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Table of Contents
Web Notes
At first I had presumed that the top IP numbers would be from the top
consumer ISPs -- AOL, Earthlink, etc. Much to my surprise, I found:
128.238.55.8, also 128.238.55.7 = Polytechnic U. Brooklyn
62.32.60.41= Al-Manaara International a telecommunications company
in the United Arab Emirates
65.162.29.76 = Voicetext Interactive, AUSTIN TX
62.17.4.100 = Web-Sat Ltd. in UK
198.6.50.33 = Symantec
66.77.127.102 = Divx Networks, San Diego
63.251.169.236 = Singingfish.com, Seattle
208.252.252.159 = uunet in Virginia
212.29.74.132 = Vestelnet in Istanbul
193.155.84.2 = Intranet GmbH, Germany
62.194.86.10 = UPC, Amsterdam, Netherlands
4.33.84.46 = Earthlink
209.6.143.28 = RCN
207.172.11.233 = RCN
168.209.98.67 = Dimension Data, South Africa
66.69.242.242 = Roadrunner Southwest
66.45.102.144 = hire.com, Austin, TX
218.6.112.225 = Chinanet Fujian Province Network, Beijing
My audience is much more international and exotic than I would have
guessed. And now I can spot sudden changes in activity as well as track
trends over time. (See
related item in last month's issue.)
NB -- install the trial (30 day) version, not the free version. While the free version doesn't expire, it can only handle small files (16K or less) and hence is very frustrating to use. The trial version can handle files of any size, and is a sheer delight. (If you choose to buy after 30 days, the cost is $49.95)
When running ReadPlease, click on File, then Open, and browse to the texts you are interested on the CD (or any other text file you have). Click on Play and it will start "reading" the complete file aloud to you. Highlight a chunk of text (of any size) with your browser and then click on Selection, and it will read the text you selected. Controls in the right column allow you to change the speed of the voice (with a sliding bar), change the font size (with a sliding bar), and switch among four different voices (with the right and left arrows). You can edit the text right in the text window of ReadPlease, adding your notations, and marks you might want to make to indicate where you last stopped reading, and then save that edited book wherever you'd like on your hard drive. You'll find other choices under Options.
How might you use it? Here are a few suggestions:
Have the computer read aloud to you while you do email and while you
wash the dishes and while you exercise.
Have it read lists of vocabulary or lines from plays that you have
to memorize.
Have it read to you while you fall asleep at night.
If you happen to learn and remember better what you hear than what
you see, or if hearing and seeing at the same time boosts your recall,
use this capability for everything you study.
If you absolutely, positively have to remember something in the morning,
have it read that text to you while you fall sleep at night If you are
having trouble falling asleep, pick a boring text.
By the way, at their site www.readplease.com, ReadPlease indicates that they are working on Spanish, French, Protuguese, Italian, German, and Dutch versions of their software. They promise to make free versions of those available for download. Then you'll be able to use this capability for studying foreign languages. In that case our World Literature CD could prove particularly valuable, with lots of books in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Our online store where you
can buy a library for the price of a book.
If you'd like to ask a question of this kind, please do so by
way of www.allexperts.com
Even before the Web, Rheingold sensed the importance of social interaction in his experiences with the online community at the Well. He explored the implications of new kinds of behavior and relationships on the Internet in his seminal book The Virtual Community.
Now that much of what he foresaw has become reality, he looks ahead at the changes likely to transform our world -- socially, business-wise, and politically -- in the next wave, based on wireless communication. Technology makes it possible that wireless person-to-person interaction, without central control, and with very inexpensive access available to all could change our world even more profoundly than the Internet has.
After bombarding the reader with one inspiring anecdote after another, hammering home that the Internet is essentially a social rather than a technological phenomenon, the author tempts us with hints and foreshadowings of the many different ways in which wireless technology might take us to a higher stage, where once again, almost magically, the value of a network increases with the number of people involved, where the sharing of a common resource adds value to that resource while benefitting all.
But, he warns, a battle looms with the disinfotainment mega-companies that seek to control telecommunications.
While Rheingold doesn't make this connection, I couldn't help but think of the old battle between "interactive TV" and Internet. A handful of megacompanies invested millions in pilot projects to hardwire communities to which they could pump in entertainment, shopping, etc. They were willing to spend so much because once in place they thought that they would have unique access to those customers for years to come. Then the Internet upended those plans, providing people with thousands of choices, and freeing them from any central control.
Now those same companies and their look-alikes have invested billions of dollars to license large chunks of the electro-magnetic spectrum for their exclusive use; and they once again intend to control the marketplace.
But in little cracks in the regulatory framework interesting innovations have made it possible for swarms of cooperating individuals to forward wireless traffic from one to another, like the early days of the Internet, by-passing any central control and connecting just about anyone to a new world of information and social interaction.
Naturally, these companies are lobbying hard for changes in laws and regulations that would block such grass-roots activity, just as movie companies are lobbying now for legislation that would block the copying of movies, and as a side effect would stymie the natural development of computer technology.
Lets hope, that as in the case of the Internet, anarchy prevails over central control, that a new realm of massive cooperation opens up, bringing with it increased freedom, greater wealth, and better chances for personal fulfillment for all.
This book is a must-read. Read it now while you and your friends can still make a difference in the outcome.
"Metatags are useless. It's much better to make the full text of your pages visible to the search engines."
I can't agree with you on this. The reason is that while content is
certainly the MOST important factor, almost every single search engine
(specially robots) use the META Description Tag in their search results.
Even though some don't realize it, but Google does too under certain circumstances
(I'm not talking about their DMOZ results). I personally like the benefit
of
this as I can write a very compelling description that I know will
be seen by the searcher which will promote a click-through rather than
trying to write an HTML document that will perfectly fit the excerpt that
would be displayed if no META Tag was available.
Search engines such as Inktomi (who reach more than 80% of the Internet population) uses the META Description Tag in all their partner results. This includes sites like MSN, Overture, About and so on. In addition to Inktomi you have AltaVista who also uses this. While there are hundreds if not thousands of META search engines out there like Excite and Metacrawler and the Terra Network, I think it would be foolish to conclude that META Tags are "useless".
Even if the META Description Tag was not used in the ranking calculations of the results, it is certainly used to describe the content of the page. I will continue to use this as I have found this to be very beneficial.
Reply from Richard:
Please note the language in the question that I was answering: "I have meta tags for keywords on my website."
I was saying that keyword metatags are useless, and they certainly are. Of the major search engines, only Inktomi pays any attention at all to them.
Description metatags are a useful crutch if the words at the top of your page don't clearly reflect your content. Yes, what you have in the description metatag will show in in the results lists of search engines. But by using that metatag instead of putting your most important information at the top of your page you give up an opportunity to improve your ranking. Most search engines give priority to content in the HTML title and at the very beginning of the page. Content in Metatags typically gets no priority at all.
So yes, your description metatags are used by search engines.
But, you would be better off focusing on the actual content of your page, and putting the most important information at the very beginning of the page.
Reply from Karen:
You said: "But by using that metatag instead of putting your most important
information at the top of your page you give
up an opportunity to improve your ranking."
I'm not saying that content at the top of the page should be omitted or "replaced" by the META Description. In fact I agree with you 100% that the content at the top of the page is VERY important as is the HTML elements that surround this text (ie, font size, headings, bold and so on). What I'm saying is that "in addition to" this highly relevant content at the top of the page you should certainly also provide a very informative/targeted META Description. As you know having the META Description will in no way hurt your rankings, but it certainly can increase a click-through.
If search engine optimization is what you want then providing all avenues
to increase a click-through is what you need to do. Content and the placement
of that content in the HTML is what "ranking" the page is all about, but
there's more to search engine optimization and "marketing" than just content.
That's like writing a book without a description on the back cover. The
TITLE of the book obviously is important, but people often flip that
book over to see if the description of that book has what they are looking
for.
When I go to a search engine and search on the following keywords "tax preparation" the below is what I get back (real listings). What would you click on?
Listing 1: Phone: 800 206-7495. 570 296-2848. Fax: 973 529-0205. Tax
Preparation / Accounting Services Coupon.
$25.00 off Tax Preparation* Stone Financial / AAA Taxes...
Listing 2: How Would You Like To Know The Secrets The Wealthy Use To
Reduce Their Taxes? This revealing
report exposes how the rich get richer..
If you're like most people you would click on listing #2 even though listing #1 came up first in the results. Listing #1 gave no reason for a click-through and it was content extracted from the page.
That's the power of the META Description and without it listing #1 failed to promote a click-through. And to think all he had to do was provide a META Description.
I hope this clears up my comment on the importance of the META Description
Tag. I could care less if it helps
in the rankings because that's what good HTML planning and content
is all about. My concern with SEO and Internet marketing is about ranking
and focusing on ways to the click-through.
Reply from Richard:
1) the HTML elements that surround this text (ie, font size, headings,
bold and so on)" are irrelevant. The search crawlers ignore markup.
2) most sites that use description metatags misuse them, placing the
same metatag on multiple pages, which really hurts. If you choose to use
description metatags, make sure that each page has a different one, distinctly
suited to its content
3) the metatag gains you absolutely nothing in terms of ranking. It
won't hurt you, but it's not worth your time and effort. Focus on the text
on the page.
I have no metatags at my site. I do nothing to promote my pages (my advertising or marketing expense); and I get about 2000 visits per day. About half of those visits come by way of search engines, and by far the vast majority of those come by way of Google, which sends its crawler by and looks at all my pages about once every 2-3 days, without me doing anything -- simply because lot of sites have linked to me. You can check my current stats at http://samizdat.com/logs/
Reply from Karen with important information about Google:
I hate to say it, but you are grosely incorrect in your first statement saying that "crawlers ignore markup". Everyone knows Google puts a lot of weight on markup. Have you read the white papers on Google? I have. As stated by Larry Page himself:
"Google keeps track of some visual presentation details such as font size of words. Words in a larger or bolder font are weighted higher than other words. Third, full raw HTML of pages is available in a repository."I can get a #1 ranking in Google every time I try simply by taking advantage of knowing how it works. Most of my traffic comes from Google too, but I realize Google isn't the only player out there so I optimize my Web pages for all.
Here's a couple links you may find useful:
Just because some people misuse META Tags doens't mean they aren't important. If people are stupid enough to use the same META Description then they are probably stupid enough to use the same TITLE too, but that doesn't prevent me for capitalizing on their mistakes.
Traffic? I know you won't believe it, but I deliver more than 30 million "page views" not hits a month so I guess I'm doing something right and all my pages have the META Description Tag. I agree the META Keywords Tag is a waste of time and AltaVista recently announce they have stopped using this in their calculations.
Reply from Richard:
"Google keeps track of some visual presentation details such as font size of words. Words in a larger or bolder font are weighted higher than other words."
That's interesting. I hadn't seen that before. I do know that AltaVista ignores markup, but these days AltaVista isn't that important. Thanks. I've learned something."full raw HTML of pages is available in a repository."I probably didn't notice the effect because the first words on my pages (the words that I want to appear as the description, without using a description metatag) are the Head, typically H2, bold.
Yes, Google archives the pages it fetches and makes those available to searchers when the original pages are no longer available. That's useful service, but has no effect on ranking.
"Have you ever considered that adding some powerful META Description
Tags to your Web pages might get you more
traffic on those "other" engines that display this in their results?
Maybe that's why you don't get as much traffic from these others?"
Description tags have no effect on traffic. They simply force what will appear in the listings. And I already have constructed my pages so the first words on each page are the words that I want to appear as the description (that's the default)."Traffic? I know you won't believe it, but I deliver more than 30 million "page views" not hits a month so I guess I'm doing something right and all my pages have the META Description Tag. I agree the META Keywords Tag is a waste of time and AltaVista recently announce they have stopped using this in their calculations.
Congratulations. Well done. If I had results like that, I wouldn't change anything either.Thanks very much for the info about Google and the pointers.As for my stats, take into account:
1) this is a one-person operation, and only a small piece of my time goes into maintaining the site.
2) I have never spent a penny on marketing or advertising
3) I have about 1300 content-heavy, graphic-light, search-engine friendly pages, and some of those pages consitute entire books
4) About 2000 other sites link to my pages.You are doing very well in the big leagues with tens of millions of page views per month. And I'm doing in my realm, with about 100,000 page views per month.
Reply from Karen:
I just wanted to make one more comment before I leave you alone.
Your Web pages are perfectly done in regards to ranking high in Google. I did a quick analysis of several pages and found that you "by mistake" it seems, were using HTML elements to best rank you in Google. Doing what you are doing by providing a fairly good description would be much harder to teach to your readers. Most as you know have no clue how a search engine renders a Web page and the majority have never looked at the HTML.
If you were to tell people to make sure their most important and most
descriptive content appears at the top of the Web page and formatted so
it makes sense in the search results, that would mean nothing to them.
Why? Because what they "see" and what is rendered are two totally different
things. Consider tables for example (probably the most used by HTML editors).
If
you are using tables as a way to provide a menu on the left of the
screen and then on right you have the content right up there at the top
of the page, that content would not be at the top in regards to how search
engines render the page. Instead that content
would be at the bottom because the search engine found your menu on
the left first.
People rarely look at the source code these days. Everyone's using some crappy HTML markup program that 1st writes terrible code and 2nd, doesn't consider search engines. I personally write all my code using a text editor. I was writing HTML when it was still considered experimental.
Your Web pages are simple (I mean that as a compliment) and will do well in search engines. People who don't understand how things work are also those people using Java, Flash and every HTML element they can muster up. I always tell people that simple markup is more effective than flashy crap. It makes no sense to have a flashy Web page that no one will ever visit. Provide valuable content and you'll become popular. Introduce that content in a manner that gives you a high ranking in search engine and you'll be found in the search engines. Mix all that with popularity and there you go, a high ranking Web site that will stay in the rankings for a long time to come.
Reply from Richard:
I agree 100%. I create my pages using Netscape Composer. When I need
to do anything fancy (like add a FreeFind search box) , I use WordPad and
just add the HTML code. Amen that fancy design techniques, encouraged by
the standard authoring
packages just mess you up as far as search engines are concerned.
I try to emphasize that Web pages should have two design goals:
1) bring traffic to your site by making your pages very search-engine
friendly.
2) provide a good experience for the visitor.
If you don't take care of #1, you don't have any visitors.
Thanks very much for the informative and stimulating discussion. I'll try to path the pieces together in some sort of coherent way and add them to that "experts" page.
Three years ago, when I began actively selling at eBay, the process was complicated and difficult to figure out. So I wrote articles with practical advice based on my experience (see www.samizdat.com/ebay.html, www.samizdat.com/ebay2.html), and I was soon contacted by an online auction management company, AuctionRover, to write a column for them (www.samizdat.com/auc.html). Back then, third party services with auction management tools were essential for serious sellers. Such services made it easy to put photos in your listings, and to have your auctions start just when you wanted them to rather than the moment you finished writing the description, and saved lots of time by making it easy for you to keep track of the many logistical and record-keeping steps involved.
Since then, in the wake of the dot-com crash, most of the auction management companies floundered, but eBay itself has continued to thrive. How do they do it? By listening to customers, working hard, and paying attention to all the details that matter to customers -- making it far easier and less time-consuming to sell through their service -- moving to the point where they now do just about everything that the third party services used to do, and more, and do it very well.
So what have they done?
Customer service -- In the past, if you had a question about eBay (and with millions of people participating in what for many is a bizarre new experience, they must have received an enormous number of questions), there was no way to phone anyone to ask. If you couldn't find the answer in the online help files, you had to send email. Then, if you got an answer at all, it would be a long, long wait. Today, they use an online application known as "LivePerson", and usually within a couple minutes you can chat live with an eBay support person. It's very effective. I suspect that lots of people who before would have gone away confused, and never returned, are now converted to loyal eBay sellers and buyers.
Online payment -- The typical model in the past was 1) auction ends, 2) seller sends email to winner stating the total cost (including shipping charges), 3) buyer sends check to seller, 4) on receipt of check, seller sends merchandise to buyer. That process would typically take 1-2 weeks. And the auction itself typically took a week. So, if nothing went wrong, it might easily be three weeks from the time an auction started to the time the merchandise was sent.
Now eBay owns PayPal, an easy-to-use online payment service and is integrating it into the overall functionality of the eBay site. PayPal has numerous options, but basically it enables people with credit cards to pay you without you having to have a merchant credit card account. Sellers who opt to accept PayPal can quickly put a PayPal logo on their auction description with a link that makes it very easy to pay right away once you have "won" an auction. Now many goods bought at auction are paid for immediately online this way, and the goods can be shipped that same day or the next (if the seller is efficient), making the whole experience much more satisfying and profitable. (NB -- There is no charge for buyers using PayPal. Sellers pay a small fee to collect the funds, comparable to what you'd pay a merchant credit card service).
Scheduling auctions -- Early this week I got email from eBay seller who had read an old article of mine talking about the capabilities of AuctionRover, especially the ability to schedule when your auctions would start. I replied with regret that such services no longer exist. Then that very afternoon when checking my ongoing auctions at eBay and relisting an item, I saw that eBay had just initiated that very service (with no fanfare at all -- it was simply, quietly added to the list of choices when you post an item). Now you can pick the date and the time (to the quarter hour). Previously, an auction automatically started the moment you posted it, and it ended at that time of day, 5, 7, or 10 days later. So if you wanted your auction to end at 9 PM on Saturday night (a good time for collectibles), you'd want to start it at 9 PM the week before -- which might be very difficult for you. This new capability is a huge improvement.
Making it far easier to handle the logistics and record keeping -- Now on your "My eBay" page, you can see a full summary of all your buying and selling activity at eBay, with links to the individual listings. When someone "wins" one of your auctions, from your "My eBay" page, you can with a click send an "Invoice" to the buyer; and three days later you can with a click send a payment reminder. And on the other end, the "checkout" process for the buyer has been streamlined as well. There is no need for composing or copying/pasting personal emails back and forth, but there is the opportunity to add a few personal comments or detailed instructions to the standard message (which includes all the relevant facts, like item name and number and the closing price). They also make it very easy to "relist" an item or to list a new item that is similar to one that you posted in the past -- carrying over all the past choices and text and letting you quickly make whatever changes are necessary.
In addition, to add photos, all you have to do is browse your hard drive to find the file, then click to upload it. (In what now feels like the distant past, you needed to post your picture at a personal Web site or at a third party service and link to it.) It's even much easier to post feedback on sellers and buyers.
For those who have never sold at auctions, these details may seem insignificant. To serious sellers, they are the difference between having a profitable, pleasurable experience, and wasting hour after hour in tedious tasks, in a mode where even if you make money, it isn't worth the effort. Overall, brilliant attention to detail by eBay's site designers has simplified many essential steps that used to be annoying and time consuming, and that you might otherwise forget.
Marketing tools -- You can use HTML markup in your listings, and even include links to personal Web pages of yours, where you might post additional detail and additional photos. eBay also makes it very easy to build a bio/profile page at the eBay site, where you can explain who you are and what you are trying to do, and where (automatically, without you doing anything) links appear to all your current auctions, and all your feedback appears. As a buyer that makes it easy to see other auctions that the same seller has going on at the same time. You can also, with a simple click from your My eBay page, add Andale counters to all your auction pages, and then click to see the resulting stats -- how many people have visited which of your auctions.
Buy It Now: more like an online store than an auction -- In addition to bidding-style sales, eBay now allows you to set a fixed price and sell items as soon as someone is willing to match that price. This approach is excellent for companies that sell merchandise through online stores -- eBay becomes an additional online sales channel, with a large audience of potential customers. If you have multiple identical items to sell (manufactured goods, as opposed to collectibles), you can post them in bundles, so as soon as one sells, another is offered, or you can list and relist, selling them one at a time.
The fee for posting a single item depends on the price you set (for a price of around $20, the current insertion fee is 55 cents). The current fee for posting a quantity of the same item to sell one after the other is the price times the number of items up to a maximum of $3.30. Once an item sells, you also get assessed a final value fee, which varies according to price. For items in the under $25 range, you wind up paying 5.25%, which feels like sales tax. And if they pay by PayPal, you pay another fee, which for a $20 sale currently amounts to about 90 cents. So the fees add up, but if you set the right price, you can do quite well, with very little hassle.
If you sell one at a time, your auction runs out in seven days, unless you opt (as I did) for ten days, for ten cents more. So, unlike with a store, you need to keep coming back to eBay to relist when they sell/run out, and or when the auction time ends without a sale. On the one hand, that's a nuisance. On the other hand, it's an opportunity. I use eBay to experiment with price. I typically have nine items for sale as "Buy It Now" at any one time -- all books on CD ROM. I posted them there originally with $5 discount "for a limited time". Each time an item sells, I raise the price $1 when I relist. Each time one fails to sell in the ten-day window, I reduce the price $1. I've been doing that for several weeks now, and have discovered (at least for the products that I sell) that the market seems insenitive to price; it appears I could charge as much as the regular retail price without reducing the number of sales.
If the merchandise you want to sell is books or CDs, as an alternative, at no cost for listing and with an incredibly fast listing process, you can sell through half.com (a company owned by eBay). At half.com, to list an item, you just enter its ISBN or UPC number and indicate if it's new or used; and if used, what its condition is. If the item was manufactured in the last 10-20 years, the chances are excellent that they already have all the info about the item, including a photo of it, in their database. And here items stay on sale until sold or until you remove them. This is a very low-maintenance sales channel; but, unfortunately, it is also low volume, with nowhere near the traffic you get at the main eBay site.
If you tried selling at eBay a few years ago and gave up in frustration, or your enthusiasm waned as you realized that the time you were putting in taking care of logistics and recordkeeping and listing and communicating with customers simply wasn't worth it, you should give it another try. And if you already sell merchandise online in other ways (such as through your own online store), you should seriously consider using eBay as an added channel or as a marketplace where you can test prices and special offers or as a way to sell closeouts and excess inventory. They have done very good work. Find creative ways to take advantage of their brilliance.
My main business these days is publishing books on CD ROM. My little company consists of just me. I work at home alone. Some days I feel adrift and becalmed in a vast ocean. Other days I get the pleasurable feeling of control, tacking this way and that, trying new sales channels, making new partnerships, making changes to my products and in how I let the world know about them with a few keystrokes, maneuvering my little boat this way and that, even sailing into the wind.
The good days typically start with an idea stimulated by a question often from a stranger, in an email discussion group or submitted through AllExperts. For instance, someone asks about the Amazon Advantage program as a sales outlet for a small publisher. I reply that Amazon Marketplace is a better approach, and in answering it dawns on me that although, in theory that looks like a good sales channel, I haven't been getting any orders that way, and I'm not doing all that great with Advantage either. So I try to sort out what's going on, making changes almost as fast as I can think of them as possibilities.
Quick definitions:
Amazon Advantage is a consignment program designed for small publishers who don't deal through distributors. If your books are accepted, they place a small order (one or two copies each). You ship these copies to their warehouse in Kentucky. Once they've received the books, they enter your information in Amazon's online catalog, which librarians and booksellers as well as customers use as a research tool, an alternative to Books in Print. And in the catalog, your book shows up as "usually ships within 24 hours", which is a lot more encouraging that 2-3 weeks, which is what they show for books that appear in Books in Print, but that they don't have in stock. When orders come in, Amazon collects payment and ships the goods. On the down side, Amazon takes 55% of the selling price; and you get paid about two months after the end customer buys.
Marketplace is a way that anyone can sell a book -- new or used -- directly to Amazon customers. At Amazon, click on Help, then Selling, then Marketplace, for details. You enter the ISBN (the standard book number) of the book you want to sell. If the book was published in the last 20-30 years, it's probably in their database. Then you indicate if it's new or used, and its condition; and the price you want to sell it for -- which must be less than Amazon's price for a new one. That's all. When people view the Amazon page for that book, under the info about the Amazon price for a new one, they'll see a link for "used". Click on that, and they'll see a list of all the reduced price Marketplace offerings for that book. If someone buys yours, they go through the same shopping cart process as usual for buying at Amazon. Amazon processes the credit card transaction (you don't need to get a merchant credit card account to play here), and sends you the info about where to ship the book.
Unlike the common practice with online auctions, Amazon does not charge for listing items in its Marketplace. They collect a fee only when your item sells, deducting a commission of 99 cents plus 15% of the sales price from the money they collected from the customer. They automatically transfer your earnings to your checking account every 14 days. If your item doesn't sell within 60 days, the listing is closed and you pay nothing. In that case, Amazon notifies you by email and provides instructions about how to relist your item.
When one of your items sells at Marketplace, Amazon gives you a shipping credit to help cover your shipping costs. For a book, their standard domestic shipping allowance is $2.26. That works fine for books on CD ROM, where with a slim jewel case, first class postage comes to only $.83, and padded bubble shipping envelopes, in bulk, cost between 25 and 50 cents. So you make a little extra profit on the shipping.
So, in theory, Amazon Marketplace looks like a far better deal than
Amazon Advantage. Even if you are listed by way of Amazon Advantage with
your regular retail price; if you sell the same book in Marketplace even
at as much as a 50%
discount, you do better with a Marketplace sale than an Advantage sale.
But you need to be in the Amazon catalog to capitalize on Marketplace, and you want your book to be labeled "ships in 24 hours". So you want to sign up for Amazon Advantage first.
Then it dawned on me -- the price. Yes, I have my regular price which I list in my own online store, and which applies to anyone who buys directly from me. But there is no reason why that should be the price that I quote to Amazon or other book sellers. I could establish a significantly higher price at Amazon Advantage -- say $39 instead of $29; then list the same item through Marketplace for my regular price of $29, and it would look like a major bargain. And when that item sold through Amazon Advantage, even with the 55% discount to Amazon, I'd still do okay.
So as soon as I typed in and sent off my advice to the stranger who had started me thinking, I connected first to bowkerlink.com, where I changed all my prices in Books in Print -- $29 items going up to $39, and $19 items to $25. Then I went to Amazon Advantage, double-checked their procedures, and sent them a message detailing all my price changes. As soon as those changes take effect (which might be in a week or two), I'll go back and raise my Marketplace prices. Yes, they'll be higher than before, but the differential between the standard price and the Marketplace price will be greater, making the Marketplace a better bargain.
Will that make a difference in the long run? Maybe, maybe not. But it doesn't cost me anything to try. And thanks to the Web, I can make all those changes for two dozen products inside of an hour.
Then I consider eBay, which with its Buy It Now program serves as another sales channel for me. There I've found by experimenting that within a range of $14 to $29 price seems to make no difference in the rate of sales. [see ebay4.html] There I don't want to tinker with the price any more. But I do want to change the auction descriptions, so people perceive the price as a better deal. As soon as the Amazon price changes take effect, I'll note at eBay that this same book CD that I'm offering here for $29, sells at Amazon for $39.
At half.com which is owned by eBay and is another marketplace for books, I won't need to do anything. As soon as the price change in Books in Print take effect, those are the prices that will appear as standard retail at half.com; and the prices I have already set for my offerings there will automatically look that much better.
As for my own store at Yahoo stores, my prices stay the same, but as soon as the Amazon and Books in Print price changes go through, I will add some new verbiage. "Consider this an online manufacturer's outlet. Here prices are always heavily discounted. When you buy directly from us, we don't have to pay the middleman, and we pass the savings on to you. The very same CD that sells at Amazon and other retail stores for $39, sells here for $29; and what sells there for $25, sells here for $19."
So I shift my sail and shift it again, taking advantage of opportunities as soon as they appear -- making potentially important changes single-handed in less time than it would take me to explain what I was doing to someone else, and far less than it would take to convince other people that it was the right thing to do. Sometimes it's fun working at home alone, sailing into the wind.
Coming soon:
part 2 -- Responding to traffic numbers and other stats
part 3 -- Partnering and couponing
part 4 -- Taking advantage of Yahoo groups
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