eCommerce Articles, Industry News & Trends | eCommerce, Marketing, Design Articles » Social Media

New PayPal Storefront Widget Beta by PayPal Labs

eCopt — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:55:21 +0000

A few weeks ago we posted about the new PayPal Labs program and widgets for Facebook and MySpace. Yesterday, PayPal officially launched their Storefront Widget Beta. These widgets allow users to embed virtual PayPal storefronts into blogs, sites, social profiles and anywhere else where HTML can be embedded in the code.

Basically, blog, site or profile shoppers select products or items from the widget to add into the shopping cart, then they checkout and pay using PayPal. The idea for storefront widgets was suggested by PayPal users as a way for them to sell easily from MySpace profiles, Facebook profiles and more (Note: At this time, the PayPal Storefront is not available for MySpace, you can get notified when it is by clicking here).
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Help Us Win MyBlogLog’s Problogger Contest, Join Our Community

eCopt — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:01:14 +0000

If you are a blogger who regularly uses MyBlogLog, you may have noticed a posting on their blog and site about a contest they recently started called, the MyBlogLog Problogger Contest. Their blog also featured a post about the contest which, in my opinion, does a better job explaining the details of the contest than the page on MBL. The MBL contest is for the bloggers who grow their communities on MBL the most from November 8th to the 30th, meaning the blogs with the most new community members will complete for the top prizes. Some of the prizes include a One Year Pro MyBlogLog Subscription and a $500.00 Yahoo Search Marketing Credit, among others.

We can’t promise that you’ll become a problogger, but we can get you started on the right path. Enter our ‘Become a Problogger Contest’ for a chance to win a prize package that will give you the TOOLS to help get you on the way to success. Good luck!

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Pronto.com Adds Product Buying Guides & Chance To Win $2000 in Products

eCopt — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:05:09 +0000

Pronto.com recently made a couple of big announcements regarding their comparison shopping engine and social shopping community. The first is the addition of brand new product buying guides into their social community. The new guides are supposed to compliment features that are already included in the social shopping sections. The other announcement involves a contest Pronto is having called the Holiday Shopping Contest where contestants have a chance to win $2,000 in products from Pronto.com.
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Social Advertising & Facebook: New Facebook Ad Network

eCopt — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:50:58 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years, you’ve most likely registered an account with or have heard of Facebook. If you haven’t heard of or used Facebook, you should know it’s basically a social networking site that was originally developed for college or university students. Now Facebook has grown far beyond just student users and now hold one of the top positions in their niche and continues to be one of the most visited and used sites in existence today.

Ok, now that the history lesson is out of the way, we can jump into the article topic, new Facebook Ads. On Tuesday, during the Facebook Social Advertising event (where more than 250 marketing and advertising executives gathered in New York), the MySpace killer unveiled their new ad system called Facebook Ads. The social advertising system will allow businesses and entrepreneurs to connect with a wide range of users and target advertising or media to the exact audiences the business needs to attract (it’s basically a BIG word of mouth system for businesses and also for users to find new things). The new Faccebook Ads are designed to show users new businesses, brands and products through their personal networks and the trusted referrals of their friends.
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Seasonal Linkbait, Holiday Promotions & Cool Halloween Ideas

eCopt — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:45:21 +0000

The holidays always remind me of all the unique marketing strategies eCommerce companies come up with for their specific holiday or event promotions, seasonal linkbait and other cool holiday specific ideas. We often report on eTail promotional efforts specifically related to seasons, holidays or events surrounding a time of celebration or remembrance. In September, for instance, we posted about how Walmart used Facebook and how PayPal used TheFind.com for their unique back-to-school promotional efforts.

Back-to-school season is over and it’s Halloween time now, so what better way to get into the spirit than to point out some of the trendy and unique ideas that other companies and eTailers are using to leverage linkers, social media and site traffic towards their seasonal campaigns or holiday promotions.
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Social Media Marketing Webinar: Featuring Neil Patel, Tomorrow On ElasticPath

eCopt — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:25:51 +0000

A heads up to all social media marketing fanatics! Tomorrow there is going to be a Webinar, featuring Neil Patel, on ElasticPath’s eCommerce blog.

Here’s the details and a link to register for the event. Space is limited, so sign up right now!

The Secret of Social Media Marketing for Online Retailers
Featuring Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT

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Shop.com Introduces New Facebook Application & Shopping Vine Blog

eCopt — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 17:54:12 +0000

Shop.com has recently introduced several new features to their shopping portal and platform including a new shopping lifestyle blog (The Shopping Vine), a Facebook shopping application and gift registries for multiple stores. Shop.com hopes the new features will give customers more ways to shop and exchange information Online.
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ShopLocal Goes Social By Adding Networking Capabilities

eCopt — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:20:37 +0000

ShopLocal recently bulked up their feature offering by adding in social community and networking capabilities for their users. The new social features include a profile page and the ability to search various product reviews, join community discussions on their Hot Deals and even track prices. The users profile can then be shared with the rest of the ShopLocal community.

Once a user has signed up for their free profile account, they simply login to begin personalizing their ShopLocal profile and personal shopping experience. Community members then use their account to share deals, promotions, rebates, coupons, reviews and more within the network of users. In addition, ShopLocal members can get Price Alerts that inform shoppers when products they are interested in are available at a price specified by the user.
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Pronto.com Becomes First Comparison Engine to Offer Social Shopping

eCopt — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:06:34 +0000

We have posted about Pronto several times before. If you are not already familiar with who they are, a good place to start getting to know them would be the interview we conducted with John Foley of Pronto. They also recently announced a partnership with ScanAlert that we covered. Lots going on over at Pronto.com, their team must be exhausted.

Today, Pronto.com not only has a new tagline, “Shopping Gone Social,” and logo but they also announced that they are now the first comparison shopping engine to enter the social shopping space with the launch of new community features that allow users to rate products, interact with other users, write reviews and gain insight from trusted peers and other like-minded shoppers.
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Lemonade Social Shopping & eCommerce for Everyone Goes Live

eCopt — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:32:27 +0000

Lemonade’s eCommerce for everyone, is a social shopping network, product recommendation engine, Online merchant marketplace and shopping widget creator that launched today. The South Norwalk, Conn company just unveiled the official press release called Lemonade Inc. Launches First Application on Facebook that Allows Users to Make Money after many months of testing. Lemonade is bringing back the old time lemonade stand with their own eCommerce shopping widgets for blogs, MySpace pages, Facebook profiles and more.

Users can create their own shopping widgets to include on their sites. The widgets display items that users choose to recommend from their social network pages. Once a user has created their widget, added items to recommend and add it to their profiles, Lemonade will share a portion of the revenue with the Lemonade widget user. When visitors to your profile page, blog or site take advantage of products and offers featured in your stand you get a commission on the sales. As soon as your account reaches the minimum balance you receive a PayPal payment from Lemonade.
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Walmart Uses Facebook For Back to School Shopping Promotion

eCopt — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:54:04 +0000

We have been seeing quite a bit lately surrounding Walmart’s new marketing efforts both Online and off (Consumer reviews and Site to Store program).

Walmart has started their own Facebook Group, called Roommate Style Match, for college students. The Facebook Group is meant to target college students for the upcoming back-to-school season. Walmart hopes that by promoting their products through Facebook’s social media site that it will help to bring in more business from younger consumers for this years school season and back-to-school shopping in the future.

According to a study conducted last year by the National Retail Federation, the average first-year college student spent $1,112.62, mainly on electronics and home furnishings.

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Buy.com’s New Facebook Auction Application: Garage Sale

eCopt — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:29:28 +0000

Buy.com introduced it’s new Facebook application for auction based sellers called Garage Sale. The announcement came a few days ago via the Buy.com Press Release. The new auction application is designed to let Facebook users run auctions and sell products from their business and social networking Facebook pages.

Garage Sale allows consumers to become personal online retailers using the backing of a major Internet company like Buy.com. With this embedded e-commerce capability, we see tremendous growth opportunities in providing the millions of users on business and social networks with an alternative to eBay and the ability to transform their personal profile pages beyond information-sharing.

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New Facebook Social Shopping Application by SecretPrices

eCopt — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:51:38 +0000

The new My Shopping application for Facebook has been getting a lot of attention lately and I felt compelled to at least mention it on our blog. I am one of the users who welcomes time saving applications for shopping purposes and we have also recently added SecretPrices to our Product Listing Guide, so really there is more than one reason for us to post about the new app.
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Canadian Shoppers More Likely To Use Social Media Before Buying

eCopt — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:53:08 +0000

Recently, we posted an article about our neighbors to the south and the new emerging market trend surrounding different age, race, gender and geographical demographics and their shopping habits. Today, we are going to write about a different demographic, our neighbors to the north.

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Product Price Comparisons, Bargain Deals & Social Shopping: How They Differ

eCopt — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:46:20 +0000

In the past, most average merchant sellers have had to rely solely on main stream search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, in order to get the kind of high-end exposure needed to drive large amounts of targeted traffic to an eCommerce enabled site. The recent buzz and overwhelming success surrounding eCommerce and selling online has led to many new merchant faces within major online niches and continues to grow with each passing day. The amount of small to mid-sized eTailers has tripled compared to past years and industry analysts don’t expect to see a change in that trend any time soon. Many of the larger, fortune 500 sellers will not be affected as much as the mom and pop sellers since the fortune 500’s tend to rely more on brand recognition and existing customers to continue growing their companies.

The extreme saturation within traditional search engines has made it difficult for many eCommerce start-ups to compete fairly within a given niche. These results are evident, especially if you are one of those merchants who are finding it more difficult to increase sales now than in past years, despite making few changes within your marketing strategy. This continuous growth contributes to an already over saturated, highly competitive marketplace to list the products you hope to be found by potential buyers who shop using traditional search engines. The chances that large amounts of buyers will find new eCommerce stores right away in saturated search results is slim and that’s why merchants shouldn’t rely solely on listing their stores in traditional search engines, expecting that one tactic to propel their business to the next level (although it can and I have seen it happen on many different occasions, just don’t count on it right away). Instead, post your catalog on alternative product search engines such as Google Product Search, Yahoo Shopping, Pricegrabber, Shopping.com, Shopzilla and many more.

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eCommerce Articles, Industry News & Trends | eCommerce, Marketing, Design Articles » Social Media

New PayPal Storefront Widget Beta by PayPal Labs

Help Us Win MyBlogLog’s Problogger Contest, Join Our Community

Pronto.com Adds Product Buying Guides & Chance To Win $2000 in Products

Social Advertising & Facebook: New Facebook Ad Network

Seasonal Linkbait, Holiday Promotions & Cool Halloween Ideas

Social Media Marketing Webinar: Featuring Neil Patel, Tomorrow On ElasticPath

Shop.com Introduces New Facebook Application & Shopping Vine Blog

ShopLocal Goes Social By Adding Networking Capabilities

Pronto.com Becomes First Comparison Engine to Offer Social Shopping

Lemonade Social Shopping & eCommerce for Everyone Goes Live

Walmart Uses Facebook For Back to School Shopping Promotion

Buy.com’s New Facebook Auction Application: Garage Sale

New Facebook Social Shopping Application by SecretPrices

Canadian Shoppers More Likely To Use Social Media Before Buying

Product Price Comparisons, Bargain Deals & Social Shopping: How They Differ

Alternative Product Search Engines Overview: