Posted by: Owner/President
on Aug 22, 2011
Tagged in:
videos ,
tagging ,
tagged ,
stop tagging ,
settings ,
privacy ,
prevent tagging ,
pictures ,
picture ,
photos ,
facebook virus ,
facebook
If you are on Facebook, you have seen your friends get tagged in inappropriate material. Often times for me, it's the people that would be the most harmed from being tagged in this illicit material. Some of my friends are pastors and of course, their job is to reach out to people. As a result, they friend people they may not even know personally that well and often they are subject to these terrible Facebook viruses. There was one case, where a pastor friend of mine that I grew up with, was tagged in a pornographic picture while he was on a date with his wife. So, he couldn't remove it until he came home and was aware of the issue. All that time, the pornographic picture sat on his facebook wall for all to see. So, obviously this is a problem and obviously we need to share how to fix it.
The first step is to prevent Facebook friends from being able to tag you in photos and videos.
To do this, go to your Account at the top far right of your profile page and click on Privacy Settings from the drop down menu.
Posted by: Owner/President
on Aug 10, 2011
Tagged in:
web ,
vendor ,
site ,
processing ,
PayPal ,
payment ,
merchant ,
greensboro ,
e-commerce ,
design ,
design ,
bank ,
accounts ,
accept credit cards
As e-commerce designer/developers, we are often asked which merchant account is best to use with your e-commerce store. Often times, a bank sales representative has approached our clients and convinced them that the bank merchant account solution is best for them. It is our feeling that bank merchant accounts are not appropriate for at least 80% or more of the e-commerce stores our there, especially the e-commerce start up! When I investigated the overall cost of using a merchant account versus PayPal, the numbers were staggering. See the chart below:
| Fee Type |
Merchant Account |
PayPal |
| BB&T Set Up Fee |
$200.00 |
$0.00 |
| Authorize.net Set Up Fee |
$99.00 |
$0.00 |
| Monthly Fee |
$9.95 |
$0.00 |
| Second Monthly Fee |
$5.95 |
$0.00 |
| Transactional Fee |
2.10% with a $0.06 |
**2.9% + $0.30 USD (if sales volume |
| |
|
is higher fee goes down to less than
|
| |
|
the set fee with BB&T |
As far as ABD is concerned, PayPal is the clear winner in terms of affordability for e-commerce start ups. But let's discuss the pros and cons of both. Bank merchant accounts are great in that they put the money you earn with your e-commerce business directly into your bank account. With PayPal that is an additional step and there are limits on how much you can transfer to your business account per day. The limit is $500 a day and this limit is in place to prevent fraud, which is a good thing, right? PayPal requires no up front investment to get started whereas a bank merchant account costs anywhere from $300-500 or more. There are no monthly charges for a PayPal account where the bank merchant account featured here charges $15.90 a month to use their payment gateway. The only disadvantage we can see for using PayPal is the higher transactional fee but if you have a higher total number of sales, the transactional percentage is lowered for PayPal. Click the *read more* link below to see how much lower it goes based on total sales.
Our biggest advantage we can see with using PayPal versus a bank merchant account is simply this: you are only charged a fee when you are actually making money, ie. on a transactional basis. You might get a merchant account and be out all the investment costs without making one red penny. The biggest advantage we can see with using a bank merchant account is that it is tied directly to your bank account not making you take the additional step to transfer money. If it were me and my e-commerce business, I would not want to take the risk in investing heavily in a bank merchant account before knowing whether or not I would make one sale or not. The additional one minute step of logging into PayPal and transferring money to my bank account would not be worth taking the investment risk.
Bottomline, whatever your choice when choosing who to be your payment processing vendor, ABD's employees have the skill set to tie into whatever system you choose. We have worked with various banks and used their merchant services. We have also used PayPal not only for our clients but for our personal e-commerce sites. PayPal is preferred for e-commerce as far as we are concerned!
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jul 24, 2011
I will have more images coming soon but I couldn't resist teasing you with one photo of Baby Addy. Addy was a little older than what is typical for newborn shoots. It made posing her a little difficult, but she proved to be a wonderful subject. What a precious little one for the Townsend family!
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jul 15, 2011
Tagged in:
urban ,
portrait ,
photography ,
photographers ,
photo shoot ,
natural light ,
locations ,
grungy ,
greensboro ,
graffiti ,
flowery
Recently, I have been getting lots of portrait inquiries. But they are all different in terms of what they want in terms of setting and background. So I have been on the hunt for urban, pin up, natural light, flowery, grungy, and graffiti backgrounds here in Greensboro and preferably close to my office...gas ain't cheap these days! I have been able to find several places that are ideal for all my upcoming photo shoots.
For an urban, grungy, and graffiti backgrounds, I have been mainly staying around the High Point Road/Spring Garden Street areas. I have been able to find solid graffiti walls, 18-wheeler trailer backgrounds, train trestles, and much more. I have also been able to find flowers...in July! I didn't think it was possible when a client emailed me and said, "We would like something very flowery and beautiful for our portraits!" I was thinking to myself..."It was 103 yesterday! How in the world am I going to find flowers?!" But I surely did and I think their portraits are going to be gorgeous as a result!
I am in the process of scheduling the urban shoot and the flower location shoot will be in the coming weeks. So I will be able to post photos soon.
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jul 11, 2011
I have been using twitter for my company and for personal use for some time now I love it! I have been on Facebook even longer and love it even more, despite reading how it was created. There are so many possibilities with social media but the most important thing, in my opinion is that you are able to connect with people, brands, and companies and follow their updates and news. I feel more connected to the brands/companies that I follow and I appreciate them giving me information about their products or services on the social media platforms that I participate in.
As a business owner, there are so many ways to use social media to promote your business. I like to look into these new marketing outlets as much as I can. I recently found something that proved to be VERY interesting. Have you tweeted or posted information on Facebook/Twitter that you would really like to have had more exposure? Do you have an ebook, free *.pdf or a downloadable product that you are selling that needs more attention? Why not make people pay for it with a tweet? It doesn't involve any complex coding either! All you do is go to: this link (http://www.paywithatweet.com/sell.php) and enter in your information. On this page, the pay with a tweet creators suggest using a URL shortener such as bit.ly to shorten your URL. Bit.ly also allows you to track how many clicks you get on that URL, which is very handy information when trying to track your marketing campaign's effectiveness.
This really is a very good service that I highly recommend to small companies just trying to get more exposure for their products! If you have any experience using this Pay With A Tweet service and have any feedback, we would love to hear it! Use our comment form below!
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jul 10, 2011
Tagged in:
yellow pages ,
winston-salem ,
web design ,
offers ,
news & record ,
marketing ,
living social ,
groupon ,
greensboro ,
google ,
daily deal
After Groupon turned down Google's 6 Billion dollar bid to purchase their company, Google decided to build their own Groupon-ish product/service. I recently read an article about Google Offers and their recent success in the Portland, OR area. They are soon to be expanding to five new cities in the US. Looking at the new "daily deal" startup made me ponder the general market these types of companies cater to.
There is a lot of competition in the daily deal market both with businesses offering the daily deal and with those local businesses offering deals. Right now, there are several daily deal offerings in Greensboro, the city our offices are in. Below are the most popular locally in Greensboro, NC.
Yellow Pages is offering some kind of daily deal according to their advertising, although I am struggling to find it on their website. It seems as though it is another ploy to trick you into using their website for search. *read that I do not like the Yellow Pages.
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jun 10, 2011
These are just a few of the storyboards we can create from photos taken during our photoshoot with you and your newborn.
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jun 08, 2011
Posted by: Owner/President
on Jun 08, 2011
This is just a preview of more images to come. Baby Gabriel is just so precious and so easy to work with.
Posted by: Owner/President
on Dec 28, 2010
I use Facebook for social professional networking and for connecting with old and new friends so I keep one tab open on Facebook no matter what I am doing on the computer. If I am working, part of it is networking on Facebook & Twitter. Because I am often found updating my status, sharing information and photos on Facebook, I often get asked questions about the new features. One of the most popular I have been asked is, "I don't like the new changes, can I switch back to the old profile?" The bad news is you can't. The second popular question I have gotten is, "how do I edit the new profile?" Mashable, one of my favorite sites to read, posted a blog about how to edit the new Facebook profile.
Once you get the hang of that, I would love to hear your feedback on the new profile. Do you like it, hate it, and what is it that you like or don't like? I have mixed feelings. I like that things/information about a person is at the top of their profile so I can easily see what I may or may not have in common with them or I can easily see how I might know them. I love the fact that my husband's picture is now shown on my profile and my friends profiles are the same way, obviously.
My least favorite feature of the new Facebook profile is that my business/employer is now linked to my business Facebook page rather than my actual business website. I understand why Facebook made this change because it helps them retain users on their website. But for businesses who are using Facebook as a networking tool, this requires them to incorporate their business website onto Facebook in some sort of dynamic way.
