#how to do ecommerce on amazon

[mostlysignssomeportents]

MIT libraries are thriving without Elsevier

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Once you learn about the "collective action problem," you start seeing it everywhere. Democrats – including elected officials – all wanted Biden to step down, but none of them wanted to be the first one to take a firm stand, so for months, his campaign limped on: a collective action problem.

Patent trolls use bullshit patents to shake down small businesses, demanding "license fees" that are high, but much lower than the cost of challenging the patent and getting it revoked. Collectively, it would be much cheaper for all the victims to band together and hire a fancy law firm to invalidate the patent, but individually, it makes sense for them all to pay. A collective action problem:

https://locusmag.com/2013/11/cory-doctorow-collective-action/

Musicians get royally screwed by Spotify. Collectively, it would make sense for all of them to boycott the platform, which would bring it to its knees and either make it pay more or put it out of business. Individually, any musician who pulls out of Spotify disappears from the horizon of most music fans, so they all hang in – a collective action problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed

Same goes for the businesses that get fucked out of 30% of their app revenues by Apple and Google's mobile business. Without all those apps, Apple and Google wouldn't have a business, but any single app that pulls out commits commercial suicide, so they all hang in there, paying a 30% vig:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig

That's also the case with Amazon sellers, who get rooked for 45-51 cents out of every dollar in platform junk fees, and whose prize for succeeding despite this is to have their product cloned by Amazon, which underprices them because it doesn't have to pay a 51% rake on every sale. Without third-party sellers there'd be no Amazon, but it's impossible to get millions of sellers to all pull out at once, so the Bezos crime family scoops up half of the ecommerce economy in bullshit fees:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

This is why one definition of "corruption" is a system with "concentrated gains and diffuse losses." The company that dumps toxic waste in your water supply reaps all the profits of externalizing its waste disposal costs. The people it poisons each bear a fraction of the cost of being poisoned. The environmental criminal has a fat warchest of ill-gotten gains to use to bribe officials and pay fancy lawyers to defend it in court. Its victims are each struggling with the health effects of the crimes, and even without that, they can't possibly match the polluter's resources. Eventually, the polluter spends enough money to convince the Supreme Court to overturn "Chevron deference" and makes it effectively impossible to win the right to clean water and air (or a planet that's not on fire):

https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/us-supreme-courts-chevron-deference-ruling-will-disrupt-climate-policy

Any time you encounter a shitty, outrageous racket that's stable over long timescales, chances are you're looking at a collective action problem. Certainly, that's the underlying pathology that preserves the scholarly publishing scam, which is one of the most grotesque, wasteful, disgusting frauds in our modern world (and that's saying something, because the field is crowded with many contenders).

Here's how the scholarly publishing scam works: academics do original scholarly research, funded by a mix of private grants, public funding, funding from their universities and other institutions, and private funds. These academics write up their funding and send it to a scholarly journal, usually one that's owned by a small number of firms that formed a scholarly publishing cartel by buying all the smaller publishers in a string of anticompetitive acquisitions. Then, other scholars review the submission, for free. More unpaid scholars do the work of editing the paper. The paper's author is sent a non-negotiable contract that requires them to permanently assign their copyright to the journal, again, for free. Finally, the paper is published, and the institution that paid the researcher to do the original research has to pay again – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per year! – for the journal in which it appears.

The academic publishing cartel insists that the millions it extracts from academic institutions and the billions it reaps in profit are all in service to serving as neutral, rigorous gatekeepers who ensure that only the best scholarship makes it into print. This is flatly untrue. The "editorial process" the academic publishers take credit for is virtually nonexistent: almost everything they publish is virtually unchanged from the final submission format. They're not even typesetting the paper:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1

The vetting process for peer-review is a joke. Literally: an Australian academic managed to get his dog appointed to the editorial boards of seven journals:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/olivia-doll-predatory-journals

Far from guarding scientific publishing from scams and nonsense, the major journal publishers have stood up entire divisions devoted to pay-to-publish junk science. Elsevier – the largest scholarly publisher – operated a business unit that offered to publish fake journals full of unreveiwed "advertorial" papers written by pharma companies, packaged to look like a real journal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090504075453/http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/

Naturally, academics and their institutions hate this system. Not only is it purely parasitic on their labor, it also serves as a massive brake on scholarly progress, by excluding independent researchers, academics at small institutions, and scholars living in the global south from accessing the work of their peers. The publishers enforce this exclusion without mercy or proportion. Take Diego Gomez, a Colombian Masters candidate who faced eight years in prison for accessing a single paywalled academic paper:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student-faces-prison-charges-sharing-academic-article-online

And of course, there's Aaron Swartz, the young activist and Harvard-affiliated computer scientist who was hounded to death after he accessed – but did not publish – papers from MIT's JSTOR library. Aaron had permission to access these papers, but JSTOR, MIT, and the prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz argued that because he used a small computer program to access the papers (rather than clicking on each link by hand) he had committed 13 felonies. They threatened him with more than 30 years in prison, and drew out the proceedings until Aaron was out of funds. Aaron hanged himself in 2013:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Academics know all this terrible stuff is going on, but they are trapped in a collective action problem. For an academic to advance in their field, they have to publish, and they have to get their work cited. Academics all try to publish in the big prestige journals – which also come with the highest price-tag for their institutions – because those are the journals other academics read, which means that getting published is top journal increases the likelihood that another academic will find and cite your work.

If academics could all agree to prioritize other journals for reading, then they could also prioritize other journals for submissions. If they could all prioritize other journals for submissions, they could all prioritize other journals for reading. Instead, they all hold one another hostage, through a wicked collective action problem that holds back science, starves their institutions of funding, and puts their colleagues at risk of imprisonment.

Despite this structural barrier, academics have fought tirelessly to escape the event horizon of scholarly publishing's monopoly black hole. They avidly supported "open access" publishers (most notably PLoS), and while these publishers carved out pockets for free-to-access, high quality work, the scholarly publishing cartel struck back with package deals that bundled their predatory "open access" journals in with their traditional journals. Academics had to pay twice for these journals: first, their institutions paid for the package that included them, then the scholars had to pay open access submission fees meant to cover the costs of editing, formatting, etc – all that stuff that basically doesn't exist.

Academics started putting "preprints" of their work on the web, and for a while, it looked like the big preprint archive sites could mount a credible challenge to the scholarly publishing cartel. So the cartel members bought the preprint sites, as when Elsevier bought out SSRN:

https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/17/disappointing-elsevier-buys-open-access-academic-pre-publisher-ssrn/

Academics were elated in 2011, when Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub, a shadow library that aims to make the entire corpus of scholarly work available without barrier, fear or favor:

https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra

Sci-Hub neutralized much of the collective action trap: once an article was available on Sci-Hub, it became much easier for other scholars to locate and cite, which reduced the case for paying for, or publishing in, the cartel's journals:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.14979

The scholarly publishing cartel fought back viciously, suing Elbakyan and Sci-Hub for tens of millions of dollars. Elsevier targeted prepress sites like academia.edu with copyright threats, ordering them to remove scholarly papers that linked to Sci-Hub:

https://svpow.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-is-taking-down-papers-from-academia-edu/

This was extremely (if darkly) funny, because Elsevier's own publications are full of citations to Sci-Hub:

https://eve.gd/2019/08/03/elsevier-threatens-others-for-linking-to-sci-hub-but-does-it-itself/

Meanwhile, scholars kept the pressure up. Tens of thousands of scholars pledged to stop submitting their work to Elsevier:

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

Academics at the very tops of their fields publicly resigned from the editorial board of leading Elsevier journals, and published editorials calling the Elsevier model unethical:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/16/system-profit-access-research

And the New Scientist called the racket "indefensible," decrying the it as an industry that made restricting access to knowledge "more profitable than oil":

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032052-900-time-to-break-academic-publishings-stranglehold-on-research/

But the real progress came when academics convinced their institutions, rather than one another, to do something about these predator publishers. First came funders, private and public, who announced that they would only fund open access work:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06178-7

Winning over major funders cleared the way for open access advocates worked both the supply-side and the buy-side. In 2019, the entire University of California system announced it would be cutting all of its Elsevier subscriptions:

https://www.science.org/content/article/university-california-boycotts-publishing-giant-elsevier-over-journal-costs-and-open

Emboldened by the UC system's principled action, MIT followed suit in 2020, announcing that it would no longer send $2m every year to Elsevier:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#nerdfight

It's been four years since MIT's decision to boycott Elsevier, and things are going great. The open access consortium SPARC just published a stocktaking of MIT libraries without Elsevier:

https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/

How are MIT's academics getting by without Elsevier in the stacks? Just fine. If someone at MIT needs access to an Elsevier paper, they can usually access it by asking the researchers to email it to them, or by downloading it from the researcher's site or a prepress archive. When that fails, there's interlibrary loan, whereby other libraries will send articles to MIT's libraries within a day or two. For more pressing needs, the library buys access to individual papers through an on-demand service.

This is how things were predicted to go. The libraries used their own circulation data and the webservice Unsub to figure out what they were likely to lose by dropping Elsevier – it wasn't much!

https://unsub.org/

The MIT story shows how to break a collective action problem – through collective action! Individual scholarly boycotts did little to hurt Elsevier. Large-scale organized boycotts raised awareness, but Elsevier trundled on. Sci-Hub scared the shit out of Elsevier and raised awareness even further, but Elsevier had untold millions to spend on a campaign of legal terror against Sci-Hub and Elbakyan. But all of that, combined with high-profile defections, made it impossible for the big institutions to ignore the issue, and the funders joined the fight. Once the funders were on-side, the academic institutions could be dragged into the fight, too.

Now, Elsevier – and the cartel – is in serious danger. Automated tools – like the Authors Alliance termination of transfer tool – lets academics get the copyright to their papers back from the big journals so they can make them open access:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Unimaginably vast indices of all scholarly publishing serve as important adjuncts to direct access shadow libraries like Sci-Hub:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#cornucopia-concordance

Collective action problems are never easy to solve, but they're impossible to address through atomized, individual action. It's only when we act as a collective that we can defeat the corruption – the concentrated gains and diffuse losses – that allow greedy, unscrupulous corporations to steal from us, wreck our lives and even imprison us.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

[robertreich]

How Amazon Is Ripping You Off

Shopping on Amazon? Stop! Watch this first.

Amazon is the world’s biggest online retailer. This one single juggernaut of a company is responsible for nearly 40% of all online sales in America. In an FTC lawsuit, they’re accused of using their mammoth size, and consumers’ dependence on them, to artificially jack up prices as high as possible, while prohibiting sellers on Amazon from charging lower prices anywhere else.

They’re accused of using a secret algorithm, codenamed "Project Nessie," to charge customers an estimated extra $1 billion dollars,

If this isn’t an abuse of power that hurts consumers, what is? So much for all of those “prime” deals you thought you were getting.

Project Nessie isn’t the only trick Amazon has been accused of using to exert its hulking dominance over the online retail industry — leading to higher prices for you.

Much of the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit centers around the treatment of independent merchants who sell items on Amazon’s online superstore — accounting for 60 percent of Amazon's sales.

Amazon allegedly uses strongarm tactics that force these sellers to keep their prices higher than they need to be. Like barring them from selling products for significantly less at other stores — or else risk being hidden in Amazon’s search results or having their sales stopped entirely.

And Amazon is accused of engaging in pay-to-play schemes and charging merchants excessive fees that end up costing you even more.

Independent sellers are effectively forced to pay Amazon to advertise their products prominently in search results. If they don’t fork over cash, then their products get buried underneath products of companies who do. This hurts sellers but also harms shoppers who have to parse through less relevant products that may be more expensive or lower quality.

And to be eligible for the coveted “Prime” badge on their items — which is considered crucial for competing on the platform — independent sellers are pushed into paying Amazon for additional services like warehousing and shipping, even if they could get those services cheaper elsewhere. If sellers forgo trying to qualify for Prime, their goods apparently become harder for customers to find.

When all of these extra fees are added up, Amazon takes around a 50 percent cut of each sale made by a third party. It’s projected that Amazon will earn around $125 billion from collecting fees in the U.S. in 2023, most of which get passed on to you.

By charging all of these extra fees and stifling independent companies from selling their products for less elsewhere, Amazon is using its dominance to essentially set prices for all consumers across the internet.

And when you combine Amazon’s control of ecommerce with all of the other industries it has entered by gobbling up companies — such as Whole Foods, One Medical, and MGM — you’re left with a behemoth that simply has too much power.

This is all part of a much larger problem of growing corporate dominance in America. In over 75% of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

The lack of competition and consumer choice has resulted in all of us paying more for goods because corporations like Amazon can raise their prices with impunity. By one estimate, corporate concentration has cost the typical American household $5,000 a year more than they would have spent if markets were truly competitive.

This power isn’t just being used to siphon more money from you. A giant corporation has the power to bust unions, keep workers’ wages low, and funnel money into our political system.

It’s a vicious cycle, making giant corporations more and more powerful.

But under the Biden administration, the government is making a strong effort to revive antitrust law and use its power to reign in big corporations that have grown too powerful.

We must stop the monopolization of America. This FTC lawsuit against Amazon is a great start.

[mariacallous]

Five years ago, in a splashy speech in Washington, DC, Jeff Bezos rolled out Amazon’s Climate Pledge, a series of commitments to show that the company was serious about addressing climate change.

A core component of that pledge, one that Bezos touted in front of members of Congress during Amazon’s antitrust hearing a year later, was putting 100,000 electric delivery vans on the road by 2030. In a blog post from this July—headlined with a picture of a Prime Rivian van driving through an open field filled with wind turbines—the company proclaims that it has now delivered 800 million packages in the US using EVs, with 15,000 trucks on the road in neighborhoods across the country.

But those EVs might not be doing much to help the climate. The company’s US delivery vehicle emissions have potentially shot up an estimated 194 percent since the Climate Pledge went into place in 2019, according to a new report.

The report, released Thursday from corporate campaigners at Stand.earth, attempts to figure out just how much damage shipping the US’s Amazon orders is doing to the planet. It finds that overall emissions from shipping packages have increased 75 percent since 2019, from 3.3 million tons of CO2 equivalents in 2019 to 5.8 million tons last year. The 2.5-million-ton difference is the equivalent of putting 595,000 additional gas-powered cars on the road for a year.

Those Rivian vans are often just delivering the last leg of a package’s life. Before coming to customers’ doorsteps, packages travel by airplane, cargo ship, and/or long-haul truck—transport methods that are both notoriously dirty and tricky to decarbonize.

Doing the math on Amazon’s delivery emissions entails a lot of guesswork. Unlike some of its competitors, Amazon does not break out details on its emissions associated with shipping and delivery. In fact, the company’s annual sustainability report doesn’t give any hard numbers at all on its logistics operations, despite Amazon dominating the US ecommerce market and delivering 4 billion packages in the US within two days in 2023.

“Stand.earth’s work is based on inaccurate data, a broad mischaracterization of our operations, and by their own admission, a methodology based on assumptions and unverified information,” Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly said in a statement to WIRED. “The truth is that The Climate Pledge is an ambitious commitment for Amazon and the more than 525 companies that have signed up to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040. It’s only by taking this on that we can work collectively to transform industries such as shipping, transportation, and the built environment, and we need more companies encouraged to take this direction and quick action.” (As well as committing Amazon to addressing climate change, another aim of the Climate Pledge is to get other companies to follow Amazon’s lead.)

Kelly added: “We’ve continued to publish a detailed, transparent reporting of our year-on-year progress. We encourage everyone to track our progress through our annual Sustainability Report, which has correct data, transparent methodologies, and a third-party assurance.”

The company did not provide WIRED with any additional emissions statistics or other additional data for its shipping and delivery operations.

“We’re doing the best we can with the data available,” says Joshua Archer, a campaigner at Stand.earth and the primary author of the report. “Amazon’s [data] doesn’t even scratch the surface of this massive operations network.”

As a result, the Stand.earth report is based on a mountain of third-party data—all US-based—and math equations to get to some ballpark estimates. UPS and FedEx emissions data disclosed in those companies’ sustainability reports allowed researchers to get an idea of the emissions created by shipping packages by truck in the US. Third-party data from two aviation analytics providers helped to tally up the estimated domestic emissions associated with Amazon Air, a fleet of planes that deliver parcels for the company. Maritime shipping estimates are based on manifest data from US ports where Amazon was a signee. Many of these numbers, the report stresses, are almost certainly an undercount, as authors excluded calculations like emissions associated with package returns and packages shipped or delivered by third-party carriers due to lack of data.

The main culprit for Amazon’s increased shipping emissions, the report finds, is from airplanes: US emissions associated with Amazon Air have skyrocketed 67 percent since 2019. According to Kelly, Amazon’s overall emissions have increased since 2019 due to the company’s expansion during the pandemic.

“When you think of things people order through Amazon, a lot of them are things you don’t need the next day,” Archer says. “Nevertheless, they’re getting shipped on airplanes.”

This trend tracks with the rest of the industry. During the pandemic, port disruptions around the world forced providers to switch over to airplanes to transport cargo; much of this air infrastructure remains in place today. Simultaneously, the US ecommerce market shot up by 43 percent in 2020 as everyone stuck inside ordered more and more stuff. In 2023, the US shipped 21.7 billion parcels—that’s 687 packages every second.

There’s one area where things are improving for Amazon: according to the Stand.earth report, emissions per package have been dropping for Amazon since 2020, which, Archer says, is largely thanks to loading more parcels on bigger planes. (Kelly says that the company’s overall carbon intensity—measuring the efficiency of its operations—has improved by 34 percent since 2019, even as its overall emissions went up.) In comparison, UPS’s package emissions intensity has consistently risen since 2020, thanks in part to its increased reliance on aviation.

But even considering small improvements like these, the aggressive growth Amazon has driven over the past few years is, in many ways, incompatible with sustainability. “Keep an eye on the skies for even more A330s delivering for Amazon customers in the coming months and years,” Amazon concludes in a blog post touting its new, more efficient cargo planes. Unless greener alternatives to jet fuel become available years ahead of schedule, it will be impossible for the company to add more planes to its fleet without also making emissions jump up.

“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s making quite a problem for itself with its air freight cargo growth,” Archer says. “If Amazon is serious about climate progress, that’s a really easy place to start: stop flying so much.”

Amazon is no stranger to climate criticism. Its overall emissions have skyrocketed since it rolled out the Climate Pledge in 2019, despite an incremental drop in 2023. Last year, Amazon lost the support of a key UN-backed global climate organization, the Science Based Targets Initiative, for not meeting certain deadlines to set targets to reduce emissions; it was one of nearly two dozen companies axed by SBTI from its list of climate-conscious companies. In July, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an employee group, released a report criticizing the company’s calculations around its claim that it had met a sustainable energy goal. In 2023, Amazon quietly eliminated a goal to make half its shipments carbon neutral by 2030—a goal which, the company says, was superseded by the larger Climate Pledge.

Part of the issue in calculating emissions for Amazon is just how sprawling the challenges it faces are, thanks to its relentless vertical integration: the Wall Street Journal reported in May that in order to expand its control over its logistics processes, the company had already leased, bought, or announced plans to expand warehouse space in the US by 16 million square feet this year. Kelly said in an email in response to WIRED’s request for comment that the vast network of logistics the company has built allows it to deliver packages closer to their destination and avoid driving long miles.

Reading the company’s sustainability report is an exercise in understanding a variety of different ambitious technical and sociological climate goals across different industries involved in its supply chain. In response to WIRED’s request for comment, Kelly listed out Amazon’s membership in two business organizations advancing sustainable shipping, its membership in a buyers’ alliance encouraging the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, and its investment in electric trucking: in May, the company put 50 electric trucks on the road in Southern California.

“I think it creates a lot of challenges for the broader transportation industry if every company just does what Amazon does and brings air freight in house,” Archer says. “Then you’ll have a situation where a lot of people are flying a lot of planes.”

There’s a real question of whether or not the company making significant changes would just move emissions from one company’s balance sheet to another’s as the rest of the industry keeps growing. Atlas Air, a subcontractor of Amazon Air, announced in May that it would stop domestic flights carrying Amazon parcels in favor of concentrating on other customers, including Chinese ecommerce titans Shein and Temu.

Still, with Amazon dominating so much of the US market—and with the capacity to kick off trends that other suppliers then follow, like expedited shipping—the company has an opportunity to set an aggressive example, like throwing a substantial effort into decreasing plane use and helping the US build out infrastructure for more sustainable long-haul trucking. (The company didn’t provide figures on how much it has spent on partnerships, research, lobbying, or other activities to decarbonize the trucking sector in the US.)

As for that splashy electric van pledge? The Stand.earth report projects that at Amazon’s current growth rates, if the company puts all the electric vans it promises on the roads by the end of the decade, that would still only account for a third of the company’s deliveries. If Amazon’s sales keep growing on pace, it would need 400,000 EVs to deliver all its packages.

“The 100,000 vans by 2030 is way too little, way too late,” Archer says.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, March 2024

Welcome to my roundup of SEO and marketing news and useful resources for ecommerce businesses, March edition. There is a lot going on with Google, and some really strong marketing pieces this time around, so let's get right to it.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google launched both a core algorithm update and spam updates on March 5, with the spam update ending on the 20th. Core updates now include the Helpful Content algorithm. In early observations, Etsy and Reddit both picked up visibility in the UK. 

The Helpful Content algorithm updates late last year destroyed a lot of sites’ Google traffic. Avoid the things they had in common.  You can read the full study here. 

Ecommerce sites were some of the biggest losers in Google visibility in 2023, with Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Target and Best Buy in the top 10 of sites whose Google appearances slipped. 

New to Google SEO? They’ve revamped their SEO starter guide for people like you. And if you are more advanced and want to learn how to optimize your website product pages, this is a good overview. 

This lengthy article on backlinks for ecommerce websites covers pretty much all the angles, including the really difficult ones. 

Reminder that if you want to rank on Google for a search term, you need to look at what is already ranking, and make decisions based on that content. [video and transcript] This works for most search engines, not just Google. 

Yes, Google crawls “high quality” content more often. I used to refer to this as Google thinking the page is “interesting”, so I guess I will need to change my wording...

While Google sends the most traffic to websites, people spend a lot more of their online time elsewhere. Market where people are, not just where your stats say they came from. 

Sadly, Google has stopped providing caches of website pages in its search results. While you can still see the caches of some pages by using the Google search Cache:[page link] as in cache:https://cindylouwho-2.tumblr.com that will eventually stop working as well. Bing still provides caches, but unfortunately both it and the Wayback Machine do not crawl often enough to give really recent results most of the time. 

Missed Google news in February? Here’s your update. And just in case you are really behind, here is January. 

Not Google

Unsure if your website has enough good backlinks? Bing Webmaster Tools will now tell you if you don’t. 

Yandex - the top search engine in Russia - was sold by its Dutch ownership group to a consortium in Russia. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

A US study of social media use found that the most popular site was YouTube, with 83% of adults using it. Two-thirds of American adults use Facebook, while TikTok is up to ⅓ of the US population. 

Because they do change periodically, here are the latest image and video sizes recommended for the top social media platforms. [infographic]

Bluesky is now open to everyone - it was previously invite-only. 

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta has introduced several changes to its Ad options, applying to Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta had a great 4th quarter in 2023, with revenue, users, and earnings per share up. “Fast-growing upstarts Temu and Shein, which originated in China, have been pouring money into ads on Facebook and Instagram. Li said on Thursday that revenue from China-based advertisers accounted for 10% of sales for the year and 5 percentage points of growth.”

Instagram

An updated post on Instagram's algorithm and how it works. 

Instagram is still beta testing longer Reels for some users. 

If your account is a brand account, you can now run ads on Instagram with coupon codes right in them. (Some Facebook users can already do this.)

LinkedIn

Among other recent changes on LinkedIn, the algorithm is now looking to boost important content longer than just the first day or two after publication. 

Pinterest

Pinterest has its own stats package, called Pinterest Analytics, but only for “Business” accounts. They show how many people clicked on the outgoing links, how many people saw your pin on their screen, and much more. Here’s everything you need to know. 

Reddit

Reddit successfully launched on the stock market this past week, but questions remain about how this will change the site. 

Google is paying Reddit to scrape its content through the API instead of from the web. 

Snapchat

Snap was a little later than most tech companies doing layoffs recently, waiting until February 5 to let 10% off staff go. 

Threads

Threads is so new that the algorithm is bound to change a lot in the next year, but for right now, here is how it works. 

TikTok

There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on the US attempt to either ban TikTok or force its sale, and much of it is incomplete, so I will let you Google to your heart’s content if you want to learn more. If you are relying on TikTok to drive sales, this would be a good time to make sure you diversify your promotional strategy. 

You can now track trending terms on TikTok through the Creator Search Insights section. “Creator Search Insights will highlight frequently searched topics, which creators can organize by category (for example, tourism, sports, science) or tailor to their content type with the “For You” option. Additionally, creators can filter for “content gap” topics, which are highly searched but have relatively few videos on TikTok covering them.“

TikTok may be testing a photo app, which would obviously compete with Instagram. 

Twitter

What? Twitter may have lied about its Super Bowl ad performance? I’m so not shocked. 

Tumblr

Tumblr will be selling data access to AI companies. 

YouTube

This is a pretty decent article on YouTube SEO. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Small and micro-businesses need an email list. An email list is:  

portable (unlike most social media followers or marketplace buyers) 

is available to almost everyone, as we all need at least one email address if we are online

less susceptible to the whims of algorithms (unlike SEO, marketplaces, social etc.)  

I keep seeing people argue that no one opens emails, but the chart in the article above is proof that is still wrong. (My blog email list averages close to a 70% open rate, depending on the topic and the time I send it. My jewellery email list - which I hardly ever send to - still has an over 30% open rate. My click rates are well above the industry averages, usually 30 to 40% of all recipients for the blog list. These are much better numbers than social, and astronomically better than my clickthrough rate on Google and other search engines.)

Gmail and Yahoo both changed how they handle bulk emails such as newsletters in February. Here’s what you need to know on the basics, including authenticating yourself so your email gets through. 

Find out how to get people to read all the way to the end of your content. 

Get ready for April marketing with 5 topical ideas. National Handmade Day is April 6. 

We should all think twice before deciding to use AI to create content. “Circa 2024, generative AI does not produce new ideas or even develop its own conclusions. Rather, it regurgitates information that it has indexed.” Not convinced? Here’s another article. “AI-generated content represents the literal “average of everything online.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google Ads can now be tracked in Google Analytics 4. 

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising were up in the 4th quarter of 2023. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google Analytics 4 tracks organic traffic differently than the previous version. Here’s how to figure it out. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

I’ve probably posted this specific article before, but it is worth another read: how to communicate with customers.  For example, “Mirroring your customer’s tone lets them know you’re on their side. If a customer is formal, for example, hold back on the LOLs. If they’re more casual, relax your tone.”

According to a US study, Generation Z is skewing the traditional marketing funnel. “Per Archrival’s data, 77 per cent of Gen Zs and 79 per cent of millennials in the US are actively seeking style inspiration at least monthly, with almost half of those looking for style inspiration on social media. When asked where they learn about new brands, products and experiences, video reigns supreme: YouTube is the most popular platform with Gen Zs, followed by TikTok, then Instagram.”

Trend alert: bag charms are back. 

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Almost all of these 12 video tools are free, and some can be used on your phone. 

MISCELLANEOUS

This is an older piece, but it checks out: IKEA Hacks for Craft Show Displays. A few of these could be done with non-IKEA items. 

Want to stay up-to-date on a nearly daily basis? Follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn, or become a member of my Patreon.

[giantimpex]

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[meganwilhoit]

Digital Retailing: Understanding and Communicating with the E-Consumer.

Over the last few years digital retailing and e-commerce have been steadily increasing. And then with the COVID-19 pandemic and months of lockdown, e-commerce has skyrocketed. In 2022 the United States' eCommerce surpassed one trillion dollars (Clark, 2022) and holds roughly an 11.27% annual growth rate (Statista, 2022). 

Hi, my name is Megan Wilhoit I am a digital marketing student at Davenport University in Michigan, and I am a consumer. I am lucky enough to come from a generation who grew up with technology as an aid to my life and have it not consume my life. Because of this, I was able to see how retail has changed over the years for the average consumer. I get to see firsthand how new technology is impacting our lives, whether that is an advantage or disadvantage. And as someone who is is wanting to go into digital marketing, getting to experience how digital retail affects consumers and how they shop is super important. 

I remember the days when if I couldn’t find something at Meijer, I would go to a different store or find the next best alternative. But now we live in a world where if I don’t see a specific product in store, I go straight to Amazon, or that store's website, and order it to be at my doorstep in one day. Over the last 23 years, I have gotten to witness the fantastic advantages e-shopping has brought to e-consumers. But I have also gotten to see the disadvantages that come with e-shopping for consumers. And when comparing the advantages and disadvantages, it makes me start to wonder how “great” e-shopping really is for the average consumer. 

One of the most common advantages I have seen is the convenience e-shopping has brought to consumers. Like I stated before, I remember the days when if something could not be found in-store, you would have to go to a different location or store to find the product or you could maybe order the product online. But now with e-retailing, consumers (like myself) can purchase products from anywhere online. I don’t need to go in person to look for a product. Also, online retailers such as Amazon, have even made the online purchasing environment even easier, using “buy now with one click” options, saving your address and payment information for future purchases, and easily being able to re-purchase goods you have bought in the past. With these benefits, consumers are also not having to put in as much effort and thinking when it comes to buying. These benefits are focused more on non-perishable items, but e-retailers have even been bringing grocery shopping online. With companies such as Shipt, Instacart, or grocery stores' online grocery shopping applications, consumers can do their weekly grocery shopping from the comfort of their homes or during breaks at work. Consumers can even schedule when they want their groceries to be delivered and schedule future grocery shopping for their most common items. 

The convenience of e-retailing can also be viewed from a location standpoint. E-retailing can put consumers in contact with brands all across the world, or just help consumers reach retailers who don’t have a physical location near them. 

Two personal examples of location convince that come to mind are 1, I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am fortunate enough to live near many malls and shopping centers, but one huge company I don’t have nearby is IKEA. With my current financial situation (being a college student and only working part-time), I cannot afford to purchase expensive furniture (even if it will last me longer). So using IKEA can really help save me money. And with e-retailing, I am actually able to purchase their products without having to drive the two and half hour journey. IKEA even offers a “design” feature on their online store where consumers (such as myself) and design out how furniture will fit and look into space. Without e-retailing and its features I would have to truly envision a space with furniture, measure out the open spaces, write a list of these measurements, and still have to make an almost 3-hour car ride to a store where the products in mind may not even be in stock. E-retailing has been able to completely cut out these inconveniences for consumers online. My other personal experience deals with local businesses. Every year I go to Mackinac Island. On the island, there are so many cute local shops and boutiques, and I love looking through them to get gift ideas. With e-retailing I can now take their business cards home with me and still be able to purchase their products from my hometown of Grand Rapids, instead of having to make the purchase the exact moment I am on the island. E-retailing has made connecting with local businesses online plausible. 

Some other advantages e-retailing has brought consumers are the variety of products or “breadth and depth” as well as the personalization of products. Online stores are able to hold a much larger stock of products for consumers than a traditional store can hold. This allows of consumers to have much more variety in styles, sizing, colors, etc. Also with online shopping, personalizing individual products is much easier. Whether that orders a custom-sized couch to fit a specific living area or customing a pair of Nikes to your significant other's favorite colors. Another area of personalization online retail stores has been able to add sections such as “customers also bought”. Consumers can use these features to find other products or brands similar to what they already have purchased while having this feeling of personalization with the company. 

The last “common” advantage e-retailing brings to consumers is the pricing and the ease of product comparisons. Pricing has been found to be cheaper through online retailers because “online retailers may have fewer overhead costs” (Kelly and Baker, 2022), as well as the ease of finding coupon codes and extra sales. Also with the ease of e-retailing consumers can easily compare prices of specific products on different websites to see which site is going to give them the best deal. The same thing goes for products. For me when I think of when I want to buy a dress for a more formal occasion. I can now use the Internet to not only find different brands but also compare their prices, reviews, and style options before making my final purchase. There are also even websites and apps that will compare prices for items for the consumer. The most common occurrence of this I think is comparing airline prices through travel agencies such as Trivago and Google itself. 

Although e-retailing has brought consumers so many amazing advantages and conveniences, e-retailing also brings consumers some disadvantages. 

One common disadvantage is the lack of security and the fear consumers feel about their information being stolen. For major brands online stores, consumers may feel more comfortable inputting their information, but for smaller or newer brands consumers may have a fear of having their information stolen. And if businesses do not input proper safety measures for this secure information, consumers' personal information can be stolen they will no longer want to shop from that specific e-retail store. I have never had my information stolen through online retail stores, but I am extra careful of what websites I input this information just for extra precaution. Another large disadvantage consumers face with online shopping is the lack of personal interaction. This social interaction can help consumers build loyalty to a brand. I also know from personal experience I really enjoy the interaction in traditional retail stores so I can receive a second opinion from “the expert”, and when purchasing more expensive items such as furniture, it is nice to get that expert opinion and see what they have to offer and if they can make any recommendations, and this cannot be done easily through e-retailing. 

Some other disadvantages that customers face with e-retailing (and I have personally experienced) are delivery times can be extremely long or customers have to pay extra money to have products delivered sooner, issues with online refunds, and not being able to actually use our five senses to buy products on the e-retail store. 

Customer reviews are one feature of online retailing that I have seen to be an advantage AND a disadvantage for customers. As an advantage, it gives customers a better idea of how products look (with real-life customer images), how materials hold up, and overall how other customers like the product. This can help influence a customer's purchase decision. From my experience, I always read customer reviews before an online purchase now, and if I read any bad reviews I either don’t purchase at all or I have to really think about if I want to make this risky purchase. But I also view customer reviews as a disadvantage sometimes. For starters, some products can have really mixed reviews and it doesn’t help a customer in determining if they want to purchase the product. But also today brands use “influencer marketing” so much more, they pay “influencers” to talk good about their products and promote them, and will even give out sales codes for the influencer's audience to use. With this, it’s hard to tell what reviews are based on personal experience or if they're just being paid to leave good reviews. One example of this that I have seen is with the Beis Weekender Bag/Tote. This product was heavily advertised on TikTok over the last 6 months or so. Every influencer was raving about it and calling it “the best travel bag ever”. Then the average consumer started buying this bag but realized this bag sucked for travel (especially flying). So through these “deceiving” reviews, consumers wasted their money on a product that doesn't actually do its job and this reflects poorly on the brand itself. 

References

Clark, D. (2022, June 14). » US Ecommerce Will Cross $1 Trillion in 2022 eMarketer Newsroom. Insider Intelligence. Retrieved January 18, 2023, from https://www.insiderintelligence.com/newsroom/index.php/us-ecommerce-will-cross-1-trillion-in-2022/

Eleonora Pantano, Bang Nguyen, Charles Dennis, & Sabine Gerlach. (2017). Internet Retailing and Future Perspectives: Vol. Second edition. Routledge.

Kelly, R. (2022, November 8). Is Shopping Online Really Cheaper? The Balance. Retrieved January 18, 2023, from https://www.thebalancemoney.com/is-shopping-online-really-cheaper-939778Statista. (2022). eCommerce - United States. Statista. Retrieved January 18, 2023, from https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/ecommerce/united-states#key-players

[ecommerce-yourguide]

How do I list and manage my Amazon products through Shopify?

Efficient listing and product management are essential to selling on Amazon. A great way to streamline your operations is by integrating your Amazon products with Shopify.

Firstly, Shopify provides a user-friendly platform for building and managing your online store. Linking your Amazon products to Shopify ensures centralized control, saving you time and reducing errors. The real question is, how do you go about it?

This is where Integration Services come in. I've found it to be an invaluable tool for effortlessly listing and managing my Amazon products through Shopify. Here's how -

Ease of Integration - Not everyone is a tech wiz, which is why such services simplify the integration process by connecting your Amazon and Shopify accounts in a few simple steps. 

Bulk Product Upload - An efficient and crucial feature, Bulk Product Upload can save you time by listing multiple products at once on Amazon. Accurate and optimized listings will ensure your product has visibility, with little effort on your part. You can also pick up tips from this blog in case you’re confused. 

Automated Order Management - You will need this feature when an order is placed on either platform. The integration service takes care of updating your inventory levels on both ends in near real-time. This level of automation and efficiency will be your lifesaver, especially during peak seasons. Not only does this minimize the risk of overselling but ensures that your customers always see accurate information. 

Let me share my personal experience with CedCommerce, to guide you through this. I integrated my store 2 years ago, as my product catalog was expanding and I needed help managing operations. In the time since, my sales have increased and I focused on expanding my business. Whenever I had a question, the support team was quick to respond and provide solutions.

This is why Integrating Amazon with Shopify through CedCommerce has been a game-changer for me. It enhanced the overall efficiency of my eCommerce business. If you're looking for a reliable and effective solution, give CedCommerce a try as your future self will thank you for it. Happy selling!

[addwebsolution]

How Much Does It Cost to Develop an eCommerce Mobile App

By 2027, the total annual revenue of the eCommerce industry will reach a staggering USD 5.56 trillion. To put that into perspective, it is more than the GDP of the UK. And that will grow as more people prefer to buy products and services online.

This has encouraged small and large businesses to actively participate in doing more commerce business. We know this because we have worked on many eCommerce app development projects. One of the most common questions is about the eCommerce mobile app development cost.

‘How much is it to develop an eCommerce mobile app?’

We will answer it in this post and a few essential factors you need to know about before hiring eCommerce app developers.

Factors That Influence eCommerce App Costs

Let’s look at the factors that decide the cost of eCommerce app development in 2023.

How complex the app is

Developing an eCommerce app like Amazon or Flipkart is a massive task as it involves extensive work and development. And the app is highly complex due to a variety of features.

A few of the elements that make the app complex are:

User account creation.

Payment gateways.

Product catalogues.

The check-out process.

Rewards systems.

EMI payment options.

The more complex the app is, the more expensive the development process is. If you are a small business looking to sell your products, that will cost you less. 

Platforms the app is being developed for 

If you want to develop the app natively for iOS and Android, that will cost you a lot. It will take a lot of time, and you also need to hire different production teams to work on different app iterations.

This is also going to cost you more money.

The best way to avoid such issues is to do the required market research and create an app that caters to your target audience.

Using a cross-platform app development approach is also highly recommended.

Integration and use of third-party APIs 

Creating features natively for your app can increase the overall cost of development, as a developer needs to spend time on it. And that will take more time and money out of your pocket.

Instead, you can integrate third-party APIs to bring all the capabilities and functionalities to your site.

Since they already have working features, you don’t need to worry about their performance.

Whether you want maintenance 

Other factors to consider when building an eCommerce app are regular updates and maintenance. You can enter an AMC contract with the eCommerce development company you are working with if needed.

That’s going to cost you extra. However, you can also do that if you want to have an AMC outside of the existing contract.

Either way, maintenance is a crucial element of any app. And the more complex the app is, the more it will cost you. 

Customization and design requirements 

Suppose you want a highly customized eCommerce mobile app with an impeccably unique design that will take time and cost you more. Developing customized apps right from the ground up is a time-intensive process.

Opting for that will save the time needed to complete the project, which naturally makes the app cost more.

The same thing happens with the design, too. You may use templates or themes available with a few edits. And that brings the cost down.

Where your development partner is located 

If you hire eCommerce app developers in the US or the UK, that’s going to cost a lot of money because they charge higher. On the other hand, choosing a partner from India or the Philippines can cost you a lot less money.

There are several reasons for this, and the biggest reason is that labour in India and the Philippines is more affordable.

Hence, you get impressive value for every dollar you invest in the project. And you can get all these without compromising on the quality.

The app development process 

Yes, that’s right. Depending on the development process, the cost can vary.

Let’s say you are developing a new eCommerce app right from scratch. It takes time to be ideated, planned, and executed meticulously.

This takes a lot of time. 

Instead of that, you can build a clone of an existing app.

And that will cost a lot less as the idea is already there. You must clone the app to fit your products and brand preferences.

Payment gateways 

Payment gateways are essential for accepting online payments. But they will cost a lot as integrating them takes time and effort.

Depending on your business, these options change, such as:

Hosting payment gateway as needed into the app.

Integrating the API.

Setting up alternative payments.

Effectively embed the payment gateways into the app.

Integrating mobile wallets as per your needs.

The Cost of Developing eCommerce Apps

We hope you understand the factors affecting the cost of developing an eCommerce app. This is how we explain the cost to our clients. We educate our clients when they want to know about the project's cost.

Here is a table with the approximate amount for developing an eCommerce app. 

Benefits of Having an eCommerce App for Your Business

While developing an eCommerce app is a considerable investment, it has the potential to take your business to the next level.

Here are a few advantages of using ecommerce apps.

Ease of use 

It enables your users to buy products and services more conveniently. They can buy your products anywhere—while travelling, from their office, or at home.

And that can make your business more user-friendly, improving your sales.

Customer experience 

Having an ecommerce app improves the overall customer experience. The convenience they can enjoy is unparalleled. And this will positively influence your business. 

Brand awareness 

People will use it more when your business has an excellent eCommerce app. And they will talk about it in their community, friend circles, etc. This is great for your business as it can expand your brand awareness.

A competitive edge 

You can trump your competition with a high-performing and intuitive mobile app to sell your products. As you offer a more convenient way, you can also attract users from your competition

Improved sales 

Selling products and services at the store and from your eCommerce app leads to more sales. And you can also reach more people than you could not previously.

How to Develop an eCommerce App on a Budget?

An intelligent approach and expert eCommerce app development company like AddWeb Solution can help you build an eCommerce app on a budget.

Here is what you can do.

Step 1 

Don’t release the app with all the features at first. Develop only the most important factors first and add more features later if your users need them.

Step 2 

Shopify, WooCommerce, etc., offer many pre-built eCommerce platforms. Use this to save time and money.

Step 3 

You must work with an agency that can offer you affordable services. AddWeb Solution in India is an excellent option to do that.

Step 4 

Instead of using proprietary software programs, develop the app using open-source platforms and technologies. Some of the open-source technologies are even better than their paid counterparts.

Step 5 

You can also reuse the code from your previous app. If you can use some parts of the code, it would reduce the overall development cost for sure.

Step 6 

Many eCommerce app development companies offer multiple engagement options. Opt for a fixed-price agreement option, which ensures more value for your project and reduces costs.

Related Article: VueStorefront Headless Commerce A Modern Solution for eCommerce Challenges

Why Choose Us for eCommerce App Development?

When hiring eCommerce app developers, you must hire a reliable eCommerce mobile app design and development company like us.

And if you are wondering why AddWeb Solution is unique, here are a few reasons.

Our expertise in the industry 

AddWeb Solution is among the most respected agencies offering eCommerce app development services. We have earned that image by working on diverse projects from large and small businesses during the last decade.

This expertise enables us to work on diverse eCommerce app projects innovatively and deliver the best service at all times.

Trained and skilled developers 

You can hire eCommerce app developers confidently from AddWeb Solution. They have the experience and qualifications to do what they are doing. Our practice is to train each of our developers in the latest technologies and frameworks as they are released.

So, you never have to worry about the talent working on your project when you choose AddWeb Solution's eCommerce app development services.

Streamlined development process 

Imagine if you have not planned your app development. The result is a waste of resources in terms of money, time, talent, etc. But that does not happen at AddWeb Solution.

We plan every single project we undertake, eCommerce app development or not.

This helps us deliver the project on time, ensure value to the client's investment, and make it easier for them to quickly take their product to the market.

Advanced eCommerce apps

We believe in creating apps that help your business grow. And technology plays a massive role in that. Having realized this, our team of expert eCommerce app developers always leverage the latest technologies to make your app.

This empowers your app with all the features and advanced functionalities you need to impress your existing and prospective customers.

Multiple QA processes 

Quality means the world to us as an eCommerce development company in India. We have multiple quality assessment processes and tests to keep the apps we develop at the highest echelon of quality.

Regardless of your industry, your app will always comply with industry standards and often exceed the benchmarks of global quality expectations. Son, you don't need to worry about the quality of our apps.

Conclusion

eCommerce apps help sell your products and services and reach more users easily. Most people worldwide use a smartphone, so you can make your app available to them to encourage them to buy from you. This is a marketing strategy that many businesses have used and has proven highly effective. However, when developing an eCommerce mobile app for your business, you must hire eCommerce app developers who can deliver value and quality. And that’s something we can offer you aplenty.

We have served numerous businesses looking to expand their reach and sales through dedicated eCommerce mobile apps. We have always served tailored eCommerce development services that exceeded their expectations.

Source: How Much Does It Cost to Develop an eCommerce Mobile App

[statisticalsite]

InstaStore Review

InstaStore - Combine the Power of Video + eCommerce to Insta-Create 6-Figure Stores

Not only that, you can also do:

Instantly create stores with 100s of products Automatically import curated video reviews Reward visitors with gift certificates Seamless Integration with both Amazon and AliExpress 100% Mobile Responsive In-Built Facebook and Social Media Integration ...Even with NO products, just ‘insta-import’ over 200 Million Products selling to over 1.44 Billion Rabid Customers!

Generate hands-off traffic with incentivized social-sharing Gain keen insights into your store analytics Build a list with any autoreponder, or export leads as CSV To customize the landing page to convert better.

Upgrade #1 - InstaStore PRO

Create a 100 more stores and build more passive income streams.

Instantly create stores with 100s of products Automatically import curated video reviews Reward visitors with gift certificates Seamless Integration with both Amazon and AliExpress 100% Mobile Responsive In-Built Facebook and Social Media Integration Upgrade #2 - InstaStore DFY

With this license - your customers can go out there and offer this as a service to their clients

Upgrade #3 - InstaStore Reseller

With this license, you can resell InstaStore and keep 100% of the profits!

Follow these links about InstaStore Review:

https://explorreviews.com/instastore-review/

https://statisticalsite.blogspot.com/2022/12/instastore-review-lets-see-how-amazing.html

[coursecreation]

How to Sell Online Courses: The Complete Guide

How to Decide on a Course Topic?

This is the most important question you need to find answers to. Let’s see how we can find our topic. Once you have decided to teach people online, you already have some expertise in your field. Now we need to find out if people are interested in learning about this topic and actually will be happy to pay for it. Below are, some steps you can do to find out if your topic will sell or not. 

Search on youtube with your topic on youtube.

Start searching on different eCommerce platforms such as amazon, and eBay where digital or physical books are sold. You need to find out if there are books out there on your topic and if people are buying them websites tries. It’s that simple! 

You should go out on popular course websites such as Udemy, Coursera, etc to find out if there are courses out there. 

 You can search on social media platforms and find out if there are groups where people are discussing the topic that you are planning to sell as a course online. 

Finally, if you have friends, family, and followers, you can directly ask them if they would be interested in something like what you are planning.

Prepare yourself on your topic

At this stage, you already know the topic for your online course. Now, you need to brainstorm and do all the homework such as gathering references, studying, practicing, and doing some trials of yourself. It’s always better to check how other people sell courses online and how they present their skills to the students. Once you study other people as well, you will get plenty of ideas to make yourself better. It’s the beauty of knowledge! 

Find out your ideal best online course platform 

Once you are ready with your course syllabus and other materials, you will need some ways to create your online course. Here EzyCourse will help you to get started from scratch. You can create courses with EzyCourse completely for free and start earning without any commissions or transaction fees.

Start creating your course content with ezycourse.

At this point, you are fully ready to create your course and upload your course content. You need to plan how you will approach and complete your syllabus and how your students will progress from start to end. So you need to divide your online course contents into chapters and lessons. Once you finish deciding, you can easily create chapters and different types of lessons easily. You can rearrange chapters, and lessons at any time.

Set up your course pricing 

This is the sweet part of this whole journey. We need to decide on a good pricing model that people would be willing to pay. You can set up a one-time or monthly subscription pricing. Let’s find out when to decide between these two. Answer the following questions.

Is this course a continuous learning type? 

Do people need to access it frequently every month option?

Are you going to invest your time in supporting the students?

If the answers are “Yes”, we would suggest starting a subscription pricing. With EzyCourse, you can offer “Community and Group chat” as an add-on for free or with an added price. This way, your students will be super active and engaging. This is also a great option to increase your revenue. 

With EzyCourse, you can sell your courses to organizations with “Tiered pricing” as an option. With this option, any organization buys a number of seats and gets the volume discount you provide, and invites their own members themselves leaving all the management work to them. A great way to stop piracy and increase revenue!

Design your course landing page or use the drag-and-drop default one. 

You can start by using our default course detail page or design your custom landing page by using our powerful drag-and-drop page builder. You can insert any templates or blocks you like instantly and start editing or adding. 

Offer upsell for your course and increase revenue 

At this point, you are almost ready to publish your course, but before you start publishing the course, you should look at the upsell features we have. You can up to 20 upsell items and unlimited add-on per upsells. 

You can offer a community, a group chat, or another course in your upsell. Students have the choice if they want to buy that upsell product or not. Upsell products are normally designed to give a little discount if they have that item together with the main product. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. For example, let’s say you created a course on “How to sell a product on amazon”, with this product, you can sell another related product let’s say “How to market your amazon product” etc. This way related product has higher chances to get sold as well. You have full control to decide the pricing and add-on items. 

Publish your course 

It’s time to go live and publish your course. Start sharing links with your friends, family, and followers. We will cover how to market your online course to your audience in a very effective way in another blog post. 

Thank you for reading and hope this guide helps you :) 

Follow Ezycourse community facebook, youtube, instagram

[logisticscompany3]

The Benefit of Using a Procurement Company With Logistics and Products Transportation Capabilities

Purchase is the procedure of determining as well as obtaining goods and services. It includes sourcing, acquiring as well as covers all tasks from determining prospective suppliers through to shipment from distributor to the individuals or beneficiary. Procurement is a key activity in the supply chain administration.

Logistics staff involvement in assessments offers logistics info as well as data that supports program/response application. All significant business source preparation (ERP) software application vendors like Oracle and also SAP give products around logistics and also transport monitoring. Arrangement and implementation of these products needs in-depth understanding of the market, neighborhood and also global freight plans, and also fundamental understanding of the business technique. The general price of logistics plays a vital part in product pricing. The organization is after that able to prepare ahead for the provision of the goods as well as solutions. Hence, logistics is the cornerstone of firms which create physical items. Logistics also plays a vital duty in military operations. Logistics shortages can create severe problems to the firm's bottom line.

Several business have been proclaimed to shed their market placement owing to rivals having far better logistics monitoring. Ecommerce vendors like Amazon and also ebay.com depend on state of art logistics to keep ahead of the market. Success of firms is not just a variable of how well they do their core-business (like generate a certain product) but additionally exactly how well they contract out non-core parts of their organization to 3rd parties. shipping logistics near me

Provided the intricacy of logistics as well as transport, this is a vital location for outsourcing. Experienced business understand to collaborate with one-stop stores to define vital solution degree contracts around supply chain and after that leave it to the professionals to overcome the complexity as a black box. This permits the firm to focus on where it matters, their core service. Logistics firms give myriad advantages (over attempting an in-house version):.

Logistics automation. Procurement solutions. International network. Shipping as well as freight services. Market experience as well as Quantity price cuts.

Logistics Automation deals with minimizing labor expenses by integrating wise machinery, progressed software program and dynamic tools and modern technologies. As included advantages, automation additionally reduces power as well as material wastefulness, enhances high quality and precision. By using warehousing innovations like RFID, automated placement and also storage, software program based supply tracking, companies give satisfaction with considerable expense advantage (that features co-location of your items).

Purchase services can vary from consultatory on resources purchase to rate monitoring. Companies with both straight (basic material) purchase and indirect procurement (fixing and also upkeep materials). They help come to a sweet area between amount and frequency while offering sector particular value. It is prevalent expertise that apparently inconsonant sectors make use of comparable product and also equipment. For instance, a manufacturing plant calls for safety and security and also clinical supplies, whereas, a health center needs general upkeep products. Utilizing one stop stores enable one to benefit from the large range of materials in their purview.

Shakespeare's 'all the globe is a stage' quite possibly obtains the current business versions with open market acts in between countries being widespread. The capability to supply to remote countries, while not needing to manage disambiguation of policy, money as well as language subtleties is vital to worldwide success. One stop stores have all the global network and also connections to encourage and perform your international shipping undertakings.

The aim of transport is to physically move products in a reputable and also safe way, promptly, price properly and also effectively to its location. Even if a company owns its cars, there may well be events when a demand develops for additional ability, to satisfy peak task or various other short term requirements. This can be fulfilled by the use lorries supplied by an industrial transport company (third party). Additionally using the 3rd party delivery as well as freight solution is advantageous to the company because:.

of the variable lots and also trips can be provided for. the hauler may have the ability to supply a much more affordable as well as an extra reliable solution. the obligation for administration of cars and drivers is no longer the duty of the company (hence enabling staff to focus on much more productive areas). transport logistics near me there is no need for resources to be purchased transportation. Several on-line logistics firms give consulting solutions whereby the customers can conquer their challenges that they face while trading goods. Market professionals well versed with plans and also laws, audit (like SAS70) as well as compliance requirements (for example hazardous and also ignitable materials), dynamic factors (like weather condition, socio-political events) and vendor staminas (like volume discounts and geographical insurance coverage) are gotten in touch with as well as business companies can create their own time and also cost effective logistical time table while optimizing their spending plan at the same time.

[dpreacherman]

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[5ft2sunflower]

The Death of a Keyword, and the Re-Shuffling of $500B in US eCommerce Sales

By Justin Leigh | CEO, Workflow Labs | Article Link

Search is really important.  It’s so much faster than browsing.  In fact, it’s so much better that over 80% of Amazon’s sales are driven by customers going to the search bar, entering some keywords and buying one of the top five products of the thousands that the search query returns.  

Keyword Search Sucks

As great as it is, keyword search sucks.  We just don’t know it yet.  We don’t know it yet in the same way we didn’t realize that stopping at a gas station to buy a paper map sucked compared to using GPS navigation.  Or having to wait in the rain at a designated meeting spot after a concert sucked compared to just texting your friends to ask where they are.

Objectively, it’s an odd process.  Customers must first think of words they believe a computer will understand.  The customer is then rewarded with an overwhelming amount of somewhat relevant products.  When the customer searches again, the search engine forgets they’ve ever talked with this customer before and returns a pile of new, unrelated products.  It’s like walking into a grocery store and yelling, “Peanut Butter,” and an army of clerks bring you all the cereal, dog treats and sandwich spread that contain the words “Peanut” and/or “Butter.”  You then yell, “Organic,” and get a bunch of bananas, flour, and healthy snacks.  

This is not how we’ve evolved to think or communicate, but we accept it because the alternative - browsing through thousands of products - is much worse.

Then the World Changed

Search is about to get a lot better.  Generative search, natural language processing and AI will replace keyword matching and the results are incredible.  Unfortunately, that’s terrible news for everyone who has built a successful business based on keyword search.

To understand the difference, consider the following product search in this new world:

Me: 

“please recommend a peanut butter that is healthy and comes in a large container because I make a lot of sandwiches”

ChatGPT: 

“When choosing a peanut butter, look for one that is made with only a few ingredients, such as peanuts and salt, and avoid those with added sugars or oils. Here are some recommendations for healthy peanut butter options that come in large containers:

Crazy Richard's 100% Peanuts All-Natural Peanut Butter: This peanut butter is made with only one ingredient: roasted peanuts. It's also gluten-free, vegan, and non-GMO, and comes in a 48-ounce jar.

Kirkland Signature Organic Creamy Peanut Butter: This peanut butter is made with only organic roasted peanuts and salt. It comes in a 28-ounce jar and is certified USDA organic.

Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter: This peanut butter is made with only two ingredients: peanuts and salt. It's also non-GMO and gluten-free and comes in a 26.5-ounce jar.

Remember that peanut butter is high in calories and fat, so be mindful of your portion sizes to maintain a healthy diet.”

Great, now I’d like to know what I should spend on these:

“How much do those items cost on Amazon?”

ChatGPT:

“The prices of these items on Amazon may vary depending on the time of purchase and location, but here are the current prices (as of my knowledge cutoff date of September 2021) for each peanut butter option:

Crazy Richard's 100% Peanuts All-Natural Peanut Butter (48 oz): $13.97

Kirkland Signature Organic Creamy Peanut Butter (28 oz): $9.86

Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter (26.5 oz): $5.64

Jif Natural Creamy Peanut Butter (40 oz): $9.99

Skippy Natural Creamy Peanut Butter (40 oz): $7.67

Trader Joe's Creamy Salted Peanut Butter (16 oz): $7.95

Keep in mind that prices may vary, and there may be other retailers that offer these products at different prices.”

I’m easily influenced by famous people, so naturally: 

“Are there any endorsed by celebrities?”

ChatGPT:

“There may be peanut butter brands that are endorsed by celebrities, but it's important to remember that celebrity endorsements do not necessarily mean that a product is healthier or of better quality. It's always a good idea to focus on the ingredients and nutritional value of a product rather than relying solely on celebrity endorsements.

That being said, here are a few peanut butter brands that have been endorsed by celebrities:

Justin's Nut Butter: Justin's is a natural nut butter company that has been endorsed by several celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston and Oprah Winfrey. Their products are made with high-quality ingredients and come in a variety of flavors.

PBfit: PBfit is a brand of powdered peanut butter that has been endorsed by actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens. Their powdered peanut butter is made with only roasted peanuts, salt, and sugar, and has 87% less fat than traditional peanut butter.

NuttZo: NuttZo is a nut butter brand that has been endorsed by Olympic athlete Lindsey Vonn. Their products are made with a blend of organic nuts and seeds and come in several different varieties.

Again, it's important to do your own research and read ingredient labels to make an informed decision about the peanut butter you choose to purchase.”

So, there you have it.  In addition to being endorsed by Vanessa Hudgens, PBFit was an early client at my last company so it’s the obvious winner.  If you conduct the same search, you will get different results.  The system is constantly learning and improving in ways no human can truly understand.

It makes the old keyword way seem so…old.

Who Will Mourn the Keyword?

There is no world in which keyword search wins.  It’s like bringing keywords to a natural language processing fight.  AI wins, Customers win, big time.  Shoppers will not mourn keywords.

Those who will mourn keywords are the owners of the products that have spent millions or billions of dollars on advertising, content, strategy, and execution to have the coveted top placement on the keywords that drive their business.  The ad platforms that generate billions of dollars selling keyword targeted ads will also mourn.  How will advertisers target consumers?  Other than just trusting AI, how do advertisers make decisions about how and where to invest?  How will brands know what content to develop? Companies that built entire businesses on keyword matching processes will mourn them.

AI in the Driver's Seat Means Different Products Win

As generative search based on natural language processing rolls out $500B+ of US retail sales will be completely reshuffled.  Ad tools and tactics will shift seemingly overnight.

Some products will just accidentally win.  They were always more relevant, but no one knew.  With AI in the driver seat, these products will steal share from others that had carefully, and expensively, mastered the now useless keywords.  Brands will be forced to learn to understand how the retailers’ different flavors of generative search work.  They will need to know a lot more about their customers.  Keyword stuffing into titles or bullets will not work anymore.  Brands will have to be strategic and highly engaged in actively managing the data that trains the AI models.  

Saying Goodbye is Hard

Having been there for the birth of the keyword and now standing here so close to the end, I’d like to say a few words:

Keyword, you were a good friend.  You led us out of the darkness of browse.  You exposed all the knowledge of the world so I could settle minor disputes with my friends in real time.  You changed our lives in unimaginable ways.  Born just thirty years ago in 1993 on Aliweb, you were so young.  But change is life’s only constant, and I need more, better ways to find the right peanut butter for me.  So, it’s time to say goodbye.  

But you never know!  Just like the acid-washed jeans I wore to your birthday party, maybe, one day, you’ll come back into style.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT ECOMMERCE NEWS (INCLUDING ETSY), AUGUST 2024

Hello, and welcome to my very last Ecommerce News update here on Tumblr.

After today, these reports will now be found at least twice a week on my Patreon, available to all paid members. See more about this change here on my website blog: https://www.cindylouwho2.com/blog/2024/8/12/a-new-way-to-get-ecommerce-news-and-help-welcome-to-my-patreon-page

Don't worry! I will still be posting some short pieces here on Tumblr (as well as some free pieces on my Patreon, plus longer posts on my website blog). However, the news updates and some other posts will be moving to Patreon permanently.

Please follow me there! https://www.patreon.com/CindyLouWho2

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Etsy has banned gift certificates/cards sold by individual shops, as of Sept 15. Only Etsy Gift Cards are now allowed. The second quarter report press release says they plan on selling Etsy Gift Cards through third parties, but no official word on how and when yet.

Many Amazon Handmade sellers were unable to list new items after a site update on July 31 [post by me on LinkedIn]. While Amazon told sellers to apply for an exemption from the Product ID requirement, some report that is not working, or that they do not have the option to apply for one. 

Reminder that Canadian Etsy shops will be charged a 1.15% Regulatory Operating fee on the item price and shipping cost as of August 15. [I’ve set a bunch of things to expire. If Etsy isn’t profitable enough to pay its taxes, maybe they should consider cutting executive pay instead of squeezing microbusinesses even more.]

ETSY NEWS 

Etsy has updated its Privacy Policy, to take effect August 31. Changes include mention of biometric data. Note that some parts of the policy are screenshots, and therefore not easily searchable nor accessible to screen readers - I am not sure how they can get away with that. I used the Wayback Machine to do a comparison of the parts that software can actually read.   There’s also a new US regional privacy policy, which currently covers laws in several states.  

Etsy is promoting a Labour Day sale August 21-September 2, and has already set up the "Cyber Savings Sale" (November 18-December 3) for Cyber Week. You can schedule the official sales through links in the announcement.

Forbes covered Etsy’s sex toy ban [soft paywall; not safe for work photos]. To no one's surprise, plenty of the banned items are still found on site, including toys and vintage Playboy magazines. 

Etsy is accused of allowing shops based in “illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory” and profiting off of them. Etsy’s response: "[W]e have shared this information internally with the appropriate teams for review."

Etsy's promised program for buyers - Etsy Insider - will be rolling out as invite-only beta in September. It's a paid membership for US buyers and includes:

Free US domestic shipping on millions of items

A birthday bonus

Limited edition annual gift, designed by an Etsy seller

First access to special discounts and select merchandise

While some of the "special discounts" are paid by sellers, that is a voluntary program shops can sign up for here. That form also allows you to sign up to offer new items to Etsy Insiders first - “drops” - which does not involve offering discounts. Etsy has done these sorts of "offers" in the past, and I believe they have already reached out to sellers for the first round of offers in September (based on some emails I have received from shop owners).

You can now sign up for “Etsy Up”, the virtual sellers conference scheduled for September 10. However, despite saying they have announced “our agenda”, all that is provided is a vague set of topics (other than the fact they will be announcing the Etsy Design Awards Finalists). It makes me wonder if there are official Etsy announcements coming soon that they don’t want to reveal too early by posting the real agenda. If yes, around August 15 is a good bet, given that  Etsy’s Search Analytics will end that day, and many new policies kick in on September 15, just one month later.

The Etsy app is showing rectangular listing images in search for some visitors, but it appears to be a test [Reddit thread with screenshot]. I wouldn’t change anything at this time. 

No, Etsy has not replaced your listing tags. I covered that topic here on LinkedIn. 

I wrote about the new Listing Image Requirement policy and the email Etsy sent to some sellers on Monday July 29. [post by me on Patreon] And not everyone is being fooled by Etsy’s new Creativity Standards, but some acknowledge it will be difficult for Etsy to turn away factory-made goods at this point. [Disclosure: I am quoted in that article]

ECOMMERCE NEWS (minus social media)

Amazon

Amazon’s second quarter revenue was below expectations, and the company predicts nothing better in the third quarter. 

In a surprising change, Amazon has decided to cancel overage fees for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) inventory storage, retroactive to July 1. 

Canadian Amazon sellers will be subject to a new digital services fee as of October 1. This is due to Canada’s new digital services tax. 

In a case that may have an impact on other larger ecommerce sites, a court ruled that Amazon is responsible for recalls of products sold through Amazon, including through “Fulfilled By Amazon”. 

US Amazon shoppers can now link their Pinterest and TikTok accounts to Amazon to be able to buy directly from Amazon ads on social media. This is already available on Facebook, Instagram and Snap. 

Amazon is changing its refund policy for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) users: if sellers do not receive an automatic reimbursement for loss, damage and returns, they will now only have 60 days to apply for one.  A lot of ecommerce experts think Amazon is making a mistake in setting up a China to US section on the site.

eBay

eBay second quarter revenue and profit was higher than expected, but the third quarter projections are low.  

The eBay app has taken a lot of flack for inserting ads between each item in a purchase history. 

Poshmark

As marketplaces popular for pre-owned items compete for the best new stock, Poshmark is offering “rewards” for listing at least 1 item a week. 

Shopify

Shopify had a better-than-expected second quarter, and expects a decent third quarter as well. Getting larger businesses to use Shopify has helped the tech company, but I still wonder how that affects the small and micro businesses who used to be the target market.

Walmart

The Walmart Marketplace has added Chile as its fourth country, after the US, Canada and Mexico. 

All Other Marketplaces

Hundreds of business owners who sell on Temu held a protest at the marketplace headquarters on July 29. Fines for returns are one cited issue. 

Payment Processing

Credit cards issued by Chase in the US will no longer allow third-party buy-now-pay-later purchases, as of October 10. Conveniently, they offer their own option, Chase Pay Over Time. PayPal has expanded the quicker checkout solution Fastlane to all US businesses, which fills in customer information without a log in.

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[madikrohnblog]

Big Data & Algorithms

Social Media is our current reality. The amount of data and information that is shared and analyzed is so powerful and honestly scary. After watching the lecture and the Social Dilemma I learned a lot about the dangers that come with big data and algorithms. The Social Dilemma focuses on how big social media companies manipulate us users by using algorithms that lead us into using their platforms. With already knowing this, I can see the benefits that it offers for companies and brands that need to sell this through ecommerce that can help. With owning my own boutique someday, I will use the same platforms to advance my sales.

However, on the other hand, this big data and algorithms that social media companies take advantage of can be frustrating at times. For example, I was recently shopping for my friend that just had a baby. I quickly looked at Amazon for some cute things and that was my first mistake. Right after being on Amazon, I switched to Instagram and probably had five adds in the first few swipes of being on the app. At first it wasn't bad seeing some baby things, but after the third day of going on Instagram and seeing baby adds I got pretty irritated. Don't get me wrong, there could be way worse things to have adds for, but I am currently not in that season of life to start shopping for baby clothes lol.

Overall, after learning more everyday about the disadvantages and dangers of having social media, I am starting to become more convinced to stop using social media as much as I do. I have become pretty disgusted of seeing my screen report every Sunday. Social media is our current reality, but it doesn't need to be.