SEO Tips: Courting Google with Your Content

Google recently made changes to its "Submit Your Content" page, with the goal being to make it easier for people to share their information with the search company.

My SES San Jose Presentation: Twitter for Marketers
Google & Verizon Becoming Frenemies?

eBiz Briefs: Mom E-Mail Marketing

A recent report by e-mail marketing management company Peer360 offers some valuable tips on how to tap into the buying power of mothers, which the company says tops a whopping $2.1 trillion a year, while also controlling 85 percent of household income.


Getting E-Mail Marketing Past the Customer’s Spam Filter

PCI Compliance: Does It Equal Security?

NEW YORK — The need for regulatory compliance is driving spending on security. Yet is it actually improving security overall? It really depends on who you ask, according to industry experts from RSA, MasterCard Worldwide, Forrester Research and Depository Trust Clearing Corporation. Representatives from these companies debated the merits of PCI compliance as well as offering suggestions on how to get it implemented during the Interop conference here.


CSO: One Tough Job
Princeton Review Flunks Data Privacy Test

eBay Alternative Action: Resources, Launches, Updates

This week we discuss what the phrase 'eBay Alternatives' has come to mean over the past several years, and also highlight the latest news and launches from the constantly growing alternative space.

So, What Exactly, Is an eBay Alternative?
(Adapted from the Ecommerce-Guide.com Glossary)

When discussing the "eBay alternative" scene, it makes sense to have a common understanding of what the term encompasses.


eBay Watch: DSR 4.3 Tips, Tactics and Seller POV
Policy Changes Prompt eBay Sellers to Diversify

Customized Chat Adds Seasonal Sales Advantage

The holiday season is approaching, and as a small online store owner, you may be wondering how to handle the increased traffic at your Web shop, especially if adding seasonal staff is not option. The solution for some e-tailers is to "hire" virtual employees in the form of customer service agents that interact with your clientele — and hopefully help close sales that you'd otherwise lose.


eBiz Briefs: eBay Layoffs, Mick Jagger Rocks the Roundtable

Study Cites Flaws in E-tail Experience

Online shopping is more popular than ever, but a new study has concluded that many e-commerce sites provide a poor user experience, causing many customers to abandon their transactions and head to a competitor's site. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, was commissioned by Tealeaf, a company that provides Customer Experience Management (CEM) software to online merchants. Of the 84 percent of online adults who shop online, nearly nine out of 10 said they have had trouble completing a transaction. Forty-one percent of the people who reported having problems said they either navigated to an alternative site or simply abandoned the transaction altogether. "The Web has changed business — companies both large and small compete for the same customers," Tealeaf CEO Rebecca Ward said in a statement. "Now, competition is just a click away and customer expectations continue to grow." Indeed, in a sign of how e-commerce is moving into the mainstream, the survey found that more than one third of the respondents said they prefer to shop online, and that 84 percent said they expected a transaction to be processed on the first try. Perhaps even more surprising, a significant minority (22 percent) said they expect a higher level of customer service when shopping online than when they go to a store. The survey also highlighted the importance of online companies maintaining a reputation for quality service, given how people tend to share horror stories about their shopping experiences. On the heels of a poor online shopping experience, 84 percent of the survey respondents said they would be likely to share their grievance with others. Of those, 82 percent said they would air their complaint in some offline channel, like phoning up a friend to vent. And that's not to say that those same people wouldn't also register their frustration online, say in the form of a review or blog post that would become a part of the company's permanent record. Chief among the customer service pitfalls Harris identified was the failure of businesses to integrate their offline call centers into their e-commerce platforms. Of the nearly half of online shoppers who have contacted a company's call center regarding problems with the Web site, 64 percent reported that the service representative didn't know much about the online store. Thirty-eight percent said their issue went unresolved. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of the people who received poor customer service from a call center when trying to troubleshoot Web issues either scaled back their business with the company, stopped associating with it altogether, or filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. "Businesses must take definitive steps to differentiate themselves by understanding and improving their customers' site experiences, and equipping their contact centers to truly meet the needs of online customers," Ward said. "Companies that do take action will be the ones to claim a greater share of this billion-dollar business opportunity." This article by Kenneth Corbin originally appeared Sept. 16, 2008 on InternetNews.com.


eBiz Briefs: eBay Layoffs, Mick Jagger Rocks the Roundtable
Customer Experience Management: Rx for the Top and Bottom Lines

eBiz Briefs: eBay Layoffs, Mick Jagger Rocks the Roundtable

This week eBay continues to dominate the headlines with rumors of layoffs and speculation about jettisoning StumbleUpon. In Web 2.0 news, a new Facebook gift registry service debuts and a customer-review service partners up with a security vendor. Finally, proving he indeed leaves no stone unturned, Mick Jagger struts his stuff in the name of e-commerce. EBay Briefs: Layoffs, Sales, CEO SouringReuters, the L.A. Times and other news outlets are reporting that eBay is expected to layoff as many as 1,500. "It all began with an article in Barron's on Monday that cited a report from a Colorado investment research firm, suggesting that eBay would cut 10 percent of its 15,000 employees. Wedge Partners' Brian Blair and Ryan Hunter wrote that the company's business was 'deteriorating,'" according to the L.A. Times. Meanwhile, the blog TechCrunch, is dishing on a rumor that the auction giant is looking to unload StumbleUpon, a Web site recommendation service. The blog quotes a source "with knowledge of the sale process" as saying eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to help find a buyer. And, finally, where is the love for CEO John Donahoe? A Wired blogger writes that, according to approval ratings on Glassdoor.com, a site where employees rate employers, that Donahoe is one of the least popular on the site. Donahoe's approval rating is a mere 30 percent, according to the post. Sortprice Service for FacebookSortprice.com this week announced the launch of its new application, The Wishlist, on the Facebook Platform. Designed much like a traditional gift registry, the application allows users to browse and compare prices on millions of products on Sortprice and then post their favorites to their individual Facebook pages. With detailed product descriptions and photos, shoppers are able to search for specific items or narrow by category, price, or merchant, then 'drag and drop' items to their individual wish list, which can be kept private or posted straight to their page. Users can assemble a list of comparable items to find the best deal on their own or post some suggested products that friends and family can purchase for birthdays, anniversaries or special occasions. Each product snapshot added to The Wishlist includes options for customer reviews and further price comparisons on everything from electronics to house wares to clothing and apparel.To learn more, click the The Wishlist page. VeriSign and RatePoint Partner UpFacing online security threats, abandoned transactions and the emerging influence of social networks, e-tailers looking to boost confidence and trust among consumers now have a new solution that helps them protect customers while offering a way to monitor and improve their reputations. Available this week, the bundled solution combines Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates from VeriSign, a provider of Internet infrastructure security services, with customer feedback capabilities from RatePoint, an online reputation management and customer feedback platform provider for e-tailers. VeriSign secures more than 1 million Web servers worldwide with SSL encryption and rigorous authentication, according to the company, while RatePoint allows customers to rate their overall satisfaction with an online business and its offerings. As a result, online businesses not only can secure their sites, they also can leverage the combination of VeriSign SSL and RatePoint reputation management to help reduce abandoned transaction rates and boost consumer confidence, the companies claim. Rockin' the RoundtableRolling Stone frontman Mick Jagger, according to numerous news reports, joined consumer and IT industry experts earlier this week in Brussels to draft a report on e-commerce trade barriers for the European Commission (EC). Jagger was invited by European Union (EU) competition commissioner Neelie Kroes to share his views at a roundtable discussion on copyright issues as they pertain to online music sales.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.


eBay Sets Bargain Basement Fees for Larger Sellers
Study Cites Flaws in E-tail Experience

Yahoo's Radical Homepage Makeover

SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) — Yahoo is moving ahead today with a radical redesign of its home page — the most heavily trafficked site on the Web — making changes that give users a personalized view of the wider Web. The Internet media giant is under the gun to deliver on year-old promises to transform Yahoo from a network of more or less insular properties into "starting points" that help consumers quickly navigate their way to the rest of the Web. "We are going to put what matters to you most at your fingertips," said Tapan Bhat, the senior vice president in charge of "front doors" — the main destinations at Yahoo, including Yahoo.com, MyYahoo and the Yahoo toolbar. The new Yahoo home page features a tab on the left hand column of the page with sophisticated links to the user's 10 or 20 favorite sites. It functions as an alternative to navigation methods like bookmarks, link bars or browser tabs, he said. In its simplest sense, Yahoo is blending the broadcast, editorially-controlled view that Yahoo.com has long offered with the personalized, self-selected view of information that the company's MyYahoo service has long offered. It mixes things users know they want, with the serendipitous or unexpected. "For the first time, we are going to marrying those two to take the best of both," Bhat promised. The changes, which Yahoo is testing on only a small group of users initially, will lead to a full-scale overhaul later. Two years ago, the last such redesign of Yahoo.com took up to six months to fully implement, the Yahoo executive said. The makeover of Yahoo.com marks the company's 14-year evolution from the Web's pioneering directory of sites to an index of links to a search navigation tool to a complex media destination site. A spokeswoman said Yahoo planned to invite a random sample of its users amounting to less than 1 percent of audience. The tests will be conducted in Britain, France, India and the United States, Bhat said. The new home page relies on slick personalization technology that allows users who have signed into their Yahoo account to see when new information arrives not just on Yahoo sites, like e-mail or news, but off-Yahoo on sites such as eBay auctions or Google's Gmail service. Instead of whisking people to these sites, users can see a preview of the information while staying on the home page, which allows them to quickly navigate across a range of their favorite sites. The Yahoo home page attracts around 100 million U.S. users a month and 300 million worldwide, Bhat said. Yahoo is relying on new technology it calls the Content Optimization Knowledge Engine to help its computers determine what the most engaging content may be to a specific user, then serve it up based on their prior surfing habits. Relevant ads tied to users' particular interests are delivered as well. Slowly Moving the Mountain
Yahoo is moving carefully with this personalized approach in the knowledge that less than 15 percent of its user base subscribe to its existing MyYahoo personalization service. "It is a leaner look, it is more user friendly," said Caroline Dangson, an analyst with market research firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts, who was briefed on the changes. But Dangson said the collective judgment of IDC researchers is that Yahoo has made a series of very exciting announcements over the past year, but has been slow to deliver on any of its promises to open up and transform how its sites function. The more than 500 million or so monthly users of Yahoo properties have little if nothing to see of these ambitious plans to date. "These are announcements. But when does this really roll out?" Dangson asks of the new home page design. And while Yahoo moves carefully so as not to anger its base of hundreds of millions of visitors, many of its biggest rivals have made sweeping changes in their own sites, Dangson said. These include Microsoft Corp's MSN, Time Warner Inc's AOL, Facebook and News Corp MySpace, everyone it seems, except Google, Dangson said. Some of those makeovers have frustrated users who prefer "classic" versions of their favorite sites, she said, adding to the caution of Yahoo, which attracts some of the biggest audiences on the Web to Yahoo.com, Yahoo News and Yahoo Mail. The real test of the success or failure of the Yahoo home page redesign will only come when the company opens up Yahoo.com to let independent developers create their own applications to work on Yahoo.com, Dangson said. That where Google, Facebook and MySpace all are further along, she said. Separately, in a bid to shore up morale within a company that has been besieged by competition, a tough advertising market and the so far unwonted takeover gestures of Microsoft, Yahoo has introduced a campaign to encourage employees to dress in purple — the company's primary color — at work.


Yahoo’s New Strategy: ‘Open’ Offensive
A Nip & Tuck for Yahoo Site Explorer

Grapes of Wrath? Amazon Angling to Sell Wine

By Alexandria Sage SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Amazon.com, the largest global online retailer, plans to start selling U.S.-produced wine on its Web site within the United States by early October, wine industry insiders said on Wednesday. Napa Valley Vintners, a nonprofit group representing 315 vintners in the famous California wine-producing region, has already begun to set up workshops for wineries interested in selling through the retail giant, said Terry Hall, communications director for the group. "They have been working for a while on this wine project. Now they are signing up the wineries," Hall told Reuters. "They're fast-tracking it right now." An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment. Seattle-based Amazon is looking to sell wine in approximately 26 states and wine sold on its site will come from all regions of the country, Hall said. Annual wine consumption in the United States has grown for the last 14 years as wine has gradually shed its image as an exclusive beverage for the well-heeled. Today, many enthusiasts are coming from all parts of the country and younger Americans are turning to wine-drinking as an alternative to beer. Total U.S. wine sales were between $30 billion and $32 billion in 2007, according to Barbara Insel, president of Stonebridge Research Group, a research firm for the wine industry. Some $2.8 billion is sold through retail formats like wine clubs, tasting rooms and the like, with only 7 percent of that coming from E-commerce, partly due to the expense of shipping wine, and confusing states rules on wine shipments, Insel said. To avoid the confusing legal issues over the interstate sale of wine that vary from state to state, Amazon will be working with New Vine Logistics, a Napa, California-based company dealing in wine fulfillment that can deliver to up to 45 states. "Amazon is outsourcing to New Vine the logistics of its wine direct business to make sure it's being done properly and legally," Insel said. Confusion over online wine sales have continued despite a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled states could not discriminate against out-of-state wineries. A group called "Free the Grapes" has been working to streamline legislation and open new states to direct-to-consumer wine shipping. Amazon, which sells everything from vacuum cleaners and cars to electronics and bulk foods on its site, continues to expand into new categories, vowing to become a one-stop shop for consumers. Hall said wine purchases on Amazon would even qualify for its discount shipping program, Amazon Prime, in which goods are shipped free for a yearly fee of $79. Industry insiders said Amazon's entry into the wine market would be a good counterpoint to the shrinking pool of distributors amid consolidation in their industry. "The good news is it (Amazon selling wine) puts some big muscle behind direct-to-consumer so consumers of wine should benefit," Hall said. Moreover, wine's appeal to consumers with money to spend also benefits Amazon, Insel said, as wine "enhances their product offering for a very attractive group of consumers." "The step forward with Amazon being a wine retailer is just more testament to the fact that Americans are really becoming a wine drinking economy," Hall said. (Additional reporting by Martinne Geller, editing by Richard Chang)


Yahoo’s New Strategy: ‘Open’ Offensive
The Return of Tax-Free Online Shopping in NY?

Advertisers Cry Foul on Yahoo-Google Deal

The trade association representing 400 of the nation's largest advertisers has come out against a major advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo that is currently under review by federal and state regulators. In a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) said the deal would create an entity that controlled 90 percent of all search advertising, and warned that the tie-up could drive up prices and diminish competition. Through the partnership, Google would serve a portion of the ads on Yahoo's search pages. The companies have defended the deal as a way to boost Yahoo's search revenue while providing advertisers a better way of reaching Yahoo's considerable online audience. The reaction from the advertising industry has been mixed, with some marketers warning that ceding more business to Google's auction will drive prices up and undermine competition, while other maintain that the search-engine marketing is essentially self-regulatory, since keywords are sold at auction. In its response to the ANA letter, Google was quick to highlight the latter view. "Numerous advertisers have recognized that this agreement will help them better match their ads to users' interests, and that ad prices will continue to be set by competitive auction," Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich told InternetNews.com. "While some have raised questions about the agreement's potential impact on ad prices, advertisers care far more about getting a good return on their advertising dollar than they do about buying cheap ads that don't bring in customers, and this agreement will clearly help advertisers reach Yahoo users more efficiently." For its part, Yahoo said it was "disappointed" with the letter, and "remains steadfast in its belief that this deal ... will strengthen Yahoo's competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for advertisers." Both companies have said that they will continue to compete vigorously with each other in search and other areas. The ANA counts many of the country's largest advertisers as members, including Procter and Gamble, Unilever, General Mills and ExxonMobil. In a brief note on the ANA Web site, the group's president and CEO, Bob Liodice, announced that the association had sent the letter to Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice's antitrust division. Liodice said that the ANA's board had conducted a month-long analysis of the ad deal, which included meetings with executives from Google and Yahoo. He did not immediately respond to requests for further comment. Google and Yahoo clearly structured the deal with regulators in mind. The non-exclusive deal does not require Yahoo to import a minimum number of ads from Google, and it only applies to the United States and Canada, thereby avoiding the tougher regulatory review the companies would find in Europe. Because it is not a merger, Google and Yahoo were not required to obtain regulatory approval before they implemented the ad deal, but they voluntarily put it on hold to accommodate a review. The Justice Department is currently taking a look at the antitrust implications, as are more than a dozen states' attorneys general. Microsoft has been among the most vocal opponents of the deal. It was Microsoft's failed bid to acquire Yahoo that compelled the portal giant to ally itself with Google as a way to deliver value to shareholders frustrated with the Web pioneer's slumping stock price. Yahoo expects the deal to ultimately generate $800 million in annual revenue. In testimony before a Senate subcommittee earlier this summer, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described Yahoo's talk of "better monetization opportunities" as "a fancy way of talking about a price increase." "The technology is complicated, but the antitrust issues are straightforward," he said at the time. Microsoft, which declined to comment for this story, has been lobbying advertising executives to speak out against the deal to regulators, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft is a member of the ANA, though in his statement, Liodice said that the ANA's analysis was independent and that the conclusion included the input of the association's board, which has more than 30 directors. This article by Kenneth Corbin originally appeared Sept. 8, 2008 at InternetNews.com.


Google & Verizon Becoming Frenemies?

Yahoo's Blueprint for Mobile Commerce

SAN FRANCISCO — Continuing its strong movement into mobile Internet services, Yahoo today announced that its Blueprint mobile development platform enables standalone applications. The struggling Internet media company announced Blueprint in January at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show. It's an open platform providing third-party developers with tools to create applications. Originally, Blueprint could be used only to create mobile widgets to run within Yahoo Go. Now developers can also build and distribute applications for Java, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. The enhancements are available as "previews," according to Marco Boerries, executive vice president for Yahoo's Connected Life division. Presenting at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment show in San Francisco, he told the conference audience that Blueprint builds on Yahoo's five years of mobile experience. "With one click, you can generate your own site under your domain with your infrastructure that supports thousands of devices," he said. Yahoo offers Web services that allow for smoother installation of the widgets and apps, but publishers and developers can make them available for download wherever they choose. The company hopes to create a plug-in for Eclipse, the open source development platform, by the end of 2008. Blueprint includes the ability for developers to include advertising in their applications, and Yahoo sees this as an opportunity to expand its ad revenue, according to Boerries. Blueprint and Yahoo's ad-serving software are loosely coupled, meaning it's easy to enable Yahoo ads but not essential. Because the more page views Yahoo generates, the more money it can make, increasing the amount of services for mobile increases the potential income from advertising. "Hopefully you will use it, but you don't have to," Boerries said. "We believe by providing these essential tools and services, we'll a good connection with the developers, and there's a chance they will take a shot." Boerries also announced that a preview of oneConnect for iPhones is now available. OneConnect, announced in February 2008, is a social address book that brings together friends from multiple social networks, including Flickr, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. Yahoo plans to eventually make the app available for other devices and global markets. He said Yahoo also has an iPhone implementation of Blueprint that it uses internally. It's in discussions with Apple to make this available to outside developers. This article by Susan Kuchinskas originally appeared Sept. 10, 2008 at InternetNews.com.


Yahoo’s New Strategy: ‘Open’ Offensive

Yahoo's New Strategy: 'Open' Offensive

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Like the guy in The Graduate who whispers the secret to success to the Dustin Hoffman character, "Plastics," Yahoo execs held a media briefing here Thursday to lay out the key a growth strategy that could be described in a word, "Open." Speaker after speaker detailed plans to open up various Yahoo services, from music and search to mobile and advertising. Most of these initiatives had already been announced earlier at separate events, including the ambitious mobile development platform called Blueprint, announced yesterday at the CTIA conference in San Francisco. Yahoo did reveal the first details of a plan to open up the Yahoo Music site to include information from other popular services like Apple's iTunes and Amazon.com's music site. Unclutter the Design"Everything on Yahoo now is published by Yahoo," said Scott Moore, who heads Yahoo's media business. "It will completely open up in the next few weeks with a cleaner design." That cleaner design includes a right hand column filled with new content and services from Yahoo and partners, such as the Pandora Internet radio, Amazon and iTunes along with Yahoo's own Flickr photo service and others integrated on the page. "Part of this is us being the center of the ecosystem," said Moore. He also said the right column of services won't benefit Yahoo financially directly, but is part of the company's plan to be "the center of the ecosystem" and provide users with a better online experience. With its executive team under fire to produce better results, the press briefing is one of many attempts, including its high profile appearance at CTIA, to show the company has a growth strategy it's ready to execute. Personalized Home Page Design on TapAlong with openness, improving the user experience was another theme repeated by various Yahoo product managers and executives. Ari Balough, Yahoo's chief technology officer, said Yahoo employs economics professors, psychologists and leverages esoteric fields like rational game theory to help better understand how humans interact. "There's a tremendous amount of data mining and information we pull together to gain a better understanding of user intent and motivation," he said. "Even on the advertising side we look at how best to present our content to users." Balough said "very shortly" Yahoo will be able to provide its users a customized Web experience based on their interests. He gave a specific example of a more personalized home page focused on a user's interest in sports, with stories from different content sources including Yahoo and partners. Balough said Yahoo already has the biggest, engaged audience on the Internet, numbering over 500 million. Yahoo's head of research, Prabhakar Raghavan, elaborated on the concept of more anticipatory Web services earlier this week at an industry event. Mark Risher, group product manager for Yahoo Mail, showed how the service is opening up to allow users to bring in and receive more content from other applications. For example, if you were to receive an e-mail asking what you did over the weekend, you'll be able to drop the message into Flickr, pull up the relevant pictures and reply without leaving the e-mail program. This article by David Needle appears courtesy of InternetNews.com.


Yahoo Buzz Opens to All; Don’t Get Too Excited

Turn Clicks into Cash: New ShopAds Affiliate Widgets

New ShopAds Affiliate Widgets

Adgregate Markets, an online advertising company, says its newly launched ShopAds widgets are poised to invigorate the stagnant ad display landscape. The company, which was a finalist at the TechCrunch50 conference, says the mini-application enables distributed commerce by helping e-tailers turn basic banner ads into fully transactional e-commerce ad units.

eBay Policy Watch: Fixed Shipping Limits for Media

A look at the recently announced limits on shipping and handling charges for eBay's media categories and seller concerns about the new policy slated for October.

Accessories: Address Books $4, Blank Diaries & Journals $5, Book Covers $5, Book Plates $3, Bookmarks $3, Other $3Books > Antiquarian & Collectible: $4Books > Audiobook: $4Books > Catalogs: $4Books > Children's Books: $4Books > Cookbooks Cookbooks: $4Books > Fiction Books Fiction Books: $4Books > Magazine Back Issues Magazine Back Issues: $4Books > Nonfiction Books Nonfiction Books: $4Books > Other: $4Books > Textbooks, Education: $4Books > Wholesale & Bulk Lots:  Audiobooks $10, Books 101-500 $20, Books 11-50 Items $8, 51-100 Items $15, 6-10 Items $6, More than 500, $30, Up to 5 Items $6, Magazines $8, Other $6

 DVDs & Movies:

DVDs & Movies > DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray DVD: $3DVDs & Movies > Film: $6DVDs & Movies > Laserdisc: $6DVDs & Movies > Other Formats: $3DVDs & Movies > UMD: $5DVDs & Movies > VHS: $3 DVDs & Movies > VHS Non-US (PAL): $5 DVDs & Movies > Wholesale Lots: DVDs 101-250 Items $30, DVDs 11-50 Items $15, DVDs 251-500 Items $60, DVDs 501-1000 Items $120, DVDs 51-100 Items $25,DVDs Up to 10 Items $10, Mixed Lots $10, Movies Accessories $17, Other $10, VHS 101-500 Items $30, VHS 11-50 Items $15, VHS 51-100 Items $25, VHS More than500 Items $120, VHS Up to 10 Items $10

 Music:

Music > Accessories $5Music > Cassettes $3Music > CDs $3Music > DVD Audio $3Music > Other Formats $3Music > Records $4Music > Super Audio CDs $3 Music > Wholesale Lots: Cassettes $10, CDs 101-500 Items $30, CDs 11-100 Items $20, CDs More than 500 Items $60, CDs Up to 10 Items $10, Other Formats $10, Records 11-50 Items $15, Records More than 50 Items $25, Records Up to 10 Items $10

 Video Games:

Video Games > Accessories $6Video Games > Games $4Video Games > Internet Games Games > Guild Wars $6, World of Warcraft $3, Software & PC Versions $6Video Games > Other $4Video Games > Systems Systems $15Video Games > Vintage Games $6Video Games > Wholesale Lots: Accessories $10, Console Systems $50, Games $9, Other $9

 

Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.

Cashing in on Coupons: Digital Discount Tips, Tools, Trends

The online coupon site Tjoos.com just launched its Merchant Portal, allowing online stores to add their store information and coupons. Coupon codes are similar to traditional grocery coupons but for online stores and give customers instant discounts on their purchases, and can be used to accomplish certain marketing goals.

Shipping Tips and Free Tools for E-tailers

Small businesses, online merchants and sellers frequently start small and work their way up into larger, more fully-featured and automated processes. Not only do their sites start on a smaller-than-Amazon scale, but the budget to set up your Web shop and market it is usually equally small. Today free shipping and online shipping deals are more than just a trend; its a must-do for merchants to stay competitive. 

eBay Watch: DSR 4.3 Tips, Tactics and Seller POV

Last Wednesday when eBay announced more "bold changes" (see "eBay Finagles Fixed-Price and Final Value Fees, Cuts Paper Payments"), it introduced new policies in several areas including fees, media category shipping charge limits, checkout and Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR). Today we're going to take a more in-depth look at the new DSR minimum that was announced and provide some sellers' opinions on the policy, slated to go into effect Nov. 1.

Policy Changes Prompt eBay Sellers to Diversify

In Kent, Ohio sits a 2,500-square-foot warehouse with garage space that offers clients restoration through recycling. TunerJunkyard.com is a subsidiary of Lost Gypsy Forge, Inc,. It's owned and managed by Marisa Alma Torres and Jerod Husvar. TunerJunkyard.com started out in October 2007 by selling restored automotive parts on eBay, using a mix of online auctions and eBay ProStores as the company's main selling channels.

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» Vendio Lifts Veil on eBay Competitor Strategy In an interview with Ecommerce-Guide.com, Jerod Husvar said that his eBay business resulted in the purchase of  the warehouse and garage, and it also meant turning down a well-paying IT job to run TunerJunkyard.com full-time." With a successful business underway, Husvar said that this year it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the business using only eBay for sales. He said, "I have a real love/hate relationship with eBay. I've learned that it's extremely difficult to conduct business in circumstances where the rules are always changing."

The Problem with eBay Policy Changes

Citing specific examples of eBay policy changes over the past year that had a direct effect on his business, Husvar said that many sellers, including some of the biggest PowerSellers on eBay, are seeing their feedback ratings go down, even though they haven't changed the way they do business to warrant the drop. When, earlier this year, eBay decided to count neutral feedback as a negative one instead of a zero, Husvar saw his own score lower from 99 percent positive to 97.3 percent. While that may not seem like a significant decrease, Husvar said his sales dropped as a direct effect of this change. (Following eBay Live, the company reversed its position on this and no longer counts neutral feedback as negative.)

Husvar thinks that the Detailed Seller Ratings system involves too much math for the average consumer to understand. Seasoned buyers who suddenly see that several of their favorite sellers have decreased feedback scores will get it, but he said, for your average eBay shopper, these decreasing numbers show that a near-perfect seller is now only a good seller even though the seller's way of conducting business is still near-perfect.

Husvar says the DSR changes also mean that achieving PowerSeller status to obtain fee discounts is now near impossible. One area of concern for Husvar is the shipping score in his DSR. "My shipping is at 4.7, which I am very happy with. The problem is going to come in when buyers, who usually do not have as good of an understanding of how shipping really works, downgrade me because of shipping costs. Many consumers don't realize that shipping a 250-pound engine from Ohio to California just can't be done for fifty dollars." While the eBay buyer may like the overall price, they can still choose to rate a seller lower due to the expense of the shipping.

In an attempt to keep buyer's shipping costs lower, and also to increase his overall customer service, Husvar said it is not uncommon for he and his partner, Marisa Torres, to jump into their own Jeep and drive all over the Eastern U.S. to deliver parts. "We do deliver a lot of our own freight, simply because this saves our customers money." Even after paying the couple a set fee, which is enough to cover their own fuel and accommodation costs, TunerJunkyard.com customers can save hundreds of dollars on their purchase when they don't have to pay freight charges to a shipping carrier.

Overall, Husvar said that trying to keep up with the many ways in which eBay has been changing how sellers are presented on the auction site has made running an eBay business a challenge that is not easily overcome. TunerJunkyard.com is also expecting to be impacted somewhat next week when eBay rolls out Best Match as the default search on eBay Motors. Husvar sees Best Match as something that will handicap a lot of sellers.

"The product I sell is unique enough that I believe that I will continue to do well in Best Match searches, but with the burden of so many changes being put on sellers, this is just another issue that hinders your ability to keep things 'business as usual' on eBay."

The Solution: Mix it Up With Wigix

When you invest your savings and livelihood in starting a business, external issues, such as eBay's policy changes and the way it now presents sellers to buyers, makes doing business difficult for sellers like TunerJunkyard.com. Husvar said his niche business started without any lofty goals, but it grew so quickly on eBay, he and his partner decided it was worthwhile to invest over $50,000 in the business. While policy changes at eBay have made things more difficult for the duo, they have not decided to leave eBay, but rather look at other alternatives as a way to increase their online exposure and sales.

TunerJunkyard.com first considered investing in and setting up their own auction service for their own product, along with merchandise from other related businesses they refer customers to. Husvar said he felt that this route would involve too much technical work on his part, and was not the ideal situation for the company. "We looked at a number of alternative selling sites but felt none were big enough. Even craigslist was unsuitable for our business, despite the traffic it gets." 

During his search for a selling channel to use in conjunction with eBay, Husvar heard about Wigix, a startup online marketplace launched by CEO James Chong, formerly in charge of Charles Schwab's online trading platform, that uses a price-matching system similar to that of Nasdaq. At Wigix, buyers and sellers list desired prices for merchandise and the system will alert them when they match up. Or, buyers can offer an alternative price, with both parties having the option to accept or reject the bid.

After some investigation, Husvar decided this newly-launched platform would serve well as their secondary selling channel. Even though Wigix is not expected to be out of the testing phase until October, Husvar and other eBay sellers are taking a chance that this financially backed and well-developed platform will provide a much needed boost their online eBay businesses.

The Benefits of Using Wigix

After contacting Wigix, Husvar said he realized that this company offered services and tools that eBay could not offer. "Wigix customer service is excellent and they are in a position where they can assist sellers, regardless of their need. For my own listings I required some very specific categories and they had no problem with working one-on-one to meet my needs."

TunerJunkyard.com currently pays out about 15 percent of its revenues in eBay and PayPal fees, compared to just two percent on Wigix. What eBay does offer that other sites cannot, however, is high shopper traffic. Because of the niche category of TunerJunkyard.com, Husvar said that his company, through its own Web site, which is being developed now, and their highly visible MySpace profile, will be able to direct their own customers and traffic to where they need it. While unsure about what the future holds in terms of casual browsers and buyer traffic from Wigix itself, Husvar is pleased to see Wigix leveraging social networking avenues to accelerate its growth.

While there is no plans for TunerJunkyard.com to leave eBay as a seller, Husvar will also be using the TunerJunkyard.com Web site as well as the Wigix platform to boost online sales.

Overall, Husvar likens his online selling experience to playing the stock market. "You have to look at the overall investment, and most people who claim to know such things will tell you not to put all your investment into one stock. That's the road too that we are going to take with TunerJunkyard.com; we're going to spread it out a bit, and consider the more viable selling channels, like Wigix, rather than leaving all of our stock in eBay, so to speak."

Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.

Trend Watch: Local Search to Boost Online Sales?

SAN JOSE, Calif. — There's no such thing as a Google killer and companies (from startups to mighty Microsoft) are crazy to think they can dethrone the search king. Second, Internet startups should be scrambling to mine the next big opportunity in search: providing local services enabled by the new generation of GPS-enabled phones and Web services like Twitter that track where you are and what you're doing. These are some insights and nuggets of advice search experts brought to the Search Engine Strategies conference held here this week. "Local is the motherlode," said Tim Westergren, founder of Internet radio service Pandora. Speaking at a panel discussion Tuesday, Westergren said the challenge for search engines is to figure out how to give more exposure to sites that don't appear in top results page. "The search war today is a great popularity contest," he said. Another local advocate, Kirsten Mangers, co-founder and CEO of WebVisible, admitted she started touting location-based services nine years ago as being "six months away" but now she thinks the time has finally arrived. "To most of the world, local is absolutely mission critical," said Mangers whose company is a marketing agency for online small businesses. "Local is about 18 to 24 months behind national marketers so we learn from their mistakes," Mangers added. There's also flat out innovation. She lauded Urbanspoon for example, a Web site for finding local restaurants. In its Apple iPhone incarnation, Urbanspoon takes advantage of the device's built in accelerometer to make the experience more fun. First, Urbanspoon gives you a local restaurant result using the device's GPS. But if you're not happy with that result and want to try something else, you can literally shake the iPhone in order to get another nearby restaurant result. Richard LeFurgy, a general partner with Archer Advisors and founding chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, said location aware applications are "an incredible opportunity." LeFurgy is on the board of Placecast, an online ad network that combines positioning data — where someone is — with what it calls "place" data, which is other information about where people are that helps further qualify them for advertisers. "We've introduced local services on wireless and seen a 20 times increase in click through rate on content," he said. "How do you create relevance at scale? That's what it's all about." Going for GoogleSession moderator Kevin Ryan tried mightily to generate controversy on the question of who would be the next Google killer, but for the most part the panelists would have none of it. But there were plenty of pointed comments. "Why does there have to be Google killer?" asked Mike Grehan, Global KDM (Keyword Driven Marketing) officer, at Acronym Media. "In any other industry someone else comes in and it's competition and it's great. Why do you have to be a Google killer?" Grehan criticized the latest Google challenger, the recently launched Cuil, started by ex-Googler's. "They (Cuil) say they have the biggest database, but does the user care?" Grehan asked rhetorically. Of course panelist Matt Cutts, software engineer guru at Google, was hardly expected to either diss his employer or predict its greatest threat. Instead, he promoted how easy it is for anyone to launch a software company with the advent of cloud-based tools that free users from relying on a single PC or workstation or having to deal with viruses and elaborate security protection. "If I'm cloud-based, if I break my laptop I wouldn't lose any data with Google apps or Zoho. It's cheaper than ever to do a startup," he said. "Eighteen-year-olds can do it on weekends. There are so many different opportunities for Web startups, we haven't scratched the surface." Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land warned that while it may be cheap to get in the game, there are still many ways a Web startup can screw up or get in over its head. "There's a lot of eye candy things out there to get excited about without understanding if it's a good marketing channel," said Sullivan. "Like, you can spend a lot of money building a kiosk in Second Life and only have three people show up." As for going after Google, Sullivan said it's going to be a fool's errand for quite some time. "Google has so much information across the Web and the analytics and the ad data. There is a good degree of information that's hard for any company to match. Even Microsoft," said Sullivan. And they've been trying for five years. At best, you're going to see incremental challenges." This article by David Needle originally appeared on Aug. 20, 2008 on InternetNews.com.

Ten Web Shop Prep Tips for the Holidays

As autumn approaches, it's time for e-tailers to start planning for the holiday rush. If you start now, you'll have the time required to get your site in shape for maximizing fourth-quarter profits.

Getting E-Mail Marketing Past the Customer's Spam Filter

With growth rates of spam, phishing, and e-mail-borne malware showing no signs of abating, more and more ISPs and enterprises are implementing stronger protective measures. Many of these anti-spam techniques are well known to those of us in the e-mail industry tasked with managing “deliverability” — the art and science of getting e-mail delivered to a user’s inbox in a timely and fully-functional fashion. Ever since the first anti-spam measures began to be widely deployed in the mid-1990s, legitimate e-mails have occasionally been caught in the net and deleted, delayed, or shunted to “spam” folders. As the economy tightens, many companies are refocusing their advertising and marketing efforts on e-mail, and as a result many enterprise IT managers are getting a crash course in deliverability issues. As I have noted in many, many, many columns, there are a number of technical and infrastructure issues that can affect a company’s deliverability. What IT managers and their “clients” in the marketing department need to realize is that technical issues are only the tip of the iceberg. Yes, the technical people tasked with deliverability need to be aware of the impact of the content of the messages, not just the mechanics of sending them. Over on the Media Post blog, David Baker has written an excellent piece encouraging marketers to make sure that they keep their e-mail recipients engaged. He writes: “Look closely at the core reason customers entered your e-mail program and gave you permission to send them e-mail in the first place, and expect that opt-in connection to last only so long before you have to re-engage them or expand your e-mail portfolio for this changing need.” On many occasions over the years I have been called upon to investigate situations in which legitimate marketers have had their permission-based e-mails flagged with the “This is Spam” button (or “TIS,” among us hipsters in the deliv biz). This can be disastrous for e-mail deliverability because many ISPs weigh user feedback via the TIS button much more heavily than any other measure of reputation. Why do people click the TIS on e-mail that they specifically opted-in to receive? It turns out that there are two main reasons: sending too much e-mail, and not sending enough. Second only to sending too much e-mail (“e-mail fatigue”), customers who haven’t heard from you in a long time are more likely to have forgotten that they gave you permission and to punish you for their forgetfulness. Building on this, making them remember you is good, but making them look forward to your messages is better. Luckily, marketers have a secret weapon: they often have an array of creative and resourceful ways of making their messages — and their brands — memorable and compelling. In the privacy world, we’ve always known that consumers will give up a great deal of personal information for very little in return. Just recently, I watched an entire family write their names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses on slips of paper and slide them into the cracked-open window of a gorgeous new 2008 Jaguar XF parked near the food court of a local shopping mall. While the ultimate marketing value of that data is dubious, the lesson is clear: people will give valuable information in exchange for something as simple as a few moments of dreaming about winning a new car. Making a compelling offer that keeps consumers excited to receive and read your messages can be as simple as a discount code or as elaborate as a snazzy new ride. Regardless of what your creative vision comes up with, it should be something relevant to their relationship with you and enhances their impression of your brand. In my experience, some of the best examples come from the resorts in Las Vegas. Even if I’m not able to take advantage of every new special offer, discount, or event promotion, the messages are regularly compelling enough that I wouldn’t think of unsubscribing — much less clicking the "This Is Spam" button. It’s difficult to know where to draw the line between keeping customers engaged versus annoying them. I agree with Dave Baker that keeping consumers engaged is important, but you’ll be positioned even better if recipients are remembering you fondly because you’re delivering something really compelling. If you are tasked with managing deliverability, whether you’re a marketer or an IT expert, you need to understand that the messaging contained in e-mails can weigh just as heavily on deliverability as technical and infrastructure considerations. Compelling e-mail can be as much about improving and maintaining deliverability as it can be about making the sale. Or, to mangle the great line from Alec Baldwin’s character in “Glengarry Glen Ross”: Always Be Compelling! Ray Everett-Church writes a column for Earthweb's eSecurityPlanet.com, where this first appeared. He is Director of Privacy and Industry Relations for Responsys, Inc., a leading global provider of on-demand e-mail and marketing automation solutions. He is a founder of CAUCE, an anti-spam advocacy group, and co-author of "Internet Privacy for Dummies."

Sell Overseas for the Holidays with Shipwire

In preparation for the busy holiday season, Shipwire Inc., an e-commerce order fulfillment service, has released "Five Steps to Holiday E-commerce Success," a special promotion offering free international order fulfillment to support e-tailers' overseas expansion and celebrate enhancements to the Shipwire Store-Sell-Ship platform.

Open Source: CRE Loaded 6.31 Released...for A Price

This is one in a series of columns on the open-source commerce (OSC) industry.

CRE Loaded version 6.3 is out, but small business owners, hold onto your hats. To the open source commerce industry, the most startling change in this open source e-commerce program will be its new pricing scheme: the Standard Edition is no longer free.

The Return of Tax-Free Online Shopping in NY?

For online retailers cranky about a controversial new law in New York requiring them to collect sales tax on purchases shipped to that state, Newegg has an solution: don't do it. Newegg, a Web-only merchant that sells computers, accessories and consumer electronics products, has reversed its policy of collecting sales tax on New York purchases, the company confirmed. When the law took effect June 1, Newegg began collecting the tax like other retailers. It was not immediately clear what prompted the change, and company spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. The tax provision sits in a murky legal area that online retailers and some tax-policy analysts say places an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce. Amazon, which is collecting the tax, has filed a lawsuit against New York, charging that the measure is "invalid, illegal and unconstitutional." The most relevant precedent is a 1992 Supreme Court ruling involving a mail-order company that concluded that a business must have a physical presence in a state in order to be responsible for collecting sales tax on purchases shipped there. Under the new law, New York is requiring online retailers that derive sales through referrals from affiliates who live in the state to collect the tax, even if they have no employees or operations there. Like many online retailers, Newegg maintains an affiliate program. Web site owners who post banner ads and links promoting Newegg earn commissions of 1 percent to 2 percent of the sales they refer. The new law led one store, Overstock.com, to drop its affiliate program in New York. Overstock has joined Amazon in its legal dispute against the state. New York estimates that the provision will generate $50 million in revenue for the state in the fiscal year. Tax experts look to other cash-strapped states to adopt similar measures if the New York law holds up in court. Newegg collects sales tax on purchases shipped to California, where it is headquartered, and New Jersey and Tennessee, where it maintains operations. On the policy page of its Web site, Newegg states that, "Sales tax is only required for orders shipping into states where we have or may have nexus for state tax purposes under applicable laws." When companies don't collect sales taxes on out-of-state purchases, the consumer is still responsible for paying it in the form of a use tax that is reported on the state income tax return. Most people either don't know about that rule or ignore it. This article appears courtesy of InternetNews.com, where it ran Aug. 25, 2008.