PlumberSurplus.com, one of the top Online retailers of 2007, has recently launched a brand new eCommerce and entrepreneurship blog dedicated to sharing their experiences, lessons and insights within the eCommerce space during their time selling Online.

I think the idea of retailers sharing their experiences with the rest of the space is fantastic and could really shed some light on many of the things that work and some that don’t. It’s a great way to dispel myths, gain insights into real world experience and an opportunity to learn from someone who knows many of the steps needed to reach that ultimate goal of entrepreneur success. It reminds me of our Store Spotlight series with some of the top 100 retailers. In fact, not too long ago we conducted an in depth interview with Zach about some of the things that have led up to PlumberSurplus’ success.

Today Kriyari, Inc., a Web 2.0 storefront network creator, launched their latest Online retail project, a unique personalized shopping service, called iStorez. Earlier this week I was able to get together with Kriyari’s CEO, Anand Jagannathan, to discuss iStorez in more detail. In addition, I took advantage of the special site launch preview and went through the steps necessary to create and publish my own personal storefront to shop from on iStorez.

The concept behind the newly launched site is wonderful and see all kinds of potential for an “opt-in, opt-out” shopping service like this within the Online selling space, for both merchants and shoppers, but especially for retailers who already run regular email marketing campaigns.

iStorez already has some biggest names in eCommerce participating in their unique shopping experience, including many of the hottest 100 retailers. With strategic partnerships, innovative features and a unique concept to create a more personalized shopping experience, it won’t be long before iStorez becomes a regular destination for today’s most savvy Online consumers. It’s certainly found a permanent home in my shopping bookmarks.

Practial Ecommerce (PE) and Yahoo Small Business have teamed up for an excellent offer going on right now where Yahoo Store merchants can get a full one year subscription to Practical Ecommerce’s annual print magazine, complete with all 6 issues for FREE (magazine printed bi-monthly). Yes, I said FREE for a year compliments of Yahoo. This is a great way for PE to gain new reader subscriptions to their industry leading eCommerce magazine, it also helps many of Yahoo’s small to medium-sized merchants gain insights into the world of eCommerce and selling Online.

PE has three main ways of distributing information to their readers; one is the print magazine previously mentioned, they also offer an Online version of the magazine through their blog, podcasts, forums and regular columns and finally they send out a regular newsletter (EcommerceNotes) with tips and resources to help more merchants on their journey to Online selling success. PE magazine, site, blog, forums and newsletter contains unique eCommerce related features, tool, interviews, site profiles, professionals and many recurring departments, such as search engine optimization, email marketing, customer conversion, legal issues, pay per click advertising and much more.

Time again for yet another eCommerce Optimization BIG Thanks shout out to this weeks blog supporters. We do this regularly to personally reach out and thank (through links and text snippets) other bloggers, authors and sites that either mention us, mention our content, link to us or add us to their blogroll. I really like the wide variety of sites featured in our BIG Thanks articles, including foreign language blogs. It shows that our content reaches a lot of different audiences and that we cover a wide range of topics that hit home within many of the different communities surrounding eCommerce and marketing Online.

To catch up on past BIG Thanks articles simply visit Our Site News section.

I came upon an interesting new service for Online sellers the other day and I wanted to share it with all our readers as an eCommerce Idea article. It’s really unique, useful and right in line with current eCommerce trends.

Before we get into the new service I wanted to briefly mention our last eCommerce Ideas article on Using Creative Linkbait and Engaging Customers At The Same Time. It featured another really creative eCommerce idea that at least one merchant is using. This idea article has the same concept, in that it’s a unique or creative idea that eCommerce merchants can use to improve or enhance their stores, however it’s not related to linkbait and customer features as much as it is related to eCommerce video content and store usability. Same concept, different topic basically.

Friday again already, wow. Can’t believe how fast this week went by for me. If you’re a regular reader here, you know about our BIG Thanks articles. For those of you who are not already familiar with the series, it’s basically a way for us to personally thank and link to sites, blogs and authors who have supported us by either adding our blog to their blogroll, linking to one of our articles or mentioning us within content.

To read past BIG Thanks articles, simply visit Our Site News and use the pagination at the bottom.

Here’s this weeks lineup in no particular order…

Caught this announcement on the Google Checkout Blog yesterday and it also appeared on Search Engine Land today. It looks as though Google has added another Trends tool to their arsenal that caters to eCommerce sellers, shoppers and even eTail professionals and search engine marketers.

The new eCommerce trends tool is called Google Checkout Trends. The tool is similar to Google Web Search Trends, except that the Checkout Trends tool only aggregates useful sales data from Google Checkout merchants and charts the data on an easy to use, easy to read interface for the user to see. Basically, it shows users important trend data about who is buying and selling what from Checkout.

It’s always interesting to see the new and innovative ways that Online retailers are coming up with to generate buzz, links and customer interaction on their eCommerce sites in an attempt to boost rankings, visitors, conversions, average orders or sales. Recently, I came across a great example of one retailer who uses creative ideas to generate new links and engages customers at the same time.

I am pleased to announce the release of a new featured guide here on eCommerce Optimization. The guide features a categorized listing of popular local search engines and business portals that can be used by merchants to list, display and syndicate their business information or corporate data into different local/business listing services including Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local, Windows Live Local, SuperPages, Dex, MapQuest, Yelp and more.

Categories for the different business portals include local search engines, yellow pages, local meta crawlers, business data providers and even local social networks.

If you’re like any other person on Earth you have probably subscribed to one or more print catalogs in the past and currently receive them via your mailbox each month. Personally, I receive about 3 -4 paper catalogs each month from companies including Cabelas, Land’s End, Victoria Secret, Business 2.0 and many even a few more like the Costco business catalog or my update catalogs from Dell, HP, T-Mobile and more.