Yahoo and Microsoft announce merger today !

Just a quick note people. Yahoo and Microsoft announced a merger today as reported by the CNBC show Squawk on the Street and already Google's stock fell by 1%. Do you need to worry about this ? Yes, to some extent as I have pointed out before I notice My adsense earnings drop significantly when things like this happen but I doubt it will be for very long both Yahoo and Microsoft are kind of soft in the web scene and merging will do very little to rattle Google's strong hold on search with a 56.3% market share.

Microsoft dropped a whopping 44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo another old school internet company that prior to this merger posted weak fourth-quarter earnings and was loosing so much money it had plans to cut 1000 + jobs. So why would Microsoft buy Yahoo ? desperation I think however both companies combined would make them a monster in page views exceeding 70 billion page views a month experts predict which would make them the company / site with the most page views on the web, putting Myspace in second place with 35 billion page view difference.

However pages views does not necessarily mean conversions, ad relevance is key and Google is the king of that and this has been proven time and time again with it's Adwords program raking in a staggering $15.8 billion dollar net revenue for 2008. No one in search marketing can even claim something remotely close to that.

However in the August 2009 issue of Wired magazine an interview with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt points out his paranoia about Microsoft, reminding Google employees to stay on the ball because he feels Microsoft could crush Google at any moment. I think the word " crush " gives Microsoft too much credit yes they are an old school company with lots of money to throw around but they clearly lack talent in the online arena or else they would not have merged with Yahoo. This shows a desperate move on Microsoft's part and solidifies experts opinion that they have no new technological trick up their sleeves to steal the revenue that Google commands, but hey you never know. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Good Saturday with Paypal and OpenCart !

Today is Saturday and I actually made some money using Paypal and OpenCart. Yes I know, looking at the screen shot it's not much so why am I so excited ? because Saturdays for some weird reason is usually my worst day for sales. I'm usually lucky if I gross $300 bucks in sales on a Saturday, but today I grossed $550 + in sales. Not bad by My standards but to some heavy hitters in online sales this is what I like to it call " monkey money " but hey I'll get to the heavy hitter stage soon. I have only been selling online now for under a year so this is good for one days work. What do I attribute the spike in sales to ? OpenCart I recently switched to OpenCart as My shopping cart and saw my sales shot up 28% over the last two weeks. The software is just very easy to use from the admin end and it's intuitive and well designed front end features encorage customers to buy. Using the products viewed tool I was able to spot an item that had the most views but no sales. I lowered the price and those product views started converting to sales.

Paypal's reputation as an online ecommerce power house also helps to boost sales. At checkout time My customers have 3 different options in My store and 8 out 10 times the customers choose to pay via Paypal. If you don't use Paypal on your site I suggest you start right now because you are seriously short changing yourself and the growth of your online business.

That is all for now folks. I hope you found this post insightful and helpful, if so keep up with me on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Don't forget to Subscribe to this Blog.

Square Trade another way to make money from your online store !

Another way to make money from your online store is by using Square Trade a warranty service for online retailers that sells electronic devices like phones, notebooks, cameras, video games etc. The information I got from the Square Trade website says they sell and handle the warranty of your customer's electronic devices. The site I saw Square Trade integrated on had a button below the item description that read " 3 Year warranty $10 " that alone made me click it as I was looking at an ipod online. Ten dollars for three years coverage is a really good price.

Most large retailers like Best Buy would charge like $40 - $50 for an extended warranty on the same item so in the eyes of the informed consumer this is a deal.

How does this work out for you the store owner ? Well to get in Square Trade's merchant solutions program for your web store you have to email them first. I did today and I'm waiting on a reply. Based on what the site says you get paid a commission for sending Square Trade a customer and Square Trade handles everything. Sounds like a good plan but I will know for sure when they get back to me.

Clearly Square Trade is just another affiliate program you can make money from but where it differs is that it does provide value to your customers and if it works the way it's described on the site your customers will love you for recommending the Square Trade service.

To visit Square Trade's website click here.

That is all for now folks. I hope you found this post insightful and helpful, if so keep up with me on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Don't forget to Subscribe to this Blog.

My Post got featured !

I was online the other day looking at the OpenCart website and to my surprise My post on OpenCart was featured in the breaking news section of the site. Which is really awsome because I noticed a surge in visits to the Blog since they featured My Post.

This makes me feel really good. It's always nice to get some recognition for your work !

FETCHBACK ADS: Use Smart Ads to Boost Store Sales !

This past Saturday I was online searching for case for My new Acer Aspire notebook computer on Google. I came across a company that had the bag I wanted for $80 and saved it to My favorites. Being the budget nut I am I decided to save $20 a week until I had the $80 and go back to the site and buy it (this is something I practice with all My purchases). Later that day I logged into My Yahoo email account and there was a banner ad from the same online store I was looking at earlier. Strange, I thought what a coincidence. Never paid the Ad any mind after that because I already had saved the site in My favorites.

On Sunday I logged back into My Yahoo email again and there was the Ad. Creepy. It made me pay closer attention to the Ad this time though. After examining the banner I realized it was served by a company called FetchBack. Never heard of them in My life, but I'm always open to new ways and ideas of marketing. So I Googled them.

Fetchback calls them selves " The Retargeting Company " and rightly so. Their Ads are based on patent pending technology called Fido Technology. Fido (hence the dog logo) works by retargeting customers who have visited your site with banners on popular sites like social networks, news sites etc. when they already left your site. In My case they had an advertising arrangement with Yahoo to display Ads through out the Yahoo network. Because they enabled cookies on the computer online store I visited it recorded My visit to the site and when I did not make a purchase it realized this and as soon as logged in to another site in their Ad network, Fido automatically displayed a banner from the same computer store. This tool can be a God Send for conversions as studies prove most people who browse online stores don't buy there until they have been exposed to your product or company at least 3 - 7 times.

Most of us online retailers use Adwords to get sales and that is cool I use it too so I'm not suggesting Fetchback as an Adwords replacement in your campaign. However I do see value in this service and I will be trying it shortly and posting my results of the trial. To learn more about Fetchback you can visit their website here.

That is all for now folks. I hope you found this post insightful and helpful, if so keep up with me on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Don't forget to Subscribe to this Blog.

The Kontera God smiles down on me !

For the first time since I have been running Kontera on My site on 7/17/2009 it out performed Adsense in earnings. It even out performed InfoLinks. Wow ! Normally my earnings from Kontera are like $2.50 a day and this day it spiked to $5.94. Look at the screen shot and you will see that with 1090 impressions on 7/11/2009 I only made $2.76 for the day. On 7/17/2009 six days later with 1028 impressions I made $5.76 for the day. This has never happened to me with Kontera and the only thing I can think of is the competion on my site they are getting from Infolinks has made them step up the amount they pay out. However when you look at the number of clicks for roughly the same amount of impressions the clicks more than double from 23 - 56. Which means they probably up the density of the key words in My post.

Oh well what ever it is it's more money so I'm not complaining. That same day I only made $4.94 from Adsense so they out performed Adsense too. Unheard of on My site. To think I was considering removing Kontera from My site because of the low performance. Now I'm glad I did not. Look at the next graph and you will see there has been a steady rise in clicks over the last 30 days. Good Stuff ! I can't wait to see what the rest of the month looks like with Kontera. Adsense usually makes me about $15 per day but I recently saw they had stock issues and that usually means My earnings from Adsense will go down when that happens. Same thing happened when the whole Microsoft & Yahoo merger was about to go through some time ago My earnings from Adsense took a nose dive for about a month but then it bounce right back. That is why it's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Now that Adsense is not earning as much I have Kontera and Infolinks to pick up the slack.

That is all for now folks. I hope you found this post insightful and helpful, if so keep up with me on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Don't forget to Subscribe to this Blog.

Boost Your Sales with the Paypal Mini Store Widget !

Widgets are the new craze now almost every social network out there uses widgets and so do alot of websites. Well since you are in the business of selling I wanted to introduce you to a widget that can help boost your sales. I like to call it the Paypal Mini Store Widget. It is made by Paypal Labs Paypal's developement company that listens to product ideas from Paypal's user base and develops the ideas into real products.

Admin Section:
This a really awesome widget. You can add item titles, description and a link to the product image. You can set the amount you have in stock and it will pull from the stock when some one buys the product. You are able to add shipping prices based on the dollar amount of the order. For example you can set it up so orders between a certain value say $1 - $20 will be charge $5 shipping and orders $100 and over get Free shipping. You can also choose to display the items in a thumbnail view, user scroll view or you have the items behave like a slide show so that they keep changing. This is the option I chose because for some reason I noticed people are attracted to moving objects online.


Store Front:
On the store front your customers can. View an item and add it to cart all with in the Storefront Widget. They also have the option of promoting the store for you on their social network like Myspace when they click the link at the top that reads help sell these items. Once they are finished shopping a link at the bottom of the widget prompts them to checkout and when they click it they are taken to Paypal to pay for their order. They can also rate the product between 1 -5 stars and write a review but they cannot save it unless they have a valid Invoice ID which limits reviews of the items to real customers only.

How Can you use this Widget ?
Place it on your blog or social network page to promote your store and urge your friends to do the same. Also if you have a content based website and the store is not your home page you can add the widget to your home page. To sign up for the Paypal storefront click here.

That is all for now folks. I hope you found this post insightful and helpful, if so keep up with me on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Don't forget to Subscribe to this Blog.