Search This Blog

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Make Money from Your Blog with Commission Junction

http://www.mushget.com/archives/make-money-from-your-blog-with-commission-junction.html
What is Commission Junction?




Commission Junction, or CJ, is one of the largest affiliate marketing networks online, operating worldwide as a middleman between publishers and advertisers. CJ serves over 1,500 customers, including eBay, Buy.com, and Yahoo! Unlike ClickBank, which offers many e-products, the majority of products offered through CJ are tangible.



What are the benefits of using Commission Junction?



The most significant benefit of utilizing Commission Junction is the seemingly endless variety of products available for publishers to receive commission. CJ has over 1,500 customers, each of which has anywhere from one to thousands of products available. The products offered all seem to be of relatively good quality, meaning publishers won’t have added difficulty finding worthwhile products or making a sale.



Are there any drawbacks from using Commission Junction?



One drawback of using Commission Junction is that the CJ Account Center is a bit difficult for a new user. It can take some time to get a handle on where to find products, links, and the appropriate reports.



Another drawback relates to the time required before being eligible to market a product on CJ. After being accepted to the program, each company must also accept a publisher into their individual program before he or she can market their products.



So how do I get started?



After completing the Commission Junction publisher application form and being accepted into the program, you’re one step closer to offering products as an affiliate. Logging into the CJ Account Manager and clicking on the “Get Links” tab lists the many categories and popular sub-categories of companies available to CJ publishers, such as Business > Marketing, Games & Toys > Electronic Games, and Books/Media > Audio Books. Clicking on one of these links will display the list of companies offering programs through CJ, as per the below screen shot.



After locating businesses with products for which you are interested in becoming an affiliate, the next step is to apply to each individual program. Applications may take several days to complete prior to being accepted. Once accepted, you will be eligible to receive credit for affiliate sales.



In order to offer products, providing product and service links and images is necessary for making a sale. The CJ Account Manager offers an easy-to-use tool for retrieving these links. Once again, it’s necessary to locate the store for which you wish to offer products. This can be done using the steps mentioned above, or — once accepted into a program — by scrolling down the the “My Advertisers” section of the Publisher Home screen after logging in. Links are available in a variety of forms, such as text links, banner ads, and contextual ads, but specific offerings are dependent upon each program.



How do I track my earnings?



Commission Junction’s reporting interface is very refined. Included are performance reports and transaction reports.



The performance reports provide a means by which to track commissions earned, sale amounts generated, total clicks, and click-through rates. The data can be filtered by date as well as specific criteria such as link ID and advertiser. Reporting top advertisers by commission earned is also available.



The transaction report is available for tracking information relating to balance and pending commissions. Similar to the performance report, there is a large number of filtering options such as filtering by date, advertiser, or transaction type.



New publishers should note that there is a minimum payout of $25 US (varying by country). Payments are made on the 20th of every month only if the account’s balance was above the minimum at the end of the prior month.



If you donĂ¢€™t want to miss a program review as my Make Money from Your Blog series continues, make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed! Otherwise, check back daily for updates.

Make Money Online with Commission Junction

Commission Junction is one of many companies that offer a range of banners and links which will pay you per click or per sale generated by showing their banners. It is in fact one of the largest affiliate network. It deals with marketing programs which include affiliate programs for Yahoo amongst others and you can also use it. Commission Junction promotes more than 70 000 affiliates. Its products and services are numerous ranging from cars to handbags, banking to gambling. This affiliate network also has highest earnings per click compared with the rest of the network affiliates. Fortunately you can join in for free and get a lot of ideas for making money. Once you are signed up with Commission Junction, you can search for products and services to put on your blog. You are also not limited in the choice of places to put up your advertisements.




The best way you can make money online with Commission Junction is through affiliate marketing. This can be a very rewarding since all you have to do is find products that are in demand and sell them. You can also sell other people’s product and earn yourself a commission. With Commission Junction, you can find numerous products and services that you can sell. The more products and services that you can sell, the more money you will be able to generate. Certain times of the year are known for reigning in money. You should always be checking the web sites for events that will create marketing opportunities that will earn you more money. These events include holidays like Christmas, Valentine and Easter holidays. There will be a lot of people who will be searching for gifts, costumes, recipes and ideas for those events. The events can also be games like the Olympics or Soccer World Cup. During this period, you can really get products and services that will make you rich. This is a perfect opportunity for you to cash in on the needs of various people. Events happen all the time and you just have to know where there are major events that have importance to people.



Sales commissions are offered by numerous companies in Commission Junction that want you to advertise their business for them. The rates are different so you can compare them and choose the company that gives you the best rates. You get commission when you direct traffic to the sites you are advertising and they purchase products or pay for services. You can also create leads which you can earn money from. When someone signs up for a product or service, you will get paid. Such companies may increase banking institutions which will pay more for sign ups. Bonuses may also be available for the companies you are promoting. If you bring in a lot of business, your commission may be raised which is a good way of increasing your income.



If you are ready to make big bucks, there is no need to fret about ideas or products, just join the Commission Junction!

Easy Way to make money online with Commission Junction | MushGet.Com

Commission Junction is a popular affiliate program super store with hundreds and thousands of companies listing their products for promotions. Commission Junction which some people simply call it CJ is a great place to visit if you want to market products that are tangible as compared to ClickBank which are digital products like eBooks and software. You can still make great commissions by selling physical products.




Depending what type of niche market you’re going in, sometimes you have tangible products that fit right in, so it’s good to know where to find these products. For instance, you might have a fitness website and you are writing content on fitness machines. Usually a good idea to capitalize on this content is to integrate AdSense or simply recommending a fitness guide at the bottom of your article. But after finishing your content, why not adding a few recommended fitness equipment and machines that can give a nice body workout. This is how you can take advantage on other aspects of affiliate marketing targeting tangible products meaning more income sources. With CJ, finding tangible products is easy. Here are 5 easy steps to get started with CJ and make money online:

(1)Start by bringing up an EXPLORER window. Tyep this link in the URL section of your browser: https://www.cj.com/



(2) Sign up for a Commission Junction account. Once registered, completely fill out your profile information as well as your tax information to make sure you will receive your compensation in a timely manner



(3) Getting Company Affiliate Approval



Once approved, go to your account. Click on “Get Links”. You will see different Advertiser Categories. Browse those that are related to your site. You can also do a direct search targeting “Advertisers”, “Links”, “Products”. Since you’re first getting started, it’s easier to search by keywords related to your site. For example, if your site is about BBQ, select “Products” from the drop down menu and type keywords like “bbq”, “bbq equipment”, “bbq tools”. Once you get the results, click on the product name and click “Join Program” at the bottom where you see “Relationship Status”. You need to join the company’s program first before being able to promote its products. After getting approved and the “Relationship Status” set to active, you can now promote. It’s important to check out the commission rate that seems more profitable for you. Usually commissions for tangible products can range in the 3-15%. It’s lesser than digital products because there are higher costs involved like shipping and other costs as well.



(4) Setting Affiliate Link



After being accepted in the program, that company’s website will now be listed in the drop down menu on the main page at the bottom under “My Advertisers” just after you login to CJ. When you click on “Go”, you can always browse through that company’s products and get links. You can search by “Product” keywords, “All(Except Products)” and more. Setting affiliate links in CJ is easy. When you click on a particular product name, look for the “Product Destination” link and right click on it and Copy Link Location. Paste it somewhere in a text file. Now, click on “Get HTML” at the bottom. You will see a link in starting from “http” to “?url=”. There can be several of them in different boxes but just select one. Highlight from the “http” to “?url=” and copy that link and paste it in the earlier text file. Now cut and paste that earlier “Product Destination” link just after “?url=”. You now have your affiliate link for that product. Same procedure can be repeated for other products.



(5) Selling Commission Junction Products



Once you get your affiliate links set up, time to start promoting them and make money online. A good way to sell tangible products is to write informative content and reviews on your site about the products themselves or writing an article about a topic related to these products then recommend these products after. For instance, say you are selling barbecue equipment, you might want to write content on how to make nice barbecue marinades and recipes, then in the end, recommend some quality barbecue equipment. People reading articles on barbecue recipes might be interested to buy a barbecue set. Another example is say you are giving tips about your exercise routine and your protein intake from supplements, you can recommend some protein supplements at the end. You can use some product images along with your promotion text and affiliate links. To check if you made any sales, just login to your CJ account where you can see stats about commission earned, sales, clicks, balance, payment status and you can also run reports.



(6) Getting Some Search Engine Traffic



Driving targeted traffic to your product pages is crucial if you want to make money. Doing some search engine optimization for your pages is a good step forward. Optimizing the titles with some keyword phrases even obscure ones can generate some little targeted traffic which can result in sales. Along with great original content, your pages will get value from the search engines. And getting valuable inbound links to your site is key to boost your link popularity and give your pages link strength.



If you don’t have several income sources for your affiliate marketing, it’s time to diversify and CJ can be a great add-on to your website’s income streams. Diversifying is always a good strategy because relying on only one program to make money online or putting all your eggs in one basket like we say is risky.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Major study charts long-lasting oil plume in Gulf (AP) | MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Major study charts long-lasting oil plume in Gulf (AP) MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Study: Smoking scenes on the decline in top movies (AP) | MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Study: Smoking scenes on the decline in top movies (AP) MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Finding Kindle Best Deals Without The Scams | MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Finding Kindle Best Deals Without The Scams MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Making Money Online With Your Website | MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Making Money Online With Your Website MushGet.com: International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News

Monday, August 16, 2010

convert gif to avi swf files

GIF to AVI SWF Converter is an easy to use and powerful conversion tool that lets you convert animated GIF formats to AVI, SWF flash and various image formats such as BMP, JPEG, PNG and GIF. Ability to define size and quality on converted outpu extract the individual frames out of the animated GIFs. gif to avi swf conver Feature Summary Convert animated GIF to Avi Flash SWF . Convert to BMP,TIFF,JPEG, PNG image series. Capture a frame to a bmp,jpeg,gif,tiff,png file Frame by frame: This mode runs Gif frame by frame, and is suitable for batch converting. Convert to BMP and TGA images sequence. Customizable frame rate for exported swf file Customizable dimensions for exported swf file Gif To avi Swf Converter application does not requires the users to put in much effort as the program's feature-set is trouble free to operate. In few simple steps you an easily convert the gif file into avi or swf. The program supports file exporting features like Export Single, Export BMP sequence and Export Tga Sequence. Gif To Avi Swf Converter program enables users to convert GIF files into .avi or .swf and save the required gif frames as required. The program incorporates user-friendly customization features, and exhibits competence in conversion process
http://www.789soft.com/gif-to-avi-swf-converter.html

free flash to mp3 converter

flash(*.SWF) is currently the dominant format for displaying animated vector graphics, text, video, and sound on the web. Flash to MP3 Converter software converts any version SWF files into MP3 formats. A Flash file may contains one or more sound elements. The software extracts any sound elements and saves as independent audio files. flash to mp3 converter help you to convert the flash file(*.swf) into mp3 file format.You can use the product to export mp3 from flash file.The software also supports batch conversion that allows user to convert a batch of SWF files in a time.Key Features,Easy-to-useConvert SWF to MP3Support any versions of SWF filesMerge multiple extracted MP3 files into single onefile ,Support batch conversion,Support adding folder 789soft established in the year 2008, 789soft is dedicated in developing innovative Digital Photo applications for individuals and businesses. The name of 789soft shows a will of the founder of the company and the folks here to share their creativity with the world, and make the life and work of others easie
 http://www.789soft.com/flash-to-mp3-converter.html

make a flash file by yourself

Flash Maker is a Flash Album Creator to make animated photo slide show with SWF file as the output format. It transforms your digital photo collection to Macromedia Flash file format ( SWF ) which you can share your memorial moments with your family or friends on your own homepage, post on your Blog or upload to your own website. Flash Slideshow Maker is the ideal tool for create slide show widget for your website quickly and easily. With Flash Maker, you can easily turn a folder full of still images into a stunning Flash slide show presentation with background music and special transition effects . This Flash animate builder tool can be used to build Flash album for website, Image Scroller banner, decorate your photos on MySpace, facebook,Blogger. etc. Key Features Easy to Use Flash Maker is extremely user-friendly. Its friendly user interface enables you to create amazing slide shows out of your digital photos with quick and simple steps. No Flash knowledge or programming skills are required. everybody can make a flash album in less than 5 minutes. Fully Customizable With lots of parameters to adjust for each theme, Flash Maker is fully customizable. Flash size, framerate transition effects can be changed to meet your web design. creating flash slideshows Flash Maker helps you create flash slideshows with photos , build dynamic photo flash gallery, and share photo flash in MySpace, Blogger, and many social websites. With Photo Flash Maker, you can create gorgeous photo flash slideshows in SWF format for watching on computer, burn the auto-run Flash Photo Album to gift CD/DVD, build a web gallery with amazing flash slideshows with dynamic SWF , and then embed the slideshows to MySpace, Blogger, Friendster and many other social websites.

http://www.789soft.com/photo-flash-maker.html

Make a animated gif easy

Easy GIF Maker is a tool for building Gif Animations.It provides many tools to make GIF animation quickly and effectively.Wheather you are creating animations for the Web or other application,Easy GIF Maker is necessary for you.Easy Gif Maker can import frame(s) from various image files,such as BMP, JPG,PNG,TGA,ICO etc..The imported frame(s) can be composed to a pretty animation you desire. Easy Gif Maker provides an incredibly basic set of tools for creating GIF animations. Its simple layout proves to be an asset, as this program is welcoming to experts and novices alike. Convert BMP,TGA,JPEG, PNG ,ICO image series to GIF file. bmp to gif,jpg to gif,tga to gif,png to gif,ico to gif. Compose pictures to gif files . Support file format :bmp,jpeg,ico,tga,png. Can add all images in a folder one time. Can set the converted gif file size. Can set the delay time between two images. optimizes size of GIF- files
http://www.789soft.com/gif-maker.html

How to convert flash swf f to animated gif

SWF to GIF converter is a SWF to GIF converter software and SWF capture software. Export GIF from SWF files, and you can extract picture list, can also extract separate picture.Convert Flash SWF to animated GIF. Convert to BMP,TIFF,JPEG, PNG and GIF image series. Frame by frame: This mode runs Flash movie frame by frame, and is suitable for batch converting. Convert to BMP and TGA images sequence. swf is a popular image format, The issue can be tackled by converting the file format into a more compatible .gif format. The conversion task can effectively be handled with the assistance of Swf To Gif Converter 1.0 application. The utility is capable of converting the Macromedia Flash SWF into animated GIF, and allow users saving the frames as images. It enables the users to generate .gif file of any resolution and frame rate from the given .swf. You can process the files in batches and fetch the output without missing any frame, with good quality output. Swf To Gif Converter 2.0 application does not requires the users to put in much effort as the program’s feature-set is trouble free to operate. In few simple steps you an easily convert the swf file into gif,Using the ‘Open File’ feature you can load the swf file into the program. The selected file is displayed at the middle left, and the features are shown at the right of the screen.
http://www.789soft.com/swf-to-gif-convert.html

How to convert gif files to flash swf

gif to swf converter help you to convert the animated GIFs into popular Macromedia's (now Adobe) SWF file format. You can use the produced SWF files as banners for your web site. extract the individual frames out of the animated GIFs. gif to swf conver Feature Summary Convert animated GIF to Flash SWF . Convert to BMP,TIFF,JPEG, PNG image series. Capture a frame to a bmp,jpeg,gif,tiff,png file Frame by frame: This mode runs Gif frame by frame, and is suitable for batch converting. Convert to BMP and TGA images sequence. Customizable frame rate for exported swf file Customizable dimensions for exported swf file Gif To Swf Converter application does not requires the users to put in much effort as the program's feature-set is trouble free to operate. In few simple steps you an easily convert the gif file into swf. Using the 'Open File' feature you can load the GIF file into the program. The selected file is displayed at the middle left, and the features are shown at the right of the screen. With the next step you need to select the directory for storing the converted files. You can set the 'Export Config' for the output file to posses 1/2 Original Size, Original Size, 2x original size, 3x Original Size, or select Custom Size, and set the Frame Rate. Making the selection you simply need to hit 'Convert to Swf' option and the program would begin with the conversion process. The program supports file exporting features like Export Single, Export BMP sequence and Export Tga Sequence. Gif To Swf Converter program enables users to convert GIF files into .swf and save the required gif frames as required. The program incorporates user-friendly customization features, and exhibits competence in conversion process.
http://www.789soft.com/gif-to-swf-converter.html

Sunday, August 1, 2010

What Makes a Good Online Product?

Just about any product can be sold online. But let’s be quite clear; some products sell much better
than others. Let’s think about some product characteristics that both help and hurt products when
selling online:
■ Price:weight ratio The price:weight ratio needs to be high; that is the price, in
comparison to the weight, needs to be high. Books have a very high price:weight ratio—
a book might be worth, say, $30/lb. Sugar might be around 35 cents/lb. The price:weight
ratio issue is why it’s hard to sell sugar, cement, and charcoal online.
■ Availability Less available is good. Available everywhere is bad. That’s why it’s hard
to sell candy bars online.
■ Information products Products that are essentially information sell well online.
Books, reports, reference materials . . . even music is an information product, really.
Why do they do well online? Because online technology provides a very efficient way to
deliver information. It’s fast and it’s cheap. It’s no wonder that books were the first major
product category online and remain one of the primary categories.
■ Complicated products requiring research The Internet is the perfect research tool, of
course. Products that require careful selection—products with many different features—
often do well online.
■ Wide selection of specialty products An example is one of the earliest small-biz
successes, HotHotHot.com, an online success for over a decade. Sure, you can find
hot sauce in any grocery store. But can you find Jamaican Hell Fire, Rigor Mortis Hot
Sauce, 99%, or 3:00 AM? (The company provides 100 different brands.) Have you even
heard of these? Another example is RedWagons.com. Certainly you can find two or
three different Radio Flyer wagons in most toy stores, but where else can you find every
Radio Flyer product made—steel wagons, plastic wagons, trikes, scooters, retro rockets,
roadsters, and everything else?
■ Deals There’s a class of goods that crosses all classes, and even covers products that
you might think of as Not Good Internet Products. If you can sell a particular product at
a very low price, you may have a good Internet product. Hey, if you can get the price of
sugar down low enough, you might be able to sell that online.
■ “Cool” products that sell themselves through word of mouth There are some
products that are just so cool, people tell their friends. One company that gets fantastic
word of mouth is ThinkGeek.com, which sells tons of really cool stuff (Figure 1-1).
Another example of a great word-of-mouth site is Despair.com. This company sells
products that people put on their office walls and laugh about with their friends.
Read More At Mushget.com

How to choose good online product

No need to touch, smell, or even see clearly. Products that really require a close view
generally don’t sell well online. That’s why it’s hard to sell furniture online and difficult
to sell unique works of art or perfume. And that’s why well-known brands can sell
online . . . because people know what they’re getting. In other words, although it’s
hard to sell perfume that your potential buyers have never smelled, it’s not hard to sell
perfume from Christian Dior.
■ High value products are good. You may do better selling a $500 product than a $5
product. You’ll have less competition—making it easier to compete using Pay Per Click
(see Chapter 22) and in natural search—and will make much higher “margins” (gross
profit). Low-price products can be very difficult to deal with online. Think very seriously
before selling anything below, say, $50, unless you’re pretty sure you can really pump
out high volumes.
■ Junk is hard to sell. This may sound obvious, but it’s amazing how many merchants
just post any kind of junk online and hope to make a business out of it. Mass produced
statuettes of kittens from China, junk jewelry, handicrafts from the wilds of Wisconsin . . .
come on, you can do better!
■ Products you understand and love. These are easier to sell. If you have a passion for
skydiving, there’s a natural business for you selling skydiving products.
Having said all that, it’s important to realize that every rule can be broken. Groceries can be
sold online, for instance. Diamonds, products that most jewelers would say need to be looked at
carefully before purchase, are selling very well online. And though Furniture.com crashed and
the big grocery-store sites (PeaPod.com and WebVan.com) went down with it, some companies
are selling furniture online and some companies are selling groceries online. (PeaPod, for instance,
was bought up by a grocery chain.) So, you can break the rules. But you’d better have a good
reason to believe that it will work.
More

The Perfect Online Product

Okay, so there’s no such thing as perfect online product. But considering what would be perfect
might spark ideas of what products are close to perfect. Here, then, is the perfect online product:
■ It’s valuable, with high margins. You’re not making a dollar or two per sale; you’re
making dozens, perhaps hundreds of dollars.
■ It’s in demand. It’s a product people want and are willing to pay for.
■ It’s not widely available. Buying online may be the only way to find the product, or the
particular variety of the product.
■ It’s a “research” product. People are looking online for this product right now. (Most
products are not research products. At this very moment, out of hundreds of millions of
Internet users, probably only one or two are trying to find out how to buy sugar online.)
■ It’s light and non-fragile, so it’s cheap and easy to ship.
■ There’s little or no competition online.
■ People love the product so much they’re going to tell their friends about you.
■ There’s no smell or texture, or anything else that makes the product one that “just
has to be seen.”
■ You are intimately connected to the product in some way. The product is related to
your hobby or passion.
■ Oh, and it’s legal! While a number of illegal substances match the perfect-product
criteria, we’re assuming the risk outweighs the benefits.
Read More at MushGet.com

Understanding the Price Sensitivity of the Online Buyer

Online buyers are far more price sensitive than offline buyers. That is, the price of the product is
much more important for the online buyer than for someone walking into an offline store. When
someone buys a product and has to select a particular merchant, they are “sensitive” to various
factors, such as these:
■ The price of the product from that merchant
■ The convenience of purchasing from the merchant
■ The confidence they have in the merchant (whether the merchant “backs” the sale, for
instance, if anything goes wrong)
■ The additional costs, such as sales tax and delivery
Price is only one aspect in the decision to buy. But on the Internet, the weight given to price
is much greater. This is a perfectly natural, and much predicted, state of affairs. Consider the
buyer walking into a brick-and-mortar store who finds a product he’s interested in:
■ Many buyers don’t care about pricing much at all. They are more interested in
convenience, selection, location, and sales environment.
■ Many buyers want the product now and don’t care too much about price, as long as it’s
“in the ballpark.” If the buyer finds the product, there’s a good chance the sale is made.
■ Even if buyers are shopping for price, there’s a limit to how much driving around
they’re willing to do. Again, if the price is “in the ballpark,” price may be trumped by
convenience.
■ Buyers don’t think too much about how much confidence they have in the merchant;
if the business can afford a storefront and take credit cards, they’ve already reached a
certain level.
We know all this is true, because offline prices are often higher than online prices. And
haven’t we all been in stores and thought, “How do they sell at that ridiculous price?” The online
sales environment is very different, though:
■ Buyers can jump from store to store very quickly. It’s very easy to find a low-priced
product extremely quickly.
■ There are many sites that will even do the price comparison for you. There are the
shopping directories (see Chapter 25) and the merchant sites (Chapter 28), where buyers,
more and more, are beginning their shopping.
■ Many buyers are used to, and now expect, a low price. Price is a much more important
factor for them than for most offline shoppers . . . they are much more price sensitive.
In fact getting a low price is why many online buyers are willing to delay gratification
(to wait for delivery).
CHAPTER 1: How Your Business Fits Online 9
■ Many buyers now do a little research to settle on the exact product they want, then
use a shopping-directory comparison tool to search for the product. Then they’ll
ask for the system to show the products sorted lowest-price first and work their way
through the merchants one by one. They often won’t even go past the first few low-price
merchants before buying.
Understanding these concepts naturally leads to a couple of conclusions:
■ If you have a really good price, you’re in a good competitive position.
■ If you don’t have a good price, many of the marketing techniques won’t be open to
you; you’ll find it very difficult to sell through eBay, shopping directories, and merchant
sites, for instance.
Does this mean price is always important, that you can’t sell a product unless you sell at a
low price? No, not necessarily. It means you’ll have trouble with sales channels that compare
your product with others based on price, such as eBay, the shopping directories, and merchant
sites. But it’s possible to position your business—on your own web site—in ways that are not
directly related to price. The lowest price does not always get the sale.
■ The big merchants have a real brand advantage. Many buyers buy everything at
Amazon, under the (not unreasonable) assumption that it’s a pretty good price, if not
necessarily the best.
■ Selection holds value. Web sites that have a wide selection have an advantage; if people
discover a hard-to-find product on your site, they may stop looking.
■ Focus is important. Sites that focus tightly on a particular type of product—and have a
wide selection of a very small range of products—have an advantage, too, for the same
reason. It makes the unfindable findable.
■ A classy site trumps a trashy site. Trashy sites make buyers feel uneasy. Classy-looking
sites make them feel more comfortable. Even if your product, in your trashy-looking site,
is listed in one of the shopping directories above a product from a really classy-looking
site, it probably won’t matter how cheaply you sell; the classy site is getting some (much?)
of the business.
■ Recommendations count for a lot. If a buyer recommends your site to someone because
they’re so happy with buying from you, you’ll get sales regardless of price.
■ Simplicity is good. Making it easy to buy helps turn visitors into buyers. AllAboardToys
.com, for instance, sells products you could buy on Amazon.com if you wished, but they
make it much easier.
■ Brand differentiation matters. Look for ways to make your business stand apart.
ShaneCo.com, for instance, a national jewelry chain, doesn’t compete on price directly; it
competes on value and unique designs. They’ve positioned themselves as the price leader
for high-quality jewelry, so they don’t have to compete head to head.
Read More at MushGet