I just read an interesting report today saying that an astonishing 25 percent of all products sold from Zappos.com were returned.

Are they happy? For Zappos, that answer is yes.

In case you don’t know, Zappos is the largest online retailer for shoes and apparels (mainly shoes), and is the pioneer in offering free returns for their products.

Lesson of the story: if it makes sense for your business, encourage contrarian behavior that creates a larger amount of comfort.

For Zappos, that means encouraging returns with free shipping. NPR says this has helped Zappos grow by 6x from $100MM to $600MM a year.

“Some of our best customers are people who return a lot of shoes,” said Craig Adkins, vice president of operations at Shepherdsville, Ky.-based Zappos.com.

Technorati Tags: Zappos, ecommerce, adwords consultant

One of our ecommerce website www.mypopcornmachine.com - which sells concession equipment & supplies - got a new look yesterday!

We redesigned the site base on the testings we have conducted in the past couple months regarding our customer’s behaviour and research we did on internet’s top 500 retailers - we expect our conversion rate to increase by 70-80% and the cart abandon rate to lower by 30%.

There’re still a few glitches here and there and will be fixed in this couple days. We’ve stopped all our ads at the meantime until the site is fully functional again.

Anyhow, go check it out and give me your feedback!

Technorati Tags: yahoo store, Popcorn Machines, ecommerce, Internet Marketing consultant

Ok, I’m talking about link exchange.

It used to be the case that you can just do 2 way link exchanges with other websites and achieve high ranking. Since 2006, Google has catched on to that and devalued the links generated from 2-way link exchanges.

As a result, I’ve seen lately a lot more link exchange schemes that involve 3 way exchanges. In essence, instead of website A linking to B and B to A (2-way) - website A will link to B, B to C, and C back to A. This way, it is much harder for the search engine to detect so all 3 parties will get a lot of quality links.

To add on to that, a lot of these link exchange schemes encourage the exchange of articles with link embedded in them to take advantage of the Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) of Google. I wonder how long it’ll take for Google to catch on this time. For now, I’ll be taking advantage of this and advice you to do so too.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Optimization, Link Building, Google, Marketing consultant

So eBay live - an annual conference for eBayers have concluded on Friday - after all those Google eBay drama (you can look up details about this yourself, its all over the internet). I’m here to inform you couple of the more exciting announcements they made during eBay Live which I believe would change your business tremendously. (I know it’ll change mine) Of all the changes, I’m most excited about the extra protection eBay will provide us powersellers against non-paying bidders. eBay is finally waking up and know that they need us powersellers to make eBay continue to be a vibrant marketplace.

Price + Shipping Sort
Bill also mentioned an important test underway. We’ve all been frustrated by excessive shipping and handling charges. Price + Shipping Sort is a new search option that sorts search results according to the total cost of the item, including shipping and handling charges. That way, buyers can choose to have the full price picture sorted by either highest total cost or lowest total cost.

Summer discount
And on that note — before I close — I’m pleased to offer our sellers a little summer relief to your selling costs. Starting June 19th and continuing through August 5th, we will LOWER the first tranche of Final Value Fees from 5.25% to 4.5%. This applies to auction, auction BIN, or pure fixed price format listings. Consider it a little eBay Live! gift to our fantastic community.

Technorati Tags: eBay live 2007, ebay, google, Internet Marketing consultant

Many of my clients know that I personally use and recommend you to use Channel Advisor as your inventory management system to manage your multi-marketplace sales as well as sales on your own website. I love how robust the CA system is and their customer support is excellent.

While I was looking into expanding my company’s marketing channel to Comparison Shopping Engine (CSE), I stumbled upon the news that they just launched a feed management system called the ShoppingAdvisor.

Here’s the excerpt from their blog:

Yesterday we took the wraps off ShoppingAdvisor, a product that allows retail marketers full control over their comparison shopping business.

Of course the release ships and everything’s OK, but I thought that was pretty funny at the time. I won’t relay the joke I told at launch time internally about the difference between a death march and a death sprint. I really prefer the term rapid development - isn’t it more positive?

I personally cannot wait to try it out and will certainly compare it with Feedperfect by Solid Cactus. More on that later and I’ll give you some exciting updates from eBay live 2007 in my next post.

Technorati Tags: channel advisor, shopping advisor, Feed Perfect, comparison shopping engine, PPC consultant

Minister of State for Labour Oscar Fernandes said India will loose its outsourcing share to China and others if it does not continue with low costs.

“If outsourcing is favouring India today, it does not mean it will always be in favour of India,” he said, adding “the time any country provides labour even for a rupee cheaper than us, outsourcing will move to them”.

When asked about who these countries could be, he said that presently “China is the biggest threat”.

He also stated that China is ahead in the technology sector.

“India has a reservoir of highly technically qualified professionals,” he said at a workshop on ‘the role of trade unions in globalized economy’.

As a company that relies heavily on outsourcing, I’d have to disagree with Mr. Fernandes. I almost NEVER work with Chinese companies because Indian outsourcers have much better English than Chinese, the time it takes us to educate our vendors is 3-5 times less than when we teach the Chinese vendors. While the rate of China maybe cheaper, the language of India will allow it to maintain an edge in the outsourcing market.

Technorati Tags: outsourcing, outsource destination, Outsourcing consultant, PPC consultant

One of my favourite activities when I’m on a long flight is browsing the SkyMall catalog. Their selection of products is very unique and as a retailer, I read it for purchasing inspirations.

It is not until this time around that I get to scrutinize the catalog, its marketing message, as well as comparing some of their products’ pricing to ours. And I came to the conclustion that:

SkyMall is a Big Fat Liar

When you flip through the first couple pages, you will soon see the sign “SkyMall’s price is the best price, gauranteed!” on the very top. So I decided to take a look and compare the prices of some products that both SkyMall and we sell. I know for a fact that we both sell products from the Helman Group, so I flipped to that page.

O, they didn’t…

Yes they did sell the Margarator, an awesome Margarita Machine, for $99.99. At which they’re selling on Walmart for $78 and on our website MyPopcornMachine.com at this price.

Um… lowest price guarantee? I don’t think so.

Technorati Tags: retail, ecommerce, skymall, margarator, outsourcing

Change in Google Analytics

Google Analytics has just changed its outlook last week. I haven’t had much time to play around with the new version but it seems like the layout is much better and contain more information than before. The new version is still in Beta so you can still login to your old version. More on that later when I get around to checking what the difference are between the old and new version.

Change in eBay’s affiliate policy

Another big change on internet marketing last week has to do with the recent changes in the eBay.com affiliate program - at which you can now send traffic to YOUR OWN auctions and store listings.

The old rules prevented this, but now eBay has has wised up! In an announcement released today they’ve made the rules friendlier and the payouts higher.

Under the old rules (which were insane) you could send traffic to any destination on eBay EXCEPT your auction listings or store. That made no sense so I won’t try to explain why they had that rule.

It now makes more sense than ever to send pay per click ppc traffic (such as Google Adwords, or Yahoo Search Marketing) to your own eBay listings.

Once you sign up for the eBay affiliate program you can send traffic to ANY ebay destination and…

- 40% to 65% commission on eBay Revenue generated from ALL purchases
- up to $35 in commission per new active user referral

I love the “flexible destination” feature of the eBay affiliate program. Even if a customer you send to eBay buys from a competitor of yours and you still get paid!

This just opens up a whole new door of making easy money online. Are you kidding? You can just go on eBay, find a product that has a high ASP (average selling price) and high sell through - because the eBay commission is more - source that product, sell it on eBay, and drive traffic to your listing using pay per click ppc while making extra commission off them! Can this get any easier?

Technorati Tags: PPC, ebay affiliate program, google analytics, Outsourcing consultant, PPC consultant

India has long been the number one outsourcing destination employed by many western companies. But now many developing countries are desiring to take over India’s place and be the number one outsourcing destination.

Among the many contendors including Philippines, various Eastern European and Latin American counttries - Russia has recently expressed their intents of coveting the said spot and has mentioned several reasons on why they could be the “ideal” destination in outsourcing. Some of these reasons mentioned were:

-stronger technical skills
-low attrition rates
-less cultural difference

Though Russia has indeed these advantages, they should also take note that many countries (particularly those in Eastern Europe) also possess the same characteristics. Putting an “edge” on their campaign for more outsourcing opportunities should be done in order to stand out from other countries with the same goal in mind.

My take on this is that India is going to remain as the number one outsourcing destination for some years, that is because of the extensive infrastructure already in this country invested by US companies and trust me - moving outsourcing vendors is a painful and costly process.

Technorati Tags: outsourcing, outsource destination, Outsourcing consultant, PPC consultant

Last Saturday was my college class’s graduation (I graduated early last year) and I had lunch with some of the co-years that I entered the college with. In the middle of conversation, a sister of my friend asked me this question:

“Dominic, most people work for a corporation for a couple years after they graduate before they start a business, why do you start a business so early?”

That’s a great question and she’s perhaps the first person that has asked specifically about it. I gave her a true but partial answer because my full answer would bore any human being and drive them insane.

Thinking about it, it is a FUNDAMENTAL question and will dictate:

1) Should you even start a business?
2) What kind of business should you start?

It is a question each and every entreprenuers need to address to themselves, so I invite you to visit my thought process as to why I start a business, why I start the type of business I had, and in particularly why I chose to start one so early (while I was at college).

Reason #1 - Opportunity

You can want to be an entrepreneur all you want, however strong your desire is, if you have not yet seen an opportunity, you would not start a business. My opportunity (and my 1st business idea) came when a “guy” literally called Guy, approached me with a business plan to buy and sell used books on campus during my freshman year of college.

One thing leads to another, we recruited another partner into the venture and started this thing called Owlbooks at our school and that kind of get my feet wet in selling college textbooks (yea I’m still selling college textbooks now) as well as entrepreneurship. I went on through several other opportunites shortly after including real estate investing (inspired by Robert Allen) and Senior Care (saw some business plan online), both failed miserably, and now finally successfully settled in E-commerce and internet marketing.

Reason #2 - Take my fate in my own hand

This is the partial reason I shared during the lunch conversation - 2 of the schools I really wanted to get into for college rejected me when I was at high school. Being the same confident Dominic, I thought to myself, “I’m the greatest person you can ever admit, why am I rejected?”

So I came to the conclusion - institutional admission system is subjective and flawed!

So, ok, if I were to try to get a job, wouldn’t I fall back into this flawed system? Having a couple people decide whether I’m good enough for their company? Having a couple other people decide how much I’m worth?

No thank you.

That’s why when I started my online business, I’m determined to make it B2C. In my consumer retail business, whether or not my customer buy from me have absolutely NOTHING to do with what they think about the owner of the site (me), which school I went to, how brilliant I am, or what I have achieved in the past. ALL they care is the product quality, the price, and the customer service. All of which I have 100% control over and my success is a direct consequence of my every single decisions and actions.

I love it: if I succeed, I’m not just lucky; if I fail, I have no one to blame.

Reason #3 - We can all be winners

Being brought up in a competitive environment, I was taught at a young age that (not just through teachers and parents, but through the environment) there’re winners, and there’re losers. If you win, it’s kind of cool; if you lose, it kind of sucks.

Success, in that world, is measured in terms of scarcity. It’s always true that if you’re successful, you’re doing it at the expense of others - directly or indirectly, more or less, sooner or later. I.e. If you get an A, that means someone else will be pushed out of the curve and get a B. If you get into Harvard, that means someone else didn’t get into Harvard.

Since I get into starting my own business, man is this a different world. In this world, you are NOT trying to win by making someone else lose (contrary to popular believe)! Here, you want to create value in your industry so that you, your vendors, and your customers all benefit from your venture and the relationship.

I urge you, all entrepreneurs or aspiring business owner, to think hard about why YOU start(ed) a business and if its the right thing for you. Share your story with me!

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurship, start business, Outsource internet marketing, Internet marketing consultant