Introduction


Back in the 1960s, it was said that opinions were like Volkswagens: Everybody had one. Fast-forward 40 years to today. When it comes to the future of e-commerce, it's no different. It seems everyone is trying to sell something on the Internet. But what about the facts?

Some day, in the early part of the twenty-first century, the e-commerce landscape will contain either hundreds of thousands of e-commerce sites or just a few Wal-Marttype sites competing for the attention and dollars of online consumers. As attractive as it might be to think that Wal-Mart will rule the Internet, as it seems to rule any community where it sets up shop, it just ain't gonna happen. This includes current Goliaths like Amazon.

Consumers like choices. They enjoy their personal freedom to choose. To think that they would sheepishly allow one merchant to fill all their needs is whistling in the dark.

Okay, then. What will the future of shopping online look like?

What was it that Dennis Hopper said? "The '90s are gonna make the '60s look like the '50s"? We're past the '90s now, but the thinking still applies. We've had a resurgence of "retro" these last several years, and the Net is adding its own line to Hopper's quote. The Internet will make the recent turn of this century look more like the turn of the last. This will add up to a resurgence of the nineteenth century, but this time on a global scale.

In short, we're becoming a planet of shopkeepers. That will change the face of e-commerce. Fueling this change is Yahoo!, which is paving the way to the future of consumer choice with the Yahoo! store program.

Now, making money to augment your income using a parttime e-commerce business is not easy. Making an entire living from your online business is even more difficult. Making money on the Net is not easy. To paraphrase an old investment quote, if you want to make a small fortune in e-commerce, start with a large one. Just look at the many dot-bombs that have crashed and burned over the last four or five years.

Why is it so difficult to make a living online?

There are a variety of reasons, and they come in all sizes. There's the cost of building and maintaining a full-blown e-commerce site. Web servers, database servers, email servers, and a host of software applications are only the start of long laundry list of expense items. Then, there are the personnelprogrammers, Web designers, IT specialists, businesses developers, marketers, and customer service and warehouse people. Finally, there's warehousing and shipping the products themselves. The money needed to run a successful online business flows like a river: You need money to create it, maintain it, and then advertise and promote it.

This is where the Yahoo! store program can help.

The Yahoo! stores have grown into one of the largest online shopping destinations on the Web today. The nearly 20,000 Yahoo! stores have a 71% reach among online consumers, the highest on the Web. In May 2005, there were 21,317 searches for the phrase "Yahoo! store," according to Yahoo! search marketing. Many of these stores have become so successful that they have grown from small "mom and pop" or part-time businesses to full-time businesses.

When a business becomes a full-time operation, a whole new set of skills and knowledge is needed to operate a Yahoo! store like a true e-commerce business. This book gives part-time business owners that advanced skill set and knowledge so they can customize their Yahoo! stores and move to the next level of making a living from a Yahoo! store.

A small to medium-size business can save thousands of dollars in programming and marketing costs by building on and customizing an existing Yahoo! store. Yahoo! provides a booklet with instructions on how to market a Yahoo! store, but it is very limited. The booklet also doesn't provide strategies, tips, or comprehensive marketing tools to grow a Yahoo! store into a full-time business. Although it offers basic customization instructions, it does not cover advanced features for turning more visitors into customers.

This book shows you how to take the standard Yahoo! store to the next level by customizing the Yahoo! storefront to take full advantage of the successful e-commerce strategies and tactics in use today. In short, this book shows you how to set up and run a true full-time business.




Succeeding At Your Yahoo! Business
Succeeding At Your Yahoo! Business
ISBN: 0789735342
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 208

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