Today I decided to test the most popular shopping networks. For me it was important to understand possibilities of free / paid advertising.

 Wishpot

(powered by www.Shopping.com)
I created free account on Wishpot and the first thing they asked me is to share at least 1 email of my friend. I was trying to skip this option but it is impossible. Message on the top informed me that I have to provide at least 1 email to complete my registration.
 As regular member I was able to create my wish list. Entire network integrated with popular shopping networks like Amazon on Buy and user should browse these stores to put item into wish list. Network offers toolbar installation which could help to submit products into wish list the same way like you submit news / pages in StumbleUpon.

 I was really excited about option called “Stuff I Recommend”. It turned to be just another tool where I can submit products from Amazon and other popular networks. It is possible to place product from independent website, but system doesn’t allow to upload any picture or logo. Independent listings do not appear in search results or directory pages… it sits deep in your profile without any chance to be noticed by other members.

For any paid advertising on Wishpot sponsor should email to address which provided on the company page.

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CrowdStorm

You can’t register on CrowdStorm unless you provide at least 1 email of your friend.

CrowdStorm is a social shopping network which was made for digital cameras and video games reviews only. There is no such thing as directory or wish list. Website / product search is based on eBay and Amazon inventory. User can only review item or ask a simple question about product before to buy.

It is clear that CrowdStorm provides great possibilities for their members to write reviews (give away content for search engines) and no chances to share products from other (not affiliated) stores. Entire network made to redirect people through affiliate links to eBay, Amazon, Kelkoo, and Shopping.

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Wists

Users can save and share almost everything using installed toolbar. For some reason it is impossible to submit product / item manually. It is important to know that visitor is able to share item from any online store.

Online store owners can integrate their website with Wist by putting widgets and buttons on their pages.

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ThisNext

Amazing social network with many features. Users are able to share everything they want. Advanced tools can help you to submit product fast and easy. ThisNext simply crawl ulr you are trying to submit and organize information from the page for you. Even the most complicated product picture, design, and description can fit in their blocks.

ThisNext works as general social site as well where people can share information, add each other as friend, and find people according their shopping experience.

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Stylehive

Shopping network to connect stylish people. The most active retailers could become featured and appear on most pages in the right block.

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Kaboodle

Good shopping network with many features. However, to submit favorite products you should install toolbar.

  Learn Pay Per Click marketing from the experts! Boston PPC summit in March are promising to be an interesting events for SEO / SEM experts and companies which would like to increase their ROI through PPC campaigns.

  From February until September summit will go through Dallas, Boston, Vancouver, London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Tech Web Media are interested in Boston summit because it will be in our home town.

  Only one thing bites about this summit is a price which are going to be $599-799 for one day pass and up to $1399 for 2 day pass.

  P.S. To be clear… we have not received any financial or endorsement from PPCSummit. Information posted on our site because we love to support good projects.

 Browsing CJ I discovered a network which reminds me Overture keyword tool. KeyCompete is a keyword tool that finds the keywords and key phrases your competitors are using in their PPC campaigns. Tool also shows competition which that is bidding on keywords. 

 Enter a company domain name KeyCompete returns a list of keywords used by that company in its SEM campaigns. Moreover, it is possible to do the opposite way research by entering keyword and tool will show you websites which used this keyword on Google AdWords and other PPC services.

 Report Preview:

 Simple features from KeyCompete are avaliable for free, but for custom reports you have to register and pay.

The war between company owners and employees over internet usage will never stop. It is the same like to forbid phone usage or conversations about work with other people.

Office clerks with blogs and accounts on social sites can create incredible power for official company website and increase online presence. From one side you can hire web design and SEO company to run corporate website, but from another side regular people who work for you can write about your company in their blogs and journals.
  
  Some companies already found benefits when their employees use social networks and own a weblog:
  HP for example hosts employee’s blogs on official HP website and everyone can run work related or personal journals.
  Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center in North Carolina use a weblog to allow all people in the office share information and participate in discussions.

Benefit for company:

People in the office use social sites and run weblogs. 

Large appearance in social media like Digg, Technorati,

 Facebook, Del.icio.us, Zimbio.

Extra backlinks, content, online presence, and visibility

 for your company.  Positive feedback.

Increase in search engine rankings.

Extra traffic through blogs and social media.

Company wins over competitors through collective work.

Last summer I was hired by psychologist who provides helpful information on his website for people with family problems. We were trying to monetize site which already has over 3000 unique visitors per day. By adding a web store to sell books he wrote in past 15 years he reached about 10-15 daily customers right away. Client was more than happy because it was a good money (each book cost $40).

We decided that $400 - $600 is not enough from 3000 people per day. We rejected to use Google AdSense, affiliate programs, ad space sale. Instead of finding sponsors we began to visit competitor websites to find what they sell and offer for people who got family problems. From one competitor we got idea to create subscription service providing extra information, email notifications, ability to receive unpublished chapters from the books, daily tips to keep family strong, etc. Our calculations wasn’t wrong and we got 1 new subscribers each day (out of 3000 daily visitors), if it will stay the same in the future… total income will be over $45 000 after first year and almost $135 000 between July 2008 and July 2009.

Checking another website we found that competitor offers live phone support for visitors charging their credit card $150/hour. The same thing we did on our website and now my client charge callers $200/hour because his name is bigger. Moreover, the same competitor gave us a hint to create a page with office, location, hotels, airport, driving directions to meet our client in person. This step increased amount of clients, especially rich clients who fly from all parts of the United States to get professional support from psychologist.

In the case I described above I made myself and and my client richer only because we worked to check strengths and strategies of our competitors. By finding key success factors we applied this to our website and reached significant increase in profit.

Media scanning is also an important factor to find how competitors advertise product, where they keep ads, how much they spend, and who they target.

Online media scanning even more important because it is good to know who link your competitors, their search engine rankings, keyword destiny, share of voice, and traffic they receive.

How to check competitor online presence:

•  Find who link your competitor. It is possible using backlink checking tool like LinkVendor Domain Popularity or by typing link:domain.com on Yahoo (Yahoo provide the best information about who link a website).
• Sign up with Google AdWords and check how your much competitors bid on targeted keywords and key phrases. Use “share of voice” function to check percentage of clicks each competitor receives.
• With Technorati it is possible to find how strong competitors in blogosphere and how many bloggers write a posts describing their products and services.
• The last thing which might help is Google Pagerank and Alexa Rank status.

 Why webmasters buy links? There are 3 reasons: to improve traffic, to improve Google Pagerank, or to improve search engine rankings.

When company buy links to improve traffic they do not have to worry about Pagerank or structure of web link. Link could contain “nofollow” tag to make sure that paid link presence does not improve search engine ranks. To receive better traffic, company should work more with text, banner image, and link / banner location to receive more hits.

Paid links to improve search engine positions could help for a little while until link broker “busted” and all his links loose value for search engines. Link buyer in this case loose money, risk to loose search engine rankings, and can forget about future improvements in a Pagerank.

Google “Busted”. Link dealers which were punished recently.

Link market became a dangerous place in SEO industry; TechWeb Media and most of my colleagues do not buy links for their clients. There are many ways to get natural backlinks from trusted websites.

Social media is the easiest way to receive quality link and improve traffic for a website. Pagerank hunters can also find social media as a great place to improve Pagerank. Networks like Digg, Zimbio, MyBlogLog do not use “nofollw” tags and benefit active members with extra traffic and ability to submit link. Google gave pr7+ to this networks long time ago. People who quite familiar how Google algorithm work should know that Google gives the highest Pagerank to a homepage (in most cases), the rest Pagerank value goes to internal pages. Pages with most internal links receive higher Pagerank then pages with less internal links. Person who joined social network just to add link in profile can get pr0-3 after Google update. From another side, member who contribute to social site by writing good posts, finding friends, commenting on quality content can pass pr5-6 for profile page because hundreds other pages will link his / her profile by the time Pagerank update happen.

Building relationships with another webmasters can benefit with good reviews and backlinks. It doesn’t work when you just trying to exchange link. The best strategy is to read related blog posts, news, entries. By giving feedback to author you can build trust and relationships with people who are in the same business / niche as you. Offline support is a big part as well. Company can benefit author with extra material, share swag, give follow up comment. As example: TechWeb Media received 5 backlinks from extremely popular SEO websites during last 2 weeks only because we shared our pictures with another webmasters, interviewed 9 bloggers, and shared ideas with some companies.

DirectoryCrytic provide amazing

 list of free niche directories.

Niche directories still rock to build extra links for a website. Even Google suggest to submit links in niche directories and indexes Read Google suggestions for webmasters. You will be surprised to find how many niche directories exist for each topic. DirectoryCritic website host over 1000 niche directories on their pages, it will take one day to submit site in all quality ones and site will improve in search results (99% guarantee).

 Inn the past i wrote an article called 10 Best Places to Get Quality Link Right Now. It might help.

Quality content is the biggest factor, which can bring good natural backlinks. As example, my favorite SEO companies SEOmoz and Backbone Media focuses to write good articles to attract web publishers and make them link a website. These two companies are always successful when they promote client websites.

    To understand a real value of web marketing we should analyze statistic about online shoppers and retail sales in United States. As primary source we used book ”Marketing. The Core” edition by Roger A. Kerin, Steven W. Hartley, and William Rudelius. These trends will help us to find how web consumers have changed their shopping behavior, needs, and spending.

Trend in Internet shoppers in the United States.

Online Shoppers in the United States (millions)

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% of US population who shop online

  Amount of people who shop online grow every year. Predicted increase of US shoppers in 2008 will be 2% (8 000 000 people). We can compare this number with population in Austria. Young people, immigrants, laggards (people who adopt new things slow)… all this people will make their web purchase in 2008.

Online retail sales revenue in the United States ($ billions)

Using this graph it is important to point the most important factors:

 •  In 2008 average shopper in US will spend $1800 online. It is $625 more than 5 years ago.
 •  Internet retail sales revenue in 2008 will increase twice comparing with 2004.
 •  Revenue will increase 640% comparing with the year 2000.
 •  69% online consumers… it is almost every adult in US. Other 31% include kids, and people who are not able to use internet (disabilities, age, religion belief etc).

Estimated % of online sales by product/service category in 2003 and 2008.

Looking on the last trend we can see:

• Food / beverage are the fastest growing industry in the web. People and investors did not trusted online food industry after Kozmo and Webvan (food delivery) companies went bankruptcy during dot-com bubble. It took a long time to recover and now food / beverage sales and delivery are coming back. This type of service again became popular with college students and office clerks. Online grocery coupons run Internet food industry as well, printers became more affordable for many people who love to save on grocery shopping. Moreover, small business owners finally realized convenience of having a website.
• Luxury goods sales increased almost twice in 5 years. Another proof that people don’t afraid anymore to spend big money using Internet.
• For those who spam the web with Viagra I would like to point on the fact that sales in health industry remain the same. Those who already became a leader in online health industry don’t want to give up positions. For people who are looking for “easy money” I will recommend to start pizza delivery service…
• Decrease in travel industry could be explained easy. Most people travel once a year and they will spend for travelling in 2008 the same money like they spent in 2003.

 Less than a year ago paid directory was a good investment for many web developers. Looking on AvivaDirectory or LinksJuice webmasters was trying to repeat success. Directory owners used to spend money for links on popular websites to reach Pagerank 5-7 and get traffic. Average paid directory with pr5+ used to have about 5-20 submissions charging $30-50 or even more for each link. Cash flow was incredible - $200 - $1000+ /day.

 In the middle of 2007 DirectoryCritic (index of web directories) indexed over 2500 paid directories. Every week 30-50 new paid directories was launching web.

 Google was against paid directories from the beginning because paid directories sell links without adding “nofollow” tag affecting search engine results. During 2007 Google made the following steps:

•  Matt Cutts asked webmasters to report paid links.
•  Pagerank update was suspended from April 2007 to November 2007.
•  Most popular web directories was removed from top positions.
•  Many directories was removed from index.
•  Google stopped updates for paid directories.
•  Most paid directories lost Pagerank.
•  Websites which paid for submissions lost pagerank.

 Simply, Google asked directory owners to open free submissions or go out of business.

Alexa traffic change for popular paid directories during 2007:

AvivaDirectory | AliveDirectory | BOTW | JoeAnt | ExactSeek

 Another factor to put directories out of business:

Newest social networks is another factor which made paid directories less popular. Good social site like MyBlogLog or Zimbio can provide link with better click rate and Pagerank. Many companies even switched their marketing strategy from SEO (search engine optimization) to SNO (social network optimization).

 Web marketing and search engine optimization it is not how to get random traffic and as many backlinks as possible. Web marketing is about reaching targeted customers and people who are interested in product or service. At the same time, search engines algoritms set up to find websites which provide quality content and occupy strong positions in their niche.

 With development of social media and Web 2.0 it became easier to deliver message for groups of people who use social sites to find information and friends with the same interests. Today, there are many niche social networks with strong traffic and many communities where people share information. Many of them are friendly when company which sell product / service join this network and (without spam) benefit community helping other members, contributing content, discussing interesting topics.

 Some popular niche social sites:

 Sphinn - SEO social bookmarking network.

 Design Float - social network for designers.

 MyBlogLog - popular place for bloggers.

 Care2 - social site about human rights, health, care.

 BuzzFlash - Political news

 Bizzlo - business information and links

 More you can find in Badi Jones blog: Social Bookmarking Sites for All Occasions

 Active participation in niche sites can improve traffic and give extra credit for Google, Yahoo, MSN rankings if your site related to this networks.

 Talking about Web 2.0 we are not suppose to forget about Web 1.0. There are millions opportunities to find Web 1.0 websites where you can join and advertise company website. Let’s talk about forums and niche directories….

  Web forums are still popular way to expose yourself, share information, and chat with people. Forum search engines like BoardTracker and Big Boards can help to find message boards web marketer are interested in. Active participation in discussions can increase brand recognition, website traffic, customers and clients. Remember, Google and other search engines watch forum spam and punish sites which violate rules. You can leave your link only in post signature and profile page.

 Niche web directories are often less popular than general free and paid directories, but niche directories is the most powerful free marketing tool for search engine ranking. Even Google on the page Webmaster Guidelines suggest to promote a website through niche directories. Portal DirectoryCritic host large collection of niche web directories here.

 Many SEO companies are still trying to rip people off when they tell that it is impossible to rank well on Google and other search engines without 5 000, 10 000, 50 000 backlinks. Quality content and good presence on related niche sites can guarantee average/high traffic to a website.

 People behave different at online and traditional market places. Most sales online happen during Monday-Friday, Saturday and Sunday often is the slowest days for web stores. Wednesday is the busiest day for online sales. Regular retalers often make 30-35% of weekly profit during saturday (busiest day) and sunday.

 Fact: More than 50% people prefer to browse web to find items and after buy them in regular stores.