The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Online Revenue News relates an interesting case study on why now is a great time to convert a popular, parked domain name into a retail business with an Amazon aStore.

The aStore model allows you to setup a site with any number of products or categories of products from Amazon;s inventory. There’s lots of room to add a creative touch with customization including colors, links, and sections that are displayed.

You can create an aStore in as little as 5-10 minutes. In this case, the stores are:

* GPSOnline.net - A GPS Superstore
* WCWineCellars.com - Wine Cellars & Wine Accessories
* MamasGiftBaskets.com - A Great Selection of Gift Baskets Online

It would be interesting if Amazon allowed the actual domain name instead of having to 301 redirect the name or implement them in a frame.

Speaking of Amazon, the world’s largest Web retailer launched Askville.com, an information-sharing Web site where users can ask questions and answer queries from others, today.

The site, open to all of its customers, has been in beta testing since December 2006 and has already been open to a few users, Amazon said. Similar services are offered by Yahoo Inc’s Answers and other Web sites such as AnswerBank. Google Inc also had an “Answers” section, which has been discontinued.

Does Amazon know for sure that I’m a search marketer who might be interested in buying ads for clients on Amazon product pages, or is it just the fact that I’ve purchased The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords in the past, or more recently, Shane Atchison and Jason Burby’s Actionable Web Analytics?

In either case, instead of  being cross-sold a robust espresso maker to help me manage those complex PPC campaigns long into the night, Amazon is inviting me to go down to the River.  ClickRiver to be precise.

Dear Larry,

As an Amazon.com customer who purchased Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, we think you’ll be interested in a new program that lets you extend your pay-per-click marketing efforts to the tens of millions of customers per month that have made Amazon.com the leading online marketplace.

Clickriver Ads, offered by A9.com, works just like the sponsored link programs of the major search engines. You bid on the keywords you want, and pay only for actual clicks to your own web site. Your sponsored links appear both on Amazon.com’s search results pages and product detail pages.

What differentiates the Clickriver program is the audience. Customers who visit Amazon.com aren’t in search mode. They’re in shopping mode - the best time to introduce them to your product or service. That’s why we think Clickriver is the perfect way to extend your marketing reach.

Visit Clickriver.com to sign up now; you can have your sponsored link up and working for you in minutes. Registration is free, so it’s a zero risk proposition, and we think you’ll be very pleased with the results.

Next, they’ll be suggesting that those Who Purchased ClickRiver Search Advertising were also interested in Yahoo! Sponsored Search or perhaps Google AdWords. Hey, interested in a good used Google Advertising campaign?

Ka-ching, ka-ching! Amazon is rolling out a new web service for online payments which will compete with PayPal and Google Checkout. The new program is an extension of the existing Amazon Payments, which allows third parties selling items on Amazon’s extended network to receive payments from buyers.
For the time being, users will be redirected to Amazon’s servers to complete the payment and then returned to the shopping site. PayPal’s integrated solution currently allows users to remain on the original ecommerce site, an attractive feature for larger partners. The new service will also allow sites to use Amazon to manage payments between users, and receive confirmation of transactions. This seems particularly useful for the new crop of online money management services.

Amazon.com Inc. plans to launch a digital music store later this year that will sell all songs without antipiracy technology, creating a rival to Apple Inc.’s iTunes store.The Seattle online retailer said its music store will have “millions of songs” in the MP3 format without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software, which prevents consumers from freely copying and transfering their music among a variety of devices.

Amazon said the store will launch with music from EMI Group PLC, which said last month it would allow Apple and others to sell its music without copy protection.

Amazon.com is now offering RSS feeds of its daily “Gold Box” special offers. Subscribe and get the money-saving value of daily deals in your favorite news reader or live feed page.The A-Team has also announced another new service coming soon: “Amazon Unbox on TiVo.”

Now, in addition to PCs and portable devices, movies and television shows will be available to download directly to a customerís TiVo box for playback on their television set. This is the first service that uniquely allows for downloadable broadband video to be integrated with programming recorded from TV so the consumer can easily navigate all viewing optionsÖ Customers can purchase television episodes for $1.99, purchase most movies for between $9.99 and $14.99, or rent movies starting at $1.99. As an added bonus, all purchased videos are automatically stored in each customerís ìYour Media Libraryî at Amazon.com for future access and download.

The 2006 holiday season was Amazon.com’s “best ever,” peaking with more than four million orders placed on Dec. 11, the Web retailer said.

During its 12th holiday season, Amazon said that it had shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines around the world. At its peak, the retailer sent out more than 3.4 million units in a single day. Read the rest of this entry »

Amazon.com was disrupted for about 15 minutes, starting at about 2 p.m. EST Thanksgiving day, as the retailer offered Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console to the first 1,000 customers for $100, $200 below the regular retail price.The Xbox sold out in 29 seconds, Amazon also sold out of discounted Mongoose mountain bikes, Barbie dolls and Amazon Prime memberships with $100 gift certificates in about 15 minutes.

Speaking of Cyber Monday, the first Monday following Thanksgiving, a gaggle of deals and coupons can be found at CyberMonday.com