Category: ecommerce

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article ecommerce emarketing

How to use Popup domination, aweber or mailchimp for mailing

BIG UPDATE : April 2012 , My own company acquires a competitor of Popup Domination, we are welcome to check it : http://www.wpsubscribers.com , it’s a good alternative to consider to build your mailing list with wordpress

What all these names ? it’s email marketing tools. to create mailing list and campaigns and send your crap to your visitor. I m not very fond of these tools but I don’t want to spam them, I want to notify them, and it is all the difference.
from some friends and contact, I have been recommanded 2 tools to power the mailing list :

Aweber logo

http://www.aweber.com or http://www.mailchimp.com

I selected mailchimp, because the monkey was fun :) , it is not only the reason, there is a free plan, and I have heard of a bug with aweber concerning the post and validation message to be in english only, which will not be suitable with my users database. Also because they have a free app for iPhone and the trend of popularity of their service seem to be pretty good

If you check at the popularity of the 2 services with Alexa

In order to get new subscribers or notify existing customers, I choosed this plugin for wordpress :

Popup Domination plugin which is supposed to work well with wordpress and compatible with either aweber or chimpmail as a backend.

stay tuned, you should see the popup to try it in a few seconds if you didn’t see it already


And now, the new reference is really WPSubscribers, because it is more complete and contains more methods, and because I can make sure development includes new requirement and suggestions for bloggers and users

logo of WPSubscribers

 

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ecommerce emarketing software review

Best sites to download WordPress templates catalog

I need a  top of the art wordpress templates for my new web site, which has a very good traffic ( http://www.obviousidea.com ) , it is a web site where different products will be available in the showcase.
so it is products / software oriented, with the need to display differents category ( online web apps, windows software and application, photo oriented products, but also iPhone & iPad apps )

the purpose of this post is to select and list the best web site to find the WordPress template of your dream :


http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes.php
good old web site providing templates and model for popular CMS, it is not limited or specialized to WordPress, but a website I know since a few years already. Price starts around 50$ and you may have an option to have someone installing it for you.

http://www.rockettheme.com/wordpress
Suggested by a friend when I asked by twitter and facebook for a suggestion list of references. I didn’t navigate too much, but worth to be listed ( Price starts from 50$ )

they have also phpBB theme, but finally, due to the lack of feedback for phpBB SEO mod and the possibility to add facebook connect to a phpBB3 forum, I prefered to invest a few $$ and I purchased a Vbulletin forum :  http://forum.obviousidea.com . But.. soon I will probably look for provider for a Vbulletin style / interface / theme / templates , whatever how they call it.


http://www.woothemes.com/

Woothemes is specialized into WordPress templates, with very smart business prices, ( buy 1 , get 3 free ), also with membership subscription. I like the woothemes website designs, but I didn’t search too much yet in their template database. Nevertheless, I know it is very popular provider for WordPress as their logo ( bottom right of live templates ) is visible in a lot of popular blogs.

and the best one ( on my humble opinion ) is :

http://themeforest.net/

I like the quality of the templates, not limited to offer a good look but also with nice features to make your daily post easier to manager, it is definitly the one I m looking first.
I bought some code from them already at http://codecanyon.net/
it works with a deposit system, so you can make a deposit and use the credit for differents items ( not only the templates )

If you have any suggestions for more web site like this, please share in comments

*** MORE to be updated ***

http://www.wordpressthemes.com/
http://www.blogohblog.com/

http://www.wpthemegenerator.com?prd=brainfight

 

 

 

Categories
article ecommerce emarketing

OpenCandy.com .. Usual story of the small player policy, short-term and unflexible…

I was mentionning OpenCandy in a post a few hours ago about some providers to make money from your traffic

Actually I have register just after the blog post, because I know the company by reputation, and from other publishers feedback.

Actually, indeed, I don’t have the VSO-Software huge traffic which was letting me receive a lot of request for sponsor program. I had to decline them most of time because of the company policy and because VSO didn’t need the extra money – yet .
For the moment, I don’t have yet my own new popular software, only a cool context menu Photo Uploader For Facebook software, still in a beta stage ( but stable ) that I need to promote. In the same time, I have other software under development, and I work as a consultant for both software publishers ( and some have a very good traffic and ranking ) and some other software relative company ( download , reviews, paiment provider etc… )
It means, I m far to be a beginner in this industry even if today I don’t have my own product running.

After my appliance for a OpenCandy account, I got a personal email, and a few exchanges have been completed by email… final result, they refused to open an account , as they require 100k download a month. We are back to the “stupid” policy I could have experienced with big companies ( I don’t tell the name but look in the top 5 search engines, or top 5 worldwide download portal ), where the policy of a company doesn’t allow any flexibility.

Too bad, as I m feeling as a slut needing to beg to have access to the account I would be able to recommand to some other publishers… these publishers which have already enough money to not have to consider another sponsor program. really, I m not sure it is the best strategy to adopt. I understand their point of view, but I will keep a quite angry feeling about them, sure.. they said I could read the SDK… fuck…
I will eat real candies.. it will make me feel better :)

Categories
ecommerce emarketing

How to get some money from your download traffic ?

A long awaited post I would like to make as good and as complete as possible.

for now, I will list a few providers you could look at, which won’t require any contract ( unlike Microsoft Bing toolbar, Google toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar or Ask Toolbar program )

– http://www.Conduit.com – a very popular toolbar provider, easy to setup , easy to try to check how many of your users would accept to have a toolbar or a promotion software bundled with your own product… BUT … the revenue from this provider is very low and with a lot of conditions to be paid. I recommand to use it to learn, but if you are not satisfy with the revenue, you can try another program.

– OpenCandy – a popular platform to suggest other publishers during your setup installation script. I didn’t try it personally ,but it is a well known and respected publisher

– a new one I just found – AfterDownload:
http://www.afterdownload.com

– Later, I would check out Predictad

Categories
article ecommerce emarketing

Reading list for marketers – Stanford SMM 2010 + mine

I was luckly to participate to the Strategic marketing management class in Stanford GSB in 2010. and from this program I discovered a lot of references from various books. Because a lot of participants were interesting in such reading information, a reading list has been compiled by Stanford faculties. In the same time, I m adding some books I have found potentially interesting or suggested by other participants of the program. Unfornutly I didn’t read all of them, and I can’t make a review of each book for the moment.

Books recommended by BABA SHIV

Digital Marketing

Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder
Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

Suggested by JENNIFER AAKER

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change

Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t

We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Suggested by Christian Wheeler

Influence: Science and Practice

Suggested by Dan Thomas Author of

Business Sense: Exercising Management’s Five Freedoms

Books about Positioning and Influence

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Influence: Science and Practice

You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard: Reach the First Brain to Communicate in Business and in Life

Words That Change Minds: Mastering the Language of Influence 2nd edition

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less

Books about Problem Solving

Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents and Everyone Who Cares About Education

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Unfolding the Napkin

Books about Business Models

The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer series)

Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal

Books about Design Thinking

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage

Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World

Books about Digital Marketing

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

Digital Marketing—Newsletters and Blogs – Written and compiled by Dan Thomas

There are literally hundreds of Electronic Newsletters and Blogs devoted to Digital Marketing. Here are just a few that may be useful to you, depending on your interests and type of business.

www.emarketer.com eMarketer provides a data rich update on developments in the use of emarketing tools. The company’s primary business is to sell an electronic database of marketing data on digital marketing to companies. If I remember correctly, it is about $30,000 per year.

www.mashable.com Mashable is the daily news feed about developments in the Digital Marketing world. It covers a wide range of topics and is a source that the people in the industry follow.

www.marketingsherpa.com Marketing Sherpa was one of the early entries in the field. They have a strong reputation and a broad set of resources on their web site. They do have a focus on B2B marketing.

www.marketo.com Marketo focuses on B2B applications for Digital Marketing. They have a marketing automation solution they sell. They also have a very good series of webinars that cover B2B topics.

www.marketingprofs.com Marketing profs started out as a group of marketing professors. It seems to have been going through a major transformation in the last year. The blog, however, is quite interesting, so you may want to take a look at it.

www.wdfm.com Larry Chase’s Web Digest for Marketers often has interesting articles and links to more complete data.

Categories
article ecommerce emarketing

Avangate E-commerce reseller and Affiliate platform for software publishers

Avangate is a e-commerce platform based in Europe and with Offices in USA and Asia. They provide solution for software publishers to register the products, so basically it is like a bank service but specialized in the software market. This way you can focus on the product and no waste any time to build a shopping cart, customer back office and database.
You will be able to support a lot of different paiment methods :

Visa , Mastercard, American Express, Paypal , Wire Transfer, Alipay ( Chinese method ), Solo , Trialpay .. all in one.

You can open a publisher account easily and it’s free, but you need to have a web site already done

Open Avangate publisher account

If you have any question please feel free to ask any question about it, I have worked with them as a publisher for VSO and as a consultant for other companies.