eCommercePractical Internet Strategies to Sell Your

Products and Yourself

Presented by Dan Bond

Sponsored jointly by Downtown Delaware, the Delaware Emerging Technology Center, 

Delaware Technical Community College (Terry Campus) and USDA Rural Development 

February 2010

I did my homework!

But then I tore it

up.

That was fun!

It's a long road!

Find & development your niche

Build your Web presence

Build traffic flow

Monitize your web traffic

Today's Main Topics

Revenue from Advertising & Affiliate

Comparison Shopping Sites

Legal & Tax Issues

Sources of Information 

  

Revenue from the affiliate commissions

Monetivzing Your Web TrafficRevenue from advertising on your website

Revenue from sales of goods & services

 

Website Advertising

 

  

AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the advertisements are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the advertisements is often relevant to the website.Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content. AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small websites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and sales people. 

Affiliate Marketing

Compensation Models

• Cost per sales (80%)

• Cost per action (19%)

• Cost per click & cost per "mile" (1%)

Affiliate Networks

Shopping Sites

SKU

Show me the money!

Social Shopping Sites

"Websites that combine social elements such as a social networking community or the ability to set social bookmarks with aspects of shopping such as product reviews and deal hunting"

"A site that only sells one item a day as a "daily woot" and provides community feedback on the item."

"Discover and share products in a social environment that allows you to recommend products to friends, organize shopping lists, find the best deals and get discounts."

Other Social Shopping Sites

Legal & Tax Issues

• Identity theft

• Protection of credit card information

• Copyright infringement

• Affiliate contact violations

• Tax collection

• Spam

PCI DSS Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Be informed. Got to:http://www.pcisecuritystandards.org

Failure to understand the PCI compliance standards could result in higher merchant account fees and fines from the credit card issuers.

WARNING!

Even if you are PCI compliant, if you experience a credit card security breach, you can be open to legal action from the affected customers.

Three types of ownership protection:

A copyright protects original works gives the owner exclusive rights to reproduce his or her work in any medium. 

A trademark is used to protect a word, symbol, device, or name that is used for the purpose of trading goods. The trademark indicates the source of goods and distinguishes them from the goods of others. 

A patent for an invention grants a property right to the inventor that will prevent anyone else from making, using, or selling an invention. 

Potential Penalties for Copyright Infringement:

1.Actual damages (the amount you would have to pay to license the material from the copyright owner).

2.Statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work.

3.If the violation was willful—up to $150,000 per work.

4.At the court’s discretion, attorney fees.5.Embarrassment.

 

This is scary stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the 1990s, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It included a very powerful tool to quickly attack the theft of unregistered copyright-protected materials so victims of theft of creative works can reach out into cyberspace and aggressively pursue an infringer. This tool, known as the “takedown notice,” requires a website host to pull down an allegedly infringing website or page merely upon receipt of a specified notice from the owner or its lawyer. No lawsuit is necessary. The implications to the host are significant: the failure to pull it down exposes the hosting company to liability for copyright infringement under traditional doctrines of law, and it also loses immunity created by the DMCA. The law giveth, and the law taketh away.

TAXES

WARNING!

Internet sales are not always tax free.

There are over 11,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the United States.

Ecommerce merchants located in a state without a sales tax do not have to collect sales tax unless they have taken some action to create a physical presence in another state.

Other states that do not have sales taxes are Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.

Sales tax vulnerability

In April 2008 the State of New York inserted an item in the state budget asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to residents of New York, based on the existence of affiliate links from New York–based websites to Amazon. The state asserts that even one such affiliate constitutes Amazon having a business presence in the state, and is sufficient to allow New York to tax all Amazon sales to state residents. Amazon challenged the amendment and lost at the trial level in January, 2009.                                       The case is currently in appeal process.

Sources of eCommerce Information

When you have questions, this is the first place to go!

http://www.business.gov/business-law/online-business/

Government Assistance, Regulations, Taxes

Small Business Issues & Assistance

http://www.delawaresbdc.org/

Business Information Security

www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/security.aspx

"NISTIR 7621 Small Business Information Security:The Fundamentals"

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/ir-7621/draft-nistir-7621.pdf

     fitbase.fitforcommerce.com

ecommerceoptimization.com

growsmartbusiness.com

Dan Bond302-228-6590 (cell) 

daniellbond@gmail.com

    

It's been great being with you

this week!