Shopping.com Partners with Bing Shopping

September 28, 2011 0 Comments

It appears that another shopping engine is going to utilizing Shopping.com for their results. Bing Shopping has just announced a partnership with Shopping.com to power their prime results. This means that if you advertise on shopping.com, then you will also end up on Bing shopping. This also means that advertisers lose another free site to the paid model. Here is the email that I just received a couple of minutes ago.

Dear Grayson

Shopping.com is excited to announce our new partnership with Bing Shopping where we will power highly visible offers throughout Bing Shopping search result and product pages. As a Shopping.com merchant, you will immediately receive the benefits of these highly targeted featured placements across Bing Shopping.

Our new partnership will allow you to leverage your existing Shopping.com feed to efficiently reach 97MM unique visitors per month on Bing – an industry leading shopping portal. No additional effort on your part is required.

We encourage you to leverage this program to its fullest extent by sending your entire product catalog to Bing Shopping through Shopping.com.

We are excited to add Bing Shopping to our list of premier publishers that make up the Shopping.com Ad Commerce Network. You can expect to see your products in these placements beginning in early October.

View the Bing Merchant FAQ for more details on the program.

Please contact our merchant support team if you have further questions about this new partnership.

Sincerely,
Shopping.com Merchant Services

What do you think of this partnership? Does this just mean that the large engines will be powering everything later down the road?

How the Netflix Split Will Affect You

September 27, 2011 0 Comments

This is a guest post by August Drilling. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Earlier this week, Netflix announced that it was splitting its instant streaming and DVD-by-mail services into two separate companies: streaming would be called Netflix and DVD rental would be called Qwikster.

In an email that was sent out to existing Netflix members and ones who had left the service, CEO Reed Hasting laid out the reasoning for the split. In essence, he concluded that the two services had diverging customer bases, each requiring the marketing of different benefits. The services would have to split in order to focus on core competencies, target different market segments, and ultimately grow.

Admittedly, the CEO also pointed out that because each company would have a different website, there will be zero integration between the services. This requires the user to set up two different accounts, manage two queues, and rate movies twice. Management did foresee these issues and were transparent and upfront with customers about them. But I think they failed to realize how the splitting of the companies would destroy the key convenience of the original Netflix.

People loved the original Netflix service because it had everything. People didn’t love it simply because of streaming. I mean, really, finding a website that illegal streams movies is just about as easy as loading a movie on Netflix. Plus, Netflix isn’t the only legal streaming site: Hulu and every major TV channel website offer streaming of popular shows.

What was great about Netflix is how you could find any movie you wanted to watch. You may have even lucked out if you found that you could stream it instantly to your computer or video game console. But, if it wasn’t available to stream, you would just have to wait a few quick days for the DVD to be delivered in the bright red envelope. A few days aren’t too much to ask and people are still willing to wait if they want to see the movie. The key convenience was that everything – both DVD-by-mail and Instant streaming – was all in one place.

Now customers have a complicated situation. If they want both services they have to manage two different accounts. They have to manually cross-check both sites to make sure the movie they are about to add to their queue isn’t available to stream. The convenience has been completely stripped away.

To worsen the situation, Netflix’s partnership with Starz for streaming content expires in February and Starz has said they have no plans of renewing the contract. This will substantially diminish the breadth of the Instant catalog. If Netflix doesn’t find a way to increase what is available, DVD-by-mail rentals could increase in popularity again.

Who knows how this will turn out. If rumblings and grumblings across the Internet are any sign, it doesn’t really look good for Netflix or Qwikster.

August Drilling works in the marketing department at CliqStudios.com, the online supplier of kitchen cabinets including oak kitchen cabinets, and is a blogger, social media enthusiast, and Apple aficionado.

Netflix Renames their DVD Service to Qwikster

September 19, 2011 0 Comments

I just got an email this morning as I am sure that everyone that uses Netflix got with the news of them changing the name and creating a new website for their DVD service. Netflix has decided to create a new website separate from netflix.com that will house the DVD operations. The name of the website and division is going to be Qwikster. This is to indicate fast shipping times for DVD’s. This appears to be a move that will allow them to justify the separation of services that they announced earlier in the year. One key note is that qwikster and netflix will not be integrated, so you will have to search both sites for a movie to watch. I see this as a big issue for customers as they want more convenience, not less. After reading the email and blog post from Netflix, I noticed that there are already over 5,600 comments and counting. Most of the comments are negative, but some are positive. Also, Netflix plans to add Video games to their DVD option for a surcharge just like Blu-Ray. This could make a good amount of customers happy as they have been clamoring for it for some time now. If you have not received the email, here it is.

Dear Grayson,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.

Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.

What do you think of these changes with Netflix? It appears they are on saving mode after a huge fallout from their stocks and customer backlash. Could this be the tipping point for Netflix customers?

California and Amazon Strike a Possible Sales Tax Deal

September 13, 2011 0 Comments

After some back and forth fighting as in any legislative process, it appears that Amazon and California have struck a possible deal in regards to sales tax collection. California passed a law earlier this year that required all online retailers to collect sales tax if they had a presence in the state, including affiliates. This prompted Amazon and many other retailers to cut ties with their affiliates in effort to skirt the sales tax collection process. This new bill that was passed by California legislators allows Amazon and other retailers another year or so to conduct business without having to deal with sales tax collection. The bill will still have to be signed into law by the governor, but at least it appears it is a step forward.

As a previous online retailers, I know that California has one of the most insane tax collection processes and without something streamlined, it would probably put most companies out of business due to all of the extra work. I chose the same as Amazon in regards to cutting affiliates. It was easier on the business and a lot easier on me. As part of this bill, Amazon is required to lobby for a federal bill requiring sales tax collection for states as long as they are part of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project. This project makes it easier for companies to collect and remit sales tax. Amazon also indicated that it will continue with the building of distribution centers in California and hiring around 7,000 employees.

The good thing for affiliates is that if this bill is signed into law, they might be able to rejoin the Amazon affiliate program and start making money again. This could be big for many large affiliates that lost around 40% of their revenue when Amazon cut ties with them. This will also bring more money into California as when you make more money, you pay more taxes. While I applaud California working with Amazon, I think the solution to this stupid problem is to just create a streamlined online sales tax process that will easily allow retailers to collect and remit sales tax for each state without any added work. It could be a potential solution, but many times greed gets in the way of this process. If individual states want to get sales tax from online retailers, they might want to think about playing this game.

Looking for NewEggMall.com? Good Luck Finding it……

September 12, 2011 0 Comments

Are you still looking for NewEggMall.com? If you are, you might want to stop now as NewEggMall.com has been shut down for quite some time. You can’t even go to the url any longer. It appears that NewEgg realized that getting into the marketplace industry is harder than they thought. With a sub-par marketplace, they tried to compete with the likes of Amazon and Buy.com, but didn’t contemplate the intricacies of the proper marketplace procedures. If you plan on competing with the best third party marketplaces, then you better invest the time and money to properly set it up. This is why NewEgg Mall didn’t succeed.

Many third party sellers did not want to join the “Mall” because NewEgg refused to take responsibility for any issues that might arise while selling on their platform. They seemed more content on just providing the visitors and not worrying about dealing with the issues that come with bringing sellers and buyers together. Why do you think Amazon invests so heavily in customer service for all of their customers? You have a happy customer, they are more likely to come back and shop with you. While I hate to see websites shut down, it comes to no surprise due to the lack of features and support. From my original review that I put out when NewEggMall.com first came out, you can see that I was not a fan of their site or their methods.

So, to all the people still looking for NewEggMall.com, please take this warning that you will not find it. It has been put out of its misery. If you still want good electronics and good prices, then just shop at NewEgg.com. They still provide a great selection and great customer service.

iMark Interactive