Electronic Commerce News - Articles for Web Business Professionals

Newsletter Archive: 2005

ZDNet International contributing editor and AttentionTrust.org president Steve Gillmor spoke at San Francisco's Syndicate Conference on attention and its worth online.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1215.html

12.15.05

Get Noticed and Sell More on uBid.com!

Let uBid manage your credit card transactions, customer inquires, advertising, and web promotions for you.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1213.html

12.13.05

How Websites Are Getting Paid High CPM's

Realcast Media uses standard ad units as well as rich media, video advertisements and contextual marketing to help our publishers achieve the highest payout per impression on the internet. Realcast Media Network prides itself in having a quick monthly payment process and helpful and informative customer service.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1212.html

12.12.05

How To Get Exactly What You Want From Your Hosting Provider

Customize your own promotion with Rackspace Managed Hosting! This December a sales representative will customize a promotion just for you.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1207.html

12.07.05

Internet Video And New Ad Audiences

Advertisers are always looking for ways to expand their grasp. One venue now coming into its own is Internet video. The content offerings are starting to grow dramatically from a variety of places.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1206.html

12.06.05

Express Merchant Processing Solutions

Your customers may not always be able to come to you, so why not go to your customers? The Internet is a valuable tool for expanding your market opportunities.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1205.html

12.05.05

How Not To Serve Your Customers Online

Verbal abuse, deceptive in-stock claims, high-pressure upselling, and attempts to charge a credit card when a customer posts negative feedback about a business comprise this primer on actions that could reflect poorly on one's business.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1130.html

11.30.05

Amazon.com Sprouts Ears, Becomes Elf

The thing about Santa's helpers is that North Pole legislation disallows Papa Noel from outsourcing. That means you're on your own with a mile-long list. That could be the reasoning behind Amazon.com's "virtual gift assistant" offered through a new site it calls Gift Central.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1109.html

11.09.05

How To Make A Horrible eCommerce Site

As a frequent visitor to forums where people ask for critiques of their new ecommerce sites, I have seen the best and the worst of small business web development.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1031.html

10.31.05

How To Get Links From Auction Sites

Online auctions provide a comfortable source of income to various webmasters. And for the customers, the auctions provide the platform to identify with the specific and discounted merchandise.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1026.html

10.26.05

Ecommerce Hosting - How To Choose A Merchant Account

For a number of e-Businesses, discovering the best way to accept payments is a frustrating task. As the Internet is an instant medium, it is highly recommended that a ecommerce website must accept credit/debit cards and online checks as modes of payment.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1017.html

10.17.05

Podcasting Monetization Strategies For Marketers

With the growing popularity of podcasting, publishers and marketers around the world are asking themselves how to monetize this content channel. Today we'll be taking a look at how marketers can monetize podcasting through enhanced marketing activities.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1013.html

10.13.05

New Law: Auctioneer School For Ebayers?

All around the United States, state regulators are increasingly miffed at the revenue loss due to eBay auctioneers' insistence they don't need to go to auctioneer school to peddle their (or somebody else's) wares online. Every few months, another state says enough is enough and the various Sheriffs of Nottingham want their cuts.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1012.html

10.12.05

How Websites Are Getting Paid High CPM's

RealCast Media was designed to provide small- and mid-sized Web sites with an avenue to become part of an online publishing team. Realcast Media Network offers online media solutions for publishers all across the world on a CPM (Cost per Thousand) basis. This means you are compensated for simply showing our advertisements.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1011.html

10.11.05

Does Your Shopping Cart Do This?

Volusion shopping cart software is packed with useful features to automate your entire business. From building & managing your website, to processing orders, to marketing and even creating your own affiliate program... you'll find Volusion to be your ONE complete INTEGRATED solution.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/1003.html

10.03.05

Ecommerce Sales Tax: What Next?

Sales tax for retail products sold on the Internet has been an issue for heated debate for some time. Since most online retail is essentially a catalog order from another state, in many cases, sales tax isn't charged. There is a movement to get a federal law passed that would force online retailers to charge sales tax on products they ship out.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0926.html

09.26.05

Rakuten Takes On Yahoo With LinkShare Buy

Japanese portal Rakuten has picked up the affiliate marketing firm LinkShare in an all-cash deal. A big player in Japan's portal market may be ready to bring the battle to Yahoo in the United States. MediaPost reports that the e-commerce and portal firm Rakuten may be moving into the US market.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0907.html

09.07.05

ECommNewz Recommends This Innovative Affiliate Program

As a VIPProfits affiliate, you have a chance to participate in this exciting new era by forming profitable partnerships with leading casino operators. VIPProfits will enable you to cash in on the popularity of online gaming with little or no marketing investment and, most importantly, earn tremendous amounts of money.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0906.html

09.06.05

Deal For Wine.com Shattered

An investment firm abruptly submarines a deal that would have seen the wine e-tailer sold to Liberty Media. It looked like a done deal, according to the Mercury News. Wine.com, a web presence that has been up and down over the past few years, looked ready to be sold for substantially more than its current valuation.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0831.html

08.31.05

Ecommerce Hosting Considerations

Website hosting can be a complex undertaking. Determining how much space you need, how much transfer, finding a reliable host, and getting everything online is no simple task.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0830.html

08.30.05

Don't Limit Hispanic Optimization To Site Translation

Whenever I have any topics relating to optimizing for the Hispanic online population, I normally consult a friend who know a great deal more about the Hispanic search market than I do to get a better grasp of what has been done and what else needs to be done to make a site an attractive option for the Hispanic audience.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0825.html

08.25.05

Eyes On Your ECommerce Website

In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute, Eyetools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0822.html

08.22.05

Amazon's New Shorts

Amazon.com is now offering a new service called "Amazon Shorts" from which customers can sample the work of new authors for 49 cents each. Through the Amazon Shorts service, customers receive digital...

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0819.html

08.19.05

Ecommerce & SEO

The purpose of any business website is to promote a product or service online. The purpose of an ecommerce website is to take it one step further and to allow your visitors to purchase your products or services directly from your website.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0818.html

08.18.05

Combine Project Management with Help Desk Software

Based on the EntryXML™ software architecture, TeamHeadquarters™ can be rapidly implemented by leveraging a company’s investments in Microsoft® technologies such as Windows Server®, Active Directory®, and the Microsoft Office® suite.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0816.html

08.16.05

Secondary Sources Of Targeted Traffic: All Part Of The Game

Leslie Walker of the Washington Post homes in on what she terms web "clutter" -- sites and pages that may be little more than parked domain names with limited content and a lot of paid listings, not all of which are relevant to what the user is looking for.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0812.html

08.12.05

Landing Pages Make Or Break Sites

Mike McDonald of WebProNews is at SES 2005 in San Jose, and took in an afternoon session on landing pages. "If your traffic isn't converting well, all the optimization in the world won't help you," Mike quotes Alan Dick as stating.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0810.html

08.10.05

Utilizing Backend Inventory Solutions For E-commerce

The advent of the internet has opened the door for e-commerce, which not only includes B2C businesses but also supports B2B business relationships.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0725.html

07.25.05

Getting Listed in Yahoo and MSN Within 48 Hours

Using our proprietary submission software, your site will also be submitted to Google, AOL, Ask.com and every other major search engine.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0720.html

07.20.05

New System Automatically Answers 80% of Customer Emails

Our system automatically answers 80% of customer emails and simplifies many customer support tasks. HostedSupport.com is a leading provider of affordable customer support automation for the growing business.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0714.html

07.11.05

Pew Says Spyware Stinks

The Pew Internet and American Life project released a study today that says most U.S. Internet users learned about spyware and adware the hard way. They've had their computers screwed, blued and tattooed by annoying bits of software that take over your browser, eat up memory, cause your computer to crash and a whole host of other problems.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0711.html

07.11.05

Blog Censorship And The Impact On Doing Business In China

The many conversations in recent weeks about blog censorship in China won't lead to any meaningful conclusions, I reckon. While the first amendment rights to free speech that many bloggers passionately post about is a US concept (and hardly likely to make inroads in China any time soon), it is something I also strongly believe in.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0708.html

07.08.05

Managed Hosting Essentials

Fanatical Support™ combined with some of the best guarantees in the industry (100% Network Uptime, 1 Hour Hardware Replacement, Instant Emergency Response) makes Rackspace the smart choice to relieve your IT stresses.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0707.html

07.07.05

The Ones That Don’t Come Back

At our company, we do our best for all of our clients. As a team we all work well together and strive to achieve good rankings, traffic and conversions for our clients. We assess and retool when things aren't going as we'd like. We aim to please, and we aim to renew our contracts with our clients.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0706.html

07.06.05

Ecommerce Store Owners : Want Visitors?

Have you recently opened an online store, and waiting for those customers to drop by and start shopping? In cyberworld - unlike the real world - you just can't pick a good location and rely on passing trade. You've got to work hard to get visitors to your virtual store.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0705.html

07.05.05

Online Marketing Matrix

Business owners are facing a harsh reality: A website in itself offers no guarantee of business. "If you build it they will come" is a cliché that has misled many into believing all a company needed was an online presence to succeed.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0630.html

06.30.05

Managed Hosting Essentials

The level of service you receive at Rackspace makes you feel like you're their only customer. It's what Rackspace calls Fanatical Support™. When you need to talk to someone, you'll find level 3 technicians available--anytime you call. These are the techs that can give you real answers, not just write up a ticket and pass you along the chain of command. You can always expect Rackspace to answer the call and go beyond.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0629.html

06.29.05

How And When To Use PayPal's New Invoicing System

Automate, automate, automate. It's darn good advice most of the time. But what about occasions where you simply need to collect a one-time payment for various and sundry items or services?

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0628.html

06.28.05

Google Wallet to Fatten Google's Wallet

This week, Google leaked information about another very smart thing they've done. Google is about to introduce an online payment system to help facilitate e-commerce. While search engine observers speculated that Google was going head to head with Pay Pal, CEO Eric Schmitt was quick to dispel rumours that they were gunning for Pay Pal.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0627.html

06.27.05

Will Google Destroy EBay And Amazon?

Battelle again points us to an ever more prescient article (looking forward, looking back) about how "Google beat Amazon and eBay to the Semantic Web" in the year 2009, so I think that automatically means that the rest of us search bloggers are obliged to pick up on it.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0623.html

06.23.05

Make up to $20 CPM

Creating your own site toolbar is free, fast and easy with our web editor. Add to your toolbar images, menus, sub menus, textboxes, links and separators. With your sitebar, you can increase traffic to your site as well as generate new incomes from constant streams of loyal visitors.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0622.html

06.22.05

Secure, flexible payment solutions for retail and e-commerce merchants

06.20.05

Top Rated Customer Support Tool: Download Today

Consumers are increasingly feeling more comfortable in buying products through the Internet. According to a report released recently by the Department of Commerce first-quarter retail sales rose 23.8 percent to US$ 19.8 billion in the United States from US$ 16 billion a year ago.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0617.html

06.17.05

Selling Through Auction Marketplaces

06.16.05

My Wacky Test Marketing Experiment Succeeded

In a previous article I recounted engaging in a wacky piece of test marketing - and now I'd like to provide you with a progress report. I set up a temporary website with a sales pitch for a product which I had yet to create - and cheekily signed off with a visitor survey request instead of the customary options to purchase.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0615.html

06.15.05

Combine Project Management with Help Desk Software

06.14.05

Paid Search Advertising Forecast To Reach $5.6 Billion In 2005

Recently, the numbers for online advertising for the first quarter of 2005, and they did not disappoint. On Thursday, the same results specifically for search engine advertising were released and these numbers left little doubt about the strength of search engine advertising.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0613.html

06.13.05

AIMing For Advertiser Revenue With E-mail

AOL has given its 22 million AIM users a free 2GB e-mail account, another in a line of free services. Internet services provider AOL wants to do what Yahoo does: make millions of dollars from advertising revenue. It's a revenue source that is growing year by year.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0610.html

06.10.05

Boost your Internet Sales with ProductCart

Online sales continue to grow. Every day more and more people purchase products and services over the Internet. Are you taking full advantage of the strong increase in online shopping?

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0607.html

06.07.05

Are You In For A Safe Landing? - PPC Landing Pages

You've paid for your ticket and your ads are up on Google AdWords and Yahoo's Overture, but have you set up a safe landing for your clients? Run a test landing. Do a search and find your Pay Per Click (PPC) ad in Yahoo or Google. Click on it.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0602.html

06.02.05

Maximize Your Online Survey Profits

One of the most common questions I get on my website is "Peter, how do I make the most money with these online survey opportunities?" There are a couple of extremely easy ways to add to your bottom line in the survey-taking world.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0524.html

05.24.05

E-commerce Shopping Carts: Stop Abandonment

Internet retailers work hard to get prospective buyers to visit their e-commerce website. Hard earned dollars are spent on marketing, promotions, search engine optimization, and advertising to bring the targeted customers to the site.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0523.html

05.23.05

Effective Tool For Managing Your Customer Support

First your customer clicks on a "Help" button on your website to access your ezSupport-powered customer support window. Next the customer support pop-up window appears. Finally depending on your customer's need, they select from the "self-help" and escalation support features.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0519.html

05.19.05

Increase Profits with the Perfect Hosting Solution

PowWeb is an industry leader in bandwidth for the cost. With a whopping 300GB of transfer a month, you will never have to worry about your online business going down during the busiest times of the year.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0517.html

05.17.05

Google AdSense's Evolution

The web has evolved into a complex "organism" which, to some, appears to have a life of its own. As the Internet has evolved, so too have online marketers and publishers. The dot-com balloon is said to have burst but savvy publishers have grabbed the coat tails of the Google search monster and employ Google AdSense on content-rich websites...

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0511.html

05.11.05

Why Adsense Is Not Suitable For All Blog Topics

One of the most striking things that hit me in my analysis of the 30 most visited blogs at Truth Laid Bear was the small number of blogs using the Adsense program...

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0428.html

04.28.05

Non-Profits Can Profit From Blogs

Blogs are a powerful addition to any non-profit organization's marketing and public relations effort. Blogs work well, either as a blog section within the site, or as a free standing blog linked to the organizational website.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0427.html

04.27.05

Add a post office to your PC

Mission statements. They are usually the feel good creations of endless committees and countless meetings. The wording is discussed and talked over innumerable times...

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0426.html

04.26.05

Mission Statements And Why Do You Blog

Do you spend a lot of time boxing, labeling, carrying, shipping and insuring packages? Become more efficient by using Shipstream™ Manager and Scale, a one-stop postage solution for all your shipping needs.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0418.html

04.18.05

Effective Tool For Managing Your Customer Support

04.14.05

The VC No And The Entrepreneur Yes

Bill Burnham has a great series (1, 2 & 3) on the Art of the VC No. Saying No is their business (from thousands of business plans to a handful of investments), and Bill explains how it's hard to say No, common ways of doing it and his reasonable approach.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0406.html

04.06.05

Combine Project Management with Help Desk Software

TeamHeadquarters, a practical, cost effective, collaborative solution that uniquely combines project management with help desk. To run your organisation as effectively as possible, it is important to balance the workload related to planned project initiatives and unplanned support requests. Entry Software understands the ongoing challenges you face.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0405.html

04.05.05

Plan Your Way To Pay-Per-Click Campaign Success!

Have you heard the saying, "planning is everything?" Perhaps there is some truth in that saying so let's discover how to successfully plan your pay-per-click campaign.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0330.html

03.30.05

Latest Web Customer Support Tool

03.28.05

Auction Sales - Keeping Customers You Worked So Hard To Get!

Congratulations, your auction was successful, payment received and now it's time to ship the item(s) to the customer. You've got the product, the address label, the box, the packaging, etc. but are you missing a great opportunity to bring customers back to your auctions or store?

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0323.html

03.23.05

Make Your E-Commerce Website More Than An Electronic Catalog

Everyday thousands of people are purchasing products on-line from the comfort of their homes. This "arm chair" shopping has become the most popular way for thousands and thousands of consumers to purchase everything from vitamins to luxury automobiles.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0316.html

03.16.05

22 Questions To Ask Before You Use Any Shopping Cart System

You can use traditional methods to sell products such as direct mail, catalogs and advertising. However, if you have a great online presence, the entire world is your marketplace at a fraction of the cost of most traditional methods. To easily sell to this worldwide marketplace, you need a great shopping cart system.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0309.html

03.09.05

Make Your Traffic 3 Times as Likely to Purchase

In the online market place there are simply two things that matter to any customer - pricing and quality of service - but without quality customer support, even the lowest prices will not build a loyal customer base.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0308.html

03.08.05

Choosing An Ecommerce Shopping Cart

Choosing an online shopping cart is a big decision. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar business, your website is your only chance to impress potential customers.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0302.html

03.02.05

Network Monitoring For Serious eCommerce

On the Internet, companies come in every size, too, from a stand-alone ebook sales page with webmaster and owner all in one, to 300 pound gorilla like Amazon, with over a million pages requiring the entire population of a small country to serve as webmaster.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0228.html

02.28.05

Effective Tool For Managing Your Customer Support

02.24.05

Do Not Drop Your Web Site Off The Search Engine Cliff

If you've been feeling like Tom Cruise climbing up the side of some remote jagged mountain in the blazing hot sun and concerned you're facing "mission impossible", chances are you own a web site.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0223.html

02.23.05

SightMax vs. LivePerson

Use SightMax on any number of websites on your network with no additional fees! Whether you have one site on your network or 1000, there's never an additional fee to use SightMax on some or all of your sites. You have the ability to assign agents, administrators and managers per site.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0222.html

02.22.05

Is The EBay Fee Increase Actually Good For Business?

Much of my email from readers this month concerned the recent announcement from eBay that it will increase many seller fees on February 18, 2005. Since many business people use eBay's online store system as their primary ecommerce point of sale, it's no surprise that most of the emails I received were of the angry variety.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0221.html

02.21.05

The 'Matrix' Help For Keyphrase Analysis

Keyword analysis is a major part of search engine marketing. Choose the right key phrase,check the market and calculate the ROI in terms of time and money.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0217.html

02.17.05

See how your Host Rates

Whether you are looking for cheap website hosting services, ecommerce hosting or high-end managed business web hosting service, we are sure that our web hosting reviews and web host ratings will assist you in finding a professional web hosting company.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0215.html

02.15.05

Five Things To Consider Before Adding Live Chat To Your ECommerce Website

"To speak to a live representative, please click here." What a great idea, I thought. After two frustrating hours reviewing website product information and scribbling down unanswered questions, I was ready to talk to a real, live human; and get some answers.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0209.html

02.09.05

SightMax vs. LivePerson

SightMax is a live chat and real-time live monitoring software package that allows online businesses to proactively interact with website visitors.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0208.html

02.08.05

What To Do When AdSense Serves The Wrong Ads

The most common frustrations among AdSense publishers are 1) Google serving inappropriate ads on their web pages, 2) low click-through rates and 3) low payouts per click. This article discusses the first frustration, which is highly correlated with the other issues, and discusses what webmasters can do to combat it.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0202.html

02.02.05

Selling Globally Through A B2B Exchange

Participation in B2B Exchanges is increasingly becoming one of the fastest growing marketing methods for businesses looking for augmenting their client base beyond their local markets.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0131.html

01.31.05

EBay Selling And Buying Safety

The irony of eBay is that as it grows to be ever more successful, it draws the unsavoury element of the internet towards it. I'm talking about people who make it their business to attempt to defraud you and I in our eBay and PayPal transactions.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0128.html

01.28.05

How To Use Your Website To Shorten Your Sales Cycle

Is your website languishing as little more than a web brochure? As a professional service business, the problem with a web brochure is it's often loaded with features and ignores persuasive results.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0126.html

01.26.05

Rackspace Managed Hosting may save your vacation

With Rackspace you have your own dedicated support team that knows your company and is motivated to quickly solve any problem. A significant piece of each employee's compensation is tied directly to the customers' satisfaction.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0125.html

01.25.05

Website Promotional Consideration

Promoting a Website is becoming tough. For many, problems are seen at the beginning, when attempting to register a domain name. Once a satisfactory domain name is acquired, the site is lost within a see of competition. Time and money is required to excel above the competition.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0124.html

01.24.05

How To Deliver Exceptional Customer Service

Having been in business a number of years, I'm amazed at the number of people who don't have the slightest idea of what customer service is. Customer service is not a way of doing things - it's an attitude.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0119.html

01.19.05

Sophisticated Customer Support For Every Website

01.17.05

How Light Bulk Wholesaling Can Keep ECommerce Sites Alive

Without a reliable wholesale supply source, an ECommerce store is likely to close. It's unfortunate, but most who sell in bulk require minimum orders in the thousands of dollars, while focusing their efforts on the large chains.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0112.html

01.12.05

Is Your Niche Site A Real Lemon?

By now how many of you have heard about the advantages of building niche web sites to promote the selling of products and services online. Indeed, building a targeted niche site is a very smart idea.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0107.html

01.07.05

Improving The ROI Of Web Directory Submissions

Submitting your web site to web directories is a great way to build high-quality inbound links, increase your PageRank, and improve your SERPS. The Internet now features a large number of both general purpose and specialized directories. The specialized directories focus on a specific topic or region.

http://www.ecommnewz.com/2005/0105.html

01.05.05