Entrepreneur Geek

Putler: Paypal Reporting, Monitoring and Planning tool for Windows, Linux and Mac

If your business accepts payments via Paypal, chances are you login to the Paypal website a few times in the day to check your balance. You would even keep an eye on email alerts of new sales and feel happy when you close the day with good sales.

The Entrepreneur’s Urge

I can tell you from my own experience that I am on the edge of my seat when we launch a new product. I am biting my nails when we push “Send” on a newsletter with a special offer. I am curious to find out how much money I made while I was sleeping, and check my Paypal balance the moment I start my computer.

You may be a web entrepreneur, a microISV, a startup or an expert offering online courses. The urge to see how well you are selling is common to all. You may be looking forward to the first sale of your newly launched product or want to track your monthly performance against your targets.

The Problem

Logging in Paypal takes time. And if you keep it idle the session also times out quickly. Now this is good for Paypal, but bad for us. All we want to do is check the Paypal balance and find out what products are selling. We want some quick bits of information and get back to our work. The process of logging in and viewing details eats up time. And biggest, it distracts you!

The Solution: Putler

Now sure, you can write-up a small program that will check your Paypal balance. You could host it on your internal server and keep hitting it when you feel like satisfying your natural urge to check your Paypal balance! But why to make things complicated (and spend time understanding and building those scripts) when you can have someone give it to you on a platter?

Welcome Putler!
Putler shows your Paypal balance on your desktop, notifies you of balance changes, lets you set a target, shows today’s transactions and tells you how well are you doing against the target. It’s a simple and effective tool to watch your Paypal account right from your computer.

Just give your Paypal API information to Putler and he will start monitoring your Paypal balance. He will gently notify you when the balance changes. He even draws a nice chart of your daily balances along with a target you may have set.

This gives you a never before visibility on targets vs performance for your Paypal business account.

Apps Magnet Launches Putler Alpha. Get it now for free!

We are releasing a public Alpha of Putler today. Get it free, monitor your Paypal account, achieve business goals, and give us feedback!

Download Putler for free now!

We are starting with only the basic features, but will make Putler smarter and stronger as he grows! Do send in your ideas and suggestions on how we can make him better!

Thank you!

Ravi Malagi sent this to me and I found it worth sharing.

Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements – code for life and personal development

Agreement 1: Be impeccable with your word

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Agreement 2: Don’t take anything personally

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering

Agreement 3: Don’t make assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life

Agreement 4: Always do your best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Frugal To the Max

When you are starting your own venture, be frugal. Whether you are putting in your hard-earned savings or have investor backing, take care of every penny you spend.

Cut down on:

• Fancy office setups & employee facilities
• Expensive hardware, software, equipment and gadgets – you don’t need to flaunt
• Number of employees – work with small number of talented, all rounders
• Traveling and related expenses – use VoIP / Video conferencing
• All expenses!

Staying cashflow positive should be the number one priority for a startup. Bootstrapping is the best entrepreneurial model. Do whatever it takes to generate your monthly cashflow from the business. Set a limit for yourself – you will never go cashflow negative for more than 2 months.

And once you get the cash, be even more watchful. It’s easy to waste money on promising opportunities / people / technologies.

Avoid temptation.

(Image courtesy Buster Benson)

Are you feeling the heat of times? There aren’t sufficient interesting & rewarding web projects out there. Everyone either wants to copy some social network / iPhone app or just wants to get it done at weekly grocery cost.

It’s not easy to find projects, so you may tend to pick up anything that comes your way. But beware!

Greg Hoy (on A List Apart) talks about five warning signs you should watch for. He recommends avoiding such customers. They will create problems later. And with my 11 years in web design / development business, I couldn’t agree more. I’ll even share couple of my own warning signs! Plus I have a list of positive signs from customers at the end.

Let’s start with Greg’s list of 5 red flags to Getting To No:

1. The never-ending contract revisionist: clients who can’t settle on the terms, keep asking for material / mocks upfront before taking decision
2. The giant project team: more than 3 people on client’s team is harmful. My experience says more than 2 is deadly as well.
3. Mr. or Mrs. Vague: All of us have them. Ask them plenty of questions.
4. The prospect with ants in their pants: clients who want it done yesterday. Sure shot problem creator. Charge rush rates.
5. The vanishing boss: Now he’s here, now he’s not. He’ll be present in the first “vision” meeting, and vanish until you deliver on the second milestone. And then claim “you’ve got it all wrong”. Solution: keep him in loop – email, phone, text – whatever works.

And here are my additions to the list:

1. Wannabe web millionaire with no commitment: someone who wants to make tons of money with this project, but has no time, money and background. He probably got an idea and his friends told him it’ll tick. But a good idea doesn’t make a business success. A project needs higher commitment from the client to succeed – higher than your own commitment.
2. Mountain of molehill’er: They give you one line requirement, like, “I want a Facebook clone”. Another version is “I want Facebook + Google Analytics + the next big Web 4.0 startup”. All your alarms should ring when you hear something like that. The spec will grow faster than mushrooms.
3. The Window Shopper: They ask for price / time estimates first. Have a long list of suppliers they are evaluating, but don’t have clear parameters for evaluation. May not have the time to answer your questions or may answer generically. Such guys will either go with the vendor who bid at 60% of the highest bidder or scrap the project.

Here are 3 signs of good prospects – do whatever it takes to win them

1. The Lake Water Guy: Such prospects give you clear specifications, are calm and understanding. You can sense their calmness even when you speak to them. They have clear vision of what they want – may not know the technical details – and passionate about it.
2. Suggestions Welcomed type: a prospect who’s willing to listen to your ideas is grounded and open. They will respect your skills and the discussions will make the project better.
3. Been There, Done That, But Not Boasting It: These are people who’ve seen the ups and downs, have failed a few times and have seen successes too. They understand there will be challenges and are ready to give you the time and space to handle them.

What kind of customers have you seen? What’s your list of positive / warning signs?

(Image courtesy dev null)

I’ve been using Paypal for AppsMagnet sales for a few months now. Paypal is easy to setup and competitive. And the biggest plus is that almost every e-commerce tool has support for Paypal.

Paypal gives you comprehensive business reports – weekly sales, monthly sales, transaction history, downloadable logs etc. But I did not see any sales graph! I searched a lot, but couldn’t even find anything that gives you charts and graphs from your Paypal sales data.

On a side note, I tried Mint / Quicken / Other online finance tools. None made much sense to me as a web entrepreneur trying to track product sales and sales trends.

Google Trends matches search volume with news reports

What I really want is to find out the impact of a new product launch / new tutorial video / ad / promotion on my sales. Surely, there are many tools that track this for affiliates. But what if I don’t have affiliates? What if I want to see sales number side by side my marketing activities?

May be something like Google Trends?

Have you seen something like this? How do you track your sales vs marketing activity?

If I don’t find something like this, I will have to build one!