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The PlumberSurplus.com ecommerce and entrepreneurship blog is a collective of experiences, thoughts, processes and updates from people that are not only actively working in ecommerce but are also zealous about the industry.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'Marketing'
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of December 4th, 2009
Cyber Monday outperformed Black Friday in online retail sales this year. This may not have been true for other internet retailers in the past but this was something that we expected and have seen before. It’s not surprising that &l...
SingleFeed Upgrades Reporting Tools
In early November, SingleFeed, a data feed submission and data feed management service which we use, released a new reporting interface. It is still in beta, but has proven to be quite an upgrade from their previous system. For those readers wh...
PayPal to Retire Pay Later
For those of you who are using PayPal, and loved that PayPal offered a "Pay Later" service, you'll be sad to hear that PayPal Pay Later is being discontinued. Today, we received a notice from our account rep:...we have just been notified that PayLat...
The Droid and Business: First Impressions
The big new thing in technology right now is the Motorola Droid with Verizon Wireless. With Google's Android 2.0, Verizon's coverage, and some nice hardware, it's set up to rival Apple's eight-hundred-pound gorilla, the iPhone. Ushering in a new set ...
Experimenting with Multivariate Testing from A Merchant’s Perspective
A couple of months ago our awesome Adwords team was able to hook us up with five free hours of assistance from a third party to help train and setup Google Website Optimizer tests. We had mentioned to them that we were interested in trying some tests...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of October 24th, 2009
Optimalogica blog recommends a reconciliation system for making financial decisions and experimental sales decisions. Gross National Happiness has been measured, and Facebook’s Prototype confirms that we are in fact less happy on Monday&rsquo...
Google and Bing Partner with Twitter to Utilize Tweets in SERPs
So as most of you know BOTH Google and Bing have announced partnerships with Twitter to add tweets to search results in real time (as well as Bing stating they will add Facebook status updates). While Google’s integration of this is still a whi...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of October 17th, 2009
Amazon offers same day delivery. Columns like the Consumerist ask questions like “Will you ever leave the house again?” You don’t have to love the Dallas Mavericks to appreciate Mark Cuban’s humor every once in a while...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of October 2nd, 2009
Does your website need a television series? Some have figured out how to do it right, meaning profitably, but it’s not easy. A few more reasons why your website sucks debuted today. One point that really caught my attention was th...
Google Enhances Filters for Shopping Websites in Main Search – Good or Bad?
Today Google rolled out more filters to their ever expanding Google Search Options category. While past roll outs have not had as much of an impact on eCommerce websites today’s new updates may change that greatly. Today they launched a past ho...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of September 25th, 2009
With the $100 million in funds that Twitter is reported to be receiving in venture capital funds the company’s valuation has nearly quadrupled this year to an astonishing $1 billion. The Harvard Business Review has put together five rules tha...
Marketing 2.0 - Marketing in a Twitter World
Remember how much easier it was to be a marketer before all this digital stuff got in the way? Just pay for a print ad and reach a ton of people through the publication’s readership. Was it successful? Who knows, I mean sure they could somewhat...
Affiliates Cannibalizing Organic Search Traffic
Recently, I have been seeing a disturbing trend, affiliates who join an advertisers program, grab their data feed and then, using networks of automated websites, cannibalize the advertisers organic search traffic. These tech savvy affiliates realize ...
Microsoft Blows Ad Campaign by Swapping Heads
“They're (Microsoft) not racists at heart - they're just being racist as it makes good business sense. They're business racists.” – Joe McCann 2009 We’ve all submitted projects that weren’t exactly our bes...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of August 7th, 2009
Multiple sites including Twitter and Facebook were hit by denial-of-service attacks this week. Google Base eliminated the single upload option, merchants using this option will need to switch to a data feed in order to continue inserting their pro...
Merchants Prepare eBay Seller Updates Scheduled
EBay merchants prepare! Several changes to EBay's marketplace will be going live late September and will affect sellers of varying sizes alike. These updates will be taking place during the weeks of September 22, 2009 and October 1, 2009. A full...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of July 10th, 2009
Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, wrote this blog recently and I think as far as eCommerce blogs go, this title is the best so far this year “Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian & Telling Stories With Data”. Search Engine Journal shar...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of July 10th, 2009
Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, wrote this blog recently and I think as far as eCommerce blogs go, this title is the best so far this year “Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian & Telling Stories With Data”. Search Engine Journal shar...
Yahoo Ad Crawler Stresses Servers for Quality Score
Recently, our web server was brought down because it was hit a great deal from Yahoo's Ad crawler all at once. It seems that the crawler hit close to 200 landing pages, simultaneously, several hundred times, in response to a very large upl...
Yahoo Ad Crawler Stresses Servers for Quality Score
Recently, our web server was brought down because it was hit a great deal from Yahoo's Ad crawler all at once. It seems that the crawler hit close to 200 landing pages, simultaneously, several hundred times, in response to a very large upl...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of June 26th, 2009
By now most of us have heard the news of Michael Jackson’s death, what really surprised me was the way in which many of us found out about it…. Twitter. Twitter may be having a far greater impact than we may even know. This titl...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of June 26th, 2009
By now most of us have heard the news of Michael Jackson’s death, what really surprised me was the way in which many of us found out about it…. Twitter. Twitter may be having a far greater impact than we may even know. This titl...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of June 19th, 2009
I finally get to say it, “The Lakers are NBA Champions!” I did so much smack talking last year that I ended up losing my bet and the Lakers lost in the finals, so this year I decided to not say anything until it was all over. ...
Extreme Internet Marketing: A Crash Course from ShoeMoney
You too can be just like me with my 12 week program! How many times have you really heard that and laughed to yourself at the guy standing there in American flag baggy pants? Well, this time there is no laughing, no jokes (at least from me), i...
Extreme Internet Marketing: A Crash Course from ShoeMoney
You too can be just like me with my 12 week program! How many times have you really heard that and laughed to yourself at the guy standing there in American flag baggy pants? Well, this time there is no laughing, no jokes (at least from me), i...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of May 15th, 2009
Jeremy Schoemaker seems to be getting somewhere with his trademark infringement case against a Google employee. Search Engine Land has embedded the documents which show the Judge has ordered Schoemaker be given access to the AdWords account i...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of May 15th, 2009
Jeremy Schoemaker seems to be getting somewhere with his trademark infringement case against a Google employee. Search Engine Land has embedded the documents which show the Judge has ordered Schoemaker be given access to the AdWords account i...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of May 8th, 2009
Don’t forget Mother’s Day on Sunday! For now let's review the week in eCommerce: Speaking of Mom… Search Engine Guide recommends using the “Mom Test” if usability is a concern. Copyblogger is stra...
Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of May 8th, 2009
Don’t forget Mother’s Day on Sunday! For now let's review the week in eCommerce: Speaking of Mom… Search Engine Guide recommends using the “Mom Test” if usability is a concern. Copyblogger is stra...
Mobile Capabilities: Changing the Framework of Shopping
I was struck recently by a video I watched on Fora.tv, Google's Vic Gundotra: Mobile Phones as Answer Machines. In the video, Vic Gundotra describes how he was having lunch with a friend and his four year old daughter. His friend asked him a qu...
