Via the Times: Online Sales Loose Steam as Buyers Grow Web-Weary.

 
Since the inception of the Web, online commerce has enjoyed hypergrowth, with annual sales increasing more than 25 percent over all, and far more rapidly in many categories. But in the last year, growth has slowed sharply in major sectors like books, tickets and office supplies.

Growth in online sales has also dropped dramatically in diverse categories like health and beauty products, computer peripherals and pet supplies. Analysts say it is a turning point and growth will continue to slow through the decade.

The reaction to the trend is apparent at Dell, which many had regarded as having mastered the science of selling computers online, but is now putting its PCs in Wal-Mart stores. Expedia has almost tripled the number of travel ticketing kiosks it puts in hotel lobbies and other places that attract tourists.

The slowdown is the result of several forces. Sales on the Internet are expected to reach $116 billion this year, or 5 percent of all retail sales, making it harder to maintain the same high growth rates. At the same time, consumers seem to be experiencing Internet fatigue and are changing their buying habits.

I have more than a few blogs.

 
Posting to them seems to be somewhat cyclical. For a while I was posting almost daily to this site and neglecting others. The roles have switched lately and I've been posting to my medical blog.

Here's my current list of blogs that I write or have created:

• Medical Spa MD: Information for physicians in cosmetic medicine.
  
• Nimble Theory: This here blog.
  
• Pony Tail Club: A fourteen year old & her horse.
  
• Kid Agent: Inside the life of a Hollywood child agent.
  
• Wild Blue Creative Partners: Advertising & Marketing
• Surface Medical Spas: My medical business site.
• Fight Club
  
• A few others.

Medical Spa MD has the most traffic, 18000 unique visitors, most of which are physicians. (This blog has about 7k unique monthly visitors.)

So, the rub. How to monetize your traffic without seeming crass and turning off your readers.

I use Yahoo PPC and my Medical Spa blog earns between $100 and $250 a month pretty consistently. I lean towards creating something more since it's a hell of a lot of work to grow a blog.

So, I'm using my blog to generate revenue indirectly rather than try to make money from PPC. I've a strong feeling that it's a better method for my market and could generate much more revenue than the ubiquitous PPC.

• I've created a classified section to allow physicians to buy and sell their used lasers, IPLs and medical equipment. With 18k readers this should generate some traffic and value... especially since it's free.
• I offer a needed piece of equipment, a spectrophotometer, at a significant discount. (I take a percentage.)
• I've organized much of the information I've generated and plan to offer it as a book, guide, or structure for starting and running a medical spa or cosmetic practice.
• I've built a portal to address every cosmetic medical practices main concern and need, driving new patient traffic. This new site will be a vertical marketing portal where a physician can build, customize, and send direct mail at a 30-40% discount from the current deep discount printers. (This is a big play in the market and I'll link as soon as the site goes live.)
• I've created a medspa membership list to garner info about my visitors.
  

I'm  am running Yahoo Publisher Network for my text ads on my blogs and not Google's adsense.

My brother-in-law was in town for Christmas and he and I argued over which ad system was better. My arguement was that Yahoo paid more than Google. He felt that Google had a higher click through rate because Google's relevancy engine is based on click throughs as well as cost. (Supposedly Yahoos new Panama engine does the same thing.)

But my blog at Medical Spa MD is a real hit and miss. When Yahoo is working well it places ads with great relevancy. But around 20% of the time the text links are some form of generic financing ads. Since I've not run adsense on that blog it makes me wonder if Google wouldn't do better for me?

One thing is for sure, with Yahoo getting their ass handed to them by Google, they can't really afford to loose the clients they already have.

Capitalist Pig isn't happy either.

The excitement was short lived as within three days, the yahoo editorial staff had removed 231 of the keywords.  That’s over 75% of the keywords that I’m currently running with google that have high CTR, and great conversions.  So now, if I want to get back in, I have to spend more time resubmitting the keywords that were declined.  The question is, what would be a better use of my time?  Trying to get all my ads back into yahoo so I’m in front of the roughly 25% of users that use Yahoo or increasing my exposure in Google?  It’s definitely more efficient for me to spend more time with Google since I’m sure my ads and keywords are going to show there.

...More than one advertiser has come public with their experiences with click fraud on Yahoo’s network.  One of the bigger claims was from Pepperjam which had a client that ran through $10k worth of clicks in one day with Yahoo.  I first read about the story when reading Shoemoney’s blog, who has a strong relationship with Pepperjam.  Yahoo responded with a $10k “goodwill” credit to the advertiser without admitting that there was fraud.

Tim Bednar over at Turtle Interactive has written a great post on “The Art of the Sign Up Page“ where he discusses his insights and decisions. 

I selected these sites because I thought they were well done and were subscription based, productivity applications. Other applications I reviewed included: 30boxes, Blogger, del.icio.us, Flock, Give Meaning, Kiko, My Pick List, Titlez, CRM from Zoho, Zopa, Second Site, LinkedIn, Box.net, Vyew, and Cork'd.

What elements make up a sign up page?

The best place to start is to list all of the elements that compose a sign up page:

• Logo
• Elevator pitch
• Description copy
• List of key features
• List of key benefits
• Call to action
• Testimonials
• Tours
• Examples of who is using the application
• Screen shots
• Life-style images
• Link to more information (price, login, about, blog, terms, privacy)

Amazon's own own PPC program, Clickriver.

Clickriver Ads is an advertising program (currently in beta) that allows businesses to place sponsored links on Amazon.com, next to search results and on product detail pages.

It's a closed beta at the moment. I've applied and if they let me in I'll post a review after I tinker with it.

I stumbled across this little Technorati API application that gives you a value for your blog or site based on the number of inbound links priced according to the numbers on the AOL-Weblogs deal. (He figures out that at $25 million valuation, each inbound site (as per Technorati) is worth $564.54.)

It's a little blog-vanity.

Here's the code if you want to add it to your site:

Click to read more ...

Viral video marketing performed to perfection. While this was for a comedy show, watch this YouTube video and you'll find a great marketing tool that could work inside a local market.

Since my RSS feeds were full of VIPBloggers posts yesterday I trotted on over to see what all the fuss was about. It seems that Justin Bergener (another of those short haired Junto boys) thought that the million dollar homepage idea was just the ticket to pry a few dollars out of the blogger crowd and buy himself more hair gel. Justin's no dummy. You're only in for a 6 month run.

This little 9 box square is mine and links to a number of blogs I run or businesses I own including:  Fight Club, MedicalSpasOnline.com, Surface Medical Spas, Nimbleit.com, and this blog. I didn't want to have 5 little boxes so I made one icon and split it up 9 ways. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It made me the largest buyer to date but did little to affect my looks as far as I can tell.

I would expect to see a number of these sites pop up much like the 'I'll tatoo your logo on my forehead' auctions on Ebay. Still, I hope it works. Justin wants the money.

Limited supply + large demand = motivation.

For anyone who doesn't know woot.com, now's your chance. Woot is an online business that takes a single product of limited inventory, discounts it heavily, and releases it every day at midnight.  If the products good it sells out pdq so you have to be quick to the button. Steep & Cheap is backcountry.com's like-concept but offers outdoor stuff.

I found out about Woot from Alan Young when he was working with the University Venture Fund. Allan told me that Woot was changing it's users sleeping patterns since they'd stay up 'till midnight to see what the next Woot was.

Of course it's the limited supply. Limited supply + large demand = motivation.

The problem many businesses have is that they don't really have limited supply, they have lots of supply. It's this factor of being able to offer unlimited supply that exerts a downward pressure on perceived value for internet companies. How much will people pay for email? Nada.

What can a business do to decrease the perceived supply of its offering? Depends. If you're direct competitors also have unlimited supply you're in trouble because your customers will switch. It's only if you're offering is unique enough that the opportunity cost is now perceived by the buyer to be lower with your offering.

It's the perceived value and opportunity cost that buyers use to make purchasing decisions. That's it. It would be really simple if all consumers used the same criteria to judge but they don't. There's slop in the decision making process since every individual use their own criteria. But that's also where the opportunity lies for any business.

Women purchasing shoes are using a very different standard of value and opportunity cost than men. (Way different in my wife's case.)

Woot proves the point. Changing the habits of customers is not easy, but if the perceived value of the offing is there it happens without a second thought. 

Seth Godin talking about Purple Cows at Google. If you like Seth, this is the stuff. Here's the link.