Archive for August 17th, 2006
Downselling As a Strategy to Turn Prospects to Customers
Reflections of a BizDrivenLife: If you are selling premium items, one way to increase your market reach and customer base may be to downsell. Create a low cost, easy to purchas e alternative that are meaningful to your target customers, and yet does not need a big decision or commitment in time or money.
EBay Still Creating New Look & Redesign
EBay plans later this month to begin testing a redesign of its search results pages that will contain more information for each listed item and will sport a new look and layout.The online marketplace hopes the changes will enhance the shopping experience for buyers, wrote Nico Posner, a senior product manager, in an official announcement [...]
Skype To Gradually Wipe Out Traditional Phone Business
LIKE most people doing important jobs in Estonia, Sten Tamkivi is alarmingly young. He is 28âpractically a greybeard in a country that once had a 27-year-old foreign minister. And like many Estonians, he is reticent and modest. Asked for his job title, he looks apologetic. âI think I am director of operations,â? he says. âWe’re [...]
You can open an online store for a few dollars. But keeping it open might come down to a few cents. That’s what some veteran eBay sellers in Delaware are saying after the online auction giant said it would increase the fees it collects from every sale made at eBay “stores” starting Tuesday. Penny by [...]
EBay has been stirring things up on blog sites around the world with its recent fee increases and business plan alterations. At this point there is no question it has been insensitive to a large group of angry and frustrated sellers. The unhappy store owners seem to want nothing more than to be heard. So [...]
The Web 2.0 Exit Strategy: Sell It on Ebay
Business Logs: Kiko, an online calendar application incubated by Y Combinator, is up for sale on eBay. The starting price of $49,999 has not been met yet, so we’ll see how it goes. Traditional exit strategies for companies include being acquired or an IPO, but that’s normally for companies that have at least an inkling [...]
This Very Young Entrepreneur Is Now in the Pink
Jim Hopkins: I haven’t met an entrepreneur yet who coasted through childhood and teen-age years without a job mowing lawns, shoveling snow or babysitting. The really entrepreneurial ones organize kids to take on big projects: A friend of mine ran three newspaper delivery routes by getting other teen-agers to work for him. Sometimes, they use [...]
SmartMoney.com: There’s no other way to put it: Your business idea is so bad that it’s good. Very good. Sure, getting it from your brain to store shelves might be tough, but well…what if? For Paul Stremple, inventor of the Banana Bunker, that “what if” has become a reality. Fruit lovers are clamoring for his [...]
eBayer Selling Snakes On A Plane Toast
An enterprising eBayer from Florida is offering a piece of toast with the “Snakes On A Plane” movie logo burned into one side. The listing boasts “whether you are a novice toast collector or a serious toast connoisseur with several hundred slices of toast in your collection, this slice of toast will surely be the [...]
Giving Textbooks Away For Free
Associated Press: College textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses this fall, students won’t pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have ads for companies including FedEx Kinko’s and Pura Vida coffee. A small Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion [...]
The Seattle Times: At night, Rachel Evans nestles under a canvas teepee in the Methow Valley, a spot so pastoral she can hear her Norwegian fjord horse gently breathing. By day, she directs research and development at a thriving dot-com. That a 25-year-old sleeps in a teepee and works for a high-tech company is not [...]
