eCommerce and

Welcome to my third installment of Affiliate Watch. I've had some great help reviewing applications from the intern department over the last month while I worked on a large SEM project, but was able to pick out some affiliate websites that I thought we could learn from. Let's see what kind of sites applied...

Site 1: Surfin For Style - If your target audience is female and the products you sell are Coach Handbags at discount prices then this affiliate is for you; provided that you also sell on eBay. SurfinForStyle uses an aesthetically pleasing flash widget to show hundreds of eBay auctions for Coach Products. While eBay offers store referral credits for the seller when a sale is driven by this type of affiliate there are many reasons why I would steer clear from these types of affiliates.   The opportunity for branding is significantly decreased in this situation as the consumer will see the eBay brands and remember purchasing from eBay rather than one of our websites.  We prefer to have publishers driving traffic to our websites directly so that we have the opportunity to expose our brand.  It helps that eBay offsets part of the FVF (Final Value Fee) with the referral credit. I think it's a great idea that eBay and eBay to Go (in beta) has developed a tool that makes it easy for publishers to promote products listed on eBay.  I am pretty sure that the tool was aimed at having shoppers promote products and create their own "unique" content, but how unique is the content if the widget users just repost someone else’s listing?

Site 4: The Schlott Company - "Resource articles to get your business off the ground" is their tag line. I wonder if any businesses found this blog useful, as they stopped posting back in May. In all fairness I actually visited the company's real home page (which has no link or mention of their blog) and found their portfolio quite decent. They ought to update their publisher profile to the company home page not the blog. Once I saw this, I offered them a spot in our program.

Actionable take-aways for affiliates:

1. Publisher Profile Information- always keep this up to date, in the example of The Schlott Company, they would have been declined had I not taken the steps to view their real website. Put your best foot forward, you only get one chance for a first impression (or your only impression).
2. Don't use animated gif images- I may have mentioned this at least once or twice before.
3. Don't get mad and irate at us when we decline your website. Unfounded, harassing phone calls and emails won't help your case.
4. Get a real webhost - We can all tell when you are using a free webhosting service and it shows. There are many services available that cost less than a Big Mac value meal per month. I don't want to see long, hyphenated, multiple directory, unrelated domain names.

I can’t believe that the fourth quarter is already here.  This year has gone by so fast that it's hard to believe the amount of history that has been made this year.  Coming off the heels of last night’s Vice Presidential debate I wanted to share this fun tool with you all.  It’s the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator and a few of us around the office had fun finding out what our names would be earlier this week, mine was Spoon Archer Palin.  Ok back to eCommerce…

• eMarketer reports that web consumers are still making their grievances heard by way of word of mouth, which may contradict initial thoughts about the way web shoppers operate.  With the availability of forums, review sites, blogs, etc. you might think that the majority of complaints was left via the web, when in actuality this study shows that most consumers complain to people they know either on the phone or in person about the poor products or services they have dealt with.
• There is a new eCommerce self proclaimed “magazine rack” called Alltop for those that don’t care to use RSS feeds.
• If you are a Google Analytics User I would suggest checking out Google Analytics Power User Tips.
• Kurt Peters, editor–in-chief of Internet Retailer shared his ideas about the state of online retailing with the e-commerceInsights blog.  I have worked one on one with Kurt on a few occasions and would definitely recommend checking out his thoughts.
• Still not feeling prepared for the holiday season? eCommerce Times provides tips and strategies to make the most of the kickoff, Cyber Monday. 

Stay tuned next week for Ryan’s Affiliate Watch for the month of September as it would have come out this week had it not been for “Intern Week”.  You don’t want to miss this one since he will be touching on the proper use of landing pages, images, widgets, and making better use of your marketing dollars.

Welcome to our fourth installment of intern week, where we present blog posts written by our remarkable interns.  The following blog post may sound contradictory to what an eCommerce intern would believe, and trust me, we gave Jeff a hard time about it after we read it.  However, he brings up some good points and reminds us that not everyone is as internet savvy as those we are used to being around, which I think is a needed reminder.

- Vanessa

Online advertising allows businesses to reach their target markets through the internet and has become one of the core advertising formats for many companies.  However, with new technology always on the rise new forms of advertising may be leading the way and marketers will need to be prepared in order to take advantage of these new advertising formats.  One of the fastest growing advertising platforms is Mobile Ads. Companies that have already succeeded at online advertising are quickly moving in to mobile advertising, companies like Google for instance.  Google has launched Mobile Ads, its mobile complement to AdSense. This concept is not exclusive to Google alone; other companies like Yahoo! and AOL have their versions of mobile advertising as well.  Google however, is attempting to take mobile ads to the next level.  According to Google, their current advertising platform would sense when a user is accessing a website on a mobile device by connecting the user directly to Mobile Ads.

Mobile advertising spend as a whole is expected to reach $1.3 billion in 2008 and is expected to continue to grow.  Mobile Ads are comprised of mobile video, images, banners, text, or a combination. For now text is the main format sent for mobile ads, but video is expected to be the wave of the future.

Mobile Ads may sound good to some, but I feel that our society is too technologically dependent. For example Mobile ads would be more of an annoyance than a perk for people like myself that don’t typically shop online and aren’t constantly texting.  Not to mention these ads could potentially would be dominate text, picture, or video message allowances for individuals who don’t have unlimited text, picture, and video messages within their mobile plan. Also, regulations have not been established for mobile advertising yet.  This could be a problem for parents that already have to regulate the number of advertisements their children see on television and other traditional marketing formats. Another problem could be that with the increase in ads could come an increase in cell phone models, such that the cell phone technology would be able to keep up with ad technology.  I am sure some consumers dispose of their old cell phones properly, but those that don’t could potentially harm the environment every time they upgrade their phone. However, the one good thing that I do see about the concept is that it does allow eBusinesses to reach out to more customers and potentially new customers. Like I said though, when it comes to my personal opinion I prefer buying in store and viewing my advertisements on the good old fashion television, and not my cell phone.

- Intern Jeff

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

Our second addition of Intern Week posts is brought to us by Kelli.  You may realize this while reading the post but in case you don’t, she was the ornery one of the bunch.  I personally enjoyed having her around as I finally had another girl participating on the basketball court amongst the many guys that play.

- Vanessa

Why would one want to do free busy work for a company when another company could pay for the work to be done? This whole internship shindig isn’t all sunshine and roses. We get stuck in between the bathrooms with all the ants, and even the day to day Surplusers call the intern section of the office the “dungeon”. What good can come out of all of this?

These thoughts definitely crossed my mind when I took on this internship, but I quickly realized that it is probably one of the best learning experiences I have had to date. There is not one collegiate class that I have taken that has measured up to the amount of information that I have acquired through this internship. Here at the Surplus, there is probably about two years worth of information thrown at you in the time span of about two or three weeks. After I and my fellow interns felt comfortable with all the information thrown at us, we then have the opportunity to put it to work. Employees around the Surplus then ask us interns to help them, at which point, we let our knowledge shine. This helps us further understand the information we have been given, as well as giving us real life situations to utilize these different concepts.

Here are just ten of the many things that I have learned about at the Surplus:

1. Keywords - Keywords are the words that individuals may use to search for different items on search engines and websites. When thinking of different key words we had to stretch our minds and think about all the different ways a user may search for the keywords we were targeting.
2. eCommerce - Basically eCommerce consists of things that are bought or sold through the Internet and other computer networks. eCcommerce is important to understand, considering that in this generation more and more companies are getting started by establishing their business on the Internet.
3. HTML - HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. I found this concept especially difficult to understand, and implement successfully. From my perspective HTML is basically the matrix like gibberish that creates an internet page.
4. Pay Per Click - Pay Per Click (PPC) is paid links that are placed on websites, mostly search engines, as advertising. Each time these links are clicked the site owner pays the website a designated fee. The websites that advertise for retailers gain money from the clicks and the advertisee gets increased traffic.
5. Google Adwords - Adwords is the PPC Google advertising platform.
6. Buying/How to guides - Too many websites have products that people know nothing about.  What better way to teach consumers about the products than with a buying or how to guide? These are exceedingly important for those who are trying something new. Buying guides tell the prospective buyer what they may need for different products they may be planning to buy as well as possible problems they may need to look out for. How to guides are exactly what it sounds like, they tell you how to do a certain activity, with simple, clear, step-by-step directions.
7. Importance of Content - Good websites that are trying to sell things should have content that appeals to the prospective buyers. The website should not just be trying to fill in space and make their site look longer and more knowledgeable.  The content needs to be easy to understand yet contain specific information as it relates to the products or services offered by the internet retailer. Everything that is said on the page should be organized and flow. Pages with content that is all over the place are confusing to the readers, consequently this will shy away potential buyers from the website.
8. Importance of Pictures - Pictures seem like such an easy thing for websites to master, yet almost every website has flawed pictures. Obviously when making a buying decision the images with the best colors, details, and views becoming increasingly important. Overall pictures can make or break a sale. Even after the sale, if a customer receives his or her product and is unhappy that the picture was different then the actual product received, the consumer will likely return the product and possibly never purchase from your website again.
9. Food is Key - I have worked a few different jobs, never have I seen such a happy bunch of employees, the reason…FOOD! Hungry employees can lead to grumpy employees. Stuffed employees can lead to happy employees.
10. Get the Food Fast - The people at the Surplus are savages. Consequently, when a new shipment of food comes in you have to run to get what you want.

For those that are considering starting an internship program, I have one tidbit of advice, it is better to not think of an internship as pro-bono work, but as a regular job, in which you get paid in knowledge verses money. 

- Intern Kelli

School is back in session and our group of interns has moved on to their next project.  Some of them graduated, some went back to school and others are now working here.  We have a new set of interns this semester and we expect them to be as successful and helpful as our last group.  One of the last tasks we assigned to the interns was to write a blog post on their experience or what they learned about eCommerce.  As we usher in the new and say our goodbye’s to the old I wanted to share what they learned with our audience, who knows maybe they picked up a golden nugget that some of us “experts” have missed.
-Vanessa

My goal is to eventually start my own internet retail business, and like most entrepreneurial ventures there are a large number of unknowns.  I entered business school with the intention of learning all that I could about the retail business and eCommerce in order to give myself any advantage I could.  When the opportunity to participate in this internship presented itself, I saw it as a chance to just that. I have to admit, I was unsure that this was the best thing for me. With the ability to learn first hand the way an internet retailer operates, there was no shortage of reasons why I should participate, but there was one thing that bothered me: the pay, or lack thereof.  I understood that this was something that would benefit me greatly, but something about working for nothing bothered me to no end.  I’m not against volunteering, mind you, in fact I support it whole-heartedly; working for free in an actual business is something entirely different.

After much deliberation, I decided that I should push through my prejudices against unpaid work and participate in the internship. I was not disappointed. This internship provided me with a glimpse into the inner workings of an internet retailer, and while I was apprehensive about working for “free” this alone was worth every dollar that would have or could have been made doing some mediocre job over the summer. Not only did I get to see what happened behind the scenes, I got to participate. This is the most profound difference between working in a classroom environment and working in an actual business. In a classroom, a project has little value after it has been graded—I have a desk full of forgotten projects to prove it. One of the main tasks that I took on was content creation for the two internet retail sites that Gordian Project currently has.  Unlike the classroom experience, I was able to put all of the things that I learned into immediate use, and it was really gratifying.  In this practical learning environment, I was able to see the result of my efforts and take pride in the fact that my work was made for a purpose.

After having completed my internship, I see that intern programs provide benefits to everyone involved, not just the company receiving the free work.  I sincerely believe that most businesses should offer some form of intern program. The business would receive free labor, and the interns receive invaluable real world experience. The end result would be a more educated group of people that have the benefit of first hand knowledge. I can’t imagine a business owner denying the advantage of hiring employees that can hit the ground running.

In the end, the best part of my experience as an intern was the people. The employees were always available to offer advice and suggestions, and the interns formed a tight-knit group that made working fun and easy—even if it was for free.

-Intern Andrew

Google celebrated their 10th Anniversary this week, and announced “Project 10^100”.  Ryan was actually at Google during their anniversary celebration and told us about special anniversary sprinkle cupcakes, balloons, a 10k run, and nerf gun wars!  I am sure there is more but I’ll let him tell you about it.  I think it is really cool to see the 10 ton gorilla giving back, quite the opposite of some of the other stories that I want to touch on this week.

• One of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Bird, Esq. of SEOmoz, published a blog this week and I am so glad that she did.  She brings great legal perspective to her posts that are therefore educational if nothing else, but this one really makes me want to campaign against the 10 ton gorilla.  The gorilla in this case is U-Haul.  The gist of the story is that U-Haul is suing HireAHelper.com for copyright infringement, but they are not only suing the company they are suing the founder and his wife personally.  I am sure that there is more to the lawsuit than what I am actually able to provide insight on, for multiple reasons of which I believe are too obvious to name, but I want to bring this up for revolutionary purposes.  I am sick of the Fatcats bullying the little guy.  The biggest players in Wall Street have run their companies into the toilet, and still think they deserve to walk away with millions of dollars in pension.  U-Haul has watched HireAHelper succeed, beat their website called emove (which I am referencing for purely journalistic value and refuse to provide any kind of linkjuice to the site) in organic rankings for highly targeted keywords, and then slapped him with a lawsuit.  From what Sarah knows about the suit she thinks he could win, if not for the fact that U-Haul has far more resources to come at HireAHelper with.  I think all of us self-starters, entrepreneurs, “little guys”, and forward thinkers should find a way to help Mike out, if not for principle alone, then for precedence as well.  Otherwise these suits are going to continue to happen, the industry Goliath’s are going to continue to monopolize the competition until we as consumers are left with inept products and services.  I for one am open to ideas on how the eCommerce community can contribute to Mike’s cause, and willing to help implement them, as I hope that my peers would do the same if I were in HireAHelper’s position.
• The economy isn’t all doom and gloom.  Take digg for example, they just received $28.7 million in funds, and one of the areas they plan on expanding on is employees.
• Who needs the police or a judiciary system if you are Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy?  Retailers such as the ones I have listed claim that their goods are stolen and then sold online and because of this they want to have the ability to send take-down notices without first reporting incidents to law enforcement.  They are acting like internet retailers are modern day pirates, come to think of it, I did see an Overstock employee wearing a patch and carrying a sword the last time I saw them, that must be the key to their online success.
• A child advocacy group has campaigned against Google Street View on the basis that it’s use can be exploited by child predators was called out for their exaggerations this week by Larry Magid.
• I have seen a lot of error messages in my day, but I have to agree with this blogger when they say that one of Gmail’s is the best. 
  

Hey business owner, are you willing to be bored? (Don’t let your employees read this.)

If you’ve worked on a startup you can likely argue that it involves little boredom.  However, what I’m finding now, a bit over four years in, is that a little boredom at the top may be a necessary evil.  I think understanding this issue requires understanding resources, growth vs. leveling off, and good management.  So the question I ask myself is “If we’ve tapped into all of the financial resources available and established a qualified, motivated team, charged with managing and growing the business according to our plan, what should I be spending my time on?” 

I have come up with seven options that may be likely considerations:

1. Get all in my management team’s mix - I could repeatedly request status, take over decisions, drive their teams, and other micro management efforts.  I think we know this undermines their efforts, creates inertia and waste, prevents learning, and ultimately renders the team impotent.  The key is to get the right people, build trust, and let them go within a wide boundary.
2. Find random little things to involve everyone in - You know, that neat new idea I just read a blog about.  Instead of efficiently rolling new ideas into the strategic plan, I can simply nab people here and there to run down what I consider to be fun, but are ultimately distractions.  Nimbleness should be innate, not the result of boredom.
3. Keep coming up with new projects, assignments, and responsibilities – Even the good projects, valuable assignments and important responsibilities cannot be tackled effectively without new resources. The assumption that my team has endless capacity to tackle new opportunities will quickly lead to burnout and de-motivation.  Eventually they’ll just stop getting anything done, or ignore me.
4. Join the "data team" - I could throw my body at whatever projects are currently in work.  I am sure that there are tasks that are consistently in need of an extra hand: Data entry, physical inventory of the warehouse, answering calls, issuing refunds, cleaning the trash bin, etc.  This is a tricky one since it seems like a good idea to jump on whatever fires I can see, and I’ve done so in the past.  At some point, however, we have to stop covering the fires with elbow grease from higher compensated workers.  We need to let those groups work through their staffing, processes, or focus issues rather than building in inefficient use of our dollars.  I’ve also found that sometimes I’m more trouble than I’m worth when I randomly toss myself into a department for a couple days.
5. Here’s a scary one… replace someone on the management team - Let’s face it, my partners and I have done each of their jobs at some point in our history.  We may be a bit rusty but it could be done again.  Assuming we don’t want our business to level off and slowly die, this may be the worst idea on the list.  If we’ve worked to put together a team that can use the available resources to grow the company, any reduction to that team would be a step backward to some previous point in time.  Our growth mentality makes this a last resort driven only by necessity, and definitely not boredom.
6. Get outside the office - This may be the best option, given the right team.  If your team needs to see your car in the parking lot every day you may have to take up web browsing as a profession.  Otherwise, I can get my creative juices working on the next thing, related or unrelated to this business.  The risk here is taking your eye off the ball, moving to something new too early, or not resisting trap number three above.  There is a possible upside to this, you may quickly test your assumptions about a “qualified, motivated team”.
7. Find more resources - Maybe this is my real job.  Debt, equity, grants, profits, couch cushions, recycling, Guido…  My partners and I need to make sure we are always on the limit of what we can do, and are willing to do, in terms of fueling our business with financial resources.  This goes back to my assumption … assuming we’ve tapped into all of the financial resources available. 

At the risk of sounding pompous, I suppose I’m learning the difference between managing and leading, or maybe a GM vs. a CEO.  At the core, I think the lesson is that we can’t always do more, even if I have time to spend.  If we’re leveraging every resource available to attack the highest priority opportunities in the best way possible, maybe it’s time to let the team carry the torch, while I simply make sure the two basic assumptions are progressively being met.  Eventually, as they build, we’ll reach new milestones that will require more of my involvement and guidance.  Otherwise, if I choose the wrong option above we change our trajectory, which isn’t best for anyone.  If I’ve maxed resources, setup the team, and created the plan, maybe I can use any extra time on a random Thursday to jump start a new venture of my own with personal resources.  I wonder if Guido will still give me that short term loan at 45%?  Uh, I guess I like my knee caps too much to take that deal.

• Vanessa suggests you read an article discussing the recent stock market activity and your online business. Hey! Since when was I classified as "cheap talent"?
• One of the largest players in our vertical, Home Depot recently announced price cuts to gain back customers and help lift weak sales. What are leaders in your niche doing to combat slow economic times?
• I want to give a shout out to my friend Nathan Decker of Evogear.com who is a new dad. Congratulations! Can't wait to see the little one on the slopes with you.
• Hopefully all you expert SEM Managers out there noticed the new AdWords Quality Score changes go live. I was curious to see how well my keywords were doing relative to other advertisers. It doesn't appear that we were hurt at all, in fact I have lots of keywords with very high scores. Thanks to my AdWords Team for the tips on account structure! 
  
  
  
   

• In case you are directionally challeged, Google Maps for Mobile has just what you need! New features include street view, as if you couldn't just look up from your phone and see for yourself.
• Maybe I talk too much on the phone and this is just a sign to save me from going over my minutes but my BlueAnt Supertooth Light bluetooth car speakerphone broke and now I'm on my third one. The product provides exceptional call quality, but there may have been some sort of production issue with the previous one's I had. Their great customer service shone bright when they sent me a new one via next day air with a prepaid return slip inside. That's how customer service should be done.
• I thought about using more text messages but prices have been increasing year after year. See what our Senate is doing to help.
• OutdoorPros.com was the first "copy and paste" to launch a new vertical for us. As we've shared with the folks at Internet Retailer we have been working to create additional websites for new product lines. Earlier this week I happened to run across this great comic from Drew at Toothpaste for Dinner and I couldn't help but worry about when we launch the next site or about Lisa Barone if she get's another cat... 
  
  
  

• New Microsoft commercials (thanks Andy) are out. I couldn't help but think about my grandma using her PC to rent Netflix.
• Excited about Chrome but don't want to leave your FireFox plugins behind? Matt Cutts put together some creative solutions for you to have your cake and eat it to, sort of.
• "I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller" (to the tune of "I wish" by Skee-Lo), but really I wish I was a bigger blogger so I could go to BlogWorld Expo. If you're a blogger looking to make some cash as an affiliate, be sure to check out the panel with Shawn Collins, Tim Jones and Mike Allen titled Affiliate Marketing Secrets for Bloggers.