Small businesses are full members of world ecommerce

Today everybody recognizes the advantages of electronic commerce beginning from giants of world markets and finishing with small enterprises. The matter is only capital involved in that electronic economy. Today more and more businesses are turning to internet banking for a clutch of useful functions in a bid to keep track of their finances. So happens in Australia with small businesses.

More than 1.2 million Australian small businesses have taken up internet banking since its inception in 2000, according to independent consultants the Market Intelligence Strategy Centre (MISC).

Initially, internet business banking products were so-called desktop systems, where a specific program was installed onto a computer in order for small business owners to access their accounts.

But the product has evolved, with banks now developing web-based offerings that require no special software.

Accounts are accessed via an internet connection and a standard web browser.

MISC, which conducts research on behalf of the banks, says up to half a million small businesses are expected to take up these new products, which incorporates features such as payroll, foreign exchange transactions and account monitoring, in the next three years.

Bank West senior manager of e-commerce Philip Bowen said small businesses had flocked to its products since they were launched in 2002.

“Bank West has a relationship manager model for business customers and as such there is a responsibility on the relationship manager to identify the customer’s needs … invariably the best solution for Bank West’s business customers is online business banking,” Mr Bowen said from Perth.

“The growth rates have been astronomical.”

Mr Bowen said Bank West achieved similarly “astronomical” growth when it relaunched its online business banking products in 2006.

“Obviously technology changes and we needed to keep the solution looking fresh and we understand customers’ usability requirements even more,” he explained.

The research said typical small businesses would pay between $80 and $140 per month, on average, for these types of services, money a MISC spokesman said was well spent given it allowed them to access functions that were “akin to large corporates”.

“If in one keystroke you can pay a thousand of your employees, or conduct overseas foreign exchange in a very sophisticated way … you’d be crazy not to change,” the spokesman said from Melbourne.

“These new platforms are so well developed that they are going to encourage … migration.”

But Robert Gerrish, founder of online small business community Flying Solo, warned small businesses to be aware of all the charges associated with using these products.

While internet banking helped avoid rushing to the local branch at lunch or just before closing time, particularly for the 70 per cent of small businesses which are run by just one person, Mr Gerrish said they still needed to understand the product.

“While it looks like it must be a lot less costly because there are less human beings involved, you still need to be aware of it,” Mr Gerrish said.

“With the simplicity and functionality of this, it is still a case of buyer beware.”

Mr Gerrish said the time savings of internet banking were substantial, particularly with tax-related matters such as the GST.

“This has made it essential that small businesses automate their accounting systems, whereas a few years ago it was OK to do things in shoe boxes under your desk,” Mr Gerrish said.

“That isn’t the case any more.”

Mr Gerrish said internet banking now was “much more user friendly” than when it launched.

http://ecommerce-journal.com/articles/small_businesses_are_full_members_of_world_ecommerce

South Korea rolls in e-commerce disputes

Every day more and more Koreans turn to e-commerce and as a result this growth causes more disputes. According to the report of Electronic Commerce Mediation Committee, arbitration agency for e-commerce transactions, the number of disputes filed to their organization grows in galloping pace. The progress is really great if to take into account that in 2001 only 308 disputes were filed. And in 2007 their number has increased up to 11,076!!!

The Korea Herald/ ANN reports that nearly half, or 48.1%, of the disputes concern cancellations of the purchase and refund, and 15.6% arises from the delivery of the products. Clothing and fashion items account for about 40% of the cases, while home appliances and IT gadgets took up 30%.

The turnover of capital involved into e-commerce has also increased. So, according to government report, last year capital involved in e-commerce was approximately 516.5 trillion won that equals $529.2 billion against 11.9 billion won ($12.18 million) in 2001.

eBay puts a dot in story with ratings

Not so long ago everybody who was somehow related to eBay was discussing new rules of auction authorities who canceled rating of the buyers. That time many retailers went to strike hoping to change the things for better. But company was cut out all squabbles and disputes by taking some measures and enforcing new rules.

So, according to new rules company reserves to consumers and buyers a right to rate sellers, but the two-way feedback system was abolished.

But again some opponents appeared. Today eBay has about 82.3 million active users that could easily make up a population of one state. One of such users is Bill Frischling, chief operating officer for Dyscern, a high-volume eBay company who said that by providing comments about sellers company can converse with its customers.
http://ecommerce-journal.com/news/ebay_puts_a_dot_in_story_with_ratings

JetBlue now accepts PayPal for online bookings

JetBlue Airways has announced that customers booking at www.jetblue.com now have the option to purchase flights using PayPal.

“By adding PayPal to our website for safer and easier payment, we are offering more options and even greater flexibility to customers purchasing travel on JetBlue,” said Don Uselmann, Manager of Business Development for JetBlue Airways. “PayPal provides just the kind of security and convenience that meets our travelers’ expectations.”

With more than 57 million active accounts, PayPal provides a safer, easier way to pay for items and services online. With PayPal, JetBlue customers can now pay for travel through debit cards, bank accounts, stored balance, or credit cards without sharing their financial information.

“Millions of consumers around the world prefer to pay with PayPal because of its safety and simplicity,” said Tyler Hoffman, senior director of merchant services at PayPal. “We are thrilled that, as one of the nation’s most popular airlines, JetBlue is now offering its customers the ability to pay for flights via PayPal.”

China: ATM security for Olympics

China is not a newbie in the ATM and credit card fraud. According to Xinhua News Agency during the first six months of 2007 credit card fraud went up by 29% representing 1,171 cases with 4.46 million yaun involved. The most common way of stealing account details was by attaching monitoring devices directly to automatic teller machines.

As a result of these unpromising statistics, China’s central bank and Public Security Ministry directed banks to increase security against credit/debit card fraud for the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing in August. Now every bank in China is expected to start working on increased security of ATMs and point of sales terminals. In addition to Beijing, five other cities are in the focus of the Public Security Ministry as they will also host parts of the summer Olympic Games.

With the population well over 17 million and a regular annual flow of over 4 million of foreign visitors, Beijing is preparing for another half a million visitors during the Olympics. Over the past several years many banks competing for business have lowered the criteria or simplified the procedures for receiving credit. It became much easier for a customer to obtain a plastic card. By simply supplying some personal information, one can get at least a 5,000 yuan credit limit on their new card. But with the upcoming Olympic Games banks will have to go on a tighter fraud watch!

http://www.ecommerce-journal.com/news/china_atm_security_for_olympics

US credit crisis

According to the recent press release from the American Bankers Association, Consumer Credit Delinquency Bulletin, in the last quarter of 2007 consumer credit delinquencies got to the highest level since 1992. This trend affected all 8 closed-end installment loan categories – a rather unusual occasion. The ABA defines delinquency as a payment on the loan which is 30 days late or more.

“The rise in consumer credit delinquencies is consistent with a rapidly slowing economy,” said James Chessen, ABA chief economist. ”Stress in the housing market still dominates the story but it’s a broader tale of an overall weak economy.” He also added that this rise is also mainly due to auto loan delinquencies which represent around two-thirds of all closed-end installment loans.

The USA is continued to be effected by the credit crisis, subprime loan crisis as well as turmoil in the world’s stock markets. Chessen also thinks that the inability to repay loans will continue to increase in the first two quarters of 2008. “No relief for consumers is in sight as food and gas prices remain stubbornly high and income growth is anemic,” Chessen said.

Amazon.com – from books to NASDAQ

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003.

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore but soon diversified its product lines by adding VHSs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more.

Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and Japan. It ships globally on selected products.

History and business model

Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos refers to as his “regret minimization framework,” i.e. his effort to fend off late-in-life regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush. It is common lore that Bezos wrote its business plan while he and his wife drove a 1988 Chevrolet Blazer from Fort Worth, Texas to Bellevue, Washington, although this story is largely apocryphal according to early employees of the company.
The company began operating as an online bookstore under the name Cadabra.com (as in abracadabra), a name that Bezos quickly abandoned due to its sounding like “cadaver”. While the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could offer many times more. Bezos renamed his company “Amazon” after the world’s most voluminous river. Since 2000 Amazon’s logo shows an arrow leading from A to Z, indicating the company’s desire to sell in many different product lines.

The company was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington, began service in July 1995, and was reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware. The first book ever sold by Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Amazon.com had its initial public offering on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol AMZN at an IPO price of US$18.00 per share (equivalent to US$1.50 after three stock splits during the late 1990s).

Amazon’s initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect to turn a profit for four to five years. In retrospect, the strategy was effective. Amazon grew at a steady pace in the late 1990s while many other Internet companies grew at a blindingly fast pace.

Amazon’s “slow” growth caused a number of its stockholders to complain, saying that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the Dot-com bubble burst and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2002: a meager US$5 million, just 1¢ per share, on revenues of over US$1 billion, but it was important symbolically.

The firm has since remained profitable: net income was US$35.3 million in 2003, US$588.5 million in 2004, US$359 million in 2005, and US$190 million in 2006 (including a US$662 million charge on R&D in 2006). Nevertheless, the firm’s cumulative profits remain negative. As of September 2007, the accumulated deficit stood at US$1.58 billion.

Revenue continued to grow thanks to product diversification and international presence: US$3.9 billion in 2002, US$5.3 billion in 2003, US$6.9 billion in 2004, US$8.5 billion in 2005, and US$10.7 billion in 2006. On November 21, 2005, Amazon entered the S&P 500 index, replacing AT&T after it merged with SBC Communications.

Time Magazine named Bezos its 1999 Person of the Year in recognition of the company’s success in popularizing online shopping.

Merchant partnerships

The Web sites of Borders (borders.com, borders.co.uk), Waldenbooks (waldenbooks.com), Virgin Megastores (virginmega.com), CDNOW (cdnow.com), and HMV (hmv.com) are powered and hosted by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would similarly bring up Amazon.com’s Toys & Games tab; however, this relationship was terminated as the result of a lawsuit.

Amazon.com powers and operates retail web sites for Target, the NBA, Sears Canada, Sears UK, Benefit Cosmetics, Bebe Stores, Timex Corporation, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, Lacoste and Bombay Company (now defunct). For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform from whence a customer can interchangeably interact with the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, and phone-based customer service agents.

It also powers AOL’s Shop@AOL service via Web Services technology.

Locations

Headquarters

The company’s global headquarters is located on Seattle, Washington’s Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle including Union Station and The Columbia Center.

Amazon has announced plans to move its headquarters to the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle beginning in mid-2010, with full occupancy by 2011. This move will consolidate all Seattle employees onto the new 11-building campus.

Software development centers

The company employs software developers in modest- to large-sized centers across the globe. International locations include:

* Slough (England)
* Edinburgh (Scotland)
* Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad (India)
* Cape Town (South Africa)
* Ia?i (Romania)
* Bucharest (Romania)
* Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan) (closed in 2005)
* Beijing (China)

Fulfillment and warehousing

Fulfillment centers are located in the following cities, often near airports:

* North America:

* Arizona, USA: Phoenix
* Delaware, USA: New Castle
* Kansas, USA: Coffeyville
* Kentucky, USA: Campbellsville, Hebron (near CVG), and Lexington
* Massachusetts, USA: Springfield (new as of early 2007)
* Nevada, USA: Fernley and Red Rock (near 4SD)
* Washington, USA: Federal Way
* Pennsylvania, USA: Chambersburg, Carlisle, and Lewisberry
* Texas, USA: Dallas/Fort Worth
* Ontario, Canada: Mississauga (a Canada Post facility)

* Europe:

* Munster, Ireland: Cork
* Bedfordshire, England, UK: Marston Gate
* Inverclyde, Scotland, UK: Gourock
* Fife, Scotland, UK: Glenrothes
* Gorseinon, Wales, UK (Temporary site while Jersey Marine site is completed)
* Swansea, Wales, UK: Jersey Marine (Under construction)
* Loiret, France: Orléans-Boigny (2000),
* Loiret, France: Orléans-Saran (2007),
* Hesse, Germany: Bad Hersfeld
* Saxony, Germany: Leipzig

* Asia:

* Chiba, Japan
* Guangzhou, China
* Shanghai, China
* Beijing, China

Product lines

Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, industrial & scientific supplies, groceries, and more.

The company launched Amazon.com Auctions, its own Web auctions service, in March 1999. However it failed to chip away at industry pioneer eBay’s juggernaut growth. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby’s/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November.

Amazon no longer mentions either Auctions or zShops on its main pages and the help page for sellers now only mentions the Marketplace. Old links to zShop now simply redirect to the Amazon home page, while old links to Auctions take users to a transactions history page. New product listings are no longer possible for either service.

Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. Today, Amazon Marketplace’s main rival is eBay’s Half.com service.

Beginning August 2005, Amazon began selling products under its own private label, “Pinzon”; the initial trademark applications suggested the company intended to focus on textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods. In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a larger and more diverse list of goods, and to register a new design consisting of the “word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter O whose space appears at the “one o’clock” position.”. The list of products registered for coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry.

On May 16, 2007 Amazon announced its intention to launch its own online music store.The store launched in public beta September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management.

In August 2007, Amazon announced AmazonFresh, a grocery service offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers can have orders delivered to their homes at dawn or during a specified daytime window. Delivery was initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, and was later expanded to several ZIP codes in Seattle proper. AmazonFresh also operated pick-up locations in the suburbs of Bellevue and Kirkland from summer 2007 through early 2008.

In 2008 Amazon expanded into film production and is currently funding the film The Stolen Child with 20th Century Fox.

Website

A popular feature of Amazon is the ability for users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. As part of their review, users must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Such rating scales provide a basic idea of the popularity and dependability of a product.

The review feature is an important and highly influential function for customers and one of the main reasons for amazon.com’s success at selling books. As with book reviews anywhere, the buyer must beware that all reviewers have bias. Under normal circumstances, reviews give the reader at least a modest basis for evaluating a given book.

Because it is an open forum, the reader can benefit from a variety of perspectives. However, the anonymity of web reviewers increases the chances of abuse in the form of self-praise, praise from friends, or malicious criticism. This situation was confirmed in 2004 when the origin of reviews was accidentally made public on an amazon site, and some authors openly confirmed their glowing reviews of their own books.

Additionally, Amazon created a feature in recent years that allowed users to comment on reviews. This has been met with a mixed reaction, since a few of the high-profile sellers have been getting “spammed” in these forums, regardless of the quality of the reviews. Amazon has done little to enforce the rules of these forums, but did recently add an “ignore” button feature to help counteract the spamming.

Amazon provides an optional badging option for reviewers, e.g., to indicate the “real name” of the reviewer (based on a credit card) or to indicate that the reviewer is one of the “top” (most popular) reviewers. Some books have well over one thousand reviews (e.g. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged), but many books, especially new ones, have none.

The U.S. site generally has the most reviews, but other country sites offer the perspectives of other reviewers. A review posted on one site is not necessarily visible on another site.

Search Inside the Book is a feature which allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog. The feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 250,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches.

To avoid copyright violations, Amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the book but rather a picture of the matching page, disables printing, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. One author observed that his entire book could be read online by searching a few words. Amazon is planning to launch Search Inside the Book internationally. Additionally, customers can purchase access to the entire book online via the Amazon Upgrade program, although the selection of books eligible for this service is currently limited.

According to information in Amazon.com discussion forums, Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliates whom they call “Associates”, and third party sellers who list and sell products on the Amazon websites.

An Associate is an independent seller or business that receives a commission for referring customers to the Amazon.com site. Associates do this by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. Worldwide, Amazon has “over 900,000 members” in its affiliate programs. Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service.

Amazon was one of the first online businesses to set up an affiliate marketing program.AStore is a new affiliate product that allows Associates to embedded a subset of Amazon products within, or linked to from, another website.

Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon’s worldwide web sites in 2007. Selling on Amazon has become more popular as Amazon expanded into a variety of categories beyond media, and built a variety of features to support volume selling. Unlike eBay/Paypal, Amazon sellers do not have to maintain separate payment accounts – all payments and payment security are handled by Amazon itself.

According to the Internet audience measurement website Compete.com, Amazon attracts approximately 50 million U.S. consumers to its website on a monthly basis.

Acquisitions and spinoffs

* In April 1998, Amazon bought the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
* In August 1998, Amazon bought Cambridge, Massachusetts-based PlanetAll for 800,000 shares of Amazon stock. PlanetAll operated a web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. In the same deal, Amazon acquired Sunnyvale-based Junglee, an XML-based data mining startup for 1.6 million shares of Amazon stock. The two deals together were valued at about US$280 million at the time.
* In June 1999, Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Accept.com and Exchange.com in a set of stock deals worth approximately US$645 million.
* In 2004, Amazon purchased Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website. It also debuted A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.
* In March 2005, Amazon acquired BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company.
* In July 2005, Amazon purchased CreateSpace (formerly CustomFlix), a Scotts Valley, CA-based distributor of on-demand DVDs. Since the acquisition, CreateSpace has expanded its on-line services to include on-demand books and CDs, as well as video downloads. On July 30, 2007, the National Archives announced that it would make thousands of historic films available for purchase through CreateSpace.

* In February 2006, Amazon acquired Shopbop, a Madison, Wisconsin-based retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women.

* In May 2007, Amazon acquired dpreview.com, a London-based digital photography review website created by Phil Askey as his personal hobby website and Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States.

* In January 2008, Amazon announced that it would acquire audiobook provider Audible.com for $300 million in cash.

Noteworthy events

In 2002, Amazon became the exclusive retailer for the much-hyped Segway Human Transporter. Bezos was an early supporter of the Segway before its details were made public.

In 2003, Amazon purchased the rival online music retalier CD Now, which was founded in 1994.

On June 21, 2003, Amazon coordinated what was at the time one of the largest sales and distribution events in e-commerce history with the sale of over 1.3 million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, since beaten by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a sale of over 2 million copies preordered in 2007.

On July 16, 2005, Amazon celebrated its 10th anniversary by telecasting a worldwide live concert hosted by Bill Maher and artists such as Bob Dylan and Norah Jones.

On December 13, 2007, Amazon paid £1,950,000 for a hand written copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling.

In December 2007, Amazon was fined €100,000 by the The Tribunal de Grande Instance in France for offering free shipping. The 1981 Lang Law prohibits companies from discounting books by more than 5%.

Products and services

Amazon.com has incorporated a number of products and services into its shopping model, either through development or acquisition.

2001

Honor System and donations
The Honor System was originally launched in 2001 to allow customers to make donations or buy digital content, with Amazon collecting 2.9 percent of the payment plus a flat fee of US$.30.

2002

Web Services

Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002. The service provides programmatic access to many features leveraged behind the scenes on its website.

2004

Amazon also created “channels” to benefit certain causes. In 2004, Amazon’s “Presidential Candidates” allowed customers to donate US$5-200 to the campaigns of 2004 U.S. presidential hopefuls. Amazon has periodically reactivated a Red Cross donation channel after such tragedies as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. After the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Amazon set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross, waiving its processing fee. As of January 2005, over 162,000 individuals had donated over US$13.1 million. Similar channels were set up for the British, Canadian, French, German and Japanese Red Cross organizations. Over 7,000 Britons donated more than US$350,000; 900 Canadians over US$56,000; 660 French over US$23,000; 2,900 Germans over US$145,000; and 1,900 Japanese over US$66,000.

2005

Prime
Amazon Prime offers customers free 2-day and discounted priority shipping for a yearly fee of US$ 79. Amazon launched the program in the continental United States in 2005, Japan in June 2007 and the United Kingdom and Germany in November 2007.

Shorts
Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offers exclusive short form content, including short stories and non-fiction pieces from best-selling authors, all available for immediate download at US$.49. As of June 2007, the program has over 1,700 pieces and is adding about 50 new pieces per week.

Mechanical Turk
In November 2005, Amazon.com began testing Amazon Mechanical Turk, an application programming interface (API) allowing programs to dispatch tasks to human processors.

2006

S3
In March 2006, Amazon launched an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). An unlimited number of data objects, from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes in size, can be stored in S3 and distributed via HTTP or BitTorrent. The service charges monthly fees for data stored and for data transferred.

Discussion boards
In August 2006, Amazon launched product wikis (later folded into Amapedia) and discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow standard message board conventions.

EC2
In August 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a virtual site farm, allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure with its high reliability to run diverse applications ranging from running simulations to web hosting.

2007

Amapedia
In January 2007 Amazon launched Amapedia, a collaborative wiki for user-generated content to replace ProductWiki.

Unbox
In March 2007, Amazon launched an online video on demand service, which has been criticized for its use of digital rights management (DRM).

MP3 downloads
In September 2007, Amazon launched a new music store (currently in beta) called Amazon MP3, which sells downloadable tracks, all in the MP3 format and most recorded at 256 kilobits per second variable bitrate (VBR). Amazon’s terms of use agreements legally restrict use of the music, but Amazon does not use DRM to enforce those terms.

Amazon MP3 is selling music from the Big 4 record labels, EMI, Universal, Warner Music, and Sony BMG, as well as many independents; as of January 2008 they are the only store to sell DRM-free music from all Big 4 labels. Previous to the launch of this service, Amazon made an investment in Amie Street, a similar music store with a variable pricing model based on demand.

Vine
In August 2007 Amazon launched Amazon Vine, which allows top product reviewers free access to pre-release products from vendors participating in the program.

FPS
In August 2007 Amazon launched a payment service specifically targeted at developers. Amazon FPS has facilities for developing many different charging models including micro-payments. The service also gives developers easy access to Amazon customers.

Kindle
In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over “Whispernet,” a free EV-DO wireless service on the Sprint Nextel network. Initial offerings include approximately 90,000 books, newspapers, magazines and blogs. The screen uses E Ink technology to reduce battery consumption.

SimpleDB
In December 2007, Amazon introduced SimpleDB, a database system, allowing users of its other infrastructure to utilize a high reliability high performance database system.

2008

Amazon MP3
In January 2008 Amazon announced they would be rolling out their Amazon MP3 service to their subsidiary websites worldwide throughout the year.

Connect
Amazon Connect enables authors to post remarks on their book pages and to customers who have bought their books.

WebStore
WebStore by Amazon allows businesses to create e-commerce websites using Amazon technology. Merchants can customize their sites using their own photos and branding. Sellers pay a commission of 7 percent, which includes credit-card processing fees and fraud protection, and a subscription fee of $59.95/month for an unlimited number of webstores and listings.

Controversies

Trademark infringement

In 1999 the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative of Minneapolis, Minnesota sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The cooperative had been using the name “Amazon” since 1970, but reached an out-of-court agreement to share the name with the on-line retailer.

Patent use

The company has been controversial for its alleged use of patents as a competitive hindrance. The “1-click patent” is perhaps the best-known example of this. Amazon’s use of the one-click patent against competitor Barnes and Noble’s website led the Free Software Foundation to announce a boycott on Amazon in December 1999. The boycott was discontinued in September 2002.

On February 22, 2000, the company was granted a patent covering an internet-based customer referral system, or what is commonly called an “affiliate program”. Reaction was swift and negative. Industry leaders Tim O’Reilly and Charlie Jackson spoke out against the patent, and O’Reilly published an open letter to Bezos protesting the 1-click patent and the affiliate program patent, and petitioning him to “avoid any attempts to limit the further development of internet commerce”.

O’Reilly collected 10,000 signatures with this petition. Bezos responded with his own open letter. The protest ended with O’Reilly and Bezos visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

On February 25, 2003, the company was granted a patent titled “Method and system for conducting a discussion relating to an item on Internet discussion boards”.

On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination of the “One-Click” patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley, who cited as prior art an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.

Canadian operations

Amazon has a Canadian site in both English and French, but is prevented from operating any headquarters, servers, fulfillment centers or call centers in Canada due to that country’s legal restrictions on foreign-owned booksellers. Instead, Amazon’s Canadian site originates in the United States, and Amazon has an agreement with Canada Post to handle distribution within Canada and for the use of the Crown corporation’s Mississauga, Ontario shipping facility. The launch of Amazon.ca generated controversy in Canada. In 2002, the Canadian Booksellers Association and Indigo Books and Music sought a court ruling that Amazon’s partnership with Canada Post represented an attempt to circumvent Canadian law, but the litigation was dropped in 2004.

Customer service

Amazon.com does not publish its toll-free customer service number (+1-800-201-7575) on its own web site. Customers are instead asked to submit written service requests (which are answered by e-mail) or to use a click-to-call service to be connected by phone to an available service representative.

There are numerous Web pages that exist solely to publish the Amazon.com customer service phone numbers, one of which received in excess of 23,000 visits in December 2004 alone. Despite the perceived difficulty in reaching customer service by phone, Amazon.com “remains the leader among e-tailers” in customer satisfaction according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s fourth-quarter 2007 survey.

Labor relations

Amazon has opposed efforts by trades unions to organize in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

In 2001, 850 employees in Seattle were laid off by Amazon.com after a unionisation drive. The Washington Alliance of Technological Workers (WashTech) accused the company of violating union laws, and claimed Amazon managers subjected them to intimidation and heavy propaganda. Amazon denies any link between the unionisation effort and the lay-offs.

Also in 2001, Amazon.co.uk hired a US union-busting organization, The Burke Group, to assist in defeating a union recognition campaign by the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU, now part of Amicus) to achieve recognition in the Milton Keynes distribution depot. It was alleged that the company victimised or sacked four union members during the 2001 recognition drive and held a series of captive meetings with employees.

Some employees of Amazon in the United Kingdom are required to submit to drug tests and can have their employment terminated on a positive test. However, the reliability of the tests has been called into question, as in the case of an Amazon worker who won a tribunal case against the company.

The Humane Society of the United States v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al.

Amazon continues to carry two cockfighting magazines and two dog fighting videos although the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) contends that the sale of these materials is a violation of U.S. Federal law. The Humane Society of the United States has filed a lawsuit against Amazon. A campaign to boycott Amazon purchases gained momentum in August 2007 after the much publicized dog fighting case involving NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

Reader reviews credibility

A 2004 glitch in Amazon.ca’s review system revealed that many well-established authors were anonymously giving themselves glowing reviews, with some revealed to be anonymously giving “rival” authors terrible reviews. The glitch in the system was fixed and those reviews have since been removed or made anonymous.

Amazon cloud

“Amazon Cloud” refers to the online retailer’s delivery and storage of online digital media and their digital rights management system to its consumers from Amazon’s servers.

Information stored on the Cloud is that such as eBook purchases made from the Amazon Kindle, which relies on Digital Rights Management (DRM). The storage of each customer’s DRM allows him or her to have an online archive of all purchases.
http://ecommerce-journal.com/articles/amazon_com_from_books_to_nasdaq

Scot Wingo’s thoughts of new management of eBay

Last week was the last week of eBay with Meg Whitman who was leading this company for 10 years. This week began a new era – era of John Donahoe. What will be with eBay? What strategies will a new “monarch” choose? What changes will occur? As we see there are a lot of different question on the future of online giant. E-consultancy.com has asked some of them to Scot Wingo, President and CEO of ChannelAdvisor at ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst event in the US.

What do you think eBay’s new management should be prioritising?

We’ve been pretty vocal at ChannelAdvisor since around 2004, when eBay really started to slow down, that we feel there are three things that should be fixed at eBay. I call them the three ‘F’s – fees, feedback and fraud.

I think they have really tackled fees and have made some good work there. We’re really big fans of back-end loading the fees and making them more performance oriented.

If you look at eBay as a whole, let’s say they have a 12% take rate. Before Donahoe’s regime, it was 7% of listings fees and 5% of final value. This latest change for most sellers on average has switched that around. I would like to see him take that two or three more steps.

With feedback, some of the things they are working on are OK but there are several more cycles they could work on.

The one I am probably most disappointed on is fraud. I think there is a kind of institutional denial about the fraud problem on eBay. We have some data from a survey where buyers are asked why they are deactivating on eBay. The number one reason is shipping and handling costs and the number two is feedback. The number three is safety issues.

Whenever I talk to Joe Public fraud is the number one reason by far. I think they need to do a lot more to admit there is a problem and they need to address it.

Where do you see eBay going in the future? Donahoe is reportedly in favour of a move towards the fixed price model, rather than auctions. Where are its sales going to come from?

It’s hard to tell because if you look back 18 months, it has gone through cycles. One of the last things Bill Cobb did was say that auctions were going to be their core focus and revitalise them. Now Donahoe has come in and is concentrating on fixed price as the growth engine.

I think we will end up with a kind of hybrid where there will be a lot of different ways to buy on eBay and the way we buy will be driven by what the seller is doing. If you have a one of a kind product, an auction makes sense. A lot will be driven by the buyers’ preferences as well.

It’s tough though. I worry that if eBay has too many choices, buyers will be confused. There has to be balancing point and I don’t think they have figured out what that looks like.

Do you think the way eBay is perceived by its community going to change significantly with the new management?

It’s hard to predict how eBay is going to change with the switchover to the new world. They are definitely more business-oriented people and you are starting to feel that within the ecosystem.

eBay Live will be interesting this year because it is kind of like taking the CEO of a Fortune 100 company and getting him to run a circus. It will be interesting to see Donahoe up on the stage at eBay Live. It is kind of like a circus situation at eBay Live and it will be interesting to see how he handles it. It feels like a round hole square peg kind of situation

I think it will be more businesslike and there will be elements of community on eBay, but it will not be as soft and fun as it has been. But eBay has vast numbers of people in the community team and I don’t see them going away.

How many of your larger clients are withdrawing from eBay, either because they have grown big enough to just use it for disposal, or because for them, it is no longer as attractive a marketplace to deal in?

I wouldn’t use the word withdrawing. It’s a question of what their focus is. eBay is the focus for a very small percentage of our customers now, because once they get that kind of multi-channel addiction it can kind of take over.

eBay will always be in the mix but it can flip from what I call the channel of first resort to the channel of last resort. A good case study would be a seller that gets to $100,000 a month in sales on eBay. They will keep that $100,000 on eBay and layer in their website, Amazon and other channels.

Now they will be doing $1m a month. What eBay has to ask itself is could it have been a part of that other $900,000 a month that has been created?

What should eBay be doing to attract larger brands?

What’s historically been tough has not been getting big brands going but the policies eBay has.

One simple one is that on eBay you have to put your credit card details on file. If you’re a director at Motorola, you’re not authorised to do that. That can become a six month fiasco at a large company, while for a Mom and Pop seller it is a very simple decision.

There are any number of problems. We have had numerous situations where eBay will nuke large sellers because it triggers fraud filters when they put a million dollars of products on there. These things have added up to a bad selling experience on eBay.

The only time it tends to work is when you have a group focused on it. They can set expectations. You pull in the brand but keep it separate enough to fly under the corporate radar. That team can be entrepreneurial enough to get round some of the issues that can come up.

In the UK, it has just become compulsory for sellers to offer Paypal as a payment method on all listings. Should it do the same thing in the US?

I think there are ways to stand behind transactions without limiting seller options. I would like to see something that kept seller flexibility on different payment schemes but still backed up the transactions. That’s do-able within a more open framework.

When you become successful on eBay, or Amazon, how can you combat the fact that other sellers will rush in to compete with you?

It’s harder and harder to build your own defensible area in online. If you go on eBay and are successful there will be someone who competes with you. It’s the same on Amazon. Sometimes Amazon competes with you.

We have seen several people take different approaches to this. One is to stay in the long tail so you sell a wide selection of items, but not very deeply. Auto parts is a great example of that.

The other we have seen being highly effective is we have a telescope seller that built up a very nice telescope brand on eBay. Then they went to China and sourced their own branded telescope and added some things that they thought would be unique.

They integrated the supply chain so that they have their own brand at the product level. That is another way to carve out that niche.

Are sellers on eBay becoming better at customer retention?

We are definitely seeing that. There is a seller maturity cycle and an inflexion point where a retailer that has started on eBay gets more multi-channel, and starts to realise that their existing customers are their cheapest customers.

Usually what happens is around email marketing and promotions for existing customers. It kind of kicks in when the seller is a $7m to $10m seller, although it can be earlier or later. They start to monetise their existing buyer base.

We have some customers that do a very clever job at that. One is a golf seller called Rock Bottom Golf. They call all their buyers Rockheads and have Rockhead-only specials. They have created a social network around the idea of satisfying their customers.

Is there any way eBay sellers’ approaches differ between the US and UK?

I would say the US guys are more experimental. Any month, they will be testing ten different things – two seller Ids with different shipping and handling costs, or creating a group on Facebook and experimenting with it.

We tend to be a more experimental bunch. The UK tend to be more – I don’t want to say conservative, but less experimental but more heads down and putting their effort into one thing.

CompUSA Chooses PayPal for eCommerce Payments

CompUSA is now accepting PayPal as a way to pay for purchases made on the All-New CompUSA.com website located at http://www.compusa.com. CompUSA is the latest in the Systemax family of brands to offer PayPal. PayPal is currently accepted in North America at TigerDirect.com, TigerDirect.ca and now CompUSA.

“PayPal has been a strategic partner to our eCommerce operations,” said Gilbert Fiorentino, President of Systemax’s Technology Products segment. “Consistently delivering new customers to our websites is a key benefit of PayPal. The addition of PayPal to the CompUSA website is a logical extension to our shopping cart.” The All-New CompUSA offers computers, electronics and accessories for consumer, business, government and educational customers through the CompUSA.com, CompUSABusiness.com and CompUSAGovEd.com websites.

PayPal is chosen by millions of online shoppers for its ease of use and high level of security. When paying with PayPal, consumer’s financial information is never shared with the merchant ensuring a higher level of protection and security. In addition, consumers can choose from several different payment options to fund transactions including credit card, bank account and PayPal account balance. Using only an email address and a password, PayPal account holders can quickly and easily complete their payments in seconds.

“We are excited to add CompUSA to the growing list of leading online retailers accepting PayPal,” said Dana Stalder, general manager of merchant services and marketing at PayPal. “With CompUSA, PayPal customers have even more choice when shopping for great deals on computers, electronics and more.”

To help celebrate the launch of PayPal on the website, CompUSA is offering $20 cash-back to shoppers who use PayPal as their payment method on purchases over $200 for a limited time. “This is an incredible opportunity for PayPal customers to experience the All-New CompUSA.com,” said Lonny Paul, Director of eCommerce for CompUSA. “Our website has a much larger selection than before, expansive product information, photos, video demonstrations and even manuals. Plus, we ship 95% of our orders the same day, with most reaching their destination in 2-3 days. There are lots of new things going on at the All-New CompUSA – and PayPal customers get a bonus for trying it out!”
http://ecjournal.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?posted=17

5 Tips To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 pro ven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.