Our good friend Amber Chand of the Women’s Peace Collection forwarded us this article from Mashable about maximizing revenue in your online store during the holidays. The article is full of good tips to take on matters ranging from quality control to security to promotions. Well worth the read for anyone in the e-commerce business.
Read the entire article here.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
When you think of online destinations for professional purposes, social networking sites tailored toward business users — like LinkedIn — probably come to mind.
Savvy small business professionals will find, however, that a crop of new startups offer them access to fresh technologies that help with professional networking, research, influence and community building.
While you’ve likely never heard of the startups listed below, each is gaining traction from early adopter audiences and is building consumer-facing products easily applied to common small business tasks. Some, especially Stipple and Marginize, could even help improve traffic to your site and engage visitors longer with more compelling reasons to stay put.
If your a small business owner who has not taken the time to set up their Google Places account – or think that you have all of their local search listings covered with Yelp, Trip Advisor and Citysearch – think again. Amir Efrati of the Wall Street Journal wrote a great piece today suggesting that Google gives it’s own content preferential treatment over others…
Read the full article at: Rivals Say Google Plays Favorites
Store shines on N. Street
By David Pepose, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Updated: 12/13/2010 11:08:30 AM EST
PITTSFIELD — After more than 30 years in New York City’s Diamond District, Herman Rotenberg decided Pittsfield was a match made in heaven for his store, Unusual Wedding Rings & More.
“We’re going back to our roots,” Rotenberg said. Rotenberg’s family had a second home in Lee for years, and his father-in-law was born in Pittsfield 93 years ago.
“It was time to leave the city for a new way of life,” he said.
That new way of life is slower, more friendly and — if business goes the way he thinks — lucrative for the Crawford Square-based operation.
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This great article on internet marketing was referred to me by my good friend, Don Dion – master at making money from the internet if there ever was one. Don just wrote a book with his daughter Carolyn about his other area of expertise … trading ETFs. You can check it out here: The Ultimate Guide to Trading ETFs.
7 Pay-Per-Click Mistakes to Avoid
By DAVID H. FREEDMAN
A few days ago, I described how a stay-at-home mom named Amy Gottesman built a six-figure party-entertainment business largely via the effective use of Google AdWords and other pay-per-click advertising services. These services allow a company to bid on certain keywords and phrases, and if the bid is high enough a short ad from the company will appear alongside the search results of anyone typing those words into a search engine and on some other Web sites. The business then pays the bid price — it can be anywhere from pennies to more than a thousand dollars depending on the competition for those words — every time someone clicks on the ad.
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The Berkshire County Chamber of Commerce has designated the week of December 4-11, 2010 as Buy in the Berkshires Week. Participating local businesses are offering great specials including the Freight Yard Pub’s offer of additional $$$’s added onto gift certificates purchased during the week. Click here to download the flier listing all participants and their offers.
