Build Your Business: How to Establish Your Expertise

As a business owner you have an expertise that you can use to build your online brand and to market your business. Being seen as an expert in your field gives your customers added reason to trust you, and it can strengthen your brand and attract well-informed customers to your business. In this article, I’ll explain what is involved in marketing yourself as an expert and how you can start doing it today.

A blog like this one from Women's Clothing and Fashion is a good way to post articles relevant to your expertise and your customers, and you have full control over it.
(Click for larger image).

Before we begin, it’s important to understand that establishing yourself as an expert isn’t something that will happen overnight. It is a process that takes time and is the result of consistent work — it's not something you can do today and forget about it from there. However it is something that can immeasurably benefit your business and, it’s you can and should start working on today.

What’s Your Expertise?

When marketing yourself as an expert, you must first determine your area of expertise. It should be something you are already knowledgeable about so you don’t need to do lots of research or learn new skills. It should be directly relevant to your business and be useful to your customers and prospective customers.

It might be something you have overlooked as being so self-evident that you think everyone knows it already when, in fact, they don't. Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate the depth of knowledge you've amassed while working in your business over time.

If you sell jewelry online you know a lot about stones and metals, about clasps and jewelry lengths and gift ideas. If you sell yacht supplies you know about ropes and safety gear and non-corroding materials.

Whatever you sell, make a list of the special things about your products and your industry that will help customers know what to buy, how to care for it, how to decide between competing products and what to give as gifts. This is your expertise.

Strut Your Stuff

As the owner of an e-commerce site the Internet is your marketplace, and it's also where you can start developing yourself as an expert in your field. Start by writing short articles on topics related to your business. These shouldn't be sales pitches. Instead they should be informative articles that help a reader learn more about what you sell. Make them short and concise — you're not writing a thesis, and you don't want to give away all your information in one article.

Use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to publicize articles you have written.
(Click for larger image).

The best place to start is with your own blog. A blog is simple to set up, you can link it to your store site, and you're in control of it so you can publish whatever you like whenever you like. However, a blog does require that people come to you to read your posts so, when you're starting out, you will be writing to a very small audience. And the only way to build a larger audience is to keeping writing.

To advertise your blog posts, use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can post messages on these services to announce your new blog posts. Other people will see them and can visit your blog. They may even retweet your posts so that people who follow them, and who don't necessarily follow you, will see these notices, too.

Include a signup link on your blog so that your readers can sign up to receive regular newsletters from you. Use these newsletters to send readers information about the posts that you have recently made. They'll stay informed even if they haven't visited your site recently. Your newsletters don't have to be detailed and can simply include links to your recent posts.

Other Places to Publish

Other options for publishing include writing small eBooks and either giving them away as a method of promoting your business or as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. These also help establish your expertise, and they don't have to be onerous to create as you can repackage older blog posts as eBook content.

Article syndication is another tool you can use. T

Online article sites like EzineArticles.com let you post articles related to your expertise.
(Click for larger image).here are many online services such as eHow.com and eZinearticles.com that will post articles you write. Most of these do not permit direct advertising, but they do give you a forum to strut your expertise, and you can include links back to your blog and store from your articles. The best sites will check your articles to ensure they meet with their requirements, but these generally are not too stringent.

Most sites let you publish the same content you provide them on your own blog, so you can get double duty from your blog posts. The benefit of article sites is that they generally rank very high in search engine listings, which means you can attract readers by writing for them — readers who may never find your articles any other way.

Contribute to Forums

Another way to share your expertise is to post on online forums that relate to your area of expertise. It's best to post answers to other people's questions and avoid directly advertising your product. You can generally include links back to your shop site or blog within the signature line of your forum posts, and this will drive traffic from the forum to your site.

Swap Posts

Once you have some online posts and articles as proof of your work, look for sites that complement your site and offer to write a blog post for that site. Ask for a link back to your site from the post to help you build traffic by harnessing the readership of the other blog. Consider also swapping posts with another site — you write for them and they write for you so you can both benefit.

In addition to writing original posts, you can aggregate information by looking for interesting information on the Web that’s relevant to your customers. Write a post listing these sites and what they contain. Doing this helps people see you as a site that provides good information whether by writing it yourself or finding it and sharing it. You’ll be seen as a trusted source of information.

Becoming an acknowledged expert in your field doesn't cost you a lot of cash. Spending a little time and effort writing articles and seeking out places to publish will help you build your expertise, reinforce your brand and attract customers to your site.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

Foursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzzBuild Your Business: How to Establish Your Expertise

Does Facebook's Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Facebook’s privacy-policy fracas just won’t go away. If you market your e-business through social networking channels, do these privacy changes affect your business? InternetNews.com reports on the latest development.

A coalition of 10 privacy and consumer advocacy groups is calling on federal regulators to take action against Facebook and force the leading social network to restore some of the privacy controls that were recently changed in a massive site-wide overhaul.

The groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook's changes violated the provisions concerning unfair and deceptive practices in federal consumer protection law.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

EPIC's complaint argues that Facebook's changes have broadened the scope of information treated as publicly available to include profile photos, lists of friends and gender. Publicly available information can be seen by anyone on the Web—not just Facebook users.

Read the complete Facebook privacy article

Does Facebook’s Privacy Policy Violate the Law?Unemployment rate improves in Tennessee

Internet Retailers Scrambling With Last-Minute Offers

The clock is ticking. There's still time. But not much.

With Christmas just a day and a half away, retailers around the Web have been hanging banners on their sites reminding customers that their last-minute purchases can still arrive in time for the holiday.

At Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the largest world's biggest e-commerce vendor, the home page displays an image of the Kindle e-reader, wrapped in a red ribbon alongside red and green text screaming "Kindle for Christmas" and offering free one-day shipping for the device -- which Amazon claims has been its best selling item this holiday season. At the top of the screen sits a clock, ticking down the seconds until the free in-time shipping offer expires, at midnight tonight.

For the rest of its wares, Amazon is advising customers to place their orders by 4:30 pm PT to receive them on Christmas Eve, using the firm's one-day shipping service.

Amazon's not the only one pushing eleventh-hour action. Toys "R" Us is talking up its express shipping option -- ending at 3 pm ET -- on its Web site, while over at NewEgg.com, the computer and electronics vendor, consumers have until 3 pm PT to get their orders in to ensure delivery by Christmas. Meanwhile, BestBuy.com is highlighting store pickup for online orders placed before 3 pm local time on Christmas Eve and showcasing last-minute deals on devices like the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod Touch. Online Selling Gets Extended

The waning hours of the holiday shopping crush put a cap on a season that industry analysts have described as something of a departure from previous years. From Monday Dec. 14 through Sunday Dec. 20, the last full week before the holiday, online sales were up 14.6 percent from the comparable period last year, according to Web marketing firm Coremetrics.

For Friday and Saturday of that week, sales were up 24 percent from last year, and up 20 percent on Sunday.

"In past years, we have seen a big drop in online sales the weekend before Christmas largely because of the end of free shipping," John Squire, Coremetrics' chief strategy officer, said of the better-than-expected run-up to the holiday. "But this season broke with tradition. We saw a lot of online buying starting late Friday afternoon and continuing over the weekend. Clearly, retailers have done a tremendous job of pushing bargains not just on a specific day, but throughout the season."

Online metrics firm comScore reported a similar uptick late in the season, tallying double-digit increases in spending over the weekend, compared to a modest 4 percent improvement in overall sales since Nov. 1.

Of course, the weather did its part to nudge e-commerce vendors into the black. Over the weekend, the East Coast was socked with a record-setting snowstorm that kept shoppers at home, redirecting money that could have been spent at the malls into online coffers.

"The major snowstorms hitting the eastern seaboard over the weekend appear to have given holiday e-commerce an additional boost, resulting in the heaviest online spending week on record at $4.8 billion," comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement.

"Consumers have clearly continued to spend online later into the season this year," Fulgoni added. "Retailers have been very aggressive with late season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off."

Internet Retailers Scrambling With Last-Minute OffersNovember retail results suggest tough run-up to holidays

10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

As an e-commerce entrepreneur, nothing makes you happier than multitudes people shopping online during the holiday season— except perhaps having them all shop on your site. And although the holidays are festive and fun, don’t let security take a holiday. The folks at eSecurityPlanet.com have 10 security tips to keep your business — and even your home network — safe all year ‘round.

Cyber-safety shouldn’t take a break when heading home for the holidays. Between free time, new toys, and family travel, year-end festivities pose plenty of opportunity for on-line compromise. So stay safe this holiday season by avoiding these ten pitfalls. 10) Malicious Season’s Greetings

December often brings an influx of e-mail greetings from distant family and friends, inviting recipients to “click here” to view an e-card, video or animation. Alas, not all such messages are sincere. While some are harmless hoax-mails, cyber-criminals have been known to disguise viruses and spyware as phony season’s greetings. So don’t let holiday spirit trump common sense; open all file attachments and URLs with care. 9) Phishing for Friends

From Facebook to Twitter, many users will use holiday down time to catch up on social networking. Unfortunately, social networking sites have become a fast-growing vector for phishing — especially targeted phishing attacks. Was that friend invitation really sent by your old colleague Joe? Think twice before clicking — and never ever give out personal data to new “friends” that you don’t really know.

Read the complete holiday security story

Foursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzz10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

IMshopping, a human-assisted shopping assistance platform has recently announced an eBay-certified Merchant Answers service to all eBay sellers. The new widget provides merchants with a new channel from which they can create a community and offer shopping assistance.

How It Works for eBay Sellers

When people browse an eBay listing, there is a quick link to “Ask Seller a Question.”  Potential buyers can ask for details on the product, shipping, payment and returns, or they can choose other. When a seller integrates the IMshopping Merchant Answers platform product questions are answered by the service.

IMshopping is an eBay Certified Service Provider. To use the Merchant Answers Program, you you’re your account to IM shopping and the service will be available on all your listings. When a buyer asks a question about the product, the question is routed to the IMshopping community for the answer.

IMshopping's Merchant Answers service lets you answer customer questions from just about anywhere.
(Click for larger image).

To answer questions, sellers can use their own employees, hire an IMshopping expert — a virtual employee with whom you set up a payment-per-answer agreement — or build their own community so that anyone can answer the question. In this case a moderator reviews and accepts any community-offered answers before they are published.

On eBay it is all too easy for a potential buyer to click “back” and move to another listing when they are searching and shopping. The biggest boost to sellers is that when you provide immediate customer service and answer a buyer’s question, you can keep them on your own product pages.

IMshopping Across Multiple Channels

Prashant Nedungadi, CEO of IMshopping, believes that when people ask questions they want your customer service to be involved in the transaction.  In using this service merchants can provide faster, quality customer service and also build a community of shopping guides at the same time.

The new eBay widget expands on IMshopping’s virtual communities by giving merchants another channel through which they can communicate with their customers.  The service is already available for your own site, Facebook fan pages, Twitter and other spaces. You can link your IMshopping answer service between all of these sites.

Nedungadi said when you use the service across multiple channels, it really lets your customers “ask anywhere,” and it lets you, in return, answer anywhere.

Pricing and Availability

The new widget for eBay sellers is available now and included in IMshopping’s Merchant Answers service.  Pricing for the human-powered Merchant Answers service is based on usage; however the company suggests that the starting price is in the $500 range for fewer than 1 million visits.  IMshopping also offers a limited, but free one-on-one chat service and also offers enterprise-volume services.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for SellersObama takes softer tone with community banks

How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular Products

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in or whether you conduct it online, offline or both. As Andrew Lock says, everything is marketing and marketing is everything. SmallBusinessComputing.com has Andrew’s latest tip-filled Web TV show of Help! My Business Sucks.

There are lots of methods to persuade people, but one you might not have considered is…fun! There’s a fascinating test in this episode, designed to get people to use the stairs rather than an escalator. I think you’ll be surprised at the result.

Our question for this episode revolves around a challenge that’s common to many businesses — how do you sell a product that lots of other businesses sell? In other words, how do you encourage customers to buy from YOU rather than your competitors? Listen up, you can apply the strategy I reveal to YOUR business.

Watch Andrew Lock’s marketing Web TV show

How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular ProductsShoppers, stores make Christmas fit the tough times

Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

IMshopping, a human-assisted shopping assistance platform has recently announced an eBay-certified Merchant Answers service to all eBay sellers. The new widget provides merchants with a new channel from which they can create a community and offer shopping assistance.

How It Works for eBay Sellers

When people browse an eBay listing, there is a quick link to “Ask Seller a Question.”  Potential buyers can ask for details on the product, shipping, payment and returns, or they can choose other. When a seller integrates the IMshopping Merchant Answers platform product questions are answered by the service.

IMshopping is an eBay Certified Service Provider. To use the Merchant Answers Program, you you’re your account to IM shopping and the service will be available on all your listings. When a buyer asks a question about the product, the question is routed to the IMshopping community for the answer.

IMshopping's Merchant Answers service lets you answer customer questions from just about anywhere.
(Click for larger image).

To answer questions, sellers can use their own employees, hire an IMshopping expert — a virtual employee with whom you set up a payment-per-answer agreement — or build their own community so that anyone can answer the question. In this case a moderator reviews and accepts any community-offered answers before they are published.

On eBay it is all too easy for a potential buyer to click “back” and move to another listing when they are searching and shopping. The biggest boost to sellers is that when you provide immediate customer service and answer a buyer’s question, you can keep them on your own product pages.

IMshopping Across Multiple Channels

Prashant Nedungadi, CEO of IMshopping, believes that when people ask questions they want your customer service to be involved in the transaction.  In using this service merchants can provide faster, quality customer service and also build a community of shopping guides at the same time.

The new eBay widget expands on IMshopping’s virtual communities by giving merchants another channel through which they can communicate with their customers.  The service is already available for your own site, Facebook fan pages, Twitter and other spaces. You can link your IMshopping answer service between all of these sites.

Nedungadi said when you use the service across multiple channels, it really lets your customers “ask anywhere,” and it lets you, in return, answer anywhere.

Pricing and Availability

The new widget for eBay sellers is available now and included in IMshopping’s Merchant Answers service.  Pricing for the human-powered Merchant Answers service is based on usage; however the company suggests that the starting price is in the $500 range for fewer than 1 million visits.  IMshopping also offers a limited, but free one-on-one chat service and also offers enterprise-volume services.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for SellersObama takes softer tone with community banks

Does Facebook's Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Facebook’s privacy-policy fracas just won’t go away. If you market your e-business through social networking channels, do these privacy changes affect your business? InternetNews.com reports on the latest development.

A coalition of 10 privacy and consumer advocacy groups is calling on federal regulators to take action against Facebook and force the leading social network to restore some of the privacy controls that were recently changed in a massive site-wide overhaul.

The groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook's changes violated the provisions concerning unfair and deceptive practices in federal consumer protection law.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

EPIC's complaint argues that Facebook's changes have broadened the scope of information treated as publicly available to include profile photos, lists of friends and gender. Publicly available information can be seen by anyone on the Web—not just Facebook users.

Read the complete Facebook privacy article

Unemployment rate improves in TennesseeDoes Facebook’s Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Build Your Business: How to Establish Your Expertise

As a business owner you have an expertise that you can use to build your online brand and to market your business. Being seen as an expert in your field gives your customers added reason to trust you, and it can strengthen your brand and attract well-informed customers to your business. In this article, I’ll explain what is involved in marketing yourself as an expert and how you can start doing it today.

A blog like this one from Women's Clothing and Fashion is a good way to post articles relevant to your expertise and your customers, and you have full control over it.
(Click for larger image).

Before we begin, it’s important to understand that establishing yourself as an expert isn’t something that will happen overnight. It is a process that takes time and is the result of consistent work — it's not something you can do today and forget about it from there. However it is something that can immeasurably benefit your business and, it’s you can and should start working on today.

What’s Your Expertise?

When marketing yourself as an expert, you must first determine your area of expertise. It should be something you are already knowledgeable about so you don’t need to do lots of research or learn new skills. It should be directly relevant to your business and be useful to your customers and prospective customers.

It might be something you have overlooked as being so self-evident that you think everyone knows it already when, in fact, they don't. Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate the depth of knowledge you've amassed while working in your business over time.

If you sell jewelry online you know a lot about stones and metals, about clasps and jewelry lengths and gift ideas. If you sell yacht supplies you know about ropes and safety gear and non-corroding materials.

Whatever you sell, make a list of the special things about your products and your industry that will help customers know what to buy, how to care for it, how to decide between competing products and what to give as gifts. This is your expertise.

Strut Your Stuff

As the owner of an e-commerce site the Internet is your marketplace, and it's also where you can start developing yourself as an expert in your field. Start by writing short articles on topics related to your business. These shouldn't be sales pitches. Instead they should be informative articles that help a reader learn more about what you sell. Make them short and concise — you're not writing a thesis, and you don't want to give away all your information in one article.

Use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to publicize articles you have written.
(Click for larger image).

The best place to start is with your own blog. A blog is simple to set up, you can link it to your store site, and you're in control of it so you can publish whatever you like whenever you like. However, a blog does require that people come to you to read your posts so, when you're starting out, you will be writing to a very small audience. And the only way to build a larger audience is to keeping writing.

To advertise your blog posts, use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can post messages on these services to announce your new blog posts. Other people will see them and can visit your blog. They may even retweet your posts so that people who follow them, and who don't necessarily follow you, will see these notices, too.

Include a signup link on your blog so that your readers can sign up to receive regular newsletters from you. Use these newsletters to send readers information about the posts that you have recently made. They'll stay informed even if they haven't visited your site recently. Your newsletters don't have to be detailed and can simply include links to your recent posts.

Other Places to Publish

Other options for publishing include writing small eBooks and either giving them away as a method of promoting your business or as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. These also help establish your expertise, and they don't have to be onerous to create as you can repackage older blog posts as eBook content.

Article syndication is another tool you can use. T

Online article sites like EzineArticles.com let you post articles related to your expertise.
(Click for larger image).here are many online services such as eHow.com and eZinearticles.com that will post articles you write. Most of these do not permit direct advertising, but they do give you a forum to strut your expertise, and you can include links back to your blog and store from your articles. The best sites will check your articles to ensure they meet with their requirements, but these generally are not too stringent.

Most sites let you publish the same content you provide them on your own blog, so you can get double duty from your blog posts. The benefit of article sites is that they generally rank very high in search engine listings, which means you can attract readers by writing for them — readers who may never find your articles any other way.

Contribute to Forums

Another way to share your expertise is to post on online forums that relate to your area of expertise. It's best to post answers to other people's questions and avoid directly advertising your product. You can generally include links back to your shop site or blog within the signature line of your forum posts, and this will drive traffic from the forum to your site.

Swap Posts

Once you have some online posts and articles as proof of your work, look for sites that complement your site and offer to write a blog post for that site. Ask for a link back to your site from the post to help you build traffic by harnessing the readership of the other blog. Consider also swapping posts with another site — you write for them and they write for you so you can both benefit.

In addition to writing original posts, you can aggregate information by looking for interesting information on the Web that’s relevant to your customers. Write a post listing these sites and what they contain. Doing this helps people see you as a site that provides good information whether by writing it yourself or finding it and sharing it. You’ll be seen as a trusted source of information.

Becoming an acknowledged expert in your field doesn't cost you a lot of cash. Spending a little time and effort writing articles and seeking out places to publish will help you build your expertise, reinforce your brand and attract customers to your site.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

Build Your Business: How to Establish Your ExpertiseFoursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzz

Internet Retailers Scrambling With Last-Minute Offers

The clock is ticking. There's still time. But not much.

With Christmas just a day and a half away, retailers around the Web have been hanging banners on their sites reminding customers that their last-minute purchases can still arrive in time for the holiday.

At Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the largest world's biggest e-commerce vendor, the home page displays an image of the Kindle e-reader, wrapped in a red ribbon alongside red and green text screaming "Kindle for Christmas" and offering free one-day shipping for the device -- which Amazon claims has been its best selling item this holiday season. At the top of the screen sits a clock, ticking down the seconds until the free in-time shipping offer expires, at midnight tonight.

For the rest of its wares, Amazon is advising customers to place their orders by 4:30 pm PT to receive them on Christmas Eve, using the firm's one-day shipping service.

Amazon's not the only one pushing eleventh-hour action. Toys "R" Us is talking up its express shipping option -- ending at 3 pm ET -- on its Web site, while over at NewEgg.com, the computer and electronics vendor, consumers have until 3 pm PT to get their orders in to ensure delivery by Christmas. Meanwhile, BestBuy.com is highlighting store pickup for online orders placed before 3 pm local time on Christmas Eve and showcasing last-minute deals on devices like the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod Touch. Online Selling Gets Extended

The waning hours of the holiday shopping crush put a cap on a season that industry analysts have described as something of a departure from previous years. From Monday Dec. 14 through Sunday Dec. 20, the last full week before the holiday, online sales were up 14.6 percent from the comparable period last year, according to Web marketing firm Coremetrics.

For Friday and Saturday of that week, sales were up 24 percent from last year, and up 20 percent on Sunday.

"In past years, we have seen a big drop in online sales the weekend before Christmas largely because of the end of free shipping," John Squire, Coremetrics' chief strategy officer, said of the better-than-expected run-up to the holiday. "But this season broke with tradition. We saw a lot of online buying starting late Friday afternoon and continuing over the weekend. Clearly, retailers have done a tremendous job of pushing bargains not just on a specific day, but throughout the season."

Online metrics firm comScore reported a similar uptick late in the season, tallying double-digit increases in spending over the weekend, compared to a modest 4 percent improvement in overall sales since Nov. 1.

Of course, the weather did its part to nudge e-commerce vendors into the black. Over the weekend, the East Coast was socked with a record-setting snowstorm that kept shoppers at home, redirecting money that could have been spent at the malls into online coffers.

"The major snowstorms hitting the eastern seaboard over the weekend appear to have given holiday e-commerce an additional boost, resulting in the heaviest online spending week on record at $4.8 billion," comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement.

"Consumers have clearly continued to spend online later into the season this year," Fulgoni added. "Retailers have been very aggressive with late season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off."

Internet Retailers Scrambling With Last-Minute OffersNovember retail results suggest tough run-up to holidays

10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

As an e-commerce entrepreneur, nothing makes you happier than multitudes people shopping online during the holiday season— except perhaps having them all shop on your site. And although the holidays are festive and fun, don’t let security take a holiday. The folks at eSecurityPlanet.com have 10 security tips to keep your business — and even your home network — safe all year ‘round.

Cyber-safety shouldn’t take a break when heading home for the holidays. Between free time, new toys, and family travel, year-end festivities pose plenty of opportunity for on-line compromise. So stay safe this holiday season by avoiding these ten pitfalls. 10) Malicious Season’s Greetings

December often brings an influx of e-mail greetings from distant family and friends, inviting recipients to “click here” to view an e-card, video or animation. Alas, not all such messages are sincere. While some are harmless hoax-mails, cyber-criminals have been known to disguise viruses and spyware as phony season’s greetings. So don’t let holiday spirit trump common sense; open all file attachments and URLs with care. 9) Phishing for Friends

From Facebook to Twitter, many users will use holiday down time to catch up on social networking. Unfortunately, social networking sites have become a fast-growing vector for phishing — especially targeted phishing attacks. Was that friend invitation really sent by your old colleague Joe? Think twice before clicking — and never ever give out personal data to new “friends” that you don’t really know.

Read the complete holiday security story

10 Security Tips for a Happier HolidayFoursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzz

How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular Products

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in or whether you conduct it online, offline or both. As Andrew Lock says, everything is marketing and marketing is everything. SmallBusinessComputing.com has Andrew’s latest tip-filled Web TV show of Help! My Business Sucks.

There are lots of methods to persuade people, but one you might not have considered is…fun! There’s a fascinating test in this episode, designed to get people to use the stairs rather than an escalator. I think you’ll be surprised at the result.

Our question for this episode revolves around a challenge that’s common to many businesses — how do you sell a product that lots of other businesses sell? In other words, how do you encourage customers to buy from YOU rather than your competitors? Listen up, you can apply the strategy I reveal to YOUR business.

Watch Andrew Lock’s marketing Web TV show

How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular ProductsShoppers, stores make Christmas fit the tough times

How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular Products

Facebook’s privacy-policy fracas just won’t go away. If you market your e-business through social networking channels, do these privacy changes affect your business? InternetNews.com reports on the latest development.

A coalition of 10 privacy and consumer advocacy groups is calling on federal regulators to take action against Facebook and force the leading social network to restore some of the privacy controls that were recently changed in a massive site-wide overhaul.

The groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook's changes violated the provisions concerning unfair and deceptive practices in federal consumer protection law.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

EPIC's complaint argues that Facebook's changes have broadened the scope of information treated as publicly available to include profile photos, lists of friends and gender. Publicly available information can be seen by anyone on the Web—not just Facebook users.

Read the complete Facebook privacy article

Comcast’s plan to buy NBC faces scrutinyDoes Facebook’s Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Does Facebook's Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Facebook’s privacy-policy fracas just won’t go away. If you market your e-business through social networking channels, do these privacy changes affect your business? InternetNews.com reports on the latest development.

A coalition of 10 privacy and consumer advocacy groups is calling on federal regulators to take action against Facebook and force the leading social network to restore some of the privacy controls that were recently changed in a massive site-wide overhaul.

The groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook's changes violated the provisions concerning unfair and deceptive practices in federal consumer protection law.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

EPIC's complaint argues that Facebook's changes have broadened the scope of information treated as publicly available to include profile photos, lists of friends and gender. Publicly available information can be seen by anyone on the Web—not just Facebook users.

Read the complete Facebook privacy article

Does Facebook’s Privacy Policy Violate the Law?Unemployment rate improves in Tennessee

Internet Retailers Scrambling With Last-Minute Offers

As an e-commerce entrepreneur, nothing makes you happier than multitudes people shopping online during the holiday season— except perhaps having them all shop on your site. And although the holidays are festive and fun, don’t let security take a holiday. The folks at eSecurityPlanet.com have 10 security tips to keep your business — and even your home network — safe all year ‘round.

Cyber-safety shouldn’t take a break when heading home for the holidays. Between free time, new toys, and family travel, year-end festivities pose plenty of opportunity for on-line compromise. So stay safe this holiday season by avoiding these ten pitfalls. 10) Malicious Season’s Greetings

December often brings an influx of e-mail greetings from distant family and friends, inviting recipients to “click here” to view an e-card, video or animation. Alas, not all such messages are sincere. While some are harmless hoax-mails, cyber-criminals have been known to disguise viruses and spyware as phony season’s greetings. So don’t let holiday spirit trump common sense; open all file attachments and URLs with care. 9) Phishing for Friends

From Facebook to Twitter, many users will use holiday down time to catch up on social networking. Unfortunately, social networking sites have become a fast-growing vector for phishing — especially targeted phishing attacks. Was that friend invitation really sent by your old colleague Joe? Think twice before clicking — and never ever give out personal data to new “friends” that you don’t really know.

Read the complete holiday security story

Returns can bedevil retailers10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

As an e-commerce entrepreneur, nothing makes you happier than multitudes people shopping online during the holiday season— except perhaps having them all shop on your site. And although the holidays are festive and fun, don’t let security take a holiday. The folks at eSecurityPlanet.com have 10 security tips to keep your business — and even your home network — safe all year ‘round.

Cyber-safety shouldn’t take a break when heading home for the holidays. Between free time, new toys, and family travel, year-end festivities pose plenty of opportunity for on-line compromise. So stay safe this holiday season by avoiding these ten pitfalls. 10) Malicious Season’s Greetings

December often brings an influx of e-mail greetings from distant family and friends, inviting recipients to “click here” to view an e-card, video or animation. Alas, not all such messages are sincere. While some are harmless hoax-mails, cyber-criminals have been known to disguise viruses and spyware as phony season’s greetings. So don’t let holiday spirit trump common sense; open all file attachments and URLs with care. 9) Phishing for Friends

From Facebook to Twitter, many users will use holiday down time to catch up on social networking. Unfortunately, social networking sites have become a fast-growing vector for phishing — especially targeted phishing attacks. Was that friend invitation really sent by your old colleague Joe? Think twice before clicking — and never ever give out personal data to new “friends” that you don’t really know.

Read the complete holiday security story

Foursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzz10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

IMshopping, a human-assisted shopping assistance platform has recently announced an eBay-certified Merchant Answers service to all eBay sellers. The new widget provides merchants with a new channel from which they can create a community and offer shopping assistance.

How It Works for eBay Sellers

When people browse an eBay listing, there is a quick link to “Ask Seller a Question.”  Potential buyers can ask for details on the product, shipping, payment and returns, or they can choose other. When a seller integrates the IMshopping Merchant Answers platform product questions are answered by the service.

IMshopping is an eBay Certified Service Provider. To use the Merchant Answers Program, you you’re your account to IM shopping and the service will be available on all your listings. When a buyer asks a question about the product, the question is routed to the IMshopping community for the answer.

IMshopping's Merchant Answers service lets you answer customer questions from just about anywhere.
(Click for larger image).

To answer questions, sellers can use their own employees, hire an IMshopping expert — a virtual employee with whom you set up a payment-per-answer agreement — or build their own community so that anyone can answer the question. In this case a moderator reviews and accepts any community-offered answers before they are published.

On eBay it is all too easy for a potential buyer to click “back” and move to another listing when they are searching and shopping. The biggest boost to sellers is that when you provide immediate customer service and answer a buyer’s question, you can keep them on your own product pages.

IMshopping Across Multiple Channels

Prashant Nedungadi, CEO of IMshopping, believes that when people ask questions they want your customer service to be involved in the transaction.  In using this service merchants can provide faster, quality customer service and also build a community of shopping guides at the same time.

The new eBay widget expands on IMshopping’s virtual communities by giving merchants another channel through which they can communicate with their customers.  The service is already available for your own site, Facebook fan pages, Twitter and other spaces. You can link your IMshopping answer service between all of these sites.

Nedungadi said when you use the service across multiple channels, it really lets your customers “ask anywhere,” and it lets you, in return, answer anywhere.

Pricing and Availability

The new widget for eBay sellers is available now and included in IMshopping’s Merchant Answers service.  Pricing for the human-powered Merchant Answers service is based on usage; however the company suggests that the starting price is in the $500 range for fewer than 1 million visits.  IMshopping also offers a limited, but free one-on-one chat service and also offers enterprise-volume services.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Obama takes softer tone with community banksEbay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

Build Your Business: How to Establish Your Expertise

As a business owner you have an expertise that you can use to build your online brand and to market your business. Being seen as an expert in your field gives your customers added reason to trust you, and it can strengthen your brand and attract well-informed customers to your business. In this article, I’ll explain what is involved in marketing yourself as an expert and how you can start doing it today.

A blog like this one from Women's Clothing and Fashion is a good way to post articles relevant to your expertise and your customers, and you have full control over it.
(Click for larger image).

Before we begin, it’s important to understand that establishing yourself as an expert isn’t something that will happen overnight. It is a process that takes time and is the result of consistent work — it's not something you can do today and forget about it from there. However it is something that can immeasurably benefit your business and, it’s you can and should start working on today.

What’s Your Expertise?

When marketing yourself as an expert, you must first determine your area of expertise. It should be something you are already knowledgeable about so you don’t need to do lots of research or learn new skills. It should be directly relevant to your business and be useful to your customers and prospective customers.

It might be something you have overlooked as being so self-evident that you think everyone knows it already when, in fact, they don't. Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate the depth of knowledge you've amassed while working in your business over time.

If you sell jewelry online you know a lot about stones and metals, about clasps and jewelry lengths and gift ideas. If you sell yacht supplies you know about ropes and safety gear and non-corroding materials.

Whatever you sell, make a list of the special things about your products and your industry that will help customers know what to buy, how to care for it, how to decide between competing products and what to give as gifts. This is your expertise.

Strut Your Stuff

As the owner of an e-commerce site the Internet is your marketplace, and it's also where you can start developing yourself as an expert in your field. Start by writing short articles on topics related to your business. These shouldn't be sales pitches. Instead they should be informative articles that help a reader learn more about what you sell. Make them short and concise — you're not writing a thesis, and you don't want to give away all your information in one article.

Use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to publicize articles you have written.
(Click for larger image).

The best place to start is with your own blog. A blog is simple to set up, you can link it to your store site, and you're in control of it so you can publish whatever you like whenever you like. However, a blog does require that people come to you to read your posts so, when you're starting out, you will be writing to a very small audience. And the only way to build a larger audience is to keeping writing.

To advertise your blog posts, use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can post messages on these services to announce your new blog posts. Other people will see them and can visit your blog. They may even retweet your posts so that people who follow them, and who don't necessarily follow you, will see these notices, too.

Include a signup link on your blog so that your readers can sign up to receive regular newsletters from you. Use these newsletters to send readers information about the posts that you have recently made. They'll stay informed even if they haven't visited your site recently. Your newsletters don't have to be detailed and can simply include links to your recent posts.

Other Places to Publish

Other options for publishing include writing small eBooks and either giving them away as a method of promoting your business or as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. These also help establish your expertise, and they don't have to be onerous to create as you can repackage older blog posts as eBook content.

Article syndication is another tool you can use. T

Online article sites like EzineArticles.com let you post articles related to your expertise.
(Click for larger image).here are many online services such as eHow.com and eZinearticles.com that will post articles you write. Most of these do not permit direct advertising, but they do give you a forum to strut your expertise, and you can include links back to your blog and store from your articles. The best sites will check your articles to ensure they meet with their requirements, but these generally are not too stringent.

Most sites let you publish the same content you provide them on your own blog, so you can get double duty from your blog posts. The benefit of article sites is that they generally rank very high in search engine listings, which means you can attract readers by writing for them — readers who may never find your articles any other way.

Contribute to Forums

Another way to share your expertise is to post on online forums that relate to your area of expertise. It's best to post answers to other people's questions and avoid directly advertising your product. You can generally include links back to your shop site or blog within the signature line of your forum posts, and this will drive traffic from the forum to your site.

Swap Posts

Once you have some online posts and articles as proof of your work, look for sites that complement your site and offer to write a blog post for that site. Ask for a link back to your site from the post to help you build traffic by harnessing the readership of the other blog. Consider also swapping posts with another site — you write for them and they write for you so you can both benefit.

In addition to writing original posts, you can aggregate information by looking for interesting information on the Web that’s relevant to your customers. Write a post listing these sites and what they contain. Doing this helps people see you as a site that provides good information whether by writing it yourself or finding it and sharing it. You’ll be seen as a trusted source of information.

Becoming an acknowledged expert in your field doesn't cost you a lot of cash. Spending a little time and effort writing articles and seeking out places to publish will help you build your expertise, reinforce your brand and attract customers to your site.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

Build Your Business: How to Establish Your ExpertiseFoursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzz

Open Source E-Commerce: Winners and Losers in 2009

For the last year we have compiled monthly statistics on the top Open Source eCommerce programs, including several free or nearly-free proprietary programs that are sold for less than some OSC programs. "Open Source" means free to look at and to modify, not free of cost: about half of the top OSC programs reviewed are sold for a fee.

The statistics we compiled include the raw Google search results for each of the programs. Over time the results become more meaningful as trends and rankings emerge. We discuss the methodology at the end of this report.

OsCommerce has enjoyed a long reign as the most popular Open Source eCommerce (OSC) program, with Zen Cart close behind. While osCommerce and Zen Cart still remain the most popular programs in terms of Google’s raw search results, Magento and several other newer carts have been rising rapidly. At the current rate, Magento is projected to overtake osCommerce by August, 2010.

The Contenders

We followed twenty-three programs over the past year, which represents approximately 50 million Internet pages both at the beginning and at end of the reporting period, for a consistently stable industry population. The programs researched include: osCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, XT-Commerce, Cube Cart, X-Cart, PrestaShop, Quick Cart, Ubercart, CRE Loaded, CS Cart, osC-Max, Shopify, Virtue Mart, Zeus Cart, EOS Online Merchant, osCommerce Project (now osQuantum), Lite Commerce, Open Freeway, Dash Commerce, OSC-SS, IOMPI, and JadaSite.

In terms of number of pages, seven of the OSC programs gained a significant number of pages over the last year, thirteen programs lost, and two programs (Cube Cart and osQuantum (formerly the osCommerce Project) held steady throughout the year.

In terms of rank order, osCommerce and Zen Cart remained at the top, the Russian-based X-Cart dropped three slots to end in sixth position. This allowed California-based Magento, the German-based XT:Commerce, and the UK-based Cube Cart to each move up one position.

The Biggest Winners

Magento is far and away the winner in the page popularity contest, more than doubling the number of pages over the past year. This is a rate of nearly a half million pages added each month. Magento 1.0 was released in March, 2008.

But PrestaShop jumped the highest in rank order, leaping five positions from 12th to 7th. It wasn’t even in the Top 10 one year ago. PrestaShop 1.0 launched in July 2008, the most recently released program we studied.

XT:Commerce gained at a rate of nearly 200,000 pages added each month. However, due to stiff competition the program dropped in rank by three positions to finish the year in sixth place.

TopTen E-Cartsfor 2009RankDecember 2009January 20091osCommerceosCommerce2Zen CartZen Cart3MagentoX-Cart4XT:CommerceMagento5Cube CartXT:Commerce6X-CartCube Cart7PrestaShopQuick Cart8Quick CartCRE Loaded9UbercartUbercart10CRE LoadedosC-Max

The number of pages on UberCart slightly increased from 629,000 to 740,000. However, it began and ended the year in ninth position.

In the up-and-coming-new-programs category, EOS Online Merchant increased from nearly 27,000 to 58,200 pages. However, due to changes in positions of other programs, it decreased in rank from fifteenth to sixteenth.

The Biggest Losers

During the last year, the popularity of osCommerce plummeted 54 percent, losing 16 million pages. At the time of this report, the Grand Dame of the OSC world still has more than twice the number of pages as Magento. However at current rates, osCommerce and Magento will each have 11 million pages next July, and by August Magento will have surpassed it.

Zen Cart also steadily declined in popularity, sliding from a peak of 11 million pages down to slightly more than eight million by December 2009. This is a run rate of a quarter of a million pages lost every month this year.

The Zen Cart team has promised a new release each year since 2007; however, in April of this year it gave the vaporware a new number — Zen Cart 2.0 — and still did not release it.

CRE Loaded dropped only two positions, from eighth most popular to tenth. However, it lost about half the number of pages it had at the start of the year. It began with about 1.5 million and ended with about 600,000 pages. The CRE Loaded team made some marketing blunders that were not well-received by their market and, despite many mea culpas, apparently never regained their audience.

They also shifted their strategy to focus on a payment module program called CRE Secure and doggedly pushed store owners about PCI Compliance, but the marketing messages were confusing. The typical online store owner will learn confusing industry acronyms when necessary, not when it is convenient for vendors.

Likewise, osC-Max dropped two positions, from 10th place to 12th. It lost about 25 percent of the number of pages it had a year ago. The osC-Max team made no major changes over the past year, so the losses are likely due to the general migration toward Magento.

Virtue Mart, formerly known as mambo-phpShop, lost about a thousand references per month over the last year, starting and ending the year in fourteenth position. Virtue Mart is an OSC program designed as a plug-in for the Mambo or Joomla content management system.

LiteCommerce is a light version of X-Cart. The group lost about 13% of page references over the past year. Interestingly, the team has focused its attention away from both Litecommerce and X-Cart on a new, 100% AJAX-based program called ECWid that can be integrated with any web site in about five minutes. We will report on and begin following this program through the next year.

Shopify lost nearly 100,000 pages over the course of the year, dropping from 312,000 to 215,000. Shopify is a hosted ecommerce solution - no installation required - for small online retailers built on Ruby on Rails. It was started in 2006.

Holding Steady

Cube Cart and osQuantum maintained the same levels of page popularity throughout the year, ending the year with a non-significant change in number of pages related to their programs.

Cube Cart is available in both a free version and a for-fee version. Originally released in 2003, it has maintained a small feature set that is very stable. While it is not based on osCommerce, many of the functions are very similar and therefore familiar to those migrating from osCommerce programs.

The osQuantum group (formerly the osCommerce Project) came out with a bang a little more than a year ago when a splinter group of osCommerce programmers became weary of waiting for the next release of osCommerce to make its way through the group's bureaucracy. The group quickly finished the current version of osCommerce and added some valuable security features to it.

However, marketing and/or copyright issues caused the group to suddenly withdraw their finished version and re-focus their energies on their own program, osQuantum. The group has been quiet for the past few months, apparently hard at work.

Methodology

We performed a Boolean Web search on the same date each month for each of the top OSC programs. Boolean searches use mathematical operators, i.e. AND, OR, NOT and (), to get the most accurate results possible. Repeating the same search over time allows patterns to emerge and thus makes the data more meaningful. Our results and rankings are based on the total number of Google results pages reported for each program at the time the search was conducted.

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10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

As an e-commerce entrepreneur, nothing makes you happier than multitudes people shopping online during the holiday season— except perhaps having them all shop on your site. And although the holidays are festive and fun, don’t let security take a holiday. The folks at eSecurityPlanet.com have 10 security tips to keep your business — and even your home network — safe all year ‘round.

Cyber-safety shouldn’t take a break when heading home for the holidays. Between free time, new toys, and family travel, year-end festivities pose plenty of opportunity for on-line compromise. So stay safe this holiday season by avoiding these ten pitfalls. 10) Malicious Season’s Greetings

December often brings an influx of e-mail greetings from distant family and friends, inviting recipients to “click here” to view an e-card, video or animation. Alas, not all such messages are sincere. While some are harmless hoax-mails, cyber-criminals have been known to disguise viruses and spyware as phony season’s greetings. So don’t let holiday spirit trump common sense; open all file attachments and URLs with care. 9) Phishing for Friends

From Facebook to Twitter, many users will use holiday down time to catch up on social networking. Unfortunately, social networking sites have become a fast-growing vector for phishing — especially targeted phishing attacks. Was that friend invitation really sent by your old colleague Joe? Think twice before clicking — and never ever give out personal data to new “friends” that you don’t really know.

Read the complete holiday security story

10 Security Tips for a Happier HolidayFoursquare social networking site’s future full of marketing buzz

Does Facebook's Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Facebook’s privacy-policy fracas just won’t go away. If you market your e-business through social networking channels, do these privacy changes affect your business? InternetNews.com reports on the latest development.

A coalition of 10 privacy and consumer advocacy groups is calling on federal regulators to take action against Facebook and force the leading social network to restore some of the privacy controls that were recently changed in a massive site-wide overhaul.

The groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook's changes violated the provisions concerning unfair and deceptive practices in federal consumer protection law.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

EPIC's complaint argues that Facebook's changes have broadened the scope of information treated as publicly available to include profile photos, lists of friends and gender. Publicly available information can be seen by anyone on the Web—not just Facebook users.

Read the complete Facebook privacy article

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Internet Retailers Scrambling With Last-Minute Offers

The clock is ticking. There's still time. But not much.

With Christmas just a day and a half away, retailers around the Web have been hanging banners on their sites reminding customers that their last-minute purchases can still arrive in time for the holiday.

At Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the largest world's biggest e-commerce vendor, the home page displays an image of the Kindle e-reader, wrapped in a red ribbon alongside red and green text screaming "Kindle for Christmas" and offering free one-day shipping for the device -- which Amazon claims has been its best selling item this holiday season. At the top of the screen sits a clock, ticking down the seconds until the free in-time shipping offer expires, at midnight tonight.

For the rest of its wares, Amazon is advising customers to place their orders by 4:30 pm PT to receive them on Christmas Eve, using the firm's one-day shipping service.

Amazon's not the only one pushing eleventh-hour action. Toys "R" Us is talking up its express shipping option -- ending at 3 pm ET -- on its Web site, while over at NewEgg.com, the computer and electronics vendor, consumers have until 3 pm PT to get their orders in to ensure delivery by Christmas. Meanwhile, BestBuy.com is highlighting store pickup for online orders placed before 3 pm local time on Christmas Eve and showcasing last-minute deals on devices like the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod Touch. Online Selling Gets Extended

The waning hours of the holiday shopping crush put a cap on a season that industry analysts have described as something of a departure from previous years. From Monday Dec. 14 through Sunday Dec. 20, the last full week before the holiday, online sales were up 14.6 percent from the comparable period last year, according to Web marketing firm Coremetrics.

For Friday and Saturday of that week, sales were up 24 percent from last year, and up 20 percent on Sunday.

"In past years, we have seen a big drop in online sales the weekend before Christmas largely because of the end of free shipping," John Squire, Coremetrics' chief strategy officer, said of the better-than-expected run-up to the holiday. "But this season broke with tradition. We saw a lot of online buying starting late Friday afternoon and continuing over the weekend. Clearly, retailers have done a tremendous job of pushing bargains not just on a specific day, but throughout the season."

Online metrics firm comScore reported a similar uptick late in the season, tallying double-digit increases in spending over the weekend, compared to a modest 4 percent improvement in overall sales since Nov. 1.

Of course, the weather did its part to nudge e-commerce vendors into the black. Over the weekend, the East Coast was socked with a record-setting snowstorm that kept shoppers at home, redirecting money that could have been spent at the malls into online coffers.

"The major snowstorms hitting the eastern seaboard over the weekend appear to have given holiday e-commerce an additional boost, resulting in the heaviest online spending week on record at $4.8 billion," comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement.

"Consumers have clearly continued to spend online later into the season this year," Fulgoni added. "Retailers have been very aggressive with late season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off."

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How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular Products

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in or whether you conduct it online, offline or both. As Andrew Lock says, everything is marketing and marketing is everything. SmallBusinessComputing.com has Andrew’s latest tip-filled Web TV show of Help! My Business Sucks.

There are lots of methods to persuade people, but one you might not have considered is…fun! There’s a fascinating test in this episode, designed to get people to use the stairs rather than an escalator. I think you’ll be surprised at the result.

Our question for this episode revolves around a challenge that’s common to many businesses — how do you sell a product that lots of other businesses sell? In other words, how do you encourage customers to buy from YOU rather than your competitors? Listen up, you can apply the strategy I reveal to YOUR business.

Watch Andrew Lock’s marketing Web TV show

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Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

IMshopping, a human-assisted shopping assistance platform has recently announced an eBay-certified Merchant Answers service to all eBay sellers. The new widget provides merchants with a new channel from which they can create a community and offer shopping assistance.

How It Works for eBay Sellers

When people browse an eBay listing, there is a quick link to “Ask Seller a Question.”  Potential buyers can ask for details on the product, shipping, payment and returns, or they can choose other. When a seller integrates the IMshopping Merchant Answers platform product questions are answered by the service.

IMshopping is an eBay Certified Service Provider. To use the Merchant Answers Program, you you’re your account to IM shopping and the service will be available on all your listings. When a buyer asks a question about the product, the question is routed to the IMshopping community for the answer.

IMshopping's Merchant Answers service lets you answer customer questions from just about anywhere.
(Click for larger image).

To answer questions, sellers can use their own employees, hire an IMshopping expert — a virtual employee with whom you set up a payment-per-answer agreement — or build their own community so that anyone can answer the question. In this case a moderator reviews and accepts any community-offered answers before they are published.

On eBay it is all too easy for a potential buyer to click “back” and move to another listing when they are searching and shopping. The biggest boost to sellers is that when you provide immediate customer service and answer a buyer’s question, you can keep them on your own product pages.

IMshopping Across Multiple Channels

Prashant Nedungadi, CEO of IMshopping, believes that when people ask questions they want your customer service to be involved in the transaction.  In using this service merchants can provide faster, quality customer service and also build a community of shopping guides at the same time.

The new eBay widget expands on IMshopping’s virtual communities by giving merchants another channel through which they can communicate with their customers.  The service is already available for your own site, Facebook fan pages, Twitter and other spaces. You can link your IMshopping answer service between all of these sites.

Nedungadi said when you use the service across multiple channels, it really lets your customers “ask anywhere,” and it lets you, in return, answer anywhere.

Pricing and Availability

The new widget for eBay sellers is available now and included in IMshopping’s Merchant Answers service.  Pricing for the human-powered Merchant Answers service is based on usage; however the company suggests that the starting price is in the $500 range for fewer than 1 million visits.  IMshopping also offers a limited, but free one-on-one chat service and also offers enterprise-volume services.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Obama takes softer tone with community banksEbay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

Build Your Business: How to Establish Your Expertise

As a business owner you have an expertise that you can use to build your online brand and to market your business. Being seen as an expert in your field gives your customers added reason to trust you, and it can strengthen your brand and attract well-informed customers to your business. In this article, I’ll explain what is involved in marketing yourself as an expert and how you can start doing it today.

A blog like this one from Women's Clothing and Fashion is a good way to post articles relevant to your expertise and your customers, and you have full control over it.
(Click for larger image).

Before we begin, it’s important to understand that establishing yourself as an expert isn’t something that will happen overnight. It is a process that takes time and is the result of consistent work — it's not something you can do today and forget about it from there. However it is something that can immeasurably benefit your business and, it’s you can and should start working on today.

What’s Your Expertise?

When marketing yourself as an expert, you must first determine your area of expertise. It should be something you are already knowledgeable about so you don’t need to do lots of research or learn new skills. It should be directly relevant to your business and be useful to your customers and prospective customers.

It might be something you have overlooked as being so self-evident that you think everyone knows it already when, in fact, they don't. Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate the depth of knowledge you've amassed while working in your business over time.

If you sell jewelry online you know a lot about stones and metals, about clasps and jewelry lengths and gift ideas. If you sell yacht supplies you know about ropes and safety gear and non-corroding materials.

Whatever you sell, make a list of the special things about your products and your industry that will help customers know what to buy, how to care for it, how to decide between competing products and what to give as gifts. This is your expertise.

Strut Your Stuff

As the owner of an e-commerce site the Internet is your marketplace, and it's also where you can start developing yourself as an expert in your field. Start by writing short articles on topics related to your business. These shouldn't be sales pitches. Instead they should be informative articles that help a reader learn more about what you sell. Make them short and concise — you're not writing a thesis, and you don't want to give away all your information in one article.

Use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to publicize articles you have written.
(Click for larger image).

The best place to start is with your own blog. A blog is simple to set up, you can link it to your store site, and you're in control of it so you can publish whatever you like whenever you like. However, a blog does require that people come to you to read your posts so, when you're starting out, you will be writing to a very small audience. And the only way to build a larger audience is to keeping writing.

To advertise your blog posts, use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can post messages on these services to announce your new blog posts. Other people will see them and can visit your blog. They may even retweet your posts so that people who follow them, and who don't necessarily follow you, will see these notices, too.

Include a signup link on your blog so that your readers can sign up to receive regular newsletters from you. Use these newsletters to send readers information about the posts that you have recently made. They'll stay informed even if they haven't visited your site recently. Your newsletters don't have to be detailed and can simply include links to your recent posts.

Other Places to Publish

Other options for publishing include writing small eBooks and either giving them away as a method of promoting your business or as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. These also help establish your expertise, and they don't have to be onerous to create as you can repackage older blog posts as eBook content.

Article syndication is another tool you can use. T

Online article sites like EzineArticles.com let you post articles related to your expertise.
(Click for larger image).here are many online services such as eHow.com and eZinearticles.com that will post articles you write. Most of these do not permit direct advertising, but they do give you a forum to strut your expertise, and you can include links back to your blog and store from your articles. The best sites will check your articles to ensure they meet with their requirements, but these generally are not too stringent.

Most sites let you publish the same content you provide them on your own blog, so you can get double duty from your blog posts. The benefit of article sites is that they generally rank very high in search engine listings, which means you can attract readers by writing for them — readers who may never find your articles any other way.

Contribute to Forums

Another way to share your expertise is to post on online forums that relate to your area of expertise. It's best to post answers to other people's questions and avoid directly advertising your product. You can generally include links back to your shop site or blog within the signature line of your forum posts, and this will drive traffic from the forum to your site.

Swap Posts

Once you have some online posts and articles as proof of your work, look for sites that complement your site and offer to write a blog post for that site. Ask for a link back to your site from the post to help you build traffic by harnessing the readership of the other blog. Consider also swapping posts with another site — you write for them and they write for you so you can both benefit.

In addition to writing original posts, you can aggregate information by looking for interesting information on the Web that’s relevant to your customers. Write a post listing these sites and what they contain. Doing this helps people see you as a site that provides good information whether by writing it yourself or finding it and sharing it. You’ll be seen as a trusted source of information.

Becoming an acknowledged expert in your field doesn't cost you a lot of cash. Spending a little time and effort writing articles and seeking out places to publish will help you build your expertise, reinforce your brand and attract customers to your site.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

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Ebay Watch: New IMshopping Widget for Sellers

IMshopping, a human-assisted shopping assistance platform has recently announced an eBay-certified Merchant Answers service to all eBay sellers. The new widget provides merchants with a new channel from which they can create a community and offer shopping assistance.

How It Works for eBay Sellers

When people browse an eBay listing, there is a quick link to “Ask Seller a Question.”  Potential buyers can ask for details on the product, shipping, payment and returns, or they can choose other. When a seller integrates the IMshopping Merchant Answers platform product questions are answered by the service.

IMshopping is an eBay Certified Service Provider. To use the Merchant Answers Program, you you’re your account to IM shopping and the service will be available on all your listings. When a buyer asks a question about the product, the question is routed to the IMshopping community for the answer.

IMshopping's Merchant Answers service lets you answer customer questions from just about anywhere.
(Click for larger image).

To answer questions, sellers can use their own employees, hire an IMshopping expert — a virtual employee with whom you set up a payment-per-answer agreement — or build their own community so that anyone can answer the question. In this case a moderator reviews and accepts any community-offered answers before they are published.

On eBay it is all too easy for a potential buyer to click “back” and move to another listing when they are searching and shopping. The biggest boost to sellers is that when you provide immediate customer service and answer a buyer’s question, you can keep them on your own product pages.

IMshopping Across Multiple Channels

Prashant Nedungadi, CEO of IMshopping, believes that when people ask questions they want your customer service to be involved in the transaction.  In using this service merchants can provide faster, quality customer service and also build a community of shopping guides at the same time.

The new eBay widget expands on IMshopping’s virtual communities by giving merchants another channel through which they can communicate with their customers.  The service is already available for your own site, Facebook fan pages, Twitter and other spaces. You can link your IMshopping answer service between all of these sites.

Nedungadi said when you use the service across multiple channels, it really lets your customers “ask anywhere,” and it lets you, in return, answer anywhere.

Pricing and Availability

The new widget for eBay sellers is available now and included in IMshopping’s Merchant Answers service.  Pricing for the human-powered Merchant Answers service is based on usage; however the company suggests that the starting price is in the $500 range for fewer than 1 million visits.  IMshopping also offers a limited, but free one-on-one chat service and also offers enterprise-volume services.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Yahoo Adds Twitter Tweets to Search Results

Tweeting about your e-business may take on a much larger scale — and much further reach — now that search engines like Yahoo and Google are including relevant tweets. Internetnews.com has the full story.

Yahoo is building on its recent moves to integrate Twitter feeds into News search results with today's announcement of direct integration of relevant tweets into Web search page results for hot topics. The new feature is set to go live today throughout the U.S.

The news follows moves by both Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to embrace the so-called real-time Web by incorporating relevant tweets into their search results.

Last month, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) rolled out a shortcut tab for Twitter results from the popular micro-blogging service, related to news stories. Yahoo also added tabs for Photos and Videos.

Read the Full Twitter Story

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10 Security Tips for a Happier Holiday

As an e-commerce entrepreneur, nothing makes you happier than multitudes people shopping online during the holiday season— except perhaps having them all shop on your site. And although the holidays are festive and fun, don’t let security take a holiday. The folks at eSecurityPlanet.com have 10 security tips to keep your business — and even your home network — safe all year ‘round.

Cyber-safety shouldn’t take a break when heading home for the holidays. Between free time, new toys, and family travel, year-end festivities pose plenty of opportunity for on-line compromise. So stay safe this holiday season by avoiding these ten pitfalls. 10) Malicious Season’s Greetings

December often brings an influx of e-mail greetings from distant family and friends, inviting recipients to “click here” to view an e-card, video or animation. Alas, not all such messages are sincere. While some are harmless hoax-mails, cyber-criminals have been known to disguise viruses and spyware as phony season’s greetings. So don’t let holiday spirit trump common sense; open all file attachments and URLs with care. 9) Phishing for Friends

From Facebook to Twitter, many users will use holiday down time to catch up on social networking. Unfortunately, social networking sites have become a fast-growing vector for phishing — especially targeted phishing attacks. Was that friend invitation really sent by your old colleague Joe? Think twice before clicking — and never ever give out personal data to new “friends” that you don’t really know.

Read the complete holiday security story

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How to Differentiate — and Sell — Popular Products

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in or whether you conduct it online, offline or both. As Andrew Lock says, everything is marketing and marketing is everything. SmallBusinessComputing.com has Andrew’s latest tip-filled Web TV show of Help! My Business Sucks.

There are lots of methods to persuade people, but one you might not have considered is…fun! There’s a fascinating test in this episode, designed to get people to use the stairs rather than an escalator. I think you’ll be surprised at the result.

Our question for this episode revolves around a challenge that’s common to many businesses — how do you sell a product that lots of other businesses sell? In other words, how do you encourage customers to buy from YOU rather than your competitors? Listen up, you can apply the strategy I reveal to YOUR business.

Watch Andrew Lock’s marketing Web TV show

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Does Facebook's Privacy Policy Violate the Law?

Facebook’s privacy-policy fracas just won’t go away. If you market your e-business through social networking channels, do these privacy changes affect your business? InternetNews.com reports on the latest development.

A coalition of 10 privacy and consumer advocacy groups is calling on federal regulators to take action against Facebook and force the leading social network to restore some of the privacy controls that were recently changed in a massive site-wide overhaul.

The groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook's changes violated the provisions concerning unfair and deceptive practices in federal consumer protection law.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

EPIC's complaint argues that Facebook's changes have broadened the scope of information treated as publicly available to include profile photos, lists of friends and gender. Publicly available information can be seen by anyone on the Web—not just Facebook users.

Read the complete Facebook privacy article

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