Monthly Archives: December 2005

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A Nice Use of the Amazon API

December 30, 2005 4:07 pm / 1 Comment /

It’s really going to get exciting as entrepreneurs start to develop more web applications from APIs and the data made available by larger companies. I’m seeing more of it every day, and the latest example reported on by MediaPost is AmazonCreditsYou.com.

It’s a service that allows you enter your email address and the product number of whatever you buy from Amazon in case they lower the prices. Amazon has a policy that if they lower the prices within 30 days, you can get difference back if you submit a request.

Before this service, I doubt many people took advantage of this, but now with a tie-in to the Amazon API and a bit of front-end coding, you can now get notified via email if you’re eligible for a refund on a price drop. That’s pretty handy.

Will this eventually make Amazon change it’s policy as more and more consumers use this? Or will it help Amazon be the store of choice over other merchants because you know if you buy there now, you won’t lose out on a sale or price drop? I’d say right now it’s giving me another reason to shop at Amazon.

As far as AmazonCreditsYou.com itself, I’m not a huge fan of the domain name due to it locking them in to being just about Amazon in case other merchants opened up APIs to do the same.

It looks like their business model is Adsense revenue and being an Amazon affiliate. I hope there’s more there for them at some point, but maybe that’s enough for the amount of work involved in creating the service. Definitely a good service, I’m sure many in the web shopping world will enjoy it.

Posted in: Ecommerce

The Ad Network As Financial Market

December 30, 2005 1:32 am / 1 Comment /

My coworker Ramsey McGrory at Right Media has written his first article in a series on The Macro and Micro of Networks.

Ramsey’s theory is that ad networks are a lot like a financial exchange like the NASDAQ. The network basically provides the platform, facilitates the transactions, and aggregates supply and demand for both sides. Obviously though the network is still like a broker in that it takes a cut of each transaction.

Obviously years of time, effort, and analysis by many smart people have fine-tuned financial trading markets to make them efficient. What can ad networks learn from examining financial markets? How can the online advertising world get that efficient?

Posted in: Ad Networks, Advertising, Right Media

Google Is Focusing It’s Base

December 28, 2005 12:32 pm / Leave a Comment /

Google Base has changed their front page to feature popular “classifieds-style” items and has also changed from sending people to job publisher landing pages to pages hosted by Google. This hurts the publisher’s branding and advertising, but it does still expose them for free to Google’s audience.

Google is getting more focused with Base, and it ‘s starting to look much more like a classified play than a “way to store and submit content”. I don’t think this surprises anyone, but it was a pretty quick change on Google’s part.

Posted in: Google

Less Is More With Text

December 28, 2005 11:09 am / Leave a Comment /

Development wonderhouse 37Signals comments about the positive side effect of big text, which is less text.

To be more exact, using a big text size forces you to make sure the text you write is meaningful and free of extra words. This is a great side observation for the trendy Web 2.0 design style of using large text and buttons. In some ways, it’s probably a more important benefit than the actual advantage of larger text being easier to read.

You’ll hear many conversion and sales experts talk about how conversion and persuasion happen with copy. What seems to happen for some sites though, is they take that to the limit and provide too much meaningless copy.

If you have a hard time keeping your copy concise and to the point, try using larger font sizes throughout your site.

Posted in: Conversion Rate

Yahoo Has a Ton of Opportunity

December 26, 2005 8:12 pm / 2 Comments /

A recent article in RED HERRING discusses Yahoo’s plans to revamp and improve both their publisher network and search marketing solutions.

As I see it, Yahoo has a huge opportunity. There hasn’t been enough competition in both the PPC advertising and contextual network space. Google has been running the show for a while now, and it’s time for someone to come in and punch them in the gut, so to speak. However, they need to execute.

Adwords is a great product. Google has done a wonderful job with it, and I know personally I don’t use Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) as much because it’s such a pain to use. It’s just not as easy to use as Adwords, and that’s hurting them. The other factor is that Adwords is driving more conversions for advertisers due to the search volume and contextual network volume. Can Yahoo compete with that? They’ll be losing MSN’s volume soon, and that will hurt. Can they make it up by making Yahoo Search better or growing their publisher network?

On the publisher network side, publishers would love a viable alternative to Adsense. So far almost all reviews report a great click payout from the Yahoo Publisher Network, but less targeted ads which equals fewer clicks. I don’t think the problem is the targeting, but that they’ve got fewer advertisers coming through Yahoo Search. If they fixed the Yahoo Search problems, they’d have more targeted ads, thus giving publishers a great alternative to Adsense. There are other things they could do with the network to attack Google, like disclose the revenue share, provide more transparency, etc. At this point it doesn’t look like they’re headed in that direction. Is that a mistake? Time will tell, but Yahoo has a big opportunity in front of them.

Posted in: Ad Networks, Advertising, Random, Yahoo

In 2006 The Big Guns Will Come Out

December 26, 2005 12:17 am / 1 Comment /

Things are really going to heat up in the tech space in 2006. Not only are their hundreds if not thousands of startups trying to do big things, the big companies in power positions are starting to bring out their big guns.

Google has been building new applications and releasing them all year long, and there’s no reason to think they’re going to stop anytime soon.

Yahoo has been snapping up startups like Flickr, del.icio.us, and Upcoming.org to solidify and grow their place in the new space.

Amazon is even getting into the game with the release of the Alexa index and offering up of computing power.

Now comes word from Ray Ozzie that Microsoft is going to make 2006 the year of “The Build”.

That’s a big deal. As an example think of the news that the new version of Outlook will have RSS built in. All of the sudden that gives all the Outlook users everywhere easy access to RSS in the application they already spend all their day using. What does that do to all the RSS reader startups?

It won’t just be Microsoft battling startups though, Richard Macmanus thinks that Microsoft is going to be big competition for Google in 2006.

I think he’s right. Microsoft is starting to see the way being Ozzie and Scoble so a battle is brewing. It should be fun to watch.

Posted in: Google, Microsoft

Seven Thoughts to Arm Yourself With in 2006

December 23, 2005 11:04 am / Leave a Comment /

Bryan Eisenberg has Seven Thoughts to Arm Yourself With in 2006 over at Clickz.com.

Bryan does a great job of writing in an easy to understand manner, and he really has done a great job focusing on the niche of persuasion and conversion on the web. Check out his company’s site at Futurenowinc.com for other articles, tools, and helpful tips.

Posted in: Conversion Rate, Web Analytics

A Little Promotion Is Okay With Me

December 22, 2005 8:47 pm / Leave a Comment /

Seth Godin discusses why he hasn’t posted much about Squidoo on his blog, and it’s because he doesn’t want to self-promote too much.

While I’m glad Seth respects his readers, I think his readers probably are okay with some self promotion. Peter Caputa apparently agrees.

First, I recall him promoting books, seminars, and ebooks in the past. It’s not like he’s never done it. Second, I subscribe to his RSS feed, and I’ve been wondering why I’ve seen so little about Squidoo on his blog. I’d like some insights from him about it. How is it going so far? What’s the traffic like? Is $950 earned at this point the kind of revenue they were hoping for? What’s coming up?

I think Seth is missing an opportunity to drive more interest towards Squidoo, but that’s his choice.

Posted in: Advertising, Blogging

Watching Analytics Can Lead To Gold

December 22, 2005 5:05 pm / Leave a Comment /

Darren Rowse at Problogger.net shares a user’s story as well as his own about how just checking their blog stats led them to understand some very lucrative things about what their audience was interested in.

There’s the obvious lesson there that checking your stats is important. But I also like to look at it another way, and that’s that checking your stats can be actually be an idea generator. In Darren’s case, he noticed that nobody was interested in his personal photos, but he was getting a steady stream of traffic to a camera review that was secondary to him, but the most important thing to his visitors. This led Darren to the idea of turning his blog into a camera reviews blog which is lucrative for him today.

So, the next time you’re in a rut trying to come up with some new ideas about your ecommerce site, blog, web app, or whatever it is you’re tracking, try taking a look at what types of features and content your users are interested in. It may just lead you to some surprising conclusions that end up putting more money in your company’s pocket.

Posted in: Blogging, Web Analytics

Interview With Reddit.com Founder Alexis Ohanian

December 22, 2005 2:26 am / 1 Comment /

A site that I find myself spending more time on for news these days is reddit.com. It’s a social news site that lives in the same world as del.iciol.us/popular, Digg, and Slashdot. It’s a bit different in a few unique ways, and I had the opportunity to ask some questions with reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian. It’s a great story of a site on the rise currently run by two young guys in an apartment.

Where did the idea for reddit come from? What’s the background of how it started?

AO: We were actually inspired by del.icio.us/popular, it’s a great
indicator of what people are busy bookmarking, but we were interested
in the more ephemeral links that are popular because they are
interesting and new — not just good reference material.

What types of features are you planning on adding to the site?

AO: We’re busy improving the collaborative filtering that currently
recommends users links based on their past votes. Our current
development is focused on giving our current users personally relevant
links while also improving the accessibility of the site to new users.

What’s your personal favorite feature of reddit?

AO: Even though it’s not really a main feature of the site, I’ve recently
spent way too much time on our reddit.com/comments page, which tracks all the chatter going on around the site. I’d also have to give the reddit.com/recommended page a nod, since it’s got me figured out pretty well (which may just be an indicator of how predictable I am).

How do you feel reddit compares to other notable social news sites likeslashdot, digg, and delicious popular?

AO: delicious/popular was our inspiration, as I said earlier, and Joshua
should be able to add lots of value to Yahoo’s MyWeb 2.0.

Steve and I grew up with Slashdot — it’s an institution. Digg has a
great following, and it’s a shame to see it so adamant about “burying
Slashdot.” The comparison to reddit, especially since they announced
an expansion into non-tech categories, certainly comes up. We both
share the belief in social news, but our guess is that training a
filter will ultimately yield the best quality front page, something
that we think sites like Digg will eventually realize and copy.

Are you using web analytics for reddit? Which package and why?

AO: We wrote our own, nothing else had just what we were looking for.

Can you give us any indication of numbers or growth statistics?

AO: We get around 13,000 unique hits a day now, a number which has been growing pretty rapidly in the last weeks. We’ve been quite pleased,
especially since we’ve only been doing this since mid-July and haven’t
spent a penny on advertising. We’ve just been trying to build the
best site that we can.

What’s the long term plan for reddit? Any plan to add any revenue streams?

AO: We’ve got ideas, but we’re going to hold off for as long as we can.
Despite not having accepted VC investment, we can keep up our spartan
lifestyle until summer with the angel funding we received.

What are your thoughts on the new types of apps being built for the social web/web2.0?

AO: There are lots of great apps being built for the social web, which
isn’t surprising given what a great time it is to be a developer.
Hopefully, this will mean some great innovations for users — we’re
just trying to do our part as best as we can.

Thanks to Alexis for the interview, and good luck to reddit.com.

Posted in: Startups, Web 2.0

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