Google

Thursday, January 15, 2009

10 Steps to Prepare SEO Friendly Open Source Drupal Site

 

 

Drupal is adequate for SEO, with a few added modules configured correctly, it is extremely powerful.

  1. Enable Clean URLs
  2. Enable Path Module and install and enable Pathauto, Global Redirect and Token Modules.
  3. Configure the Pathauto Module
  4. Install and enable the Meta Tags Module.
  5. Install enable the Page Title Module
  6. Do NOT install the Drupal Sitemap Module.
  7. Fix .htaccess to redirect to "www" or remove the "www" subdomain.
  8. Fix your theme's HTML headers if they aren't right
  9. Recommended: create a custom front page
  10. Modify robots.txt file.

Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Monday, January 12, 2009

6 Steps for Best Your E-commerce Shopping Cart Sites

 

 

Most of the E-commerce shopping cart sites on the internet are based on content management systems, example osCommerce, magento, Zen Cart, opencart, etc. this means: URLs and pages are dynamically generated by the scripting language fetching all elements from the database. To improve for these e-commerce shopping cart sites:

1. Designing for Success

- The top 100 eTailers prefer a 2 column, centered designed. The next most common design is 2 column, left justified design. However, there is no one size fits all solution. You have to test to see what converts best for your product.
For instance, make sure your proceed to checkout buttons are highlighted and easy to find. Make sure you have contact information easy to find, same for shipping info.

2. Be an expert of your products.

You know so much more about your products than your customers do, and in general retailers aren't doing a good job conveying their knowledge to their users. Offer your opinions on your products. Offer testimonials. Tell the users what to buy.

3. Make Buying Simple

-- Show progress
-- Eliminate distractions
-- Reduce shopping cart abandonment
-- Relay error messages in a friendly, useful manner.

Single page checkouts often help conversions by reducing distractions and generally making the process more simple and quicker.

4. Internal Site Search

It's not an option, it's a requirement. Make sure your site search is displaying relevant results. Check the Google Analytics site search report. People that utilize site search convert at a rate 5 times higher than other visitors. If you're not doing your site search well, then don't make it prominent.

5. Internal SEO for:

-- Internal Linking
-- Header Tags
-- Page Titles
-- Anchor Text
-- Image Optimization

6. Pay attention to your off-page SEO.

Increase your inbound links through:

-- Online Press Releases (PRWeb.com is used as an example)
-- Directory submissions
-- Blogging/Link Baiting
-- Shopping Feeds (make sure you optimize your data feeds)


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Features to Decide before Selecting Open Source Shopping Cart

 

 

All open source shopping cart software offerings have unique features about them which make them more or less useful, depending on your needs as an online marketer.

The following is a list of shopping cart features that you should consider as you decide which cart to use as the platform for your online money make website.

  • Discount coupons
  • Affiliate programs
  • Gift certificates
  • Automatic postage calculations (such as with UPS, FedEx, USPS)
  • International postage calculations (in real time)
  • Order-taking options (through the website, over the phone, fax)
  • Detailed statistics (who came to the site? How did they get there?)
  • Flexibility with taxes (state, international, multiple taxes)
  • Credit card payment options (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, etc)
  • Multiple payment options (Credit Card, PayPal, C.O.D., paper invoice, purchase order, charge to telephone)
  • Real-time credit card processing
  • Electronic gateway options (such as Authorizenet, Verisign, Bank of America,...)
  • Multiple currency displays (Selling to Canada? Show the prices in Canadian dollars)
  • Recurring billing (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
  • Digital delivery (for e-books and other e-files)
  • Bulk purchase discounting
  • Recognition of repeat customers and customer-sign in
  • Automatic confirmation emails
  • Automated "lost password" recovery
  • Newsletter sign-ups
  • In-site search engine
  • Detailed sales reports (to the extent of cost versus price)
  • Integration with sales software (such as Quickbooks)
  • Security issues (such as forbidding orders from a Yahoo account)
  • Gift wrapping option
  • Multiple products options (such as color, size, style)

Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Online Money Make Affiliate Marketing Network Classification (Part 2)

 

 

Part 1 can be found here.

If the classification is based on the online money earning types of the affiliate network, the most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

1. PPC - Pay Per Click is a highly promoted and used affiliate marketing method by affiliates with no websites or small websites. This is also the easiest way for them to start making money. Under this method of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid a commission by the merchant when a visitor visits the merchant’s site through the affiliate’s reference, that is, whenever a visitor clicks and goes to the merchant’s site through the banner or text ads that the affiliate has put up. Pay Per Click method is basically used to capitalize on the traffic that arrives at the affiliate’s site and the affiliate facilitates the flow of these traffic from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site and the affiliate gets paid for this effort. The merchant’s product or services need not be purchased by the visitor, who is referred by the affiliate, for him to earn his compensation from the merchant. However, compensation for each click under PPC affiliate programs are quite small, usually in the range of 10 cents to 1 dollar.

2. PPP - Pay Per Performance affiliate marketing is the darling among merchants and is also the most sought after type by the affiliates. Under this type of affiliate program, the affiliate is paid a commission only when his referral performs an action - that is the visitor that he has referred should actually purchase a product or service from the merchant’s site or when the visitor is converted to a lead for the merchant. For the merchant, this translates into a lot of cost and resource savings in terms of his own direct marketing efforts. Also, this type of affiliate marketing is highly lucrative and most rewarding for the dedicated affiliate, since commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually is in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales. And, in the case of e-products or e-goods, the merchant may offer a commission as high as 70 - 75% of the sale price to the affiliates.

A further classification of Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be done into two types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL). Both these are very popular:

a) Pay Per Sale (PPS) - In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the affiliates get commission from the merchants whenever the affiliate is successful in converting the visitor into a purchaser from the merchant’s site. Affiliates are generally paid on percentage basis, although some merchants may opt to pay a fixed fee. But, whichever method is adopted, percentage or fixed, it is generally much higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click marketing methods.

b) Pay Per Lead (PPL) - The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant’s site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type. Generally, the sales conversion rate is the highest in the case of PPL, because, the visitor is not required to purchase anything but only complete a non-financial transaction, like, filling up an application form, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.

Every affiliate marketer has to try out various methods and decide which works best for him. He should then concentrate on those affiliate marketing methods which is suitable for his style of online business building.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Online Money Make Affiliate Marketing Network Classification (Part 1)

 

If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is a type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate every time the customer he has referred purchases an item from the merchant’s site sometimes the merchant extending recognition for affiliate loyalties to a lifetime arrangement.

Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on various levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made.

A) Single Tier - In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. Most of the time, unless specified, all the affiliate marketing types mentioned earlier (i.e. PPS, PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

B) Two Tier - In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliates are not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he brings to the merchant’s site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by other affiliates who joined as sub-affiliate of the above affiliate marketer.

C) Multi Tier - Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for more number of levels of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

D) Residual Income Affiliate Marketing - In this type, the affiliate gets paid for every customer he has referred to the merchant’s site. Additionally, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred goes back to the merchant’s site and purchases another product. Commission for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either percentage of sales or based on fixed fee.

Every affiliate marketer finds that these different affiliate marketing methods work differently for each of them. For instance, multi tier affiliate marketing, also called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is a highly difficult type of internet marketing and it does not work for everyone. As a matter of fact, many legitimate marketers consider MLM as illegal or something which is undesirable.

Part 2 Can be found here.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Online Money Make/Earn for Hong Kong People (Part 2)

 

Part 1 can be found here.

Below stated would be suitable for hong kong people who want to earn and make money online either at home, after working hour, or even while you are working in the office, your earning project are still running at the back.

Zero Cost and Earning from hk$1 to hk$1,xxx.00+, zero cost, no hosting, no domain payment fees, only your electric bills and phone bills count, unless you want to have it running in a Cybercafe near your house, or Coffee Bean with free wi-fi.

With Zero cost, Free blogging services like blogger.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com and many others more, you can signup for a free blogging space, with your own name that you want, but of coarse provided the name wasn’t taken by others and with their free service domain name at the back like yourname.blogger.com, or yourname.wordpress.com.

After signup, you can post or blog anything that you want, write something about your interesting life, or even something you like to share about around the world, gadgets that you’ve recently bought, and all these are topics or post that you can actually write about.

For Zero and Low Cost input, with lower earning or higher earning with risk. If you wouldn’t want to do all the above mentioned category, and all you just want is online earning, and do less work, you can try out some of the website which is paying member to visit/browse a website, pay to read email, pay to click website and pay to search. These service is easy but have some risk of not getting paid or even getting your information exposed because you need to enter your personal details of receive payment in method like check or virtual money. Not all website like this, some really do pay their member.

For Low and High Cost input, with lower earning or higher earning. Shopping cart-like, or bidding and auction website, is one good website for those who doesn’t want to type a lot, and doesn’t want to spend time blogging nor want to have a domain. These website like lelong.com.my and ebay.com.my are indeed a very good tools for hong kong people who want to earn some money by selling and buying things.

For example, at Lelong.com.my you can actually look for those unique stuff which is either second hand or used items, and if you think they can be worth more, try buy it back with low cost, and try selling it again after a period of time, if you are lucky enough, you might earn 100% of what you’ve paid for. And if you have some friends and you, yourself, have some items which you no longer used or haven’t use, you can also try selling or auction it there, to earn some extra. Not only items that you have, you can also try source out items which is rare or order items from a shop having a dealer price, and try selling the items there. This way, you can have your online shop without a real shop locally. For some reason, there are hong kong people that write an ebook about some guide, or story, and sell it online via these type of services, or some even draw art to sell their arts online here, and its free.

There are many more method of earning and making money online, and these are some of them, and again, the method mentioned above may not or won’t have any guarantee of 100% work, but something you will know, and at least you can try to your business online. Previously, I did mentioned to a friend of mine, about selling or having a business using method no.2, and till date, he is still doing the same thing, at home. He is able to work with this method till date, is not because of what I’ve told him, it is because he himself, know at least how to twist turn using the method to make money online.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Online Money Make/Earn For Hong Kong People (Part 1)

 

How to make and earn money online for hong kong people whom are working at home and working at daytime, but want some extra income on night time? A question asked from a friend of mine via MSN. For some of us out there with experience over the internet, it would be easy to answer yourself with this question, but for some reason, those that have not really go into making money online life via internet marketing, he would try to search high and low for answers, some say this will work and some say by doing this it won’t.

Many people are going into the internet marketing industry dreaming to be a millionaire overnight. While this is a true statement that you will be rich “overnight” literally, but the learnings and failures before this are what most people can’t see.

This gives opportunities for the con men to pull their scams right in front of your eyes and yet there’re still many people believing in them wanting to make easy money.

You’ve got to realize that internet marketing is just another business model that everyone else is having. You will need great determination, persistence, and efforts in order to pull this off and get rich.

If you are among one of them that’s thinking, “Oh, working over the internet is just as simple as eating a pie” “Oh, I’m pretty good over IT stuff it’s simple!” then you’re very wrong. Internet is one place where zillions of information are running across everyday, and you’ll easily get lost not knowing what is the next step.

However, internet marketing does offer you a lot of advantages, the most common one is that you need only little to none money to start your business, and that you can work less for more each day because you’re leveraging the internet to do the selling for you.

This is the very main reason where most people fail in internet marketing, they have the misconception that internet marketing is the easy way out with huge commission checks come rolling into you, and you don’t need to learn the way of how this business works, don’t need to put in effort etc.

But as the matter of fact, you will need to really understand everything within the industry to make things “click”. When everything starts “clicking”, then you’ll know you’ve “got” it and there is where you start to do less for more, and wait for the checks coming in.

Part 2 can be found here.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Drupal Shopping Carts with E-Commerce or Ubercart Modules

 

using Drupal as your CMS you are better off using the e-Commerce or Ubercart modules. Those modules were made for Drupal. These are exciting times for Ubercart and the e-Commerce module.

Drupal ecommerce solution faces with two choices, Ubercart and the e-Commerce modules, e-commerce is only compatible with the Drupal 5.x branch (the version for the 6.x branch is still in development).  Ubercart has a version compatible with the Drupal 6.x branch (a beta version but already pretty stable) and the Ubercart community is very active.

Here are the Pros and Cons of drupal e-Commerce and Ubercart modules:

E-Commerce
Pros                                                                             Cons
Endlessly extensible                                       UI is difficult and confusing
More options for contributed modules    Requires a lot of theming
Been around the block longer             Feels bloated and cumbersome

Ubercart
Pros                                                                   Cons
More ready to go out of the box     Difficult to customize some areas
Lots of jQuery built in                                Lots of jQuery built in
Vibrant, active community                     Still in alpha
User interface is awesome                  Not as many modules available

As conclusion, there may be no solid answer for which one is better. However, there are a few things Ubercart offers that e-Commerce does not. Most importantly, is a one page checkout. Ubercart has a really nicely done one page checkout, while e-Commerce's leaves much to be desired. If nothing else, perhaps having them both will give us two strong options for using e-commerce in Drupal.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Three Reasons to Not Use Open Source Magento for Large Ecommerce Shopping Cart

 

 

magneto as the potential to be an excellent shopping cart. but their are some things that they need to fix:

First and most importantly is the initial page load. On average its about 250k and takes between 7-9 seconds on a broadband connection. (28 or so seconds for a 56k connection) The reason it takes so long is the javascript they use.

Second, Seo wise it is not the best. Decent, but it needs some work. Regarding Magento's SEO solution, they allowed multiple paths to the same page, which can result in duplicate content within your own website (not always penalized, but is something to avoid).

last, If you have a lot of products, magneto is not for yo. it will take you much longer to list a product than pretty much any other shopping cart.

In summary, Magento is not really free. Yes you can download and use it for free. However you can not use cheap hosting with it. The reason is the amount of load it puts on the server. If you try to use it for example, you site will take forever to load and your customer will NOT wait for it.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Magento Solutions to Build Best Online Earning Ecommerce Site

 

 

Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. With Magento, never feel trapped in your eCommerce solution again. You can Control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more. There are no limits to creativity with Magento.
Please visit http://www.magentocommerce.com/ for more details.

Following are the typical solutions for using Magento to build best online earning ecommerce website.

Magento themes development
Magento module development
Payment module solutions such as with google checkout
Cart module solutions
Migrate other shopping cart system such as OSCommerce site to Magento
Migrating Data to Magento Site
Magento site SEO
Magento site SEM/PPC

Magento affiliate programs

Creating multiple online storefronts and store websites
Magento setup hosting

By implementing above steps and solutions, online money make marketers can easily build an online earning site using Magento shopping cart.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Three Simple Step Online Money Make Plan

 

 

Making money online is not the result of just wishful thinking. If we want to make money online then we need to have a burning desire to make things happen. We need then to make a definite decision and never give up until we succeed. Here is a three step plan about what you can do for an internet online money make business.

The first thing to do is to find a market or a niche. I mean a "hungry crowd" if you prefer. You have to find people who are looking for solutions. The more desperate these people are in this specific market, the better is your niche. So the first thing to do is to find a market. Not the other way around.

Now you might have people who are very interested in your offer but they are not willing to give money for that. They are used to find the things they want for free especially on the internet. Your target is obviously not this "hungry crowd" but a really "starving" one meaning people who are not only interested in your offer but better yet they are willing to pay you to use your solution. And the simplest way for you to know if there is a market for your offer is to find out what the competition is doing. Are they spending money advertising and promoting their products to your potential clients? If so then you're in business.

The third step is to make your customers an offer they can't refuse. You have to stand out from the competition. That's where your passion, your personality and your imagination come into play. If you can make an irresistible offer to a "hungry crowd willing to pay for your product", you are in business.

A final point I want to make is about people speaking of doing what they love. I totally agree with that just because doing what you love will put you in the right vibration and people you deal with will catch that good energy. But believe you will do better by such a plan than just "guessing" what works even if you are doing what you love.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Best Ever Online Money Make Formula and Secret

 

 

Here is a Mathematical Formula For Making Money online from Internet, i.e. a formula thru internet marketing to earn money online:

1. Leads Per Annum x Conversion Rate = Customers

2. Customers x Average Dollar Sale x Sales Per Customer = Gross Profits

3. Gross Profits x Profit Margin = Net Profits

The real power of this formula is stored within the five variables (a.k.a. levers): 1. Leads Per Annum, 2. Conversion Rate, 3. Average Dollar Sale, 4. Sales Per Customer, and 5. Profit Margin. Quite literally, when you apply these levers to your online money make business your profits will increase exponentially.

Here is an example, assume for the moment that your business currently operates under these circumstances:

Leads Per Annum = 10,000
Conversion Rate = 0.1 (10%)
Av. Dollar Sale = $50
Sales / Customer = 2 per annum
Profit Margin = 0.2 (20%)

Plugging these into the formula gives you a net profit of $20,000 per annum.

Let's now demonstrate the impact of improving progressively more levers without increasing your overall effort:

Case #1: Improve leads by 100%

Net profit = $40,000
Profit to Effort ratio = 1:1

I.e. for every % increase in effort you get the same % increase in profit.

Case #2: Improve leads and conversion rate by 50% each.

Net profit = $45,000
Profit to Effort ratio = 1.25:1

I.e. for every % increase in effort you get a 1.25% increase in profit.

Observation: By simply increasing the number of levers you improve you magnify your leverage. In other words, for the same amount of effort, the more levers you improve the more your profits improve.

In this example we see that by spreading your effort over all five levers you increased your net profits by $29,766. Compared to the $20,000 increase gained from improving only one variable we see that your profit growth is almost 50% greater for doing nothing more than spreading your resources over all five levers. Imagine all the extra money you could be generating right now without any extra effort. All it takes is a simple change in focus.

Conclusion: To leverage your efforts for maximum returns you must focus on improving all five levers in your online money make business. This has to be one of the most magnificent realizations and secret you could ever make in online money make business. Furthermore, to be more effective and efficient to earn money online, never stop improving all five levers of your online money make business.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Online Reputation Management Tools

 

Reputation management is a very hot topic online right now. As an entrepreneur, your reputation can have a serious impact on your success and you have a need to monitor your reputation and to make sure that what is being published is true.

Online reputation management involves monitoring the conversations and communications on Internet (online) that revolve around your brand, promoting a positive image and suppressing negative content.

There are a variety of resources that can help in different ways:

claimID Free, easy way to manage your online identity.

Google Alerts Email updates of the latest relevant Google results.

Yahoo Alerts Free, personalized notification service.

Technorati Real-time search for user-generated media.

FindMeOn Manage your circles of friends, family, colleagues and others.

myOpenID Secure OpenID provider.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Magento Open Source Shopping Cart With SEO Features Reviewed

 

 

Magento – an open source ecommerce platform for shopping cart websites with SEO friendly features. Lot of developers support Magento as it allows more flexibility and clean code compared to any other ecommerce platforms.

It is common in shopping cart websites when we have same products listed under multiple categories that will result in multiple pages with same product description. In the page Google addressing ‘duplicate content’ issue, they have mentioned such duplication as non-malicious. But that doesn’t mean that having them will not affect your search engines rankings.

From the features page, these are the SEO advantages they offer:

  • 100% Search Engine Friendly
  • Google Site Map
  • URL Rewrites give full control of URL’s
  • Meta-information for products and categories
  • Auto-generated Site Map for display on site
  • Auto-Generated Popular Search Terms Page

 

In Magento, 'duplicate content' issue  occurs when we have “Use categories path for product URLs” option as “On” under System>>Configuration>>Catalog>>Search Engine Optimizations. Suppose I have a product listed inside three different categories, the Magento system will generate four pages with the same Product details.

  • /product.html
  • /category1/product.html
  • /category2/product.html
  • /category3/product.html

Think about a situation where a website has more than hundred products and at least a 20% of them are assigned under more than one category.

What will happen if we turn off that category path URL option?
This will ensure all the product pages will be shown independently instead of showing under a category folder. But this can highly affect user experience, difficulty in recognizing which product under which category. It will mess up the breadcrumbs. Also we will be losing an opportunity to make use of category name keywords in URLs.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Magento vs Miva vs osCom vs Zen Cart - which is better?

 

If you had the ability to choose between Magento, Miva, osC, ZenCart - which would you choose. Each one, by my reckoning has great value and I am having issues deciding which to use. Here are the comments collected from Internet and you would be able to make decisions based on these:


Magento: graphically pleasing, multiple stores in one store, ajax, easy to customize

Magento is very graphically pleasing, but don't just jump in because of the pretty backend. Magento is still very young, but if you are comfortable with the OOP approach and specifically the Zend Framework setup that they have, Magento could turn out to be a great cart for you.

Magneto is slower than an oscommerce site, loaded with products. And that's very slow. Its why the trend back in 2005 was to go with CSS/XHTML php carts like Zen cart, instead of table based carts like Osc.
Magneto is nice in the way that web based flash applications are nice- it is packed full of great features that run like a snail unless you spend a fortune on specialized web hosting.


Also, the template is inflexible in critical ways, such as altering the nav bar to be a side menu instead of a top nav bar. There are also some key bugs in the bulk-uploader (if you like to manage stock via a spreadsheet)

it's not really ready for the mainstream yet. It IS bulky and slow, and pretty much requires a dedicated server to run (you don't even want to try it in a shared hosting environment). The real WTF moment for me was dealing with their templating system, and the fact that all their add to cart/checkout buttons won't work AT ALL with javascript disabled.

As of the current Magento release, more products == exponentially slower performance, especially while searching the product catalog.

The good news is that the development progress on it seems very active, and they will no doubt address the (huge) performance concerns at some point in time. And when they DO solve those performance problems (and other little "gotchas" like javascript issues), the software will be almost unbeatable.


Miva: very robust and well documented

Miva is very robust, but FAR from well documented. Recently purchased, the new owners (who were actually the former owners) claim that this will be fixed soon. While the community is very active, every modification you want to make will cost you $20-$100.

osC: great support community, somewhat easy to design around, user friendly

osC is dieing. Version 3 has been "in progress" forever now, and Magento has really tried to replace osC as the #1 open source cart.


Zen: same as osC but better with features and easier to use

Zen is a pretty good cart and is still very active. The infrastructure is similar to osC, but very different than Magento's. Zen relies on "hacks" more than "addons", which can be very, very messy.

In summary, don't stand miva. It's expensive and has very little support, and hard to modify (the hardest). OsCommerce has died, they are more concerned about fighting than getting anything done. It's been over 3 years that 3.0 is coming. Zen is just a knock-off of osCommerce and has no future without osCommerce.

Magento is backed by a commercial company who has an interest in keeping it new and fresh. I feel comfortable believing that these few items (yes performance is bad) will be addressed soon and I'd rather be able to upgrade a Magento store then have to upgrade from another to Magento.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Magento With Google Website Optimizer for A/B and Multivariate Testing

 

Magento, the widely used open source ecommerce platform, just announced it will soon have an interface to integrate with Google Website Optimizer.  Magento users will be able to enter the pertinent script right into a section in the Magento Admin Panel. 

This of course allows Magento users to do A/B and multivariate testing on their sites, with very little effort, and no heavy development effort.  Magento, an inexpensive ecom platform, is now integrated with a free optimization (and analytics) platform, enabling webmasters to make data-driven decisions and optimize the visitor experience by answering questions like “would it be better if we actually displayed the prices of these items?”

To save or make through optimization, there were some best practices that they needed to put in place, and I had some hunches about some aspects of the layout that I thought would improve their conversion rate.  Primarily this had to do with the add-to-cart button and the options (usually size and color) selection.  I knew we could run some simple split tests on the layout and options, and find the one that resulted in the best conversion rate.  I was fairly certain I could raise the add-to-cart rate by 5%.

There were of course development and consulting costs involved in this.  But an overall 14% boost in sales more than covered those costs, not to mention the long-term value of acquiring new customers by improving the visitor experience.

So, where do you start with split or multivariate testing?  Anywhere!  Start small, make one educated and solid assumption, and test it out.  Watch the results, and then move on to another change, or, if you were unsuccessful, modify your first assumption and try again.  The critical objective is to begin to make testing part of your decision making process.  Next time you are sitting with your developer, marketing personnel, or site manager, deciding what you think “looks”, “would work”, or “worked at company x” better, just remember that your visitors will do a much better job of letting you know what works.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Top CPC/CPM/CPA Website List for Online Money Make

Here is a list of resources of how to make money online thru CPC/CPM/CPA, just use the keywords given to search then you will find the clue.

CPC: Cost per click - the cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through.
Google Adsense
Yahoo Publisher Network (Beta)
Chitika
BidClix
BannerBoxes
Adbrite
AdSonar
Clicksor
Searchfeed
Revenue Pilot
Kontera

CPM: Cost per thousand impressions
Tribal Fusion
Casale Media
BurstMedia
RealTechNetwork
ValueClick Media/FastClick
Buds Ad Network
MaxOnline
24/7 Real Media
Bannerconnect
Mamma Media Solutions
Adtegrity
Ad pepper Media
Rightmedia.com
Advertising.com
Accelerator Media
AdSmart
AdAgency1
Interclick

CPA/CPL Cost per Action - model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.
Linkshare
Commission Junction
ShareASale
WebSponsors
Advertising.com
Azoogle Ads
Maxbounty


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Friday, January 2, 2009

Open Source Magento Ecommerce Shopping Cart Site To-do List

 

 

Magento is one of the fastest growing Open Source eCommerce web application, simple to configure and customize. And in spite of the fact that it was launched quite recently, it gains more and more popularity among web designers. Magento CMS includes such advanced features as Marketing Promotions and SEO Tools, Mobile Commerce, Catalog-Management Tools and etc. And everyone, who is already using Magento, may customize his/her store with a new theme or template.

Here is the to do list normally for people to use Magento as an ecommerce site, i.e. from  Hosting, Installation to Customization steps:

- Selection of your domain name.
- Selection of your web hosting for Magento.
- Installation of the Magento default (without the sample data products) version with a mysql database.
- Creation of your personal logo made in Photoshop format.
- Customization of the header image.
- Creation of the menu with color customization and image background.
- Customize the header Slogan, and the top links (color, bold….)
- Customize the left box and right box image with Photoshop.
- Footer image creation and link customization, removing the magento information line.
- Add your page layout for home page, customer service and about us.
- Add the keywords for Google optimization.
- Add the shipping account ( Fedex, UPS, DHL….).
- Add the payment system ( Google checkout, Paypal…).
- Link building and SEO to get more than 1000 unique visitors a month.
- Add the Search Engine Friendly URL.
- Customize your admin such as email templates, newsletter template and personal information.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Five Steps to Keep Your Online Money Make Earnings

 

 

Here are the five steps I am taking which help you keep your online money make earnings running.
   1. Go out and buy some good websites so as to convert some of your liquid cash into online money make earnings. This is the right time. The online money make earnings on the sites are on the lower side, so the valuations will be better. It will add to your top-line and will be a very good investment in a long term.
   2. Go out and try to find your own advertisers and advertising deals. I am trying this and today only I finalized on a big deal. It looks difficult, but is not that difficult. If required, you can even try to do a monthly+CPA sort of mixed deal with your advertiser. It is sort of a win-win situation. But there is a problem in this one. This sort of deals are easier for bigger sites but more difficult for smaller ones.
   3. This is the time to ask favors (and return them as well) from all your online friends in terms of links and mentions.
   4. Shell out some more advertising space on your website for some new advertising network. Every bit helps. Also make sure that this addition of new network is not reducing your online money make earnings from other networks.
   5. Reduce the percentage of the online money make earnings you spend on yourself and increase the percentage you put back into your website. That means increase the marketing budget and hire more people/freelancer to increase the content on your site. That way you can compensate the decreasing eCPM by increasing the traffic.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

10 Common Ways of Earning Money Online

 

Here are the 10 common ways of earning money online:

1. adsense

2. affiliate marketing

3. blogging

4. ebook creation

5. email marketing

6. online advertising

7. offer free traffic

8. internet marketing

9. earn thru building numerous websites and earn small amounts of income from those sites

10. earn thru a number of membership sites


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Research and Steps on Choosing A Drop Ship Supplier

 

 

Finding a reliable drop ship supplier is actually one of the most important steps in launching a drop ship business. It requires certain research, the best way is to start with the research of your industry niche. Once you get familiar with these spheres, you'll find it easier to select a reliable company to establish reciprocal relationship with.

Your first step is to find some drop ship supplier directory.

Your next step should be coming up with the type of goods you expect a drop ship supplier to provide. You should also pay attention to the services offered by the supplier and make sure they meet your requirements.

Then, browse the Web for some helpful reviews, for your to get a basic idea of several drop ship suppliers you consider. Be sure to look through special comparison charts that will provide you with some personalized idea of what those companies are.

After combining the information from charts and online reviews, you'll be able to judge about this or that company on the basis of other people's individual experience of dealing with it.

Your next step would be examining the websites of each supplier. There, you'll get an idea of their services, products, and prices, customer support, history and working experience, learn more about their payment system, read testimonials, etc.

While examining suppliers' websites, pay attention to the simplicity and convenience of navigation. This aspect is important for you to quickly find the necessary products once you start your drop ship business. Note the suppliers' shipping fees, monthly or yearly fees, and average prices on goods.

Checking and comparing such aspects will help you decide which drop ship supplier is the most attractive choice. All in all, your primary considerations should be the prices on products and service fees, both of which should be as low as possible.

As a result of your research, you should be able to come up with one drop ship supplier.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Thursday, January 1, 2009

3 eBay Affiliate Tools

 

 

Here are 3 tools that eBay has given to make an affiliate's work easier.

1) eBay Editor Kit (EK)

With the eBay Editor Kit EK, affiliates can add relevant, real-time eBay listings to their Web sites in just seconds.

eBay states that the EK produces click-through rates two times greater than traditional banners!

The eBay Editor Kit dynamically lists pertinent eBay auctions and listing details, including product information, gallery images, bidding prices, and ending times. Each specification is completely customizable.

Affiliates can display up to 200 eBay listings that are dynamically updated in real-time.

Additionally, affiliates are able to customize each Editor Kit by specifying the search results set and the format to match the content and look of your Web site.

Some of the customizable features include:

** Search term
** eBay category
** Seller(s)
** Number of items displayed
** Editor Kit size and color

2) Dynamic Landing Pages (DLPs)

To increase affiliates' conversion rates, eBay supplies affiliates with Dynamic Landing Pages (DLPs): specialized portal pages available for thousands of eBay's most requested and relevant keywords, like "fishing", "handbag", and "Gymboree".

DLPs are proven to be 33% more effective at converting traffic than ordinary landing pages!

It's easy to implement the DLPs.

Simply go to EBay Keywords for a list of all eBay DLPs and link directly to those pages relevant to your site.

Then append "%26krd=1" to the end of a search results link that you use as your landing page.

The user will be redirected to a DLP if one exists for that keyword. If the page does not exist, the user will be sent to the original landing page instead.

3) eBay Flexible Destination Tool (FDT)

The Flexible Destination Tool is a powerful tool that eBay offers its affiliates that allows you to build your own eBay text links...you choose the landing page.

You can use Hot ebay keywords to create a Hot Items! section on your website or easily promote all the Buy It Now! items.

EBay Flexible Destination Tool

Find it at EBay Flexible Destination Tool


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

Some Social Media Optimization (SMO) Metrics

 

 

There are several things you can look at when measuring the success (or not) of your SMO marketing efforts; and of course it depends on what your overall marketing goals are, here are some others to consider besides the common metric options such as views, qualified visitors, increased sales and increased brand awareness:

Contributing content – assuming you have a blog and allow for comments; a quick and easy metric would be to monitor the number of visitors who are actually interacting (posting comments) on your blog.

Reading content – if you have a blog, a good way to measure engagement is to monitor who is reading your blog and where they are coming from. You can run web analytic reports that will show you what is the most popular content on your site (blog); how long they were on that page, where they came from, and also the bounce rate (percent of visitors who left your site after visiting a particular page).

Subscribing to a RSS feed – you can also measure how many web visitors are subscribing to your RSS feeds.

Who is bookmarking your site/blog posts – there are a couple of ways you can look at this metric. You can use your web analytic tool and run a click map report and see how many web visitors are clicking on the social bookmarking icons. Or, you can simply create profiles in each of the bookmarking sites and search for your urls. This can be very time consuming and would only recommend spending time searching in digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon and netscape.

Emailing posts – assuming you allow for your blog postings to be emailed to others (see below); you can use your blog platform tool like wordpress to see how many emails are actually being sent through your web form.

Who is talking about you – another metric you can use is to see who is actually linking to your blog and talking about your blog postings. You can do this a couple of different ways; through technorati or searching in Google and Yahoo for the following: link:http://wangzhuan0811.blogspot.com. Or, if you have budget, you can hire companies like Radian6 or Collective Intellect, that offer real-time social media monitoring and analysis.

Final thought: to judge if your social media optimization succeeds or not, measure at each stage of your process is the key to identify where the fail points are.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|

6 Top Earning Tips to Generate Social Media Based Traffic

 

It's time for you to consider developing content specifically to drive traffic from social media sites, and also the time to consider what you want from that social media traffic, and what to do with it once you have it.

1. First off, don’t break the rules! Before you start to market to users,you need to understand the written and unwritten rules of the community and know the communities tolerance for sales promotions and get involved in the social community.

2. With social media, the bottom line is that your campaigns will be more successful if you create content that speaks specifically to the community audience.

3. Before you try to promote your site on digg, the first thing you should know is if your site can handle the traffic of being on the first page (what would 200,000 visitors do to your website server?).

4. The quality of traffic will vary for each social media channel. Sites such as Digg, and Twitter may help you reach a more targeted audience, while StumbleUpon and other niche sites such as Hugg drive non-targeted traffic.

5. If you are a large brand spending a lot of money to develop a ‘viral’ campaign, you may be losing a lot of that money if your content can’t be found. First thing people do for an offline campaign is to search for more information online. 2/3 of searchers are driven to perform a search online as a result of exposure to offline advertisement.

6. If you spent money to develop a viral campaign and it ‘spreads’ via word of mouth, which helps to drive and increased number of searches for your campaign, but you aren’t actually resulting for the main keywords, what went wrong?

In summary, the whole point of social media is engagement, abandoning your community mid campaign will deter the audience from further engagement. Also, it’s not enough to just have traffic, you have to have qualified traffic. In addition, having a call to action and compelling value proposition is key to making your campaigns worthwhile.


Add Post To: | Technorati| del.icio.us| Stumbleupon|
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)