PayPal is expanding its in-store payments technology to 15 new national retailers, following its initial brick-and-mortar rollout with Home Depot earlier this year.  At a press conference held yesterday at PayPals’s San Jose HQ, the company confirmed it is now adding new merchants including Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Guitar Center, Jamba Juice, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Nine West, Office Depot, Rooms To Go, Tiger Direct and Toys “R” Us.

The merchants will soon be integrating PayPal technology at their point-of-sale, allowing customers to choose it as an alternative payment option to cash, check or charge.

As with the Home Depot integration, customers can either use a PIN code or a special PayPal credit card that can be swiped, in order to deduct the payment from their PayPal accounts. The solution is appealing to retailers, because it doesn’t require a significant investment in new technology, like replacing POS systems or installing some sort of NFC-based solution, for example. In the future, the vision is to scale the PayPal integration to support more merchant-friendly services, like real-time location-based ads and in-store offers.

PayPal is attempting a massive land grab in the race against buzzy new startups like Square, as well as alternative mobile payments and wallet solutions from startups and established players alike. And time appears to be of essence for PayPal. The company says that it went from a 5-store pilot test with Home Depot to a full rollout to the chain’s nearly 2,000 locations in just two months.

In addition to the new retailers, PayPal also announced deals that will allow it to reach mid-market businesses, which have multiple locations and some sort of point-of-sale solution already in place. PayPal is now making it possible for merchants using POS software providers Leapset, ShopKeep, Vend, and Erply to very quickly enable PayPal within their stores – again, without replacing their current POS infrastructure. PayPal notes that through these customers combined, they reach some 50,000 offline businesses. Some of the POS software vendors’ customers have already switched their PayPal integrations on, though the company did not detail how many or who.

Finally, PayPal also announced deals with VeriFone and Equinox, the #1 and #3 POS terminal manufacturers, respectively. These companies will now integrate PayPal into their payment terminals. PayPal is already working with Ingenico, which means it will now reach nearly 40 million POS terminals worldwide.

PayPal hasn’t always been the most beloved brand in the payments space, but its a well-established player with a significant user base, traction, brand recognition and, as demonstrated, the ability to scale quickly. Last year, the company saw over $118 billion in total payment volume, and expects to top $7 billion in mobile payment volume this year. 2012, says President David Marcus in the official announcement, is about testing and learning what works in the offline retail market.

Despite the competition it faces, it’s impossible to count out PayPal’s potential for success in this arena just yet.

By Sarah Perez

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."
Futurist, Alvin Toffler

Your action for today is to learn something new -- a new word, a new system or a new tool in your computer program.

Have an extraordinary day!

Great computer support from Business Remedy -http://BusinessRemedy.net

"Reality is above all else a variable and nobody is qualified to say that he or she knows exactly what it is. As a matter of fact, with a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before."
Novelist, Margaret Halsey

Your action for today is to stop for five minutes, close your eyes and visualize in detail where you’d like to see yourself in two years -- make a commitment to take this time at least two times a week.

A few weeks back I wrote about the powerful new metrics that small business owners can glean from the new Social reports within Google Analytics. And since that post, even more neat features have been released to help business owners learn more about not only what’s happening on their site, but what’s happening off of it, as well.

It’s no secret that I’ve long been a fan of Google Analytics. For a consultant or small shop looking to monitor keywords or keep their ear open to conversations, Google Analytics provides a simple, yet powerful, way to do that. However, with the new data tucked inside the new Social reports, you can now get your Google Alerts data directly in your analytics. It’s a one stop shop!

Over on the Google Analtyics blog, we hear about new ways to expand Google Analytics Social Reports and track links (aka trackbacks) to your site content directly from your Analytics console.  By monitoring trackbacks, webmasters learn who is linking to their sites and which content generates the most links. This is invaluable insight for any content marketing strategy.

To access the reports go to Traffic Sources -> Social -> Source and click on any data hub partner (Google+, Blogger etc.) Above the graph a tab named “Social Referral” will be selected, click the next one “Activity Stream” and in the top selector hit trackbacks.

From there, you’ll get an automated list of all the sites that are linking to your content. Use the data to thank the author for mentioning your content, keep track of what content is being most passed around, or to use it to build a larger influencer list.

According to Google:

These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.

I couldn’t agree more. While setting up Google Alerts was already an easy way to help site owners keep track of links and mentions, putting this information directly into their analytics data makes the process even easier. It’s also a great incentive for sites who haven’t set up analytics on their Web sites to do so.

But it’s not just links you can track via your analytics, you can now spot the actual conversations happening, in near real-time.

To use Google Analytics as a conversation tracker, go back to the Activities Tab screen and select Conversations. Once on this tab you’ll get an interactive look at how your content is being shared on Google’s social network, as well as the specific users who are doing the sharing.

Those are the people talking about your brand in the wild. In the drop down on the right, select the option to View Activity, Google will take you directly to the page where the comment happened. From there, you can interact, answer a question, thank a user for the mention, etc.

This is incredibly powerful information now sitting perfectly (though a little hidden) in your analytics. Currently, this information is only available for Data Hub providers, but with any luck Google will be able to expand it soon.

Alert Photo via Shutterstock

By Lisa Barone

"Every now and then go away--for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer."
Leonardo DaVinci

Your action for today is to schedule on your calendar a personal day or two just for yourself.

Have an extraordinary day!

Great computer support from Business Remedy -http://BusinessRemedy.net

"Take charge of your attitude. Don't let someone else choose it for you."
American Writer and Lecturer, Dale Carnegie

Your action for today is to see if you can choose to be happy regardless of what happens to you during the day.

"You must have long-term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures."
Major General, Charles C. Noble

Your action for today is to take a specific action that will move you towards one of your long-term goals.

Aaron Patzer launched Mint.com as a user-friendly alternative to Quicken and other personal-finance software out there. Little did he know that just two years later, Intuit, which makes Quicken, would fork over $170 million for his website. So how'd he do it?

Step 1: Create a product that makes a difficult, tedious task easy and fun

Aaron Patzer launched Mint.com as a user-friendly alternative to Quicken and other personal-finance software out there. Little did he know that just two years later, Intuit, which makes Quicken, would fork over $170 million for his website. So how'd he do it?

Step 1: Create a product that makes a difficult, tedious task easy and fun

Guest Blogging

I cannot stress enough how important it is to guest blog for links, especially if no one knows who you are. Get the right topic on the right blog, and the results can be pretty astronomical. You get the link juice, sure, but you also get traffic, brand awareness, and potentially even conversions.

One guest blog post brought us 72% more traffic.

As I mentioned last month, I swear by guest blogging communities like Blogger Link Up and My Blog Guest. Instead of you finding the opportunities, they come to you. Blog owners will send out a query on the type of post that they’re looking for, and you can respond if you’re a good fit.

Offline To Online Relationships

If you’re new to the online realm, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re new to the offline world.

The first place I go when building links for a new client is finding any partnerships, relationships, or even just friends they’ve worked with or built offline. Then, parlay that connection online. People are much more likely to link to you when they already know who you are and can vouch for the work you do.

Forums & Online Communities

Whoever your target audience is, they’re probably already hanging out somewhere online. You need to be there.

Find these online communities, forums or discussion groups and join them. You can use these search queries to find these forums or discussion groups:

• inurl: + keyword + forums, discussions or groups
• intitle: + keyword + forums, discussions or groups

Word of the wise: Establish your credibility first. If you go in there firing out links and praise, it’s like saying “I’m Erin. Marry me?” Take some time first to get to know people there: ask questions, answer questions, tell your story, whatever. Just build the relationship first. And when you do post a link, don’t let that be your last post.

Go Local

Every community has a local chamber of commerce. Join it. You get a great link and great exposure to other networking opportunities. If you live in a bigger city, there are also directories specifically to list local businesses in that area.

Also, target your local press. Local journalists are craving for content to write about, so if you’re doing something within the community, let the media know about it.

Whether it’s your staff doing a day of community outreach, helping a local charity or nonprofit organization, or just doing something really cool, people will write about it. We got press coverage and a link just because we hired 24 people over half a year. Whatever you’re doing, let people know.

Give Stuff Away

I don’t know where you stand on the link bait debate, but frankly: I dig it. The whole point of link building is to create things that people like and want to link to. (Of course, don’t do something for the sole reason of going viral.) And what people like is to get free stuff. Host a giveaway or contest that is related to your business (don’t just giveaway an iPad ) which will put you in touch with people in your target audience.

What are some other good links to get for new websites?

by Erin Everhart