Google is Great

One of the things that you'll notice quickly with SightPage is how much we use Google tools. Google has done a fantastic job of making integration with web sites very easy. Once you have a Google account, your SightPage is open to lots of useful tools.

You likely created a Google account (if you didn't already have one) when you first paid for your SightPage. That's because we use (and recommend) Google Checkout to easily and securely take payments. They are running a promotion right now where Google Checkout is free until 2008. Completely free. And signing up is easy - there's not a lot of forms to fill out and you just need a Company Tax ID and a bank account. They take your payments and then drop them in your bank account. If you want to be able to take Credit Cards, this is a great option. And if you want to sell individual items on your SightPage, we can create little buttons for you that take your customers right into Google Checkout.

You'll also notice more Google features on our SightPages. Our blog is on Blogger.com, a Google company, and you can sign in and set up a blog with your Google account.

If you would like to display a video on your SightPage, your video will actually be hosted by Google Video and we simply embed it into your site.

And Google AdSense is another easy feature to take advantage of as well. By default, we don't put Google ads on your SightPage. But if you are looking to earn a little extra revenue, we certainly can add it to your SightPage for you. We are using Google AdSense - right here on this blog. Your blog is a great place to use AdSense, and Blogger.com will even pass your information to Google for even more easy setup.

Behind the scenes, we rely on Google to help promote your SightPage as well. They have a great webmaster tool that allows us to submit information about all our SightPages, so that Google searchers can find your SightPage more easily. And we just added a SightPage Directory Search on our home page that uses another handy tool from - you guessed it - Google.

Here at SightPage.net, one of our goals is to keep things very easy for you, but we also want to provide useful tools from other companies that can make your SightPage interactive and robust. We don't have to create everything - we just have to make sure you can USE the good stuff that's already out there. And Google has lots of that good stuff to use.

- Tom