s easy to start accepting credit cards with PayPal, Square or Stripe.
Did You Know?
Online payment security tips include requiring two-factor authentication, verifying transactions and buying cyber-liability insurance.
How much does it cost to accept Apple Pay?There is no cost to the buyer to use Apple Pay to make purchases. However, your credit card processor or facilitator will charge your business a fee for each Apple Pay transaction, just as it would for every credit card transaction. The transaction fee is a percentage of the purchase total plus a flat per-transaction amount.
Credit card processors don’t charge any additional fees for Apple Pay transactions, so there are no additional costs related to accepting Apple Pay beyond their standard credit card processing fees.
Credit card processors and facilitators that accept Apple PayMany of the best credit card processors and facilitators accept Apple Pay. Here’s a breakdown of top processors and their associated fees.
Company
Apple Pay in-person transaction fee
Cost of NFC-enabled card reader
Facilitators
PayPal
2.7%
$59.99
Square
2.6% + $0.10
$49
Stripe
2.7% + $0.05
$59
Processors (may also charge monthly fees)
Merchant One
0.29% to 1.55%
Free for new customers
Clover
2.6% + $0.10
$9.95 per month
ProMerchant
Interchange + 0.5% + $0.15
Free for new customers
Tip
Read our review of Clover, our Merchant One review and our ProMerchant review to learn more about these credit card processors and their associated fees.
How To Decide If An Lms Is The Right Fit For Your Business
Several business functions had to start working on the cloud overnight, all thanks to the International emergency that has confined everyone to their homes.
While many business functions were also disrupted, there were also those that were delayed owing to the absence of the right tools in place.
If you are reading this article, chances are, employee training was one such function in your case.
Whether you are a corporate training administrator or simply someone trying to do something productive with their time, if you have just started accumulating the tools you need to deploy online training, there are some pressing decisions to be made.
One such decision is choosing the right learning management system (LMS).
Choosing the wrong LMS can turn out to be a pricey disaster. For starters, LMS, even the affordable ones, are generally a large investment.
Moreover, the LMS plays a critical role in the development and deployment of your course content. Choosing a complex LMS can cause serious delays in the delivery of your course material.
Finally, the LMS is a significant part of the learner’s experience. Choosing a difficult to use LMS will have a negative influence over retention and engagement numbers.
Now that we have established that choosing an LMS is a decision that is best taken diligently, let’s look at what you must look for in your next LMS:
User-FriendlinessIf you have read this far, you must have already understood the importance of user-friendliness. An intuitive user experience in an LMS allows learning administrators to use its features to their full capability, allowing them to create immersive learning experiences that leave a lasting impression.
At the same time, for learners, user-friendliness in an LMS allows them to focus on their course curriculum, instead of having to learn the ropes of the LMS beforehand.
This is crucial for businesses and course proprietors alike. For businesses, a complex LMS can mean spending paid manhours learning how the LMS functions. At the same time, for a course proprietor, a complex user experience can mean a poor customer experience, which can negatively affect their future enrollment numbers.
A good example of a LMS with an intuitive user interface is
Absorb LMS
. The LMS is supported by the same team that has developed the platform and they will be happy to help you customise the experience of the user interface and dashboards.
Essential FeaturesModern learning management systems come loaded with a variety of features that allow course administrators and creators to make their course curriculum more engaging.
From the ability to break long-form lessons into bite sized micro-learning modules to gamification features and features that enable social learning, modern LMS are designed keeping the needs of a modern learner in mind.
With that said, the flexibility and utility of these features may vary between different learning management systems. Moreover, there might be cases where you make use of one particular feature or ability of an LMS, more than the others. For such cases, there are specialised learning management systems.
A great example of the same is the
Mindflash LMS
that specialises in helping learning administrators create immersive video courses.
Tracking And Reporting AbilitiesFrom being able to track individual students’ progress to understanding how each student interacts with each lesson, modern LMS are capable of generating insightful reports that help you understand how to help your learners/students better.
However, not all LMS are made alike and similar, not all of them are equally capable at offering in-depth reports. For this reason, understanding the tracking and reporting capabilities of a prospective LMS becomes one of the most pressing considerations while making a purchase.
ConclusionHow To Use Twitter Homepage For Your Business?
Introduction to Twitter Homepage
Digital marketing, conversion rate optimization, customer relationship management & others
Organizations nowadays especially hire employees to manage their social network accounts and keep the business digitally savvy. There are options for the audience/customers to contact the business directly, with their issues, expectations as well as feedback. The employees in this department make sure that they respond to customers queries within a specific period of time so that it makes the customer feel important and connected to the organization they have been loyal with for the associated time.
The best social network so far analyzed, based on its tools and options offered for business and its promotion and marketing is the Twitter homepage.
Twitter was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Billions of users send over 500 million Tweets each day, giving businesses a great opportunity to reach the audience of new and existing customers globally. No matter what type of business, what scale and area of business you are, from a wholesaler to a freelancer, from a service provider to a software production company, Twitter homepage can be used to build and retain meaningful long-term connection with the targeted audience, further leading to implementation of plans and actions through the network of customers who are loyal to your business.
How to Use Twitter Homepage for your Business?The use of the Twitter homepage for your business is as follows:
1. Marketingii. Monitor your brand on the twitter homepage: Using the aforementioned Twitter Search tool, you can search and track what people are saying about your company, products, competitors or any other hot words in your industry. Set up an RSS feed to receive all search results in Google Reader. If you find someone tweeting about your products or a person who is looking for a solution that your product provides, let them know!
During the event, people use the HashTag, denoted by ‘#’, while live-tweeting, or tweeting what they see/hear in real-time. The HashTag will collect the event tweets and build an online chat about that particular event.
People who are not at the event will see your HashTag and may even use it. A popular HashTag often creates excitement, and people can go to Twitter Search to follow the conversation around the event.
v. Use the Twitter homepage to promote new tools. Twitter users love new toys, especially if they create some sort of outcome, grade or analysis of the person using the tool. Make the results of your tool/grader as easy to Tweet as possible. Perhaps you could add a “Tweet this grade” function. Make sure your tool is the easiest to share!
2. Public relationsi. Develop relationships with reporters, bloggers, and other media people through twitter homepage. Reporters and social bloggers are very active in social networks, especially when gathering cues for stories.
ii. Watch for tweets about editorial opportunities. Because the nature of Twitter is very quick-response, it’s a great place for media people to look for last-minute, additional resources for their stories. Track the tweets by reporters or bloggers very closely, and scan for any possible opportunities. It’s a great idea to send reporters’ tips to other resources, showing help and improving relationships with media personnel, regardless of the company. The media person will be thankful for your help and more likely use you as a reference when the subject is applicable to you!
iii. Send direct messages (DMs) rather than an email. To send a direct message, you will be forced to frame a crisp and concise pitch that a reporter is more likely to read. Direct messages are less formal, and some media people prefer DMs over emails. It also saves you time.
Remember, you can only DM the ones who follow you back. However, don’t pitch too much; they could easily un-follow which makes it much more difficult for you to connect.
iv. Use Twitter to check in on your media person before PR pitching. Check to see what the person you’re about to pitch is up to before contacting them. In the event that the person is sick, having a bad day or away on travel—it may be best to contact him or her at another time.
3. Customer serviceiii. Make sure that you follow back everyone who follows your Business Account. Although it’s acceptable to pick and choose whom you want to follow back in your personal account, there’s no reason to limit who your company follows. If you want, set up an auto-follow account with a third-party tool like TweetLater.
Also, the added benefit of following back everyone who follows your company account is the ability to DM you.
iv. Do not send an auto direct message whenever someone new follows you or your company. It’s easy to get into the trap of automating your Twitter homepage activity. Many people will set up an auto direct message (or auto DM) to be sent to every new follower. This looks artificial and could make you appear apathetic about building true relationships with your customers.
4. Record and scrutinize your campaignsNow that you’ve integrated twitter homepage into different elements of your campaign, it’s important to find components that you can track to judge its effectiveness.
Track the following aspects in your campaign:
Reach: Constitutes the total number of followers. This number is your raw distribution power.
Rate of Response: Is the average number of replies per tweet. When you sent out a link or a question, how many people respond?
Branding and Exposure: How often are your company’s products or services referred. Use Twitter Search to track.
Influence: Is the overall effectiveness of your Twitter handle. Assess your followers and their influence.
Every tweet appears in your follower’s feeds.
You can tweet images and build a conversation around them and also old posts from your WordPress site.
You can follow potential clients and customers.
You can organize people into lists and conversations as well.
You can schedule your tweets (using the Buffer app) to go out at important times.
Recommended ArticlesThis is a guide to Twitter Homepage. Here we discuss the introduction and how to use twitter homepage for your business? You can also look at the following articles to learn more –
How To Fix Windows Update Kb5000842 Killing Game Performance.
If your computer recently installed the Windows 10 April 2023 update (Windows 10 update KB5000842). There’s a good chance you’ll be having major game performance issues moving forward. Something in the April 2023 Windows update is destroying gaming performance so follow along as we show you how to revert back to a previous version of Windows 10 to fix the issue.
Related: How to enable Twitch Radio to stream Twitch in audio-only mode.
Twice a year Microsoft releases a major update for Windows 10, one in April and one in October. So far every single one of these updates over the years has seen major issues affect the operating system and the April 2023 update is exactly the same. If you haven’t already updated to the latest version of Windows 10, April 2023, I suggest waiting a while.
Windows 10 update KB5000842, the April 2023 major update is causing a lot of problems for gamers on just about every hardware configuration, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia-based systems are suffering from random stuttering in games, instability with V-sync enabled, reduced FPS, and random lag spikes across the entire Windows OS. The issue is so bad Nvidia is suggesting users roll back to the previous version of Windows 10 and wait for Microsoft to address the problem. If you haven’t rolled back a Windows 10 update before, you’ll find everything you need to know below.
Fix major game performance issues after installing the Windows 10 April 2023 update.
Note: As I had already removed KB5000842 I had to use an older update as a reference for this guide. Make sure you remove KB5000842, not the update shown in the image.
Even if you have already removed the update using the steps shown above, you’ll probably want to pause updates as Windows will just download the same update in a few days time so make sure you follow the steps shown below as well.
How do you stop Windows 10 downloading and installing the April 2023 game performance killing update?
If you haven’t yet got the April 2023 update that kills game performance, you can ask Windows not to download it for a while by doing the following. Sadly there is no longer a way to stop all updates for a longer period of time. Windows is strict on updating its OS.
Annoyingly, you will have to remember to do this for the next few weeks as Microsoft will probably take a little while to fix this issue.
Even if you have already removed the update using the steps shown above, you’ll probably want to pause updates as Windows will just download the same update in a few days time.
Wrapping things up.
Now that you have removed the April update from your computer, you will have fixed the major fps drops in games like Forza, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, and just about every other game on your system. If you notice the issue has returned and you are getting game performance issues again, check to see if Windows has sneakily installed KB5000842 again. Don’t forget to share this guide with all your friends!
How To Incorporate Apple Pay Into Your Business Plan
With the recent release and popularity of Apple Pay, it’s important to consider how it works and whether or not it offers an opportunity for your business. Apple Pay is a system developed by Apple that allows iPhone, iPad, and Apple iWatch users to store all of their credit cards and payment information on their mobile device. Apple claims his is actually a more secure way of paying than your traditional methods and that all of the user’s cards can be accessed in one convenient location.
Sounds pretty good, right?
With more and more people signing on to using Apple Pay for their one-stop shopping liaison, it is important to consider some of the ways that this system may impact your business plan directly. Start with a breakdown of what Apple Pay is more specifically and what it can be used for, and then you can start getting into ways this impacts businesses, as well as e-commerce sites specifically.
What is Apple Pay?As mentioned above the Apple Pay system is a digital wallet that allows users to keep track of all of their payment cards (credit or debit cards) in one place. The caveat is it is only available to users of the: iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, Apple Watch-compatible devices (iPhone 5 and later models), iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, and iPad Mini 3 and 4.
Apple does not specifically require people work only with their terminal system, but will also work with Visa’s PayWave, MasterCard’s PayPass, and American Express’s ExpressPay terminals, so there is a lot of flexibility even though it is an Apple-specific system.
For now, I will address Apple Pay as a business tactic for in-person purchases or through an app available through the App Store, while making some suggestions on how you can incorporate or promote this service in your online environment.
What Apple Pay Offers Your ClientsAt this point, Apple Pay is really all about offering a service to your clients. It is convenient for them to operate and use, and knowing that your store has Apple Pay is bound to get them excited.
However, excitement aside—the Apple Pay readers are generally around $300-500, which can be a hefty cost for small businesses. Right now the system is being used by a great deal of corporate merchants including grocery stores, boutiques, restaurants, and hotels.
The entire list of Apple Pay retailers can be accessed here on Apple’s site. Some e-commerce businesses (again, mostly larger corporations at this point) are also able to use Apple Pay when users make a purchase using their site’s application.
On American Express’ Open Forum discussed whether or not Apple Pay was going to be worthwhile for small business. They mentioned 20% of Americans would likely have access to Apple Pay by the end of the year, that shoppers like the idea because it boosts their data security—but that ultimately the spread of Apple Pay is pretty uncertain, and it may not be worth the investment just yet.
On that note, I want to make some recommendations in the next section for small businesses and e-commerce sites who are thinking about incorporating Apple Pay into their business plan.
Apple Pay Advice Small Businesses, Franchises, and E-Commerce Sites
Promote Apple Pay on your Website: Make sure you post that you have Apple Pay at your store locations on your website, that way site visitors know that they can use their contactless payment at your location. (This may sway them to shop with you over a competitor).
Develop a Mobile App: If developing an app is within reason, now is really the time to consider it. There are several developers and companies that can help you develop an application that would work well with your small business or e-commerce store, and relevant to this article, would also allow you to use Apple Pay.
Take it to Social Media: If you are going to make an investment in the Apple Pay system for the convenience of your customers, make sure you let them know about it! Take some time to launch social media announcements.
Newsletters and Other Email Marketing: It is a good idea to indicate the Apple Pay logo at the end of newsletter and email marketing. Again, you are paying to have this system, so you want to let as many customers know as possible so that people can truly benefit from the service. I recommend placing the “We Offer Apple Pay” logo somewhere around your social media links.
The TakeawayIf you are going to take the time and effort (and funds) to incorporate Apple Pay into your business plan, I highly recommend you do so strategically. At the end of the day, this is something you are doing to benefit your customers, and thereby increase your business, so there is absolutely no reason not to make it clear that you offer the service, particularly if you are a small business owner.
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