Amazon has launched a new cateogry called Amazon Green a few weeks ago. Amazon has always been good with following high demand trends in online shopping world. In most cases Amazon is the first to implement those.
The behavior of both offline and online shoppers in the US are changing, and going more towards Green Shopping. This is great news for the environment, and for our future.
Many small businesses are following the green shopping trend for a while but the big shots in online shopping game are jumping onto the board recently, one by one.
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[photopress:online_sales.gif,full,alignleft]According to a recent Forrester Research report, online holiday retail sales in the U.S. are expected to hit $33 billion in 2007, a 21% increase over last year’s sales. Personally speaking, our online sales have already doubled this holiday season. Even though we have run a big discount through an email campaign, black friday was not our best sales day. For the holiday season our best day was yesterday (Cyber Monday).
Our prediction shows that our ecommerce business sales will increase around 50% for the month of december (compared to november), and we will try to keep the increase until June with different promotion techniques.
Included in Forrester’s report were the following findings:
Apparel and Accessories: This category will top holiday shopping lists.
(80% of respondents said that they will purchase something in this category online.)
Free Shipping: A majority of consumers still have interest in free shipping promotions.
(61% of respondents said they are more likely to shop online from a retailer offering free shipping.)
Less Flare: Fewer consumers are willing to pay for extras such as gift wrapping, or overnight delivery.
(26% of respondents said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45% who said they would do so in 2006.)
*Forrester defines the holiday shopping season as the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
ComScore, Inc. also released recent information and predictions regarding the 2007 holiday season. ComsScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, projects that the months of November and December will see approximately $29.5 billion in online consumer spending.
2006 versus 2007
Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)
2006: Jan-Oct: $77.5 Billion
2007: Jan-Oct: $93.6 Billion
(21% Increase)
2006: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $24.6 Billion
2007: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $29.5 Billion
(Projected 20% Increase)
Their reports also show that the first eighteen days of the holiday season saw more than $7 billion in online retail spending.
Holiday Season to Date, 2006 versus 2007
Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)
2006: November 1-18, $6.01 Billion
2007: November 1-18, $7.04 Billion
(17% Increase)
“The online holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in the first week of November, but it has since picked up sharply,†notes comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Sales in the first ten days of November were up modestly versus year ago, but surged to levels in excess of 20 percent by mid-November. It’s likely that warmer than average weather at the beginning of November kept people outdoors and away from their computers, weighing down early holiday season sales, especially for key online categories like apparel. The growth rates during the second and third weeks of November are likely to be better indicators of how the remainder of the season will play out.â€
Many will sale most of the ecommerce niches are already saturated. DO NOT Believe them. There are so many ecommerce niches that needs new online stores desperately. Even some big names still don’t do a good job in online marketing. For me, an ecommerce business is like a long term investment. People will shop online more, and your ecommerce site will keep growing if you work hard on it.
Happy Holiday Sales!
[photopress:thepoint_logo.png,full,alignleft]The Point is a social and consumer activism site found by Chicago based Andrew Mason that just launched this week. I like the concept, and tested it myself by starting a campaign.
The concept is simple; A member creates a campaign, and participants pledge to take action only when enough other people have pledged to do the same thing. If the tipping point is reached, members agree to boycott a product, donate money to the cause, or take some form of civil action. You can review all the campaigns, and decide to participate or not.
If the site becomes popular, one of the main concerns might be the cencorship. I couldn’t find any information if ThePoint.com will use any cencorship towards any campaigns in the future or not. This part from the Terms & Conditions Page may give us some idea:
The Point may remove any Content and The Point accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all. To report Terms of Service abuse, please email: abuse@thepoint.com
TechCrunch points that ThePoint.com has already raised $2.5 million from angel investors, and will soon try to raise more in a VC round. I’m very curious about the monetization techniques they will use. I will definitely write a followup.
Andrew Mason, the founder of ThePoint.com, has posted this comment at TechCrunch after a question raised by a reader about the similarity of ThePoint.com to PledgeBank.com ;
Pledgebank is a great site and shares the same basic “I’ll do something, but only if others cooperate†model, but beyond that, there are more differences than similarities. First, The Point is largely focused on “do this, or else†campaigns — ultimatums targeted at a third party that are designed to, once they tip, quickly force a change by creating an unendurable financial stress. For many campaigns on The Point, the tipping point is something that can be quantified — it’s the point where the cost to a target of the group action becomes greater than the benefits of not changing. The tipping point of a campaign on The Point shouldn’t be determined by a prediction of how many people are likely to join, rather, a calculation of how many people are needed to force change. On The Point, it’s less important that a campaign tip than it is for people to have the sense that they will only be asked to take action when the conditions exist for a combined action to solve their shared problem. We also have an awesome feature called conditional anonymity — your identity isn’t revealed until the campaign tips — that makes The Point a singularly powerful tool for forming issue-specific workplace unions.
Overall, I like the idea and the site (usability, design, and concept is pretty good). I will definitely be checking the campaigns, and will participate.
You have the great idea for a Web 2.0 Startup project. It might be the next Facebook. But you don’t have the experience to properly put a business plan, sales pitch for VC’s, or any development experience. You believe in your idea so much, you have the entrepreneur spirit, but no experience. What would you do?
[photopress:dp.jpg,full,alignleft]Duncan Riley from TechCrunch introduces us to the company which will answer your questions; Digital Telepathy. If you are an experienced entrepreneur in Web 2.0 field, you might not need a helping hand even though Digital Telepathy offers services for existing startups looking for advice on taking their business to the next level, but if you are new to all Web 2.0 thing, this might be a great choice for you.
Duncan Riley explains the 3 “Biz in a Box” Products which Digital Telepathy offers;
The concept is simple: Digital Telepathy offers three design my business options with varying service levels based on the length of each plan. The 15 day plan provides a wannabe startup with market research, strategic alignment, scalable revenue model, instruction manual for project completion and a concept summary delivered as a “Biz in a Boxâ€. The 45 day plan offers (in addition to the 15 day plan) “initial buzz building,†and a range of design services including basic prototyping, usability testing, blueprints, concept mapping and other design services. The 90 day plan adds development services including full scale back-end development for beta release, front end development, private beta invites, feature development and more.
Prices range from $15,000 through to $250,000. Each project has its unique needs, therefore you will need to contact them for a quota. Below is a comparison chart for Digital Telepathy’s services:
Check out the projects they have already done. Their work looks promising.
[photopress:rm_logo.gif,full,alignleft]I have been an eBay Powerseller since 2002. Like many other eBay Powersellers, I have so many stories about eBay and eBay customers. Many of you are tired of hearing these stories, but let me tell it again, eBay used to be so much profitable and fun. Just like any other company which grows too fast, eBay has lost some of the main points in its business model. They started caring less about the problems of the sellers (actually their customers). They have become more and more interested in increasing their quarterly profits.
This path has helped many eBay sellers to start their own websites, and sell through their own sites. By making international sellers job easier to sell at eBay USA, it has become almost impossible to compete for small home based US sellers. But we are talking about selling retail on eBay. I have also written about ebay affiliate marketing before.
I will talk about a different business model for eBay selling. Since eBay has become so big, and there are so many success stories out there, now so many people try to sell on eBay. But they have no clue how to find the real sources to buy. eBay has created a new platform called eBay Reseller Marketplace. You can sell wholesale direct to eBay Powersellers.
What are the advantages of eBay Reseller Marketplace?
- All the prospective customers are current powersellers (pre-qualified).
- You can make money without spending any money from your pocket (I’ll get into this little later).
- Your fees will be much less compared to regular eBay fees.
- You don’t have to deal with many retail customers, and make small profit. You can have large profits per month with dealing a few wholesale customers.
- If you keep your promise, and if your customers like your products, you will be having returning customers. Because they will want to buy more to resell retail.
How to make money at eBay Reseller Marketplace without spending any cash?
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[photopress:email_marketing.gif,full,alignleft]I have recently had a successful email marketing campaign for one of my ecommerce sites. I will share the story of this email marketing campaign as a case study.
The site we have launched the email marketing campaign is an ecommerce site which is 14 months old. We have never done email newsletter or any type of email marketing for this site due to very busy schedule. We had around 14,000 email adresses collected from our customers. So, I thought it was time to start our regular newsletters, and increase our returning customer rates by offering specials through email marketing.
After an extensive research, we had 3 choices of hosted email newsletter programs on the table, and we have decided to go with Aweber. (Read my Aweber Review). Aweber had all the features we needed, plus some extra features such as a great autoresponder system integrated. After we’ve signed up with Aweber, the only down side seemed as the verified opt-in requirement. Yes, our only choice was to have a verified opt-in email list. We couldn’t just email our list of previous customers. We had to send them an email asking if they wanted to be added to our newsletter.
* What is verified opt-in?
Frequently called confirmed opt-in or double opt-in, it is generally defined as sending an email to a new subscriber request to verify that they are the person who made the request before adding them to a mailing list. This is usually accomplished by means of an email message sent to the subscriber to which they must reply, or containing a URL which they must visit, in order to complete the subscription. This prevents others from accidentally or maliciously adding an email address to a mailing list that does not belong to them.
After sending 14,000 emails to our previous customers, only 750 of them opted in the newsletter. I was first shocked and very disappointed with the low return rate. After speaking with a few friends in email marketing field, they have encouraged me with the success rate. Even though we had only 750 people on the list, they were all previous customers, and also were very interested in receiving emails from us. Because we have asked their permission for it.
It has been little less than 24 hours since we’ve sent the newsletter, and I believe we have already great success. Here are the facts:
- Only 6 emails were undeliverable
- 79% open rate (79% of the people who have received the newsletter have opened it)
- Almost 80% of the people who have read the email have clicked a link within the email.
- Already had 20 orders with over $2000 revenue.
We had a very simple design with a short text. We had the company logo, 1 coupon code, 1 short paragraph thank you letter for being a customer, and 3 new product images/links. Short and simple, to the point.
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Important Note Before Reading this Volusion Review: This is a post I’ve written over 2 years ago. The comments section has become a discussion platform with hundreds of questions and answers. Even though this Volusion Review is little outdated, there are still important points to go through if you are looking for information about Volusion Shopping Cart.
I’ve closed the comments, so you won’t be able to add new comments. Please follow this Volusion Question Link to add your comments, questions, and thoughts about Volusion Shopping Cart. The site you will visit is Ecommerce Aid, a site started by myself and a number of ecommerce experts. You can ask and answer anything related to ecommerce.
I will personally answer and try to help with any question related to Volusion and ecommerce in general at Ecommerce Aid.
If you like to read the Volusion Review before heading to EcommerceAid.com to ask you questions, please feel free so. Thanks for your time.
I know how frustrating it is to find the right shopping cart solution for your business. I have worked with many small businesses and helped them finding the right solution for their needs.
Every ecommerce business has different needs just like real life brick and mortar businesses. Some of them start as home based, and some start larger with an initial investment. But they all have this question in mind;
What is the BEST shopping cart solution?
Very brief answer to this question is; There is not a solution called BEST shopping cart solution. If you want to start an ecommerce business, or if you are ready to upgrade your shopping cart, your question should be;
What is the RIGHT shopping cart solution for MY business?
The right shopping cart for my business may not be the right one for your business. Therefore, you should write down your needs step by step before starting to shop for a shopping cart solution. If you are planning to upgrade your shopping cart, start writing down the pitfalls, and bottlenecks within your business workflow. Maybe your shopping cart is not the problem, it is something else within your organization which you need to fix.
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[photopress:google_logos.jpg,full,alignleft]What is google?
- A search engine
- A full service advertising agency
- A verb in English language
This list will go on and on. But what is actually Google doing? What is their goal in the long run? What were the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s plans when they first started google?
This is a pretty long article about my thoughts about Google’s dangerous monopoly game foreplay.
After the launch of Google Adwords (Google Sponsored Search Results), it has started to become popular. It was a great way for google to make money. Many users didn’t even notice they were paid search results, so they have clicked them. Google showed paid search results only at the right sidebar of the screen. My first thought was; They will eventually put these paid search results at the top section just above the organic search results, and they did.
Google Adwords has become a multi billion dollar revenue source for Google, and they wanted to make their shareholders happy quarter after quarter. Don’t get me wrong, I love google, I have always been a big fan since their launch, but just like any other corporation the interests started shifting at the Google Headquarters.
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Most people think link baiting is for only blogs, but they are wrong. Blogs might to better link baiting due to their freshly updated content. But I’ll show you some tricks about link baiting for ecommerce sites.
[photopress:link_baiting.jpg,full,centered]
What is Link Baiting?
Create a free content to offer the web community. It may be an article or a blog post on your blog, a press release, or an authority article sent to an article directory, basically any content you offer freely on the internet. Then the web community will find your content valuable and link to it. Bingo!!! You start receiving free backlinks instead of paying for them or spending hours finding them. Link baiting is a part of Viral Marketing.
Why is it called Link Baiting?
It is exactly like fishing. With the bait, you have the chance to catch some fish.
Free Content => Bait
Free Backlinks => Fish
If you have a community related site, or a blog, or an article/authority type site, it may be easy to do link baiting. But I receive many questions from ecommerce site owners about how to do link baiting.
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UPDATE: I have written a detailed and updated post about Making Passive Income as an eBay Affiliate Marketer. Please visit the updated post.
[photopress:ebay_affiliate_site.jpg,full,alignright]eBay has been an increasing revenue source for many home based and small businesses. If you have never tried to make money with an eBay affiliate site get prepared to learn some insights. I’ll walk you through how to create a product niche website which generates eBay affiliate sales, and creates a longrun income stream for you.
As a longtime gold level powerseller on eBay, I may call myself an eBay expert. I have helped many beginners to start their eBay businesses successfully. With eBay’s expansion into international markets, everyday it’s becoming harder to make a profitable eBay business. Even some manufacturers are selling on eBay and shipping direct from their factories (how could you compete with that?). If you are a true entrepreneur, you will find a way to increase your sales in any situations. Here’s my motto for eBay success:
If you can’t beat the competition, help them to generate more sales.
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