Ecommerce Web Site Hosting

As web technologies improve, more and more people are reaching to the internet to supplement, or replace, their income. This has brought about a revolution in the way information products are marketed on the internet. These Information products, which are marketed as resale rights ebooks, master resale rights ebooks, and private label right ebooks, have become an extension of the activity itself. Probably the easiest way to become an ‘infoprenuer’ is to acquire some of these products and then reselling them.

Buying resale rights ebooks is the best way to start earning money <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online, especially if you don’t have your own products. You can easily make 100% profit with resell rights ebooks that you purchase, because if you pick the right subjects, they will be in high demand. If you can find master resell rights, you can recoup your expenses and make even more profit because you can pass on the basic resell rights, which puts even more money in your bank account.

Nowadays most e-books are business related, focused on the popular topics of stock or forex trading and real estate or investments, which will help you with quicker money making opportunities. Other topics such as personal transformation and growth, weight loss and fiction are also preferred by other customers, as it is convenient for them to read the information instantly rather than visit a store to buy the book or wait for it to be delivered.

Making money from master resell rights ebooks is quite easy. You simply repackage it; including more products and raising the value of the package, which in turn increases the price. While not only selling the product, you could also add an offer related to the product, and sell it for an additional price.

If you are going to try to resell information products that have been ‘on the market’ for a period of time, you may need to be more creative. You will need to check the rights of those particular products and make sure that you can make changes to them. If so, you are free to edit and change them and make your own creation. These types are usually Private Label Rights, but you will find an occasional resell rights package that you can change. You will repackage the product you have to make it unique, fresh and different.

Once you have the ebook ‘repackaged’ you need to drive traffic to your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site. You can post articles in forums or write articles linked to your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site in the resource box. You can upload your product sales page and link your page to your web <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site. Typically, the products that come with resale rights also have a preformatted sales page and graphics so you don’t have to bother about creating a sales page of your own product. You’ll just edit it in your favorite html editor and upload to your webhost.

Once you have finished uploading pages with the product to the web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, you are ready to start taking orders <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online.

Before you go great guns buying the resale rights of all of the products you can find, check the license agreement carefully. Resale rights vary from one product to another and they will all have different rights, terms and conditions. Typically, these rights will be included as a ‘readme’ or license file in the resell package. There may be few products in a resale rights package, which may be for personal use and not for resale at all. Be sure you do not break any of the copy right laws. So do thorough research on the product so you can earn as much profit from this easy to start business, reselling ebooks.

About the Author

Ron Barrett writes about how using resell rights and private label rights ebooks can supplement, and even, replace your current income. You can read more about him and the tips he provides at his <a href=”http://www.5star-ebooks.com/blog”>blog. Also visit <a href=”http://www.5star-ebooks.com/”>5 Star Ebooks to pick up the most current resell rights ebooks available.

<a href=”http://www.content4reprint.com/internet/e-business/making-money-with-resell-rights-ebooks-a-step-by-step-guide.htm” title=”Making Money With Resell Rights Ebooks — A Step by Step Guide”>Article Source: Content for Reprint

There are millions of disabled Internet users who are unable to use a web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site in a traditional manner, and making sure a <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site functions for sight impaired, deaf or disabled users is called “accessibility.” To learn more about the topic, we spoke with Joseph C. Dolson, president and founder of Accessible web Design, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based firm that designs and consults on accessibility matters.

PeC: Approximately how many users on the web depend on accessibility help?

Dolson: “It’s probably as high as 10 percent of the population, possibly higher.”

PeC: You have written about new accessibility standards recently adopted by the World Wide web Consortium. What is the World Wide web Consortium?

Dolson: “The World …

Google Alerts is a free service that sends users an email or RSS alert when the search engine indexes new material related to a specific keyword phrase.

Although the service is still described as a beta, it has been available for years and many a savvy businessperson has used the service to manage a company’s reputation <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online.

As an example, an <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online merchant might set up an alert for his or her store’s name, URL, and key products. When her store is mentioned in a review or in a blog, Google will send the merchant an email with a brief description and a link back to the source. The merchant would be smart to comment on the review post, thanking the author, for example, for a positive analysis or trying to get to the bottom of (and n…

In these hectic days people barely get any time to look around to buy or sell anything. And mass people have become relatively internet savvy. Therefore <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online classifieds are the best or rather easiest way for people to buy or sell any product or service. <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online classifieds, these days have become an integral part of any community based on portal web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites. Many big companies use this medium for their product/service promotion and quite a no. of web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites has had huge success.

Classified ads these days are used extensively for <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online services like dating and match making. But the thing is like designing and developing any of these kinds of web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites is very complex and also a costly process.

Classifieds software programs can be defined as “a software program that allow you to run your own free or commercial classified ads service or just manage ads and listings on your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site in an effective and organized way”.

Most developers have their own research and development team designs utilities which are easily acceptable by neophyte users also. To look after all the clients existing needs, software development team designs quality software and also provides expert advice, as how to get along on those needs. Growth and diversification depends mainly on constant search for challenges that clients face. Small but powerful software components are the main gears of this technology.

Combining this whole range of components together, a user friendly software system is created. Developers bring highly advanced technology obtainable in software engineering as to bring the right technology to the right solution. Add software is developed in such a manner that it goes easily with any web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites. It can be easily included for any general or functional market target. It is obvious that classifieds adds software provides value addition to web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site visitor.

The cost of ownership is low and easily rebrandable such that it provides lot of creative possibilities. More than that, it provides lot of additional search engine traffic being generated and also ad space that can be easily incorporated with Google-Ad sense.
Our classified ads software provides unique internet business opportunity for new and existing businesses. The software has capabilities to scale up horizontally and vertically. It integrates will all major banner networks.

Any classified ads software should always have the following general features:- powerful search engine to search classified ads, Integrated inquiry form (lead capturing) + inquiry counter + visitor counter, easy fast registration with various premium plans, listing restriction as per plans, easy category view & detailed classified ads view, premium listing facility, registered free/premium members, fast registration and profile creation.

Furthermore, there’s secured zone for members, multiple ads processing on fly - as per plans, easy payment for ads and plans, customizable as per requirement, administration side, short listing and inquiry capturing, easily add, update or delete classified ads on fly, manage registration details & inquiry details of classified ads, pre-developed reminder/alerts after registration, pre-developed emails & easily configurable settings.

The billing part is also very unique in this software. It makes the billing procedure much more easy and totally error free. No manual calculation required for individual ad posted. Everything thing is automated and hence adds a lot to the unique feature of the software.

Advantages of Classifieds ads Software:

The biggest advantages of classified ads software in comparison to other products are its performance, low cost, after sales service etc. Following are some other advantages of the same:

Increased Productivity: This software adds a value to the increased productivity through increased awareness.

Reduced server load: On installing this software, it does not put any extra server load, scalability: it supports one million listings or more, depending on server environment.

Stability: There have been in continuous development for many years, increasing the stability of the software, hence used on hundreds of web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites, customizable.

Versatility: software is distributed with full source code and that gives you unlimited possibilities to edit the program immediately or at any time later according to your needs and demands.

About the Author

Ron McNeil promotes <a href=”http://www.webscribble.com/products/webclassifieds/index.shtml”> classifieds ads software to easily start a <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site with a <a href=”http://www.webscribble.com/products/webclassifieds/index.shtml”>classified ad scripts powered by <a href=”http://www.webscribble.com”>webScribble

Article Source: Content for Reprint

In Conversion Review we visit a web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site as if we were a potential customer and assess how well the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site does at converting visitors into buyers. For this review, we vi<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sited TheRussianStore, acting as a customer who wished to purchase some Russian collectibles. Staff of The Russian Store requested this review.

The Russian Store has been selling Russian imported gifts and collectibles for over 10 years and has had an <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online presence since 2003. The web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site offers roughly 5,000 products for sale at any one time.

First Impressions

Arriving at The Russian Store web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, my first impression was positive. The design is uncluttered and there are a variety of clues that indicate this is the right place to buy Russian collectibles. These clue…

Practical ecommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing “Cart of the Week” feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart’s owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses.

Here we profile 3dCart, a Margate, FL-based hosted, with prices ranging from $19.99 to $99.99 per month. We asked 3dCart representative Gil Gonzalo to explain the benefits of the cart. We then asked Bo Corsillo, vice president of Frik-n-Frak.com, a 3dCart store, for his views on the cart. Frick-n-Frak is an <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online retailer of puzzles and games, based in North Carolina.

PeC: Please provide some general background on the cart.

Gonzalo: “3dCart is a hosted ecommerce solution for small to large businesses. We just went live with…

“Lessons Learned” is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Dave Anderson, co-owner of Wildlife Wonders. Anderson and his business partner Brenda Martin run the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online business from their brick-and-mortar store in Seminole, FL. Wildlifewonders.com offers more than 5,000 fine gifts and home decor items <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online, and grosses roughly $1 million in annual revenue. Here we give you Anderson’s experience and advice.

Third Party Business Resources

“We used Solid Cactus to design and then redesign our <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, and they did an exceptional job. We also have used a couple seo and PPC companies, but we were dissatisfied, so we do all that ourselves n…

Payment card industry compliance is confusing for many ecommerce merchants. But it potentially affects every merchant that accepts credit cards payments. Failure to understand the PCI compliance standards could result in higher merchant account fees and fines from the credit card issuers.

Merchants oftentimes have similar general questions on PCI compliance. We posed some of them to Tim Erlin, principal product manager for nCircle, a security consulting and compliance firm that offers PCI-related services, among other compliance services. Those questions, and his answers, are below.

What is PCI?

Erlin: “PCI generally refers to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or the PCI DSS. This standard was developed by the PCI Sec…

Choosing the right <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online shopping cart is one of the most important decisions an ecommerce merchant will make. And carts are possibly the hottest topic we regularly explore here at Practical ecommerce. This has prompted us to develop a comprehensive guide of every known shopping cart offered on the Internet. If you own a cart or work for a cart company, we want to make sure your cart is listed in our guide.

“The ecommerce industry needs a definitive shopping cart list. No respectable vendor will want to be left out,” said PeC contributing editor, Armando Roggio.

Tell us about your cart

This is your chance to tell the world why your cart is worth considering. Is it hosted or licensed? What is the price range, lowest to highest? How ca…

For many small <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online businesses, especially ecommerce, search-engine, keyword optimization is a once a year process at best. Once you have gone through the laborious and mind numbing process of keyword research, writing title tags, page descriptions and revising your copy, the idea of doing all over again every year is enough to make you want to crash a hard drive.

The simple solution is to hire a qualified seo professional to handle it. But as budgets shrink this option might not be plausible. You can, however, stay on top of new search trends and generate more traffic without having a nervous breakdown. The secret is in the longtail phrase and adding relevant content that captures these visitors.

What’s a Longtail?

A longtail phr…

If you are worried about how your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online business will survive the current economic situation, you might find it helpful to learn how other ecommerce businesses are faring. Practical ecommerce invites all <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online merchants to participate in a quick <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online survey to explore current trends in <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online sales and hear the thoughts of <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online business professionals.

The goal of this month’s Practical ecommerce survey is to discover whether individual sales have risen or fallen in the past few months, and how the overall economic situation has affected <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online sales in general. Completing the survey takes only a few moments, and all entrants are eligible to win $25 Amazon Gift Certificate.

“We find these merchant surveys very insightful,” says Ar…

Editor’s Note: The World Wide web Consortium recently approved new accessibility guidelines. Passed in December 2008, the new “web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0” is the official recommendation for web accessibility for the disabled.

The new guidelines focus on four fundamental principles:

1. Is it perceivable?
2. Is it operable?
3. Is it understandable?
4. Is it robust?

This article addresses operability, and is part two in a series discussing the impact of WCAG 2.0 on your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site.

The concept behind web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site operability is simple: Can everybody use the tools and mechanisms required to operate your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site? Operability may seem easy, but it can be very challenging. Every control, every link, and every button on your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site is …

Selling <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online can take many forms and merchants can use several channels to market and sell their wares. The SOC Exchange is a new <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online storefront that lets merchants post and sell products for as little as $10 per year with no hidden fees.

The <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site allows ecommerce businesses to create a simple storefront and sell products using The SOC Exchange’s tools and domain. It acts like a mall and an auction house—at one moment bearing a resemblance to Amazon and the next looking like a young eBay. While the jury is still out on how many sales The SOC Exchange can generate for ecommerce businesses (an essential factor), it was easy to work with, inexpensive, and functional, earning it three and a half stars out of a possible five in this T…

Many ecommerce merchants rely on email newsletters and email marketing to drive sales, but the success of those email campaigns varies. There are frequently issues related to open rates, click-through rates and even deliverability of the email itself. To offer insight and suggestions on these issues, we spoke with Ben Chestnut, co-founder of MailChimp, an email marketing firm located in Atlanta with more than 60,000 clients.

PeC: Can you tell us the range of ecommerce open rates that you have observed over the past few months?

Chestnut: “If it’s their first campaign with MailChimp, we usually get around 50-60 percent open rates. Then as they get into some monthly sending, you’ll start to see that plateau around 20 percent, and …

When sales slip and consumers’ confidence in the state of the national economy falls, ecommerce business owners might think about slashing prices. But new statistics showed that prices for many of the items consumers purchase actually rose in February 2009.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, an important measurement for the state of the economy, actually rose 0.5 percent in February before seasonal adjustments.

As an example, apparel, which is a popular with <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online merchants, had its index rise 1.3 percent in February 2009 compared to the prior month. And January 2009 had also represented a 0.3 percent rise in prices over December 2008.

Related Articles

Chart o…

Selling downloadable products <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online presents a number of special problems for ecommerce businesses, not the least of which is demonstrating the value of an intangible product that has no physical form and no glossy packaging. Certainly, software vendors and popular <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites like iTunes have gone a long way in demonstrating value. But one <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online music <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, Amiestreet.com, has become very successful using a dynamic or variable pricing model and paying customers.

That <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site is worth looking at since its structure may be applicable to other ecommerce businesses.

Amie Street has become a popular place to discover, download, and share new music (sometimes from unsigned groups or artists) from nearly any genre. While the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site is an exciting p…

Practical ecommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing “Cart of the Week” feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart’s owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses.

Here we profile EC Express by Mercantec, a Naperville, IL company that first began offering ecommerce solutions in 1995. Launched in 2006, EC Express is a free, hosted cart created with new ecommerce merchants in mind. We asked CEO and co-founder, Bill Tait, to explain the benefits of EC Express. We then asked Beth Dell, a manager of a non-profit theatre currently using the cart for ticket sales and program registration, for her views on the cart.

PeC: Please provide some general background on the cart.

Tait: “EC Express is…

If you visit the “About Us” section on the SportsRCool web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, you’ll find a simple promise to offer the best possible products and customer service at the lowest available prices. And the company certainly delivers where customer service is concerned.

Each month, Practical ecommerce sends me shopping. I make a purchase from a real merchant and create both an article and a video of the shopping experience. My goal is to report back to you about the overall checkout process, customer service experience, and delivery. This review should provide a customer’s perspective about the featured merchant in particular, and about <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online retailing practices in general. To make sure that we don’t get preferential treatment, we do not notify the m…

One of the things you want to do as a business owner is to make sure your business information is available <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online. You don’t want to be left behind in this competitive time. Besides, many internet users go <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online first to find business locations and information. Thus, being visible <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online will really help boost your business.

Create a web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site for your business

If you have a limited budget, create a free blog in Blogger and Wordpress. Once you have set it up, make sure that the privacy settings is set to Public. Meaning, your blog will appear in search engine results.

Then publish a few articles about your business and your products. Design it too however you want. Most blogs nowadays don’t look like the old-fashioned blogs anymore. With a few linking and web design, it will look more like a web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site.

You may opt to keep it as a blog,however, by keeping it updated every week. You can post articles about any changes in your business, like future sales events or new products. Allowing visitors to comment may also be a good idea. Be open to harsh comments though if there is any. (You can manage comments anyway, by approving or deleting them.)

If you are using Wordpress, use the custom permalink structure /%postname%/ so that the post URL is readable.

If you can pay for a domain, and monthly web hosting, then get one. Think of a domain for your business. Either you will use your business name, or the kind of business you have. The good thing about the latter is you are targeting the keywords most of your future customers will likely use when they search <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online. Don’t make your domain name too long though.

Whether you have it hosted for free or you pay for it, you should submit your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site to Google, other search engines, and web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site directories. This will help the search engines know that there is a new <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site.

Put your business location on the map

This is something that you should not miss, since most customers want to know how to get to your place. You can add your location in Google Maps local page and click the link that says put your business on Google Maps. Sign in with your Google account, and fill out the form. In Yahoo, you can do this by going to Yahoo local page too. Yahoo offers basic listing and enhanced listing which is a paid service.

Do A General Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (seo) is the method most web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site owners use nowadays to make sure that their pages are on the first page of Google search results, if not the number one spot. This has something to do with the keywords often used in searching. Incorporate these keywords in your article and in the title of the article. Make sure that it makes sense since whatever you have written is a reflection of your business.

Create a Pay Per Click Campaign

Through Pay Per Click advertising, you as an advertiser will only pay your host once the ad has been clicked from publishers’ web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites. You set up your budget while you are creating your ad campaign. You should also target the users near your business location to make the best out of your PPC campaign. This will make sure you are not wasting your budget from visitors who are impossible to visit your place, unless you deliver orders to a different state. Check out Yahoo Search marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Google AdWords.

About the Author

Chris is the editor of http://gfanatic.com, a Google fan blog that features articles on different Google products and tutorials like how to Google directions, and how to put business on Google Maps.

<a href=”http://www.content4reprint.com/internet/e-business/tips-on-exposing-your-business-<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online.htm” title=”Tips on Exposing Your Business <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online“>Article Source: Content for Reprint

In a pay-per-click world where your Quality Score seems to be controlling the performance of your campaigns, there is one proven method to improve performance. It’s called ongoing bid management.

Regardless of whether you’re using enterprise level bid management tools, such as Marin Search Marketer, mid-tier tools, such as ClickEquations, low budget tools, such as Adapt or whether you manage bids through crazy Excel macros – below is a list of logical strategies you may want to consider exploring.

Understand The Lingo

Specialized terms that I’ve used in this article are explained below.

Cost per acquisition (CPA). This is the overall pay-per-click cost of a keyword or phrase divided by the number of individual sales transaction gen…

While many ecommerce businesses trade only in new merchandise, there is a booming market for used, refurbished, and surplus items. Savvy ecommerce merchants can identify niche markets and use public auctions, web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites, and classified ads to source valuable inventory for resale.

In this ecommerce Know-How, a recurring Practical ecommerce feature, I will introduce the idea of using auctions and classifieds to find inventory that you can flip quickly and easily for a profit on your own <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site or on auction <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites like eBay.

Video: Using Auctions and Classifieds to Source Non-traditional Merchandise

Finding Your Niche

Some items lend themselves to resale while others are not so easy to remarket. Finding a successful niche can…

Many <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online shopkeepers want interactive, Flash-based charts that allow them to compare product features, enumerate benefits, or offer an effective pitch. A new <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online beta tool lets <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site owners do just that.

The iCharts beta is a web-based, Flash, chart development tool that makes it pretty simple to create, share, and embed interactive charts. Although the beta does have what I consider to be some minor bugs, it clearly has the potential to be a great resource for developing and publishing relatively high-quality, Flash-based charts, and for that potential I am awarding iCharts three and a half out of a possible five stars in this The PeC Review.

iCharts In Action

An Excellent Concept

The iCharts concept, while not …

Measuring success in search engine optimization can typically be done in four ways. “Indexation” measurements will determine if a search engine has properly identified all of your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site’s pages. “Backlink” measurements will show the number of internal and external links that point to your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site as a whole. “Rankings” measurements will show where in the natural search results your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site appears for given search words or phrases. And “traffic and revenue” measurements will show the keywords used to find your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, revenue generated per keyword, the percentage of visitors that purchased products and so forth.

This article will explore each of the measurements, which we refer to here as “metrics.”

Indexation Metrics

Indexation is the first…

Elgg is an open source platform to power any kind of social media community, and it is a tool that <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online merchants can use to help develop a loyal flow of <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site traffic.

Social media communities similar to Facebook and MySpace are extremely popular. For example, eMarketer, a marketing analysis firm, estimated that more than 44 percent of Internet users would visit a social networking <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site at least monthly in 2009. What’s more, <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online socialites are finding specialized communities to network with. Flowwrestling.org, for example, is a social networking community built around collegiate, high school, freestyle, Greco-Roman, and Olympic wrestling.

I believe that ecommerce businesses can begin to use the social media trends and tools to d…

Practical ecommerce is soon to publish our first annual “Shopping Cart Roundup” guide. The purpose of this PDF guide is to help ecommerce merchants locate the right cart for their businesses. We’ll explain the shopping cart features that we believe are important to look for, as well as the relative merits of licensed carts, hosted carts and open-source carts. We’ll cite common mistakes that merchants make in choosing shopping carts.

We’ll also provide a list of every shopping cart – licensed, hosted and open-source – that we are aware of worldwide. There are hundreds of them, and our list will be, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive.

If you own a cart company or work for a cart company, we want to hear from you to make sure your c…

In spite of growing recessionary concerns, U.S. marketers are likely to boost spending on search engine marketing by as much as 16 percent in 2009 according to a report from eMarketer, a leading marketing trend firm.

According to the report, total search engine marketing spending is likely to rise to $14.1 billion in 2009, up from $12.2 billion in 2008. And by 2013, spending for search engine marketing may exceed $23 billion annually for what eMarketer described as the four basic forms of search engine marketing: paid search advertising, contextual advertising, paid inclusion, and search engine optimization.

“The recession is driving marketers to concentrate on gaining new business, even more than on customer retention objectives,” sai…

Any marketer that chooses not to embrace the changes encompassing digital media would be foolish. The truth of the matter is, search engine marketing and social media marketing have become one. People are likely talking about your brand <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online, or searching for your blog, and Google is indexing your Flickr page. In order to establish and maintain a strong <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online presence today, businesses big and small must embrace social media and optimize everything digital.

Here are four quick tips that will help you start establishing your presence on social media <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites.

Start a Company Blog

Encourage employees to regularly write posts about the company, industry, products, services or events that are relevant to your business. Keep this blog up…

From time to time it is useful to take a look at other industries to see how they are doing business and to glean tips for boosting web traffic to your own ecommerce <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site.

In this edition of The PeC Traffic Report we’ll take a look at an interesting new survey of electrical engineers in Asia conducted by the industry journals EE Times Asia and EE Times China. While it is unlikely that very many Practical ecommerce readers are targeting Singaporean or even Chinese design and development engineers, we can still gather some interesting insights based on how these engineers search for work-related information that are applicable to ecommerce operations particularly in the business-to-business space.

About the Electrical Engineer Survey

Th…

Practical ecommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing “Cart of the Week” feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart’s owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses.

Here we profile Cartweaver, a licensed cart system based in Washington state. The cart solution is designed for integration with Dreamweaver and costs $295. We interviewed CEO Lawrence Cramer, asking him to explain the benefits of his company’s cart. We then asked Michael Evangelista, a ColdFusion developer who has used Cartweaver on dozens of <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites, to evaluate the cart.

PeC: Please provide some general background on the cart.

Cramer: “We started out as a ColdFusion cart because I’m a ColdFusion developer. For version 2, …

“Lessons Learned” is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Tom and Fran Harrington, owners of Alwaysstationery.com. Based in Naperville, IL, the husband and wife team have been running the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online paper shop for five years, and they began devoting all their time to the business after they were both laid off from their jobs in 2008. Alwaysstationery.com offers nearly 400 individual products and makes approximately $200,000 a year in annual revenue. Here we give you the Harringtons’ experiences and suggestions.

Shopping Cart Software

Tom: “We use Cart32. It has most things up-and-coming carts have, and it fits our business pretty well. I trie…