Building a large online retail business
October 31, 2006
Today I saw a job posting from “Abe Books”:http://www.abebooks.com, a Victoria, BC, Canada based company that is the world’s largest online book marketplace with more than 80,000,000 new,used,rare,out of print books from more than 13,500 independent booksellers in 53 countries. This sparked an insight for me. If I want to build a large marketplace for a specific niche, they way to do that would be to build an instore pos/management application for that niche and tie that instore system into an online e-commerce site for that specific store, as well as a centralized marketplace that would allow consumers access to all the retailers in that niche. Obviously, details matter. One such detail is which niche to pick. Abe Books has chosen books (though I don’t know how they did/do it so far). Thinking about what value to provide the consumer and the retailer are both critical pieces.
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Marketing What I Know!
October 31, 2006
Today, reading an advert by Janet Swirtzer for her “How Experts Build Empires” series of programs for info-marketers, a number of things she had to say struck me as insightful.
First, everyone knows and has done something that someone else would like to know and be able to do. Many of those things people will pay money for. So, I can build a product and business around that thing if I can find those people and give them the value they want. She also notes that the market niche can be small if the interest and value is high. One anecdote was about a 8,000 person niche that generated over a million dollars in 46 weeks.
What I know – Payment Systems
October 29, 2006
Well, lately I’ve been thinking about what I know best and realized that I’ve been working with payment systems (credit cards and prepaid cards) for more than 17 years now. So, I’ll be blogging on a variety of topics in this area.
Everyone is familiar with Starbucks and their gift card (powered by ValueLink of First Data). It’s been an amazing success. In 2002, 7% of purchases were made with their prepaid card and more than 16 million prepaid cards have been activated. Of course, the Starbucks card is only useful at Starbucks.
There is a new style prepaid card coming on the market now. It’s found at www.ugcard.com. This new take on an old theme, emphasizes marketing and building sales in your business. Read more
