Launched in November 2010, LinkedIn’s Company Pages are a tool for businesses to “drive growth….and leverage word-of-mouth to attract new customers.”

Suitable for all types of business, Company Pages consist of three new features.

* Analytics, visible only to members with administrator access to your Company,  allow you to see see how many LinkedIn members are visiting your Company Page and how many LinkedIn members are following your company. You can also compare yourself against the competition to benchmark your performance.

* You can now mnage the editing and privacy settings to give all your employeea rights to your Company Page.

* A new Recommend buttom has been added to allow your customers to recommend your products or services by adding the snippet of code below to your website:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js“></script><script type=”in/recommendproduct” data-company=”CompanyID” data-product=”ProductID? data-counter=”right”></script>

To get your Company ID, go to linkedin.com and click on “Companies” and search for your company by name. While on your company profile, your Company ID is the number in the URL [e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/mycompanyname/CompanyID. Replace “CompanyID” in the above code your Company Id.

To get your Product ID, replace the Product ID # (data-product=) for any of your products from the URL of your product pages – the number that follows “prdid=” in the URL.

Supreme Center Hosting has teamed up with Doba to offer FREE DobaLimited accounts valued at $100.

Doba is the leading wholesale drop shipper in the industry. Doba gives you access to multiple band name product categories including electronics, home and garden, apparel, sporting goods and more. Doba has more than 1.5 million products to choose from – and with access to 30,000 FREE – you’re sure to find some products to sell for a profit!

Choose the products to sell from Doba’s product catalog. List the products for sale on any auction site or your own online store. Doba’s suppliers take care of warehousing, packaging, and shipping – the product sells, the customer pays you the sale price, you pay Doba the wholesale price  – you keep the profit!

Order any affordably priced Linux VPS [with prices atarting at $14.99], Premium Linux VPS or Windows VPS, and we will include a FREE DobaLimited account – valued at $100 – that includes Doba’s best suppliers with the best selection, the best pricing, and the best fulfillment rates with over 30,000 products – FREE.

That little image to the left says it all about the new Google Checkout transaction processing fees going into effect May 5, 2009:

When we launched Google Checkout in 2006, we set out to create a fast, secure online shopping experience for our users. Now in our third year of helping merchants increase sales and attract user interest, we’re announcing the decision to move from our previous standard fee schedule to a new tiered pricing model where rates decrease as merchants process more transactions through Checkout.

On May 5, we will be implementing a few changes to Google Checkout:

* Google Checkout’s transaction processing fees will transition to a new tiered fee structure, where the rates will vary depending on a merchant’s monthly sales processed through Checkout. For more details about the pricing changes, please visit our U.S. fees page and our U.K. fees page.

* With the new tiered fee structure, merchants can qualify for rates as low as 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction in the U.S., and 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction in the U.K.

* We will also be discontinuing the AdWords free transaction processing promotion at this time. As previously announced, Google Grants recipients will still be eligible for free donation processing until 2010.

We’re committed to the continued growth and development of Checkout and to helping merchants increase sales by driving more leads and higher conversions.

Google Checkouts new transaction processing fees are now very similar to the PayPal processing fees:

Monthly Sales Through Google Checkout/Fees Per Transaction

Less than $3,000 –> 2.9% + $0.30
$3,000 – $9,999.99 –> 2.5% + $0.30
$10,000 – $99,999.99 –> 2.2% + $0.30
$100,000 or more –> 1.9% + $0.30

It appears that these new rates are aimed at forcing smaller online business to pack up their Google Checkout buttons and head on over [or back] to PayPal and there are plently of people ranting about it. One user stated:

Wow. It seems to me that you at least wait until you have the best service possible before you hike the prices – especially given the current economic crisis. While I understand the need to raise prices, as one of the many small businesses who chose Google Checkout over PayPal despite the lack of comparable services/options (phone assistance, multiple order checkout for customers, gift card options etc.) I can no longer afford to pay for GCO. We are a small company and we just launched our online ordering system a few months ago. We are still building our sales and online presence and we simply can’t afford this level of price increase especially with the many options that GCO lacks. It is really unfortunate, as many of our customers truly hate using PayPal and were excited that we were going with GCO. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to leave Google at this time. If the prices are the same and I get more for my money with PayPal, I will simply explain to my customers that Google went back on its “DO NO EVIL” philosophy. I guess the saying is true “If it seems too good to be true – it must be” Sorry to go Google, but what did you really think the response would be from us little guys?

The lack of comparable or competitive services was the number one reason we never implemented Google Checkout on our hosting site, not to mention that Google Checkout was merely a lesser version of 2Checkout, which is another service I would not recommend.

American Greed is rampant and a shitty economy does not seem to matter when the all mighty dollar is in control. Its all business, right Google?