EricEwe.com

It’s been quite some time since I posted on here. With the extended vacation which I have yet to find and upload the pictures to my new position, it’s been a hard hitting Q1 2010.

Somebody sent this to me and I thought I would share the quiz.

FIRST, do the simple math below.
THEN, scroll down to find your hero.

It is truly remarkable just how accurate this is!
1) Pick your favorite number between 1 and 8
2) Multiply your choice by 3
3) Add 3
4) Multiply again by 3
5) You’ll get a 2 digit number…..maybe 42, for example
6) Add the digits together. Example 4 and 2 = 6

Now Scroll down.
With that number, see who your ROLE MODEL is from the list below:
1. Albert Einstein 2.
2. Oprah Winfrey
3. Mother Theresa
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Bill Gates
6. Gandhi
7. Eleanor Roosevelt
8. Babe Ruth
9. Eric Ewe
10.Winston Churchill
11.Barbara Walters
12.Dalai Lama

If you have some spare change and would like to own part of history, you can put your offer in for an authentic space shuttle at 31.43% off the asking price. There are some strings attached and you have the next 30 days to look under the matress to find the money before putting in the offer.

Here is a fact that you might not know about the Shuttle program. The first space shuttle developed by NASA was the Enterprise (aka OV-101) and was rolled out on Sept 17, 1976, but it never made it into space.

In an article reported by Associated Press on Jan 15, 2010:
Nasa has slashed the asking price for its soon-to-be-redundant space shuttles from 42 million dollars (£25.8 million) to 28.8 million dollars (£17.7 million).

The shuttles are for sale once they stop flying, supposedly this autumn.

When Nasa put out the call to museums, schools and others in December 2008, seeking buyers, about 20 expressed interest.

Nasa spokesman Mike Curie expects more interest, especially with the discount. “We’re confident that we’ll get other takers,” Mr Curie said.

Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Atlantis and Endeavour are up for grabs. It’s possible that Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, also will be available. Enterprise currently is at the Smithsonian.

Mr Curie said no decisions will be made before summer.

The new lower price is based on Nasa’s estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Centre to a major US airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. The travel cost may vary based on location. Nasa moved up the delivery date to the latter half of 2011, instead of 2012.

Potential customers have until February 19 to put in a request.

As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. Nasa advertised them for 400,000 to 800,000 US dollars each in December 2008, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artefacts, for the cost of transportation and handling.

Assembly will be required, however.

With the recent development of Chinese nationals hacking Gmail – Google’s Free Email service, this lead the world’s largest search engine to rethink their strategy plus take swift action by enabling HTTPS for all Gmail users.

The hackers targeted Chinese human rights activists where these Gmail users believe that their Gmail accounts were compromised by the Chinese authorities. A law professor and human rights lawyer in Beijing, Dr. Biao stated that “At the end of last year, I received an email invitation to a human rights conference in Ireland. Two weeks later, our university officials came to me and said that the heads of the university had heard I planned to visit Ireland and that it was better not to go.” He elaborated “How did you know that? I have not told anyone” and was told: “Who do you think we are?”.

The hacking of GMail also put a strained on Google’s relationship with China as Google worked hard to tap into the Chinese market over 1.3 billion people and internet users of 384 million, according to Reuters on Jan 15, 2010. Revenue for Google in Q1 to Q3 for 2009 amounts to $16.9 billion and China’s est. revenue for 2009 is only $600 million, Google sees a huge growth potential in the country due to the sheer size of internet users and also the rise in disposable income for the Chinese middle class.

I do not think that the world’s 900 lbs search gorilla which is still trailing Baidu, China’s #1 search engine will leave the land of opportunities.

Do you?

This came as news to me when Friendster.com was acquired by a company in Malaysia. Friendster.com used to be the leading online social networking site and was often copied by the one Maga social networking site – MySpace.com (see book I finished on Stealing My Space).

I know that Friendster.com is a big hit in countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines and maintains a strong foot hold in Asia, but the growth of the company within the last few years were very disappointing. According to an article in Wired.com (Issue 12.04 | April 2004), they valued Friendster at $53 million. After five years, Friendster was only able to double its value in comparison to companies like MySpace or the current social networking website titan, Facebook which is able to command a higher value and have seen a huge surge in growth.

A couple of days ago, Frindster was sold for a price tag of $110 million to a Malaysia company – MOL Global. MOL Global is an affiliate of online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Bhd, which has Berjaya Corp Bhd chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) Tan Sri Vincent Tan as the principal shareholder.

An industry blog, TechCrunch, had in July valued Friendster at US$210mil, a fraction of Facebook’s estimated US$10bil valuation. According to Compete.com, Friendster is currently generating 1.1 million unique hits in Nov 2009 while Facebook is generating 128.3 million unique hits for the same period.

I doubt that Friendster will come close to what Facebook is doing but I am sure that MOL sees a value in Frienster to cough up $110 million, and if TechCrunch is accurate in their estimate, then Friendster was sold at 50 cents on the dollar.

Google announced today that they are taking an aggressive move to make reviews more accessible to those brick and mortar stores. Google will allow U.S. consumers to read reviews about local stores on their cell phones when they point and scan the bar codes on those local stores.

Google labeled this initiative as “Favorite Places on Google”, and Google sent out 100,000 bar codes to 100,000 most popular local businesses based on searches. That initiative spanned across 9,000 towns across the 50 states.

Businesses can put the barcode up in their window; searchers can scan it with any camera- and app-enabled phone, then read the reviews and other info on the Place Page, and even get mobile coupons on the spot. The QR codes can be scanned by a variety of mobile phones, including Android-powered phones, the iPhone and BlackBerry devices, provided that the user downloads a barcode-scanning app. Google suggests its own Barcode Scanner app for Android, and the $1.99 QuickMark app (iTunes) for the iPhone, among others. 

Google mentioned that the barcode initiative will be expanded with more bar codes being sent out, but there was no mention of a timeline. If you are keen on getting onboard, you can claim your own barcode via this Google Favorite Places link.

I have been in the affiliate realm for quite some time and I have seen a lot of changes, from the rise and fall of cookie stuffing affiliates to networks imploding. Within the last 3 years, I have seen a surge in not just super affiliates like Fatwallet, SlickDeals but rather what I would call MEGA Affiliates that make those super affiliates look like dwarfs.

Don’t get me wrong, in order to reach a status of a super affiliate, that particular affiliate should be driving a substantial amount of traffic to the retailer and generating a decent revenue. Commission Juction categorizes larger affiliates as “Top Performers” and it order to qualify, one must have a CJ Marketplace account and have been paid at least $10,000 USD in commissions per month for the last three months.

Over the last 3 years, companies that are typically merchants are getting into the affiliate game. A good example is DiscoverCard. They came storming into the scene and in 2007, Discover was recognized as the “Best New Affiliate” in the Linkshare Golden Links Award in NYC on June 19, 2007. It is no surprise that they are not only a super affiliates but Mega affiliates with their millions of DiscoverCard customer. One of their biggest angle is to offer a CASH BACK to the consumer for their purchase by clicking through the Mega affiliate’s link. Another notable Mega Affiliate is Bing which is supported by Microsoft.

What really puzzles me is the fact that the retailers have with these Mega Affiliates. Yes, it is imperative to have a relationship with them but at what cost? If you are paying your public affiliates 2% on all goods bought on your website and you offer these Mega affiliates more than 10% commission, where is the logic behind this? I have worked at an electronics retailer and competition is fierce and consumers are not only price sensitive, most tech savvy consumers will scour the ends of the world to save a penny. Thus, one is often squeezed by manufacturers to be competitive. I noticed that there was an electronics retailer offering 10% cash back to Bing’s users when they purchased through Bing’s links.

Today, I noticed that Wal-Mart is offering 20%. Yes, 20% on Bing.com. If you do some quick math, 20% is basically 1/5 off on a product. On Average, they are offering 1%-4% through their affiliate program on Linkshare and have been constantly shaving commission via their Linkshare program. So if Bing.com is able to offer 20% kick back to their customer base, then either Wal-Mart is offering at least 20% or Bing is subsidizing 16-19% on each transaction for their customer base.

Let’s look at this in a logical way, I am a firm believer in rewarding for performance but not to the extend where it cuts into your profit margin. In the long run, this is not a sustainable strategy where the merchant will bleed to death. And if the Mega affiliate is dumping money to promote a merchant, that is a great relationship for the merchant.

If you are having some issues with eBay search tonight, you are not alone. Apparently, this is happening to the eBay US and also eBay UK. Based on what I discovered on blogs, eBay will credit sellers for invisibility due to this outage.

A regular search term that I tested, “Toyota Camry”:

The once high flying Sharper Image is back, but utilizing a different business model with funding from Camelot Venture Group. I doubt that they are able to breach their ever successful pre-2004 strategy and this holiday season is going to be a good barometer. Their present model evolves around selling to consumers through other retailers as well as maintaining a presence online. I have no doubt that Sharper Image invested millions of dollars in building its brand since their inception, but having another retailer sell your products is similar to having Wal-Mart sell your product among the 5 other brands that they sell.

Some of their brick and mortar retailers that are selling their products are Best Buy, Staples, Kohl’s, Bed Bath and Beyond to Macy’s. Well, they are not in Wal-Mart yet but just image, if you are going to get Dad an electric shaver, would you go with something like Remington, Norelco, etc which produced quality shavers for a living or Sharper Image which sources for products and slap their brand on it? Hummm???

If they have a Sharper Image store, then it is a different story as they only carry and selling one item; not items with multiple brands.  So making a sale with Sharper Image product sale is much easier at a Sharper Image store as opposed to a store like Bed Bath and Beyond. Blanketing the nation with retail stores will not work too [read on].

As for their website, it is OK. It did not blow me away and hosting videos on YouTube. If one is on a shoe string budget to setup the website, then YouTube is the way to go. i.e. the “The Sharper Image® Deluxe Nose & Ear Trimmer With Vacuum” video was hosted on YouTube. Why not create a video hosting engine and not distract online consumers with another brand like YouTube – they are on your site, focus on selling your brand and your product.

Overall, it is a good effort to kick start a brand that went through bankruptcy in Feb 2008 and I sincerely hope that they do turn around and make a profit… plus bring back the retail stores. Brookestone which is their closest competitor are still going at it and can be found at Malls. With the retail stores, just don’t go over crazy and maybe test out revolving mall stalls that is established in Q4 like what ToysRUs are doing currently to capture the holiday shoppers.

I was browsing one of the tech sites and I stumbled upon this company – Swoopo.com. Pretty interesting and lucrative business model  – NO DOUBT!!!

Basically, they are an auction company which sells directly to consumers. Swoopo started in Germany and is making an impact in US. They focus on electronics like LED TVs, SLR Cameras, laptops, ipods, top end cell phones like the Nokia N97, etc

This is how their business model works.

1. Like eBay, you need to bid and be the highest or last bidder when the auction closes.
2. The highest bidder will pay for the item price at the close of the auction.

Simple and straight forward huh? So what’s the catch?

1. The bid increments are predetermined by Swoopo. I have seen mostly increments of $0.06 per bid.
2. In order to place a bid, you have to buy credits at $0.60 per credit.
3. As opposed to having the auction end at a predetermined time, it is always a moving target as to when the auction will close. See # 4 below for moving target details.
4. Every time somebody submits a bid, it will add 15seconds (sometimes 20 seconds depending on the item) to the auction closing time.
5. The key to winning is to be the last person bidding on the item when the countdown timer is zero.
   i.e. Assuming that I am looking at bidding on an Apple iPhone 3Gs. The countdown timer to the auction is 7 seconds when I submit my bid, it will add 15 seconds to the countdown timer making the timer 22 seconds. The goal is to be the last bidder when the timer is zero. It will cost me 1 credit which is $0.60 per bid.

Here is how it gets super duper lucrative: -

I was observing an auction for a Nokia N97 cell phone. Retail price on Nokia.com is $571, with the retail price of $699 but who pays retail.

The last bidder who won the item was Racer13 with 432 bids plus $119.76 for the item.

Auction Price:	$119.76
All prices are in US Dollars
Bidder:	Racer13

Worth up to:	$699.99
Placed bids (432):	$259.20
FreeBids (0):	$0.00
Auction price:	$119.76
Savings:	$321.03

By their calculations which I verified, Racer13 paid $373.56 for the phone (@ $0.60/bid X 432 bids  + $119.76 for item). He got a pretty decent deal as you can pick up a Nokia N97 for about $400 on eBay.

On the flip side, Swoopo made a killing selling this auction.

When I was looking at the auction, there were about a dozen people actively bidding on it. This is based on my unscientific observation.

If Racer13 paid 432 bids to be the winner, it would be safe to say that those other dozen or so bidder might have utilized 1/2 of the total # of bids that Racer13 used.

Total bids for that item:
=Racer13′s bids + 12 other competitors bids which is half of Racer13′s bids*
=432 + 2592
=3024
*Avg 216 bids per bidder X 12 bidders = 2592 bids

Total amount collected by Swoopo for the Nokia N97
=Item sold + (total bids X $0.60 per bid)
=$119.76 + (3024 X $0.60)
=$119.76 + $1814.40
=$1934.16

I would think that if you buy the N97 phone at wholesale the price, you might be able to get it for $270-$300. Making $1934.16 from $300 item, that is a 6X return and that ain’t too shabby.

Now, eBay would be kicking themselves while saying “Why didn’t I think of that?”

If you think that Swoopo is for you, you can sign up and test it out with 3 free bids, expiring 12/31/09. CLICK HERE