Super Mario 3, World 4
If you remember World 4 from Super Mario 3 than Big.com may seem a little familiar to you - it’s just a search engine with extremely large text.
It’s kind of a cool idea for a search engine since I would think it would be popular with people with bad eyesight and older people but I did a few searches on it and the relevancy was terrible - wait, I just noticed that there is an “Ask” logo at the bottom - that explains it.
Internet Retailer 2006
We just got back from Internet Retailer 2006 in Chicago and I highly recommend it for any internet retailer. It was a lot different than any show I have ever been to because it focused not only on marketing, but on inventory management, customer service, etc.
One thing that I wish they talked about more is search engine marketing - I didn’t hear one speaker actually talk about search engine marketing which struck me as a bit odd since that is such a crucial component of internet retail.
Cameron observed, and I agree, that the information at the show was great but it became obvious to us just how new this industry is. It really seems like there are no industry standards yet for things like measuring customer service, international merchandising, marketing strategy, etc. I am more excited about the direction of the industry now than I have ever been.
I saw two Utah companies speak - Overstock.com and Backcountry.com. They both gave very good presentations. If you are considering a vertical niche strategy I highly recommend that you find a chance to hear John Bresee from Backcountry.com speak.
As a side-note I fell in love with Chicago - it was a fun, exciting, clean city. We saw The Blue Man Group, went to a Whitesox game and ate a ton of good food - I’m already planning my next trip in my head.
China’s Protectionist Policy
Almost all internet retailers will, at some point, have to deal with a Chinese manufacturer. In corresponding with a trading company in Hong Kong recently I learned something interesting about China - they heavily tax imports (17% VAT) and basically do nothing with exports - I always thought that our import duties were expensive here in the US - I guess I shouldn’t complain.
What really bothers me, though, is that this VAT (value added tax) is levied even if products are being sent back into China because they are faulty. So if a Chinese supplier sends you $100K worth of merchandise (their cost) and you have to return $50K of it you will lose an additional $8,500 at the border. Good luck getting a Chinese manufacturer to pay it.
That’s how China’s protectionist policy can hurt me, but it is also detrimental to Chinese citizens. China has one of the fastest growing economies in the world right now and potentially the largest. Eventually China won’t be an impoverished nation - they will continue to be a commercial powerhouse and wages will go up. At that point if they cannot freely trade with lower-wage countries they will have to live with economic inefficiencies that will keep their standard of living artificially low.
Governments should promote free trade and stay out of the picture as much as they can - I recognize that some grading, quality control, safety precautions may have to be imposed by the government, but in the long run non-essential protectionist trade policies will only hurt the citizens they are designed to help.
Spam Karma 2
A few weeks ago I started getting hit by comment spam - hard. I was getting about 100 PPC comments a day (the other PPC - porn, pills and casinos). I realized after a few days that I couldn’t keep approving all of my comments by hand.
So I looked around for a good comment spam filter and found Spam Karma 2. At first I wasn’t that impressed with Spam Karma 2 because it was filtering about 80% of my comment spam and approving the other 20% - I temporarily turned it off, but then after looking at some of the options I realized that I could make it more aggressive. Since setting it as a very aggressive spam filter I haven’t had one spam comment approved and I also haven’t had one legitimate comment filtered - I couldn’t be happier.
I’m not sure exactly how Spam Karma works but I think that it looks at a variety of factors such as links, common spam words, ip addresses, etc. to assign a “karma score” to each comment. It was really easy to install with Wordpress and it is probably saving me at least an hour a week.