350 words is an easy target. It’s a half page column in a magazine. (It’s my quota every month for the print magazine, Internet Telephony). Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void says that 300 words a day is easy. He’s right (and write). Read it here.

If you are blogging, you have to do it regularly. So set a schedule and hit that 300-350 word quota.

The buzz today was about Intuit’s Payment Network. It is fee simple at $0.50.

People are frustrated with PayPal. The fees. The hurdles to jump through. The ease of use that does not exist. And the 4 day delay to transfer money out of PayPal (eBay owns them) to your own bank account.

People forget that merchant services (credit card processing) costs money. Most brick-and-mortar retail stores have a card swipe machine that usually comes with a monthly fee (rental or lease payment) on top of the actually bank fees for credit card processing. VISA, Mastercard, AMEX and Discover want the money for the risk. More money for more risk for online cc processing. With PayPal I pay high fees but I don’t pay a monthly charge nor do I have any quotas or minimums.

I also do not have to worry about PCI Compliance, which is a big PITA.

One thing about the Intuit’s Payment Network: it doesn’t accept credit cards. It’s cheap because it’s mainly ACH transactions. I have a problem with that. I use bill pay discreetly – to insurance companies and credit card companies, who have to be security compliant.

I for one am scared of ACH, because if they can hack credit card info, they can certainly hack ACH info. It’s the same reason I do not use a debit card for anything but the ATM machine. There’s no protection if your bank account or debit card get whacked.  Who wants to fight with the bank after my account was wiped out? Have you ever fought with a bank about an ACH transaction that went the wrong way (they took the money out not in). It took weeks to get resolution – and not to my satisfaction.

Let’s face it we live in a credit card society. There are costs to that.  Even Authorize.net has monthly charges for cc processing. But the complainers are usually also the cheapskates.

Have you read the book? Linchpin by Seth Godin. Reviews are collected here at Squidoo.

Are you a Linchpin? Do you aspire for more? Do you want to lead or create or connect or give back?

Linchpins are meeting in 700 cities world-wide. More than 4000 people. On June 14th, 2010. Are you going to be there?

There are many places to connect with Linchpins online. There is the Tribe. (Now with a blog everyone can read). There is a Linchpin NING. There are a few LinkedIn groups. Now there are over 600 MeetUps. There are probably groups local to you similar to the Tampa Creative Network or Brand Tampa.

But this is In-Person! Connect with another local Linchpin live! Maybe you will connect through Art or Genius. Maybe you will Inspire each other to Ship!

(Did you know that there is a Linchpin Manifesto?)

You can meet Seth live on his book tour (dates here; Boston on June 17th)

Linchpin Meetup June 14th

PS: There is another way to meet Linchpins in-person: events like BarCamp.

There isn’t a single I in Team. But there are 4 I’s in this group: INITIATE, INVITE, INFORM, and INSPIRE. (Thanks to Ed Brenegar).

A few other posts about being a Linchpin:  Mind Map, Tampa Linchpin MeetUp, and Are you a Linchpin?.