Don’t let it ever be said that I can’t be positive about something eBay does. Though, like in the post you are about to read, I have many caveats.
ProStores 9.2 With Pay-Per-Sale Marketing - The Announcement
“Hi everyone…this is Matt Ackley, VP of Advertising and Internet Marketing at eBay. Many of our sellers who run their own Web stores face the challenge of marketing their stores in a cost-effective way. With the release of ProStores 9.2, we can now offer sellers a way to take the hassle out of marketing their stores online with zero upfront cost or risk.
ProStores 9.2 includes Pay-Per-Sale Marketing (Beta), a new feature where ProStores can market your store for you and you pay a commission only on sales linked to the traffic we drive to your store. Just set a minimum commission rate of 8% and increase it for more exposure. This makes it possible to get […]
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If you’re new here, welcome! And thanks for subscribing to Get Elastic. Friday is Blogger Digest day where we highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.
Being Halloween and all, let’s start off with Negotiate FAK or Bleed to Death - the latest entry by Maxim Mironov who blogs regularly about how to save millions by optimizing your ecommerce fulfillment. Don’t be scared if you don’t know what FAK stands for, Maxim explains it.
Alexander Interactive examines several recent articles regarding free shipping this holiday season, including USA Today, the New York Times and Ad Age and provides 8 solid recommendations in its white paper Free Shipping: Holiday Hit or Headache?. (This link points to the online version, no download required).
On the Practical Ecommerce blog, Brian Getting tackles the web designer’s nemesis - cross-browser compatibility problems with his own 3 group […]
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SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct 30, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — PayPal today announced great deals and special offers for cash-strapped online shoppers this holiday season. Customers can receive up to 20 percent cash back on purchases from major retailers, such as American Eagle Outfitters, eToys and Blockbuster, as well as free shipping from select PayPal merchants and great eBay deals for anyone paying with PayPal.
“With the economy tightening, consumers are shopping early and using every tool at their disposal to find the best deals on holiday gifts,” said Cliff Hopkins, senior director for PayPal. “Many online merchants are responding with cash rebates, free shipping and other great deals for all our PayPal members this holiday season.”
Forrester Research predicts online sales will increase by 12 percent this November and December over 2007 (”Outlook for US Online Holiday Sales,” October 2008).
To attract online holiday shoppers, retailers are offering a number of holiday promotions to […]
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Last Halloween we actually commissioned a local caricaturist to cook up something out of his Doodle Labs, and the result was “Ghoulgle!”
Since we have about 5,000 more subscribers this year than last, I figured we could get away with posting this one again. (If you caught this in your feed reader the first time around, we thank you for pulling through an entire year with us, and if you email your physical address to linda.bustos @ elasticpath.com, I’ll pull a Rackspace and send you a hand-written note).
Although today’s posts are a departure from our usual content here, don’t worry - we’ll be back tomorrow with regularly scheduled programming (Friday’s Blogger Digest) and ecommerce tips, tricks and treats (I mean, trends) on Monday.
Next Free Ecommerce Webinar…
Multi-Store Retailing Online: Perks and Pitfalls November 19th, 2008 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend…
You may also like […]
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From the press release:
Revenue for the Interactive Services segment grew 14.7 percent to $62.6 million. Segment profit was $12.8 million compared with $8.7 million during the same period a year earlier.
The growth at Interactive Services is attributable to increased user traffic and higher referral fee revenue at Shopzilla, and an increase in energy switching activity during the period in the United Kingdom for uSwitch.
This compares with Q2 revenue of $66.9 million and segment profit of $15.1 million (PDF link).
These results are a positive sign for the industry in the face of Shopping.com’s troubles as reported by eBay in its Q3 2008 call.
The results are also a bit of a surprise to me…if Shopping.com was really affected by “changes made by search engines that disrupted shopping’s traffic.” (from the eBay Q3 Earnings Call), why wasn’t Shopzilla? Were these “changes” to PPC listings or organic listings? I believe that eBay was probably […]
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Sorry about that title, but honestly I am pretty worked up about this. Billionaire, Pierre Omidyar should stop writing tweets about the state of America and start concentrating on the state of eBay. Maybe if we shame him publicly, we can get him to do his job for the good of each of eBay’s stakeholders.
The problem with eBay is not John Donahoe (he’s a hired gun), the problem is Pierre Omidyar. He is the majority shareholder and Chairman of the Board and the only one with any real power.
He created a site that became the single best “personal empowerment” story ever told and turned it over to Wall Street and the MBA’s. They enriched him so he could pontificate about the terrible state of America when he has in his grasp a tool to empower real Americans.
I have lost all respect for the man. He has no real principles he’s […]
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Hat tip to Chad White’s Retail Email Blog for finding this email from Crutchfield’s CEO Bill Crutchfield, which is also available on the Crutchfield website.
As Chad puts it: “In light of Circuit City’s woes, Crutchfield wants to reassure their customers that they are well-positioned financially to survive the current recession—and therefore safe to shop at this holiday season. They have a pretty reassuring story to tell.”
Dear Valued Customer,
The international financial crisis is weighing heavily on all of us. As consumers, one factor that we all need to consider is the stability of the companies with whom we do business. In the current economic climate, many retailers will stumble and some will even fail. For that reason, I personally want to explain Crutchfield’s unique situation.
For many years, I have been concerned about the growing credit bubble. It was obvious to me that it was unsustainable and […]
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If you follow Get Elastic and the ecommerce marketing world, you won’t want to miss 2 back-to-back webinars by our friends at Sitebrand, Future Now and Marketing Experiments:
Your Website and First Time Visitors…Friend or Foe?
Presented by Sitebrand and New York Times best-selling author, Bryan Eisenberg
Thursday, October 30 @ 2pm EST, 11am PST
First time represent on average 60 to 80 percent of all visitors, with a conversion rate significantly lower than site average. They’re also the most expensive visitor to your site. So making your site the first time visitor friend versus foe needs to be a top priority.
Learn key steps to converting first time visitors, including:
1. Using data to build first-time customer personas
2. Building messaging that engages first-time visitor segments / personas
3. Mapping site real estate around your messaging
4. Launching your cycle, watching results, and planning for […]
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I know how much you all love my stats, well now that my Webstore is up and running and taking orders, I have some early stats: (From Oct 17th through the 27th).
Unique visitors: 322
27% of visits are from returning visitors. (Probably some of you).
34.16 % of traffic has come from Google Product Search. (Google Base)
29.21% of traffic has come from My Blog Utopia - Thank You
10.64% of traffic has come from Yahoo organic search.
Sales to date: $132.16
6 affiliate sales (2 from my readers, thank you)
2 of my own items.
Now you may laugh at those sales, but I’m very pleased. I haven’t even started to actually market the site yet, this activity is pretty much straight out of the box. Once I fine tune my SEO efforts and add a blog to the site and start to do some merchandising, I’m feeling very confident that this will turn into a nice […]
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CuddleWorks founder Jim Richardson did his homework before selecting Volusion as the e-commerce platform that provided the best fit for his business. Emphasizing great prices and excellent customer service, CuddleWorks specializes in high quality, plush and stuffed animals ranging from teddy bears of all sizes to farm and jungle animals. “For just over three months, […]
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