Tạp trí Internet Marketing Số 24 - JULY 2013

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IMPORT FROM CHINA LIKE A PRO

CRAIG FORD
>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE
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INTERNET UPDATE

STATE OF THE INTERNET
In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine our editor Greg Cassar cover’s the facts and provides
expert commentary on what are the big plays that have recently happened online and how they
affect you.
Google Changes the eCommerce Game with Dynamic Remarketing

choose from that you can customize to reflect the
design elements of your brand.”

Dynamic Remarketing is a remarketing technology
and methodology where the site visitor is shown
banner ads as they navigate around the web for the
exact products that they viewed on the eCommerce
store but did not purchase.

How is works is that Google will pull the product
images and descriptions from your Google Merchant
Center feed to automatically place the relevant
product information on the banner ads for your site
visitors when they leave your site.
This new remarketing feature from Google will make
Dynamic Remarketing accessible to eCommerce
stores of all sizes.

Examples of Google Dynamic Remarketing Ads

I remember first seeing Dynamic Remarketing demonstrated at a Yahoo site visit about 2 years ago now,
and was blown away by it’s relevance and targeting
and knew straight away the impact it would have on
ROI.
Once becoming aware of it I then started to see it
popping up when navigating the web from big players such as Zappos etc.
Google has announced in late June that they now
offer Dynamic Remarketing technology for Google
Merchant Center customers.
Before Google’s announcement this month Dynamic
Remarketing was only available to larger players
utilising remarketing platforms such as Adroll or Mediaforge.
Google advises “Dynamic remarketing lets you automatically create beautiful, customized ads that
connect with shoppers across the web, by reminding them of items they’ve seen on your site. You
can build ads quickly with dozens of templates to

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We’ll test it out in the months to come with the
eCommerce stores we work with and let you know
our findings.
Facebook Making it Easier to Get App Installs with
Mobile App Install Ads
Facebook Mobile App
Install Ads have been
around for a while now
but Facebook has recently announced that
it is simplifying the creation of this Ad unit to
make it more widely
used and accessible.
A Facebook Mobile App Install Ad

Advertisers can now simply enter a link for the Ad
from the App Store (for Apple) or Google Play (for
Android) without the requirement to have to register the App with Facebook as was the case previously.
This change gets rid of a major hurdle for App developers and makes Facebook a logical place for App
developers to advertise to get more installs.

Terapeak Launches New Amazon Analytics Tool
Terapeak is well known in eBay circles as a big data
solution for analysing niches and competition historical sales data for several large eBay platforms
around the world.
Not many people associate Terapeak with Amazon,
but that is all about to change as Terapeak launched
last month the first iteration of their historical sales
data analysis tool for Amazon.
Terapeak for Amazon.com features product, offer
and sales rank date for over 35 Amazon categories.
You are able to see average, minimum and maximum pricing history, as well as competitor research
and analysis, and the ability to view historical Amazon transactions.

growth statistics like this year after year now certainly is a great time in history to be investing in
eCommerce plays.
What was interesting is that U.S.-based eCommerce
stores hold 21.9% of the European e-commerce
market share. There is no great surprise that Amazon.com topped the rankings in 2012 with European
web sales of $16.11 billion (12.29 billion euros).
This figure is up by 25.13% over their 2011 web sales
of $13.50 billion (10.30 billion euros).
The Rise and Rise of the Responsive Web… But
Long Live the Mobile Site!
Month by month more and more sites online now
are going responsive (adjusting in size and shape
depending on the form factor of the device viewing
the page).
At our sister marketing agency business when we
had tested responsive themes a year or so ago we
found them clunky and limited in their functionality
and ability to seamlessly morph shapes depending
on devices.

A Terapeak for Amazon Search for Baseball Bats

This is a very smart move for Terapeak as they
now provide analytics and intelligence data on the
world’s two largest eCommerce trading platforms.
This follows on from Terapeak’s new MySales product feature in April which allows you to suck your
sales data from Magento directly into Terapeak so
that you can compare it with your eBay sales and
now your Amazon sales history as well.
Internet Retail Growth in Europe

We feel that the responsive web has come along
way in maturity in the last year and that responsive
themes available for common platforms like Wordpress and Magento now work seamlessly.
This is great news especially for eCommerce stores
where maintaining a standard site and a mobile
site and keeping them in synch can be cumbersome
when dealing with large numbers of SKU’s. The general buying public is becoming more and more comfortable with buying what they want at any time,
from any device, so a responsive eCommerce theme
is now a must.
But what is the best solution for the average business owner such as a tradesman or a physical shop
owner or service provider?

InternetRetailer.com publishes each year a guide on
the top 500 Internet Retailers in Europe. They recently reported that the 500 leading online retailers If I was to just follow the industry trends I would
in Europe grew their web sales in 2012 by 17% to say a responsive site, but when I really think about
$123 billion (93.74 billion euros).
it 9 out 10 businesses we meet really need inbound
phone leads and so in this case I say the industry
Europe is now the world’s largest e-commerce trend is just plain wrong.
marketplace with total online sales that grew 16%
in 2012 to just over $300 billion. With consistent
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Our research is showing that for these types of businesses having a mobile site at their m.domainname.
com is resulting in far more leads than for those who
choose purely the responsive design without a mobile site.
The reason for this is two or three very important
tools for lead generation. The first of these is ‘Click
to Call’ – having this at the top of a mobile site for
many businesses results in as many leads if not more
than their enquiry webform on their traditional website.
Another
important
feature on mobile
sites is the ability
to add one click to
Google Maps to ‘Find
Us’.
Whilst from
mobile analytics we
only see this get used
about 30% as much as
the ‘Click to Call’, its
still a very important
lead generation feature for getting potential customers to
the door of physical
stores.

From the Desk of the Editor
The ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ Podcast is now live in
iTunes. If you like to learn
on the go then subscribe and
grab a copy of it. It kicks
off with the first interview
we did with Perry Marshall
and then goes on from there.
These expert interviews are really worth listening to
as the calibre of market leading professionals who
have graced the cover of Internet Marketing Magazine have been nothing short of brilliant and have
done many hundreds of millions of dollars in sales
online between them.
We also did a site visit to Google for Google Engage
to find out the very latest news from the dominant
search provider online. We’ve included some of that
breaking info here in this section and we have more
to follow in future issues. A big thanks goes out to
Google for running that excellent event series for
agencies and the very knowledgeable Dave Booth
who ran the day.

If you haven’t got access to the member’s area
please feel free to do at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member (it’s free). This month’s
complete audio interview with Craig Ford has now
A new feature on been added. It has lots of sections in it that were not
many mobile site plat- included in the magazine, so be sure to check it out.
forms is ‘Click to Text’
An example of a mobile site with ‘Click which enables the A special thanks to those who have left reviews in
to Call’ and ‘Find Us’ features
mobile site visitor to the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If you
click one button and are getting good value from Internet Marketing Magthen be able to send the business owner a text. The azine and you can spare 1 minute of your time to
jury is still out on this one as we are new to testing click this link to give us a quick honest review that
it, but will share the results with you in the months would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’
to come as we test it in the wild across a number of then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks
different industries mobile sites.
:).
So I think if you have a large and complex site then We hope you get great value from Internet Marketing
responsive is the way to go. If you need the phone to Magazine. Wishing you the best of success online,
ring for lead generation then there is no better move
than a mobile site with ‘Click to Call’ functionality. Regards,
Perhaps a hybrid solution of a responsive design that
only redirects to a mobile site when the form factor
of the device is a hand held the size of a smartphone
will prove to be the best solution for the majority of Greg Cassar
businesses moving forwards.
Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor

GregCassar

Internet Marketing Magazine

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>

EXPERT INTERVIEW

CRAIG FORD

IMPORT FROM CHINA LIKE A PRO
An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar
Craig Ford is an import and export market expert with a long history of success. Craig has spent
virtually his entire working life in different companies related to importing and exporting of goods.
Prior to setting up his import education platform, My Import Label, Craig and his team recorded
over $20 million in export sales. Craig has extensive experience in importing from China, India,
Vietnam, Malaysia and a whole bunch of other regions, as well as expertise in private labeling
products.
Craig, really, it is quite a unique skill set you have
there, and certainly an area of huge demand with
the rise of e-commerce at the moment and also
eBay as well. My understanding is that you first
got started importing when you were backpacking around the world. How did that come about?

of age and there are a couple of other sites like
Alibaba. It’s easy to find suppliers - finding them
is actually not the issue. The issue is being able to
sort through the genuine manufacturers from the
tons of trading companies, sales agents, wholesalers and other brokers that are out there.

Craig: I did the usual Aussie thing, which is put on a
backpack and head away for a couple of years. Australia is a long way from anywhere and when you’re
backpacking you tend to get off the beaten track a
bit. When you’re travelling you tend to find lots of
interesting products that you think, “I haven’t seen
that before. I wonder how that would go with selling it back home?”

Unfortunately, Alibaba has taken a bit of a back
step there. Once upon a time, you could do an advanced search and filter those guys out. It’s not as
easy to do that anymore. So it does require a little
bit of skill to be able to weed out those guys. Certainly one thing we encourage our clients to do is
just to take the information that’s posted online at
face value, much like you would do if you were on
a dating website.

I was already used to selling in Australia through
weekend markets, so it was pretty easy for me to
grab new products and send them back or bring
them back with me and test them out.
It was all about finding unique stuff that no one else
has got ideally, and then making sure that there’s
some residual value and a good margin on it.
The first question for many Internet Marketers
and upcoming Internet Retailers once they’ve
chosen their product and market niche would
be where online can they find genuine suppliers
who are legitimate manufacturers rather than
just product distributors?
Craig: In the last three years, Alibaba has come

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When you see a profile of a supplier that you like, by all means
have a chat with them and see
what they’re offering. But it’s
quite another thing to place a
commercial order just on the information posted online.
So we encourage our marketers
to go through a whole lot more
steps before they go and place
that order.

Is there a definite right way and
a wrong way to approach a supplier professionally so as to not
come across as an amateur importer?
Craig: There is a low level of
trust initially, so you’ve got to go
to another level to show to the
supplier that you are serious.
There’s a few basic things you
can do such as:
• Contact them with your
own domain name rather than
a hotmail or a Gmail type free
email account.
• Already have an online
presence setup so that they
can look you up and make sure
that you are an actual business.
• Include a positioning sales
blurb in your initial inquiries
about who you sell to and the
volumes you are currently doing and where the business is
headed. Just let them know,
“I’m a major retailer in XYZ
Country, I sell to all of these
markets at the moment, I’ll be
expanding into these markets”
etc.
The key is to get them to see you
as the real deal, but also look
beyond the initial discussion and
look at the long-term opportunity for you. It’s really important

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Alibaba.com

to talk to those suppliers about
your long-term quantities. If you
go in there trying to negotiate
to drive down a minimum order
quantity, you’re really not going
to get far at all.
Another rule is don’t talk about
prices and quantities in your
initial discussions. Focus on the
product and focus on if they are
a suitable supplier.

As a general rule we all want
to deal with the manufacturer,
but it actually gets complicated
when manufacturers sometimes
have trading names. They call
it an import/export company,
which is generally what the trading company is.

To make it even more complicated, some of the wholesalers
can do very low volume orders
for you and have very well designed, ready-made products.
How important is a site visit to a Sometimes it is best to start
manufacturer and when would working with a wholesaler iniyou recommend that in a rela- tially and work your way up to
tionship, or is there any other working directly with a manuway of doing that due diligence facturer.
on the supplier?
You need to find a suitable supCraig: There’s a lot of due dili- plier that matches your needs.
gence you can do from your desk- Many marketers need to start
top initially. We talk quite a lot with ready-made products, with
of this on the program and just low quantity orders and have
ways to filter out trading com- plenty of factory designs to
panies and filter out the guys choose from. This means that
who are not as well suited to the often it’s not the factory that has
product.
10,000 staff and massive

production lines that is a perfect fit for you.
So even though you might want to deal with them,
they might not want to deal with you. It’s about
finding that suitability. If we go back to the dating
example - You’ve got to find someone who matches
your needs and you have to match their needs as
well.
With regards to doing more due diligence on the
supplier its important to then move into a sampling
and testing stage. This stage is about much more
than about just testing the product. The sampling
stage is you testing the supplier to see how flexible
they are, how willing they are to work with you and
how good the relationship is. Another area that we
talk a lot about with clients these days is testing
your markets, so ideally you want to be getting that
product back to your country so that you can test
if your market wants it and is willing to pay for it.

There are lots of different things that you can do
before you get to that commercial importer stage.
Certainly we have a team in China, and that’s exactly what they do. Clients will get to the point of
negotiation and before they go and part with their
money, they just want to know if this supplier exists
and if they’re the real deal. Our team can go look at
the factory and make sure the factory is what they
say it is, and importantly, it’s actually producing the
quality of product that they’re claiming.
If you are about to commit to a big order, then we
strongly recommend you go to the factory yourself
and check it out.
It always brings up a few surprises, both good and
bad. Some suppliers that you didn’t think were that
great can turn out to be really well suited. On the
other hand we’ve certainly been to factories on a
couple of occasions and found out that the quality

“

Some of the wholesalers can do very low volume
orders for you and have
very well designed, readymade products. Sometimes
it is best to start working
with a wholesaler initially
and work your way up to
working directly with a
manufacturer.

“

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9

of product was just poor. We were
looking at the products that were
being produced and they were
for the Chinese domestic market,
so the quality and materials were
not what we would expect in a
western country. That’s the sort
of thing that you can only find
out when you’ve got a trusted
eye and ear on the ground.
Greg: That’s a good point that
you raised. One of the things
you’d have to think about when
you’re dealing with a supplier is
have they dealt with any other
Western countries before, because you would imagine that the
UK, USA, Australia, and parts of
Europe have similar safety standards. Is that something that you
would generally think about?
Craig: Yes, absolutely. We’ve got
a big criteria list that we work
through for each new supplier.
One of the major things on that
list is they must already export.
They’ve got to export to the U.S.
or the EU because of comparable
style and design and also comparable quality requirements.

be produced elsewhere and then
people will take it to China and
China then becomes a specialist in that product. So China is
always the default location and
will be for some time.
The issue with China is it’s actually becoming very expensive.
Certainly, on the Eastern seaboard, the prices we’ve seen
for clothing in the last two years
have gone up exponentially.

How would you normally go
about getting samples or prototypes of the product to test
to ensure that they sell in the
market that they’re good quality before doing a more substantial order?
Craig: The default option here
is people will hop on Alibaba
and they’ll order some samples.
They’ll bring it back here and
they’ll check the product out,
they’ll test it, and then they’ll
launch into a commercial sized
order.
Other countries like India and
Bangladesh are becoming popular for clothing now. Bangladesh
has become the go-to market for
the major department stores like
Wal-Mart purely because they’re
producing quality; they’ve got
a good background in textiles;
they’ve got the skills and they’re
producing at a very low cost.

China gets the most focus as
they are well known as a manufacturing country to be importing products from. Are they
across all types of products, or
is it just certain product areas?
And what are other countries
that people should think about
for different categories of prod- India is a fantastic location as
ucts to import from?
well. It doesn’t have as many
export-capable companies and as
Craig: China is the default loca- much industry as China does, but
tion for manufactured products India is a leader in textiles, and
worldwide because they have so we have plenty of clients that
much scale of industry that they source very unique good quality
can produce such a massive va- home ware, giftware, and texriety of products. Products can tiles from India.

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Vietnam is another good one.
I’ve actually got quite a few
clients that are doing clothing
and textiles, and they’re raving
about Vietnam. One of the reasons is that they’re finding very
small manufacturers, sometimes
factory-owned businesses that
are able to do small runs that
are very high quality, and also
they’re extremely adaptive.

Really, it is a high-risk way to do
it like that because there are so
many steps that you can put in
place to remove a lot of risks and
assumptions that you’re making
in doing that.
We’ve been following closely
‘The Lean Startup Process’ which
was pioneered in Silicon Valley.
There are a few really important
principles that have come out of
the Lean startup process that can
be applied to importers.
The first part of that is you don’t
over-engineer a product. You go
to market with a minimum viable
product at the start, so that you
can get tons of feedback.

10% bracket. You can get concessions if the product is not manufactured in the country where you
are importing to and sometimes
the tariff can be zero.
Probably the biggest issue is port
charges, and the array of costs
that are applied by government.
As an importer you need to figure
out the government charges and
the duty and also GST (or VAT),
which the government applies to
the product as well as to services
for your country.

We’ve certainly seen importers
run out of budget and run out of
sanity and patience where they
have tried to commit to a very
complex product at the start.
Over a series of months and thousands of emails often they just
run out of patience and time and
re-sampling.
We see a lot of importers who say
“I’ve got a fantastic idea, I’m going to run with it”. But once they
actually test it with customers,
that product can be a dramatically different from the one they
first envisioned. So sampling is a
process that you’ve got to be prepared to do a couple of times.

dramatically changing their process to improve their quality?
Craig: Yes, absolutely. The rule
of thumb that we tell clients is
if you get samples that have very
poor craftsmanship, there’s not
a lot that you can do about that.
You’re best advised to move to a
new supplier because it’s not your
business to improve the skills of
the factory.

We provide tools for people to
quickly evaluate how much it’s
going to be to bring a 20-foot container to your local port. Sometimes it is better to stay away
from bigger product items initially and import small products
that can use air-freight in smaller regular volumes.
Greg: I’d imagine you’d also be
able to get the products quicker if
it’s going via plane than via a ship
as well?

Craig: Absolutely. It arrives in 3
to 7 days as opposed to with a
ship where you’ve got a few days
either side in port, and it can take
20 to 30 days from China to Australia, Europe or the States. So
What about things like tariffs add in a bit of time for trucking to
and taxes and how long it actu- and from the port as well, and all
ally takes containers to get from of a sudden it can blow out to 1 to
one country to another if it goes 2 months on top of the production
via ship - What are some of the time.
common mistakes you see there?
If, however, you find that it is good
craftsmanship but the materials
are poor, then that’s relatively
easy to negotiate improvements.

Very often the first load of samples you get are poor quality. Certainly sampling can be very frustrating, but having a process in
place whereby you can negotiate
improvements to the product is
the big difference.
Craig: It’s actually a lot simpler
than it used to be. Import duGreg: guess sometimes you get ties and tariffs have been brought
I
to the point where you’re better down. In the 1980s, they were just
off just to change the supplier. If ridiculous. They could range anythe quality is just really not there, where from 5% to 150%. Now as a
then what’s the likelihood of them general rule they are in the 5% to

What can you tell us about MyimportLabel.com.au? Who is it
for, and what can they expect
to learn in that online coaching
environment? Is it just for Aussies, or is it for globally based
marketers and business owners?
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11

MyImportLabel.com.au

Craig: Certainly we started in Australia, but we have many clients from
around the world in the program as well. It’s a digital learning resource
for startups in the importing community that are looking to import and
launch their own labeled products to market.
The majority of the platform is e-learning where we get people up to
speed of how to import from China like a Pro in as little as six weeks.
There’s a large area that is about negotiating with overseas suppliers
and getting that product back to market, but there is also a lot about
launching it digitally online and also testing and evaluating products.
There’s also a pricing tool for being able to forecast your profit margins.
At the start of the business, people need to make decisions on products,
your suppliers, and which sales channels or which markets you’re selling
into. So it’s designed to get people to make those decisions, the best
decisions they can as quickly as possible.
Resources Mentioned in this Article:
AliBaba.com
MyImportLabel.com.au

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CONVERSIONS

HOW WE INCREASED CONVERSIONS
BY 700% USING GIVEAWAYS TO CAPTURE LEADS
By Adeel Vanthaliwala
For years, online marketers have regularly used
giveaway contests as a buzz-creating strategy.
However, according to our research at Incentivibe,
giveaway contests have another powerful benefit
that marketers have rarely utilized: Giveaway
contests have the ability to convert daily targeted visitors into email subscribers and leads.

Think about it, when was the last time you ran
a contest on your regular landing pages to boost
your lead conversions and build your email list? In
this blog post, I’ll discuss our research results using
giveaway contests as a lead conversion strategy,
and the eight tests that we conducted to optimize
this strategy.
The Test:
Before we delve into the details, here are some
important points to help you understand our giveaway-as-a-conversion-strategy research:
• Data: We analyzed 3 million visitors from
100 of our client websites between the period of
March 15, 2013 and April 15, 2013.
• No announcement: The giveaway contests
ran only on individual client’s landing pages –
they were not featured or announced elsewhere.
This ensured that only the targeted organic/paid
traffic saw and converted from these contests.
• Call to action: Each contest asked visitors

for their name and email to either subscribe to
their newsletter or stay in touch.
• Shared Prize: These clients used our sharedcontest-prize service to offer a $500 contest
prize for a minimal cost, and put our black contest widget with their name as the co-sponsor.
The Result

Landing pages with
a contest collect
700% more email
subscribers.

The increase in
email leads due to
the contest was
predictable,
but
the magnitude of
the increase was astounding. We discovered that
landing pages that ran a contest with a $500 prize
collected 700% more email subscribers than landing pages with no contests.
The 8 factors that increased conversions from
200% to 700%
The most intriguing part of this research was not
only the end result, but the journey. When we ran
these contests for the first time, email subscriptions increased by 200%. How did we reach 700%?
We tested and optimized eight different factors
that bumped the average increase in email subscribers to 700%.
Test 1: The Month Effect
Have you ever come across a contest, only to question when it began and when it will end? It is one of
the most common pieces of information that is left
out of contests and one of the reasons why people
won’t enter. The result in our research reinforced
this point. When we specified the month of the
contest on the widget, our conversion rate
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increased by an astounding 40%.

Contests that specify a month receive 40% more
email subscribers.
Test 2: The Promotion Labeling Effect
Is “giveaway ” the same as a “sweepstake” in an online visitor’s mind? Do people respond more to “promotions”? In our research, the word “giveaway” was
the winner. It resulted in 27% more conversions than
the word “sweepstake” and 50% more conversions
than the word “promotion.”

The A/B test found a 24% conversion lift when asking for an email. Read the full case study with Oli’s
psychological conclusions here.

Facebook likes can decrease email subscribers
significantly.
Test 4: The Location Effect
Do visitors focus more on the left or the right area
of a website? We read from the left, but scroll and
sign in from the right. This is one of the trickiest
web behaviors, and results vary for different call to
actions.
In the case of a giveaway contest, when the contest
widget was placed on the bottom-right, it increased
email subscriptions by a whopping 125% than when
the contest widget was placed on the bottom-left.

The word “giveaway” gets 27% more conversions
than “sweepstakes.”
Test 3: The “Like-gating” Effect
Isn’t everyone logged onto their Facebook account
pretty much all the time? Doesn’t it seem that getting a Facebook like would be a more frictionless
action than requesting a visitor to type their email
address? Not so fast…
In our research, the contest widget that simply
asked for a visitor’s email address, got 80% more
email subscribers than the widget that asked visitors to like a Facebook page to access the contest
(a.k.a. like-gating).

A contest placed on the bottom right increased
email subscriptions by 125%
Test 5: The Stating-The-obvious Effect
This test reminded us of the importance of stating
the obvious to remind online visitors that a specific
action will in fact be very quick.

For the first few days, we used the words “Submit”
or “Enter” as the button text for contest entry. We
Granted, that a decrease in email subscribers makes assumed that visitors would look at the contest form
sense for the like-gating widget since we erected a and understand that clicking “enter” will finish the
like wall. However, the magnitude of the decrease entry process. However, when we changed the but
was very surprising, given that the widget also gave ton text to “Enter in seconds”, the number of email
subscribers increased by 33%.
visitors a clear path to bypass the like wall.
Unbounce saw a similar trend when they let people
pay for their ebook with a tweet or with an email.

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This Unbounce post teaches you how to write effective CTA copy & increase conversions. In addition,

Unbounce always preaches that you should “Never
Submit” when it comes to your CTA copy.

“Enter in seconds” gets 33% more email subscribers than “enter.”
Test 6: The Image Effect
Shouldn’t an image that fails to communicate the
message of a $500 prize, lead to lower conversions
than a message in big text that clearly conveys a
chance to win a $500 prize?
It turns out that this is not the case and that simply
having an image, no matter how poor or irrelevant,
leads to higher conversions. The contest widget
that had the fuzzy image collected 22% more email
subscribers than the widget that had big text and
no image.
When making snap judgements about “facts,” researchers have found that photos (even irrelevant
photos) increase our likelihood to accept them as
true. This study was featured in an Unbounce blog
post teaching you how to use images to increase
your conversions.

Including a company name increases contest conversions by 28%.
Test 8: The not-so-dominant lightbox effect
Is a lightbox as almighty as everyone claims it to be?
The answer is yes, but with one key exception. Yes,
the lightbox increased conversions by 62% overall,
but it actually led to a decrease of 20% in businesses that were in the fashion/indie clothing industry.
Again, many factors are at play here, but I think
businesses in this industry tend to have more design-focused websites and a lightbox was probably
unsettling to their design-centric audience.

Lightbox decreases conversions by 20% in fashion
industry.
What’s next?
If your marketing team has not utilized the giveaway-as-a-conversion strategy, I strongly recommend that you try it out to see how it impacts
your conversions.

Fuzzy images gets 22% more contest conversions
than big font text.

This post was originally published by Adeel Vanthaliwala on Unbounce conversion blog.

Test 7: The branding effect
Should you have your business name on a widget
that has limited space for marketing copy? In our
research, when the contest widget stated the name
of the contest holder in the header, the conversion
rate increased by 28%.

Adeel Vanthaliwala

is the Co-founder of Incentivibe
a service that groups businesses
together so they can offer big contest
prizes ($500 visa) while sharing a
fraction of the prize cost ($24.99)
with other businesses. You can read
Incentivibe’s other researches here.

july 2013

15

Make Your Website Easy to Read
& Effective on all Mobile Phones

16

july 2013

>

CONTENT MARKETING

CONTENT MARKETING

THE ART OF DEVELOPING CONTENT
THEY CAN’T RESIST
By Tommy Walker

Content Marketing is one of those buzz phrases in
the online marketing space that many use and few
understand.
Some people confuse “blogging” with content marketing, while others say they’re “content marketing”, when what they’re really doing is journaling.
Content marketing as I see it, does two things.

So what they’ll do is create a piece of content, like a
blog post, video, or any other form of media expecting it to do the work of generating leads, selling the
service, raising awareness and starting a discussion.
Of course, when content fails to do even one of
these things over a long period of time, it causes you
to spin out into a million different directions until
eventually you say, “why bother” and quit.

Engages the reader & and compels them to take
action.
What Are Your Content Goals?
In the real world, unless you’re a “business celebWhen your content doesn’t drive actions, it’s not re- rity” it’s rare that one piece of content achieves all
ally marketing. It’s just content.
four goals.
Marketing is about using creative to drive viewers
to a desired outcome. So if content doesn’t do that,
it’s only a story or a set of instructions, and nothing
more.

Instead, most online marketers take a more strategic
and methodical approach to the content they create
and the goals that it reaches.

It’s is fine creating content for content’s sake, that’s
art. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re
“marketing” or “building trust” when nobody interacts with or shares your stuff.
The Purpose of Content Marketing
To understand the purpose of content marketing,
and the role it plays in online marketing, you must
first understand the marketing funnel.
Many people start blogging with the intent of selling
products or services, however when asked what the
overall strategy is, they say “create awesome content and people will want to buy my stuff.”
While that’s at the surface of content marketing,
and is most often pushed by “experts”, what most
people don’t realize is that content is supposed to
take their reader through a journey over a longer
period of time.
july 2013

17

Those content types and goals
are:
1. Viral – Content that is designed to spread organically
through a specific community.
Usually, the content is at the
extreme end of a spectrum:
It could be hilarious, cute,
heartwarming, controversial,
disgusting, or downright scary.
Usually, it has little substance
beyond the initial spark that
makes viral content unique;
thus has a fairly short shelf life.

Viral content’s main goal is to
get your prospect to click a social share button and forward
to as many people as possible
in order to raise awareness.
2. Discussion – Once awareness has been raised, it’s time
to take that relationship to the
next level. Discussion content
is designed to spark conversation within a community. Like
Viral content, it could also be
hilarious, cute, heartwarming.
etc.; but, unlike viral, its shelf
life is much longer. The content
can play on the same extremes
as viral, but it’s more thoughtprovoking and deeper in nature.
The main goal with discussion
content is to get its consumer
to leave comments and interact with other readers. In the
marketing funnel, that’s giving consideration to a problem

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july 2013

that needs to be solved.
3. Lead – This content is designed to draw people into
some sort of opt-in. Generally speaking, the goal of this
content is to expose a gap between where the consumer is,
and where they would like to
be and hints at a possible solution in exchange for an email
address or other personal information on a lead form.
The ideal lead conversion outline takes the viewer on a journey, at the end of which he realizes what can be summed up
in three words: “I need help.”
4. Sales – Sales content is similar to lead content, but with
one major difference. Instead
of getting the consumer to say
“I need help,” this content convinces him into making a decision to alleviate their problem.
Sales content leads the buyer
to believe that making an exchange of dollars will alleviate that problem and solve the
problem.

While this is true, what few people really emphasize enough is
the amount of market research
skill level to realistically create
“engaging” or “compelling” content.
In my opinion, creating web content shares many characteristics with long running television
shows,critically acclaimed films,
and best selling novels.
What matters the most is the art
of story telling, compelling characters, story structure, and style.
Let’s get an overview what these
mean in terms of content marketing:
Story telling
In order for story to work well in
content marketing, you need to
understand your customers in intimate detail.
To start, think about your ideal
customer’s current situation.
What stresses them out? What
makes them happy? What are
their goals, desires and dreams?

As an exercise, try writing about
When you create a piece of a day in your customer’s life.
content with only one of these
goals in mind, the intention Maybe they’re struggling to keep
flows through the entire piece, their position at work and need a
from opening headline to final big win.
call to action.
Their last few ideas were shot
Where “Content” Gets Tricky
down by the boss, and that’s
What’s interesting about con- starting to take a toll on their
tent marketing is just how tricky confidence. Of course, this spills
it really is to develop something into their marriage because their
unique.
spouse thinks they’ve bet on the
This is where the big guys say you wrong horse. If they don’t have a
need to have your unique selling big change, and fast, they could
proposition and develop your own lose everything.
voice and brand character and
blah blah blah.
All they need now is a friend to

to help them get back on track.
Or perhaps…
They’ve just gotten a promotion after years of hard
work, and that comes with an extra $30,000 bonus.
Through their career, they’ve had a great relationship with the family and kids, and because of that
everyone was willing to sacrifice knowing this day
would come.

With content marketing, the main character has to
be your reader. And you have to understand them
well enough to guide them through a story that
takes them from where they are to where they
want to be.

Now, it’s time for them to indulge. Maybe it’s a
new car, maybe it’s breaking ground on a new
house, maybe it’s an in ground pool; whatever it is,
it’s big, and everyone is excited for them to have
reached this new chapter in their lives.
Even though these stories are very different,
they’re very human and relatable.
According to Edgar Roberts in ‘Writing Themes
About Literature’ you define character by:
1) What a person says (and thinks, and shares in
the third-person omniscient point of view).
RANDY KEPPLE:
2) What the character does.
”Sitting here after an early rising due
3) What others characters say about him.
to insomnia… this article really hit
4) What the author (market research/demohome for me. I think you just described
graphic data) says about him, speaking as either
me to a fault.”
the story-teller or an observer of the action.
With this understanding, the stories you take their
life story into account, and drawing responses like:

Comment from 5 Silly Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Blog on BoostBlogTraffic.com

Of course, telling these stories without any frame
of reference is hit or miss. Which is where the next
section comes into play.
Character Study
Great stories are driven by great characters. Great
main characters almost always the reflection of
who the viewer is or who they would like to be like
to be.

Fortunately, you can gather all of this information
by studying social media, blog comments, demographic reports etc. to learn about your customer’s
profile.
It’s a lot of work, and if you’re impatient, you’re
going to hate it. But it’s the only advantage you
have to creating content that actually does something.

Structure
If content were a product you bought at the store,
Tyler Durden for example is the embodiment of structure would be the product’s packaging.
rebellion and the human id. Empire magazine describes him as “effortlessly stylish, unshakably How you structure your content is going to probcool, and dangerously charismatic…he is a mon- ably one of the most important aspects to what
ster, he is the very image of modern man (or at kind of audience you’re going to build over a lonleast how modern man would like to see himself).” ger period of time.
What could you do if you made your readers feel
like Tyler Durden?

On a post by post level structure is about the over
all elements that make up a post; headers, subinternet marketing magazine
july 2013

19

headers, paragraph length, multimedia usage, etc. Consistency
to the way your content is presented establishes a familiarity over time with an audience.
An example structure for a post
might be Long Posts, paragraphs
3-4 lines, New Subhead every
3-4 paragraphs

us that we’re not so alone in our
own weirdness and we appreciate the hell out of you putting
your weirdness on display so we
know you’re just like the us we
keep private.
Style makes you attractive. The
only way to develop it is to repeatedly take risks.

Structure also applies to the
overall publishing of content to You Will Have Content That
the blog.
Flops, It’s Not The End Of The
World
Are you more likely to write
detailed series of posts to thor- Everyone, and I mean everyone
oughly flesh out a subject or are who puts themselves out there
creating smaller posts to cover and does creative work has
a wider range of subjects within failed.
a category? How you structure
your content creation is widely Yeah, I know its cliche, but it’s
dependent on how you want true, and you have nothing to
your blog to be perceived.
worry about if it doesn’t work.
Style
Style may seem obvious, but
the truth is, it’s an incredibly
difficult thing to master. Mostly
because developing your own
style requires vulnerability and
demands you do and say things
that you’ve been trained to
keep private.
Fear of developing a unique
style is the #1 reason most bloggers succumb to that generic
borg voice, which is why 99% of
the blogs out there sound like
they were written by the same
person.
But nobody cares about that
voice.
What we do care about is your
honest, and unique perspective.
So what if it’s weird? People get
weird. We like weird. It reminds

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july 2013

I mean, think about this for a
second… if you have no visitors
now, who’s going to know you’re
doing something new, or different, or even ::gasp:: weird.
So what if it’s scary? Who’s going
to know right now anyways? And
besides, they’ve already heard
that other guy, and the 10,000
people who try to emulate him.
Don’t you owe it to them to give
them something new?
I think so.

Tommy Walker
is an Online Marketing
Strategist and Host of
two Youtube shows,
Inside The Mind & The
Mindfire Chats. Tommy’s
main mission is to make
the concepts of online marketing fun and
interesting to learn.

>

GOOGLE

GOOGLE

IS THE ONLINE VERSION OF THE MAFIA
By Christopher Morley
in waste management – he was
also able to link and connect other businesses – occasionally cutting in the other Families. Google
has been able to do a similar thing
by having their search engine link
to their maps, their mail, their
shopping, their payment, and any
other business that Google invests
in.
The greatest similarity that may
exist between Google and the
modern mafia representation is
that of expanding into other industries and being able to do so
under the guise of waste management. Google has continued to
The Sopranos is one of my all time online is a crucial aspect to mod- expand their offerings on Adverfavorite TV shows; Mafia movies ern life yet it is amazing to think tising (their largest revenue earnand TV shows have always been a that nearly all who use it on a er), travel, maps, eCommerce
genre I have absolutely enjoyed to daily basis don’t understand how and mobile platform all whilst the
watch – the action, the drama and it works, and what can affect the public largely thinks of Google as
the personalities – what is not to results that are presented. Google a search engine and necessity of
like? One of my much loved aspects who are a market leader in online modern life. As Google expands
of The Sopranos is the profession search marketing appear to prefer by purchasing existing compathey are apparently in – ‘waste the mystery and misunderstand- nies, changing search algorithms,
management’. This is brilliant ings that exist on search market- purchasing patents and creating
as it is an employment catergory ing – using it to their advantage. new product offerings – the busithat can connect to multiple in- Very much like The Sopranos did ness seems to get further from its
dustries, it can be a front for oth- in the TV show; waste manage- status of being a search engine.
er businesses, it’s a job that needs ment is not an industry that most Having all the data conducted
to be done that no one knows a lot people know a lot about – so when from online search queries allows
about it and it does allow you the its brought up in a conversation – Google to look at areas of growth
ability to get rid of waste such as there aren’t many follow up ques- – is it little wonder why travel
bodies. And these reasons are why tions that can occur – similar to companies such as Froomer are
I think Google is an online version search marketing.
purchased when a company can
of The Sopranos’ – except for the
see search volumes and number
dead bodies aspect.
Waste management can connect a of players in the market? Google
few different industries together will maintain their status as being
Search Marketing is a curious busi- – not only the number of business- a search engine much the same
ness – many – even some within es who use the service – but also way that Tony Soprano maintained
eCommerce don’t completely those that may be linked. As So- that his business was Waste Manunderstand it. Searching items prano continued his involvement agement; despite the numerous
july 2013

21

other business and activities Soprano was involved in.
And with the recent change in
Google’s policy for trademark
and brand monitoring in Australia
– Google who call themselves a
search engine – although according to their figure 96% of their
revenue is from advertising – are
they then a media company that
has to play by the same rules as
TV, Radio and Print? Trademark
laws exist to stop other businesses copying brand names,
looks and defaming a brand. If
a business was to be accused of
defaming or misleading the public over an abuse of a registered
trademark – the business who ran
the advertisement along with associated agency and even the TV
station that ran the ad can have
copyright infringements breeches
leveled at them. How this scenario plays out is with businesses,
agencies and media playing the
‘I didn’t notice card’ and all the
lawyers get rich.
So how would this then play out
on Google? I make an ad using a
registered brand or trademark
term of a competitor – place my
Google paid ad at the top of all
search enquiries – my creative is
suggested as misleading by my
competitor – I will have to fight
this claim and Google would wash
their hands of involvement under
their updated policy. How can
that be? Given they are in advertising – the same as other media
groups – yet because they are a
search engine; they will play they
Soprano’s card and claim innocence.
Another similarity that exists between the Sopranos and Google is
that off using their power to in-

22

july 2013

Google Logo

fluence and get their way. The Sopranos may have used a bunch of
‘heavies’ or stand over men occasionally combined with paper bags
containing cash to get their way.
The reputation of the Soprano’s
family would often ensure they
get their way without the ‘heavies’ needing to get violent – after all who wants to be swimming
with the fishes. Whilst Google
don’t have the same stand over
men or have sent anyone to swim
with the fishes – they do use their
power and market dominance to
get their way. Their market share
in Australia is in excess of 90%
of search market – meaning that
advertising with Google can get
you in front of 9 out of 10 internet users; this power can be used
to ensure increased revenue from
advertising; set minimum spends,
even promoting their own brands
and businesses ahead of competitors as desired.
The mafia-helped shape America at certain times – think of Al
Capone – the portrayal of these
families on the silver screen has
been popular amongst the masses. The Sopranos was a show that
brilliantly connected stereotypical mob activities into modern
living; highlighting issues such as
depression. Google is in our lives

more and more – evolving and
moving with the ever-changing
online world – they have grown
into a multi country multi industry giant – who is further and
further away from being just a
search engine every day. The rate
of Google’s businesses growth
and international expansion has
made it hard for laws to keep up
with it; potentially similar to how
the feds caught Capone, on tax
avoidance, it may be something
that brings Google to answer for
some of their mafia style activities.
Christopher Morley

Chris Morley has been
helping
Australian
businesses
improve
their online strategies,
revenue and process
for nearly 10 years;
working with retailers
and brands of all sizes
to increase their online footprint and
market share in a meaningful and
manageable way. Chris has worked
with Australia Post, Deals Direct,
OO.com.au, Cadbury and others
on various online projects; always
bringing his passion and enthusiasm
for eCommerce and digital marketing
to each and every role.
Chris holds the position of General
Manager with Online Market Experts
and also acts as senior consultant for
the blueprint for success document
that the business provides for
numerous businesses.

>

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july 2013

23

>

VIDEO STYLES

7 TYPES OF VIDEOS YOU CAN
SWIPE + DEPLOY
By Pete Williams

With so many different styles of video available,
how do you choose which ones to use ?

and frame for the thing you are recommending to
your audience.

It’s a question I get often and thought I’d answer in
this (long) essay, by using a bunch of videos we’ve
used in our various projects and businesses.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
Well, face-to-camera stuff is very easy to do, once
you get the confidence to put yourself on screen.
It works extremely well if you are trying to relate
a personal story and the audience can truly ‘see’
your expressions.

I’ve broken each down so you can see WHY we
chose this style for the outcome desired, WHAT actually is happening in the video itself, and then
some quick notes on HOW we actually put it all
together.
Example 1. Product Recommendations
The video below is something you probably saw recently. It was shot on my iPhone 4S after I was recommended Jules Watkins’ iVideo Hero program. I
was about to invest over $1,200 on a DSLR for faceto-camera stuff, when someone suggested I learn
some amazing little hacks on the iPhone camera.
Long story short, I invested the $97 in Jules’ training course, turned the iPhone on, quickly recorded
my story, and recommend Jules’ program to the
entire Preneur Community…

WHY would you want to use this style of video?
I’ve found that using a face-to-camera stuff is not
only super quick and easy, but it’s a great way to
pre-sell a recommended product or service (ala affiliate product), as it allows you to set the context

24

july 2013

It also work well when you are trying to build trust
with the viewer, like in a sales letter or testimonial.
HOW do you actually make this happen?
In this case, and as with most of my recent (and
future) videos, I’ll be shooting them on the iPhone.
Simple as that.
Get yourself a cheap tripod and a iPhone camera
mount, and you’re good to go.
Example 2. Product Reviews
The video below is something we do quite regularly
for our e-comm projects such as SimplyHeadsets.
com.au. They are very simple yet highly effective
product reviews, so our online prospects can get
as close to a tangible understanding/feel for the
products usually only visible in a photograph.

If you are selling a product or service that is “tangible” or “tactile”, a video showcasing that is much
more impactful than any photo or textual description ever will.
It’s just me sitting at a desk, talking about the
headset infront of me with a few B-roll cutaways to
make it a little more ‘active’ visually.
Again, it’s just a matter of sitting down in front of
a camera, having some notes for direction on a
whiteboard or butcher paper behind your camera,
and away you go.
If you want to have B-roll footage for the cutaways,
you might need a second camera. But that’s only
really needed if you want to go that extra mile in
production.
Example 3. Live Event
The video is a excerpt from one of the various live
events I’ve spoken at. This one is from the first outsroucing workshop Dave Jenyns and I did together a
year or so back.

quite easy as all you need to worry about is speaking and over-delivering to the live audience. As you
will see from this excerpt, I completely ignore the
camera and focus on the people in the room. (This
also means the video viewers will be a little more
forgiving of errors and stumbles you may have during your delivery.)
The hardest part of this type of video is getting bums
in the room for the live event. Beyond that, you just
need to shell out some coin for the videographers
who will record and edit everything up for you.
Example 4. Green-Screen Video
The video is a video from our Going Analogue course.
The intros for each section were filmed just outside
London while I was there speaking at an live event
(which was also recorded). We very rarely use green
screen for our videos as I don’t believe they give a
great bang-for-buck. But like everything, there is a
time and place for them.

To be honest, I find it very, very hard to justify the
effort and expense of green screen — so unless you
have a mate with a studio and some spare time. For
the wider Preneur Community, I wouldn’t actually
recommend you use this style of video in your busiUsing live events as the source material for videos ness.
(and training programs) is a fantastic positive constraint, which I’ve spoken previously on the Pre- WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
neurCast podcast. If it wasn’t for the pressure of This was a really fun (yet, over-the-top) way of dohaving people attending a live event, there would ing intro videos. The way we recorded these was by
be a tonne of content I would have never gotten having me stand in a full green-screen room with
around to having recorded.
a teleprompter. The production team then went
about creating the sweet backdrops and slides in
post-production.
From a video production standpoint, this is really
july 2013

25

I don’t want to get too technical here (for obvious
reasons), but you need an extremely well-lit studio
with a green screen and some really good software
for the editing process.

programs use this style as well. The example below
is a keynote-style video that’s been applied to a PreneurCast podcast episode, where funnily enough,
Dom and I talk about all this video marketing.

Example 5. Screen-Capture Training
Hopefully, this style of video isn’t overly new to
anyone here in the Preneur Community. It’s something we use a lot in all projects — from demonstrating marketing tools like SendOutCards below,
to doing demo and training videos on the software
that comes with the phones systems we sell thru
Infiniti Telecommunications.

I personally believe this is not only the easiest but
the best way to communicate and teach anything
that doesn’t need a live demonstration. The ability
to support the stuff you are saying with bullets and
graphs really helps the understanding and consumption for your audience.

This is one of the easiest and most effective style
of videos you will ever do. If you’re trying to document a process to your virtual assistant, train your
clients on a tool, or just want to demonstrate a
product you’re trying to promote, screen-capture
video is the closest thing you’ll ever get to sitting
down with them side by side.
Well not a whole lot technically. I am just using the
tool I’m trying to demonstrate and just commentating the process through a headset.
All you need is a headset (or machine with inbuilt
mic), and then some screen-capture software like
ScreenFlow or Camtasia.
Example 6. Keynote-Style Video
Boy do we use this style of video A LOT. Every single
one of our podcast episodes get this treatment, plus
most of the strategy videos we produce for training

26

july 2013

Like I mentioned above, the visuals in this style of
video is primarily there to support the audio track
by emphasizing the key points through graphs, bullet points, and key pieces of text.
The way we produce this style of videos is probably
a little different to what you may have heard before (unless you played along with the Profit Hacks
launch), but I find it the most productive for myself personally. The short ‘how to’ is: I record the
audiotrack by itself, and then let my team put the
slides together after the fact. This way, I am not
distracted with choosing fonts, slide transitions, or
other non-essential elements so many people get
bogged down with.
Example 7. Concept Demonstration / Pre-Education
The video here is another one from our telco business. Like a lot of products and services, the workings of a phone system can be quite complicated
and confusing for prospects; so we put together this
video to easily break down how a phone system

works. By pre-educating our leads, it makes it so
much easier for our sales staff to speak with and
convert prospects through selling, not basic education.

put together. We shot it in the video studio we have
at the office, with me and my iPad. I am simply talking the viewer through the basics of telephone systems whilst using the graphics to support it visually.
While we have the face-to-camera side of things recording, we used a really cool app called Reflector
to stream my iPad screen to the MacBook, which was
getting recorded via ScreenFlow, then just merged
the two recordings in post-production.
So please feel free to swipe and deploy these into
your own projects, and then let us know below how
you’re using video.

If you are selling a solution that is even remotely
technical, being able to pre-educate and thus prequalify prospects online via video, prior to them
spending time with your sales team, is a huge ROI
increaser. (You can see one from our headset business here too.)
This was a really fun (and relatively easy) video to

>

Pete Williams

is an entrepreneur, author and marketer; an
expert in many forms of online marketing,
including both eCommerce and direct
response. Pete has a highly successful track
record in many traditional businesses as
well as several pure play online businesses.
Many people know Pete Williams for his
expertise in systemisation and efficiency
profit hacks. Check out The PreneurCast Podcast and his
website PreneurMarketing.com

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27

>

MANAGEMENT

7 TRAITS OF

INEFFECTIVE LEADERS
By Joanna Martin
As a lifestyle business owner, you
are likely to become a leader at
some stage in your business. You
may not yet be at the stage of employing staff, but even outsourcers require leadership… and the
outcome of these relationships
depends on your effective leadership.

I want you to have the support of
a great team around you too… but
to nurture your team to operate
effectively, you need to be an effective leader.

I’m 37 weeks gone now, so officially “full term” which is extremely
exciting. But as I’m now officially
on maternity leave, I am relying
on the support of my team more
than ever before.

#1: Being too busy!
No leader should ever be ‘too
busy’ to offer support and direction. When you admit you are too
busy, you show up as inefficient…
so definitely avoid the “I’m too
busy” attitude.

I realise how blessed I am… but every now and then it occurs to me
how much harder this time in my
life would be without these guys
around me.

And that means NOT making any
of these common leadership mistakes…

#2: Unwilling to “muck in”
To be a great leader, you have to
get your hands dirty sometimes!
For a great example of this in
practice, you only need to think of
Gandhi. His leadership style was so
effective because he wasn’t above
his followers, he was one of them.
#3: You fear competition!
Don’t focus on others, focus on
what you are doing and how you
can do it better. The best leaders in the world train their team
members to take over.
#4: You want all the glory!
If you’re the kind of leader who
claims all the credit, then this will
cause resentment to build within
your team.

28

july 2013

The most powerful leaders actually give all the credit to their
team, because it’s a fact that
people work harder for commendation and recognition than they
ever will for money alone.
Love your team and they will love
you! Avoid selfishness.
#5: Lack of loyalty
Any leader who is not loyal to his/
her team will not be their leader
for long.
#6: Authority
If you’re trying to lead through the
“authority” of your role, you’re
trying to lead by force.
Real leaders lead through encouragement. In the wise words of Motzu,“People only become unmanageable when one tries to lead
them with a violent love.
But if one approaches them with
trust and takes them by the hand….
there will not be a single one will
not adapt himself to the rule.”
#7: You assume a fancy title will
gain respect!
Great leaders don’t need fancy
job titles to gain respect. A true
leadership style is one through
his/her actions not by the words
on their business card – their offices are free of ostentation and
open to anyone to enter.

The first step to being an effective leader is to become a LEADER!

certainly start
changes now.

to

implement

I invite you to look at the list and
And… the first step to becoming ask yourself honestly which of
a leader is DELEGATION!
these mistakes you are making…
and which of these you could
You have to be prepared to let go change within yourself.
of the things you are not so good
at… and delegate them to oth- Make a commitment to change
ers. But not abdicate responsibil- one thing today and take a step
ity for them.
forwards towards becoming a
great leader and nurturing a
Good delegation is:
strong team around you that you
1. Ask someone to achieve an can depend on.
outcome
2. Ask if they accept respon- Joanna Martin
is an internationally
sibility for it
3. Give them authority to acclaimed speaker and
complete it (or outline what sought-after educator
who has taught over
you want to be consulted 55,000 people on
about)
three continents. She
4. Schedule to review prog- is one of the world’s
ress on estimated completion most successful and
inspirational speakers having taken
date.
Ineffective delegators just hand
tasks over like a parcel and never
check in.
A strong leadership style is not
achieved overnight, but you can

her own business from stand still to
7 figures, and two countries, in 12
months. She is widely regarded as a
Lifestyle Design Specialist.
She started her working life as a
medical doctor, then an actor before
launching her career as a speaker.
She now runs what she calls “The
Ultimate Lifestyle Business”.

july 2013

29

>

EBAY VS AMAZON

TERAPEAK HOW-TO:

KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
EBAY & AMAZON FOR EBAY SELLERS
By Aron Hsiao
Many Terapeak users sell regularly both on eBay and
on Amazon.com, and Terapeak’s new Terapeak for
Amazon.com product makes it easier than ever before to compete and succeed in both channels.
If you’re an eBay seller that has long considered adding an Amazon.com presence to your selling strategy, there’s never been a better time to take the
plunge—but getting started on Amazon.com can be
a daunting task due to the differences between the
two selling platforms.
Here are some of the most important ways in which
the practice of selling on eBay differs from the practice of selling on Amazon.com.
Differences in Listing Inventory Available for Sale
The most obvious differences between selling on
eBay and selling on Amazon.com have to do with the
ways in which products are listed for sale, found by
buyers, and cataloged on Amazon.com:
• There are no auctions on Amazon.com. If
you’re an Amazon.com shopper, you likely already
understood this to be the case, but it bears repeating that auction-style selling simply does not exist
on Amazon.com.
• You’ll spend less time creating listings on
Amazon.com. Many common products are already
included in the Amazon.com catalog. For these
kinds of items, you won’t spend time creating photos, listing titles, or descriptions. Instead, you’ll
locate the existing listing and add yourself as a
seller with inventory of the item in question available, at a price that you set. In fact, it’s against
Amazon.com selling policies to add a listing of your
own for an item when a catalog entry for it already
exists.
• Even when you do create your own listings,
the process is less open. In the unusual case that
a product isn’t yet in the Amazon.com catalog, you
may be given the option to create a listing for the
product. This process isn’t available to all sellers

30

july 2013

(Amazon.com decides
who will have access to
it) and requires details
that aren’t needed on
eBay, including the
UPC or EAN code from
the product packaging.
Product testimonials,
customized
themes,
and many other kinds
of information common in eBay listings are
prohibited, as are watermarked product images. Most importantly,
once you’ve created
a listing, other sellers will also use it to
list their stock of the
same item, meaning
that clever listing tactics provide very little
competitive advantage
on Amazon.com, a major difference from the
world of eBay selling.
• You’ll spend less
time maintaining listings on Amazon.com.
If you’re accustomed to sellOn Amazon.com, you’ll
ing on eBay, the Amazon.com
add an item to your list- experience will be different—but
ed inventory once; it will not so different as to cause most
sellers to feel lost.
remain there until sold
out or until you remove
it. There is no need to constantly relist or update
listings. You can adjust your product pricing as
many times as you like before the sale, in response
to competitor pricing or other factors, without
otherwise having to alter or change your listing—
and there are a number of third-party services to
help you to do this automatically.

• Key policies are set by Amazon.com. Amazon.com has a blanket 30-day return policy for
most kinds of items, in contrast to the more flexible set of choices offered to sellers on eBay. Amazon.com provides a limited set of shipping time
options and rates based on item category, weight,
and service levels promised to buyers; you’ll have
to work within these constraints to handle order fulfillment. You’ll sell through Amazon.com’s
checkout and payments process; no other alternatives are available. On the upside, this will require
no configuration or management from you.
Differences in Business Strategy and Operations
The differences between eBay and Amazon.com
aren’t just skin deep; while the product listing differences are significant, differences related to the
way that you fulfill orders, operate your business,
get paid, and grow your business are just as important:
• Proactive customer service is critical on
Amazon.com. Amazon.com’s strategy is focused
on providing a consistent service level to buyers,
even if this means less selection or a limited ability
to compete on price against other marketplaces.
To succeed on Amazon.com, you’ll need to engage
on a very timely basis with seller tools related to
shipment confirmation, customer service inquiries,
returns and refunds, and so on, and your ability to
sell is not determined entirely by customers’ ratings of your business—Amazon.com monitors your
performance closely as well. Failure or underperformance in these areas will limit your visibility to
buyers and may even limit your ability to sell at
all. On eBay it’s possible to operate a relatively
lax, or even “hands off” business and still make
regular sales if your products are unique or in demand. On Amazon.com, this is simply not the case.
• Amazon.com offers a free fulfillment service
to sellers. If you want to be free of the shipping
hassle altogether, you can ship your inventory directly to Amazon.com before the sale, after which
Amazon.com will handle the logistical details of
packing, shipping, and returns for you. Using the
Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) service also enables
your items to be made available to Amazon Prime
shoppers, who are often willing to spend more
for item purchases. eBay does not generally offer a comparable service or program, and FBA can
even be used to manage your fulfillments process
for sales on other channels like eBay—often with

reduced shipping costs and much faster delivery
times.
• You’ll pursue “Featured Merchant” status rather than “Top Rated Seller” status. Like
eBay, Amazon.com promotes its highest performing sellers. Unlike eBay, promotions on Amazon.
com are not related to search or browse placement; instead, featured Amazon.com merchants
appear more prominently than do other sellers
on product detail pages, most notably in the “Buy
Box” (through which buyers can make an immediate purchase) and “More Buying Choices” box (in
which the top three “other” sellers of an item are
foregrounded).
• Your fees will be calculated differently. Amazon.com’s fee totals often work out to be similar to eBay’s in the end, but the fee structure is
significantly different. While eBay charges a listing (“insertion”) fee, a final value fee, and PayPal
fees, Amazon.com charges either a monthly subscription fee or a small per-item fee (depending on
whether you’ve “subscribed” as an Amazon.com
seller or not), a referral fee that varies by category, and a closing fee based in part on item weight
in most non-media categories. For some transactions, Amazon.com fees are slightly higher than
they would be on eBay and for other transactions
they are slightly lower, but in most cases they work
out to be within a few percentage points of one
another. Before selling on Amazon.com, however,
it’s a good idea to calculate fees for your products
in advance, compare against your eBay fees, and
price accordingly.
• You’ll be paid
differently. While
eBay
payments
generally end up
in your PayPal balance immediately, leaving you to
transfer money to
bank accounts or
spend the balance
down
according
Amazon Webstore powers the online
to your needs and stores of many recognized brands. If eBay
judgment, Ama- Stores isn’t right for your business, Amazon.com
makes zon Webstore may fit the bill instead.
(Image: Amazon Webstore)
automatic biweekly transfers of your earnings balance into a payments bank account whose details you provide. In

july 2013

31

practice, this means that for many sellers, getting
“paid” by Amazon.com will be a slower process than
they have become accustomed to on eBay.
•
You’ll have different opportunities for
branding and growth. While listing limitations
make it more difficult to differentiate yourself as
a brand on Amazon.com proper than on the eBay
marketplace, sellers that are willing to open a web
store through Amazon.com using the Amazon Webstore platform can achieve much clearer branding
and separation than they can through eBay Stores.
Amazon Webstore offers sellers complete branding
control (including their own domain name) while integrating closely with Amazon.com and its general
selling infrastructure, including the Fulfillment By
Amazon program. Sellers that haven’t found eBay
Stores to be a good match for their needs may prefer Amazon.com’s offering instead.
Links to Detailed Information
The discussion above illustrates the differences
you’ll experience between the two marketplaces
in general terms, but sellers thinking about adding
Amazon.com as a selling channel should start with

32

july 2013

the links below for a more detailed understanding
of the Amazon.com selling experience and how it
compares to selling on eBay.
While Amazon.com may not be an additional channel of choice for every eBay seller, for many it could
be a step toward new growth and new opportunities—particularly with Terapeak for Amazon.com
now a part of their toolkit.
To see how Terapeak for eBay, Terapeak for Amazon.com, and Terapeak MySales can help you to
start or grow your business, take advantage of
Terapeak’s free trial membership today.
Aron Hsiao

is a social research professional and
a longtime writer and editor in the
e-commerce and technology space. As the
social media coordinator for Terapeak, Aron
interacts regularly with sellers on leading
marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.com,
working to help them leverage Terapeak’s
technology in order to seize e-commerce
opportunities.

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