eCommerce and

Welcome to the third addition of intern posts for intern week.  This post was written by Rochelle who's focus was in the marketing department during her time spent here.  She impressed us greatly when she showed up for work after having a tire blowout.  I hope you enjoy her take on what she learned while she was here.

- Vanessa

These past 8 weeks have flown right by me. Oh, the knowledge I have gained while at the Gordian Project.  I have learned so much in my “crash course”, and my time spent at PlumberSurplus.com has been very rewarding and profitable for me.  I am grateful for the time that my supervisors spent in teaching me about eCommerce.  There were times that I got confused, however, I learned a great deal.

My first project was writing a buying guide for the OutdoorPros.com Learning Center.  I enjoyed the project very much because it enabled me to gain product knowledge. The information that interested me most was learning about Google AdWords.  I listened to automated lectures from Google that talked about AdWords, and was able to take quizzes to test how much I had learned from those lectures. I was also able to create keywords for organic search results for PlumberSurplus.com.  Another project that I was given was writing advertising text for AdWords. This task was challenging because it introduced the important aspect of ad copy writing for an internet retailer.  

I think one of my favorite projects was doing competitor and product research on comparison shopping engines.  I researched PlumberSurplus.com products on several different shopping engines such as Shopzilla, Google Product Search, MSN shopping, Nextag, Pricegrabber, Yahoo Shopping, and more.  I learned how these search engines are used as marketing tools to create brand awareness, and how these comparison engines compare different company's products and prices.  These engines are also helpful to consumers who are trying to make better purchasing choices.  

Affiliate networking was really great to learn about.  An affiliate network consists of merchants and publishers that get connected and find a relationship that is beneficial and complimentary. The Gordian Project websites currently use multiple affiliate networks to manage affiliates. I worked on recruiting new affiliates and reviewing the many publisher applications that came in daily.

The merchandising research project gave me the chance to analyze site search results sets so that merchandisers could improve upon the result sets that needed improving.  When searching for products on Outdoorpros.com most of the searches were good, however, some searches would have random, irrelevant products show up in the results.  Janelle (another intern) and I went through all the product categories on the website and gave synonyms and keyword recommendations to the merchandisers for the products on the site.

I thoroughly enjoyed the video project the interns got to work on.  I learned how valuable videos can be for internet retailers.  This was actually one of my favorite projects and it was great to actually see the videos live on the Learning Center.

These projects are merely a glimpse into what I have personally learned during 8 weeks as an intern here.  I have appreciated everyone's kindness at PlumberSurplus.com.  The employees are truly wonderful people that wish to see the interns through this short but valuable experience.  The Gordian Project program has been a pleasure to be a part of.  

- Intern Rochelle

I can’t wait to let you all in on some of our new projects, but for now we must exercise patience.  Here’s this week in eCommerce.

• I know it is the middle of July and thoughts of Christmas and the Holiday season may seem far off to many, but marketers should have the season on their radar and on their schedules. Internet Retailer posted an article this week claiming that marketers should have holiday campaigns ready by October.  Read the full article with figures from MarketLive Inc.’s recent study here.
• The Small Business Mavericks have compiled a few lists that they believe can make or break a small internet retailer. 
• Affiliates have been getting a bad rap at recent conferences, so The Rimm-Kaufman Group has provided a video featuring Shop.org’s Larry Joseloff explaining how to balance affiliate programs. 
• Want your business teams to perform better?  According to this study one of the first things a company can do to increase performance is to not have one dominating team leader. 
• Andy Beal has announced the 2008 SEM scholarship winner. 
• Tell Marketing Pilgrim what you think the conversation went like for this picture….
  

This was my thought (hey it’s Friday, have some fun with it):
“Sergey: Jerry you gotta let loose a little bit man, you look like you are about to have a breakdown.
Larry: Yeah if you don’t have your sunglasses at least tossle your hair a bit so you don’t look so uptight.
Jerry: I know I know, it’s just, well you guys know what it’s like where I’m at, I mean I don’t even have a bean bag in my office.”

Welcome to this week in eCommerce and Entrepreneurship.  Take a look cause the world of eCommerce is getting more interesting by the week.

• Brainstorming for keywords can be tough especially if you or your search marketer has hit their own form of writers block.  Search Engine Journal put out a list of tools to help with keyword generation. 
• “The Churchill Club of Silicon Valley just wrapped up one of its most anticipated events: the Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate. Five well-known and opinionated venture capitalists weighed in on what trends will take flight and what trends will fizzle out in the months ahead.” …more 
• I am not a fan of the Dallas Mavericks nor am I really a fan of Mark Cuban, not for any particular reason other than the fact that I am a Laker fan.  As a fan of the competition, one tends to feel a little sour towards the Mavericks owner.  As you may know though, he is one of us, an ecommerce nerd.  This week he pondered about how to beat Google, and what he came up with may interest you. 
• It is no secret that companies have discovered that employee health and well being cuts out on the amount of sick days used which cuts costs and increases productivity.  What about the employees that just plain play hooky?  Well a new technology has surfaced that can detect when an employee is lying over the phone.  From the article: “The technology means someone phoning in for a sickie will speak not to a sympathetic secretary but to a computer set up to check whether their voice is steady and reliable.” 
• In response to New York tax laws, Overstock.com has cancelled all relationships with affiliates in New York.

What’s an Affiliate Hunter you ask? It’s just one of the many hats I wear here at the Surplus. While overseeing our affiliate program, there are certain responsibilities of that job which has led us to come up with the term “Affiliate Hunter” (thanks Zach!). An affiliate hunter is someone who I picture wearing khaki colored safari shorts and carrying standard hunting equipment; except instead of binoculars you have IP addresses, urls, and search engines, instead of shorts and a hat you are dressed to meet your company’s dress code policy, and finally instead of a high powered rifle you have the power to terminate publishers and deny commissions with the click of a mouse.

If you are a merchant or advertiser running an affiliate program on ShareASale, Commission Junction, or elsewhere, there are a few activities to keep an eye out for when dealing with publishers. Affiliate’s can hijack your tracking code, bid on keywords you don’t allow, or buy domains that are similar to yours. One type of resource I often reference is affiliate forums, like ABestWeb. If your affiliate program has been around for any length of time you’ve probably experienced some if not all of these tactics used by publishers, but for those who are new to the game you’ll at least become a junior affiliate hunter by the end of this post. So put on your safari hat and lace up those chukka boots, we’re going affiliate hunting!

1. Keyword Bidding: Part I- Do you allow affiliates in your program to bid on keywords? If you do, do you have terms that affiliate publishers are not allowed to bid on, like your company name? One of the most productive ways publishers generate traffic is through keyword bidding on the search engine advertising platforms. If you do have a list of terms that are off-limits to publishers, you need to share it with them. Add the blocked list-o-keywords to your program details, include it in your approval emails, and remind them to check the list frequently. If you’ve already done all of this, or are having an epiphany right now, open a browser, go to a search engine and search your blocked terms. If you see ads for your name that aren’t yours, they could be a competitor’s but it’s most likely they are an affiliate’s. One method you can use to find out who the affiliate publisher is, is to click on the ad and see if the url redirects or forwards through with any kind of affiliate tracking. Within that url you can find the publisher id number, which then lets you check your approved publisher list.  



2. Keyword Bidding: Part II- Other tricks publishers might use with keywords includes scheduling them to run during the night time when you aren’t at work looking for them, and geo-targeting the ads to show everywhere but your region. Ask a friend or relative on the opposite coast to run some searches for you. 



3. Domain Stockpiling- Do you own all the common variations, misspellings or extensions of your domain name? If not, someone may have already purchased yourdomain.info or yourdomain.extensionofchoice. This tactic is referred to as typosquatting.  We have seen strikingly similar variations of our domain being utilized by publishers. While we do own several domain extensions of our domain and misspellings we saw a publisher using the combination of our domain misspelled at a non .com extension which we did not have. We were able to politely email the publisher and offer then a little bit of money (to cover their domain purchase cost and transfer fees) and they accepted. If you aren’t sure who owns the domain in question, simply run a check through the whois database and then cross reference the registered user’s name in your list of approved publishers. 



4. Promoting Coupons- Many affiliate sites excel by offering merchant coupon codes and discounts. Some of these coupons are exclusive for select publishers; others are widely available to all. Keep track of who coupon codes are shared with, some affiliates may steal codes that are only for select affiliates and repost them on their site. This is a rather unfavorable thing to do, and the violating affiliate can quickly rack up many sales or leads by piggybacking off the popular merchant’s coupon code. 



5. Dropping EPC- On occasion publishers will send you tons of leads and traffic but it will not convert. Depending on how that affiliate is generating the traffic, it may not be very qualified for your site or offer. Lots of traffic and low conversions spells LOW EPC for a merchant. Find the publishers with low EPC rates and email them asking if they need any help, and give them some pointers for what works well in your program. They may realize they cannot generate sales for you and stop sending high volumes of non converting traffic, but if they continue and your EPC is sinking faster than the Titanic, send another email and let them know you may have to let them go. 



6. Automate Approvals- As I mentioned in my last post, some networks provide tools to automate the approvals of applications. It’s pleasant to know that as I lay my head down to sleep, I am approving qualified affiliates to join my program. With these automated rules, you can prevent publishers from certain countries, low performance levels, or by particular categories their website is listed in from ever entering your program. I’ve been told it’s more time efficient to let everyone in, then weed out the undesirable publishers as you come across them. Imagine throwing a black tie event, you wouldn’t let people in the door wearing Wranglers would you?
   
   
7. BONUS- I would also like to recommend two tools that have been very helpful in hunting down affiliates using redirects and encoded links. Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer is a free tool available online. I have also found a FireFox extension called LiveHTTPHeaders.