I wanted to add our logo to a brochure so that visitors of our scales and balances shop would have a way of telling from where they had downloaded the brochure. This particular brochure had backgrounds in several colors, which is why the logo itself needed to have a transparent background.

Unfortunately, Nitro PDF Professional does not recognize the transparent background in image files (tested with version 5.5.1.3). The watermark has to be a PDF file to have a transparent background.To make matters worse, the simple graphics editor I had used years ago to create the logo had no PDF export option.

Here’s the workaround I used:

1. Export the logo in an image format that supports transparency (I used PNG):

2. Open the image with OpenOffice Draw (open source, free download here):

3. Export as PDF:

4. In Nitro PDF, choose Insert and Edit > Watermark > Manage Watermarks & Backgrounds:

5. Create a new profile and add a PDF watermark:

6. Choose the PDF file created in step 3 and adjust the settings to place the watermark where you want it. Don’t forget to choose Open a web link under Action if you want the watermark to be clickable:

7. Apply the watermark to the document:

As you can see, it looks pretty good on a blue background, too.

Note: You can move individual watermarks around using the Edit tool, but the clickable area does not seem to move with them.

External links:

• Nitro PDF Professional
• OpenOffice Draw
• balances.lu (in French)

Some checkboxes you might consider turning off in your campaign settings:

• Automatic matching (not available in all countries)
• iPhone ads
• Search Partners

Search Partners? Why wouldn’t I want Google to show my ads on sites like Google product search, ask.com and aol? Well, because they’re showing on ebay, too, even though Google doesn’t mention this in Adwords help.

I asked Google last year and got this reply:

“Our global search network includes Google Product Search, Google Groups, and search sites such as AOL, Ask.com, ebay.com/ebay.de and shopping.com.”

An no, you can’t chose certain sites, it’s all or nothing.

In our case, “nothing” was the right choice. Ebay customers are not our target market and we actually stopped selling on Ebay years ago. Why would we want to display ads there?

Instead of throwing tons of money at Google Adwords, we restricted spending to a sensible level, redesigned our main online shop and invested some time into SEO. The result? December turnover increased by 50% in comparison to last year while costs for Adwords decreased by 57%.

No, Google did not steal our Christmas.

At least, that used to be the situation until…  well, I have no idea when they actually changed this, but anyhow: It’s finally possible to withdraw money to a bank account in Luxembourg!

As you can see, you can alternatively withdraw funds to a credit/debit card (this feature had been announced on the Paypal Blog in September).

I’m just glad I didn’t go through the trouble of establishing a bank account in the U.S. just to be able to withdraw funds.

***

In other “news that I apparently missed”, Paypal competitor Moneybookers [affiliate link] is allowing merchants to accept payments with the French Carte Bleue. As far as I know, this is the first and only option to accept the Carte Bleue without the need to establish a merchant account (compte commerçant) with a French bank.

While most Carte Bleues (>90%?) are nowadays co-branded with the Visa logo, giving potential customers in France the additional option of using the Carte Bleue Nationale sounds like a good idea to me, especially if the implementation is as simple as it is with Moneybookers.

I’m about to change my company’s online shops’ payment pages and might post again in a few weeks about the acceptance of Moneybooker’s Carte Bleue payment option.