Social Shopping | Internet Marketing Blog

Can the community create cash flow?

We’re all aware of how important cash flow is to any business, especially start-up tech businesses where cash flow equals food on the table… So how do the new raft of user generated content offerings plan to make their cash flow sustainable?

by Gareth Knight 08 August 2006 13:21pm 2 comments

The 12 fundamentals of e-commerce

We are often asked about the fundamentals of e-commerce: how do you build an online retail store, what do customers need to see, what does Google look for, how can you increase conversion rates?

I have compiled a list of the 12 fundamentals that you can put in place to enhance an existing online store or plan a new one...

by Chris Lake 18 July 2006 14:14pm 1 comment

Marketers must embrace shift of power to the consumer

There were three engaging presentations about the Future of Online Marketing at the Commission Junction University event for advertisers and publishers in London this week.

The message coming through loud and clear was that marketers need to wake up quickly to the shifting balance of power on the internet.

There is no escaping the fact that consumers will increasingly hold sway in the fast-changing digital environment.

by Linus Gregoriadis 14 July 2006 10:09am 1 comment

Free Web 2.0 software doesn’t mean better…

TechCrunch posts a heads up on ActiveCollab, a new open source alternative to popular online project management tool Basecamp, by Web 2.0 poster children 37Signals, and talks about the possible threat to current monopoly and current business model if the software is of high quality.

by Gareth Knight 13 July 2006 12:03pm 0 comments

Blogging almost going mainstream?

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ll probably feel that it’s old hat. The principle is simple – you talk about something that you’re interested and/or passionate about, and through that you find people that are interested in the same sort of things that you are.

Over time if you’re a good write or really passionate or you simply create / get hold of good content, you’ll rise to the top of that niche vertical interest, which in turn will result in more readers.

The problem is that until very recently blogging was kind of hard to do – you have to be at least a little technically literate to be able to use the blog software interfaces. The result being that until recently blogging definitely wasn’t part of the mainstream consciousness.

by Gareth Knight 05 July 2006 11:34am 1 comment

Web 2.0 startups in the UK – questions to consider

There’s a pretty great post on Particletree about the kind of questions VCs ask when you’re doing a startup, so I thought I’d highlight them here as there seems to be a profound lack of 'noisy' UK-based Web 2.0 startups, and maybe finding finance is one barrier for entrepreneurs?

Where are all the UK web startups? Maybe everybody is just being very quiet (to fail in complete obscurity), or perhaps things are as dead as they seem to be (more than likely). The UK seems almost entirely barren compared with what's happening in the US.

It’s probably worth noting that local VCs seem to be a little behind their US conterparts (two local startups that I can think of off the top of my head have been approached by US investors – names of the innocent withheld). This too could be part of the problem.

by Gareth Knight 22 June 2006 11:58am 2 comments

Are all AJAX homepages doomed?

Dozens of personalised homepages (aka "AJAX homepages") have emerged over the past 18 months as developers started to programme lovely drag and drop interfaces, allowing users to customise the layout of their personal homepage. Cool technology, great use of AJAX, but is there trouble ahead?

by Chris Lake 15 June 2006 14:45pm 12 comments