Land of Opportunity

Bluebert G. Peabody of Peabody’s Cre8tive Flow pointed me to a long, but very high quality article on ad placement.

The post caught my attention due to some recent blogosphere discussion on placement of Google AdSense ads on blogs. I, for one, made several changes in the location of the Google ads on the Land of Oppoprtunity small business blog and saw an immediate (next day) improvement in click throughs. (more…)

This weeks Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Beyond the Brand. The CotC is a weekly roundup of some of the best business and economics blogging during the past week or so. (more…)

TechWeb’s messagingpipeline has an article on the recent Forrerster Research report Best And Worst Of E-Mail Customer Service, 2005.

The gist of the report is that 54% of consumers use email asking for customer service. The report points out that most government agencies and businesses are doing a poor job of “answering the mail.”

The article highlights 3 key problems and 5 recommendations by Forrester Research.

Among the problems are failure to deliver essential content, (more…)

CNN Money has reported that Ohio residents selling on eBay online auctions will require a state auctioneers license starting May 2, 2005.

In yet another case of well meaning legislators creating laws with unintended consequences, this error could cost eBay merchants based in Ohio a $200 license fee, a $50,000 bond, a one-year apprenticeship, attendance at auction school, and passing written and oral auction exams. Failure to comply may result in a $1,000 fine and a 90-day jail sentence. (more…)

Darryl Gehly has an excellent piece on shopping cart abandonment over at Darwin magazine, a companion site of CIO.com. Seldom is shopping cart abandonment written about except to complain. Darryl’s article is one of the best and is a definite must read if you have an online shopping cart.

Darryle states that, according to Forrester Research, conversion rates average about 2.4 percent. This is a large drop from the already low 2.9 percent average conversion rate of 2003. (more…)

Originally, I had planned this week’s grand post to be the long awaited Part 2 of Marketing a Business Blog. But, recent discoveries in the blogosphere demand immediate attention.

“There’s trouble in River City!” And, ala the famed musical, The Music Man, that’s trouble with a capital “T.”

The same idiots that spam the search engines, like Google, with worthless sites are now trashing Google’s new blog service, Blogger. (more…)

A recent wave of scams involving eBay’s Buy It Now feature has many eBay sellers upset.

In the scam, unknown buyers have been closing eBay auctions early using the Buy It Now feature. The buyer sends an email to the seller offering to pay by Western Union money order. An official looking email arrives stating Western Union has received a money order. The seller ships the item and then discovers that there is no money order and that the email was spoofed.

Common items being scammed include (more…)

Web site accessibility design is an after thought for most business blogs. And, that’s being generous, if you get my drift.

Few business bloggers, and even most conventional web masters with traditional websites, have given even scant attention to ensuring their sites are accessible to handicap visitors. Everyone assumes that all visitors will be able to see the flashy graphics, watch a video, hear an audio message, and then move a mouse to open additional eye and ear candy.

Test Your Blog

Here’s a quick test. Turn off the images in your browser, visit your blog or one listed in the blogrolls to your left, and navigate without using your mouse. (more…)

Dana VanDen Heuvel at Made for Marketing blog thinks so.

With the average visitor to a traditional website reading only one page, with less than a minute at that, and the average blog visitor seeing a scarcely more respectable 1.4 pages in about 80 seconds, “stickiness is dead” are fighting words. From my vantagepoint, I disagree — strongly.

Dana lists five reasons why “…site stickiness and visitor length of visit are no longer the ways that we should be looking at the effectiveness of our sites…” (more…)

Want a free Google Gmail invite but don’t know where to sign up or who to ask?

isnoop.net offers a FREE gmail invite spooler. isnoop.net’s page offers “a place for people with Gmail invites and those who want them to come together with minimal effort and fuss.” As of Wednesday, Feburary 23rd, isnoop.net has (more…)

A legitimate business opportunity that I speak about lately is the eBay consignment store franchise. Dane at Business Opportunities blog pointed us to this survey of eBay auction consignment stores at AuctionBytes.com.

The timing is opportune as I am speaking this Tuesday evening in Clarksville to a group of 80 or more fellow Arkansans on how to start an Internet auction business. This seminar is a one time good deal as First Security Bank of Clarksville is paying for the program, so admission is FREE. Registration details are on the Arkansas SBDC’s Fort Smith training calendar. I suspect that like many of my programs, this will end up a standing room only affair before sunset.

The survey of eBay franchises and independent auction consignment stores has some interesting findings: (more…)

Steve Smith at EContent has a very eye-opening article on 2005 Product Trends. This article is a must read for anyone who wants to be on the leading edge of breaking consumer trends.

So what are the new rising trends of 2005 according to Steve Smith?

Streaming video ads. Why have a single flash ad when you can easily stream ads using existing pay per view solutions? This is another example of the America’s adult entertainment industry pioneering technologies that are later adopted by main stream business worldwide. I’ve noted this trend for an upcoming redesign of a college recruiting website that would likely benefit from some bleeding edge eye-candy.

Blogging for Bucks. Bloggellers bloggelling to bloggell will add billions of new pages of content to ever expanding Internet. This is so hot that I’ve submitted a speaking proposal to the Association of SBDCs to train our nation’s small business counselors. I’m already counselling small businesses on how to bloggell. Watch for my first book to come out later this spring. Its on bloggelling. (more…)

From the pages of CNet we have another example of why Americans don’t vote for new taxes, even if the tax is limited to just a few years:

A report prepared by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation proposes extending a 100-year-old tax on phone service to some or all data connections. The tax originated in 1898 to pay for the Spanish American War. After being repealed, it was reinstituted to pay for World War I and was eventually set at 3 percent. (more…)

Part 1 of The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004 is up on Vince Flander’s web design site WebPagesThatSuck.com. The site is reverse psychology in spades.

1. Believing people care about you and your web site. Vince aptly posts a photo of three giggling women looking at a laptop. Why are they giggling? Because you proudly launched a boring piece of brochureware. When they’re done having their laughs, the women are going to buy from your competitor. Interestingly enough, a similar scene played out on my office PC screen this past week. (more…)

E-mail marketing campaigns are in trouble, if recent reports are any indication. Rob McGann at Clickz points out several recent surveys of e-mail marketing campaigns. All showed downward trends.

Return Path issued a 5-page white paper that summarizes a survey of 723 consumers aged 18-54. Briefly:

98.6 % of consumers felt they received a noticeable increase in email.

60.% (3 in 5) deleted email without opening them
(Guilty as charged. I deleted 16 of 20 emails today — all unopened. I also teach my teens to do the same.) (more…)