Amazon Says It Added 3M Prime Members In The Week Before Christmas

Amazon is a company famous for press releases that are devoid of actual information. (As we saw after Thanksgiving this month.) But, in a moment of selective truth-telling, the company just revealed that it signed up over three million members for its Prime program during the week before Christmas.

There are caveats, of course, as ever.

Amazon confirmed to Geekwire that this figure refers to new trial and paying members. So the actual number retained as ongoing, paying members may prove to be lower. (This is the case with over services that offer free trials, such as Apple Music.)

The company just gave a figure for the third week of December — which, in case you forgot, is right before Christmas falls — so we’re unable to gauge how much more popular the service was than a more normal week. Offering free shipping is clearly most appealing during last-minute Christmas shopping time.

(Fwiw, last year, Amazon said it added 10 million new Prime members over the entire “holiday period.)

And finally, in typical Amazon fashion, there is no word on the total number of subscribers that the service has, although it was apparently a “record-breaking holiday season.”

“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and there are tens of millions of members worldwide,” the company added.

But the three million figure does give a small glimpse into the service’s popularity.

The $99 per year Prime service gives Amazon customers free-shipping for Amazon.com products, other shopping perks and access to its Prime video service.

Netflix, which rivals Amazon on the latter, has 69 million customers across 60 countries worldwide. Amazon Prime Video is only available in the U.S., UK, Austria, Germany and (recently added) Japan, however, though Prime membership services are supported in more countries.

That’s the most meaningful part of Amazon’s holiday announcement. Other carefully selected metrics — some of which include no actual, raw figures and therefore give little to no insight — include:

• Nearly 70 percent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday — last year that was approaching 60 percent, but we don’t know how many went beyond browsing and actually bought items via mobile
• Prime members made The Man in the High Castle the most watched TV season on Prime Video this holiday by 4.5x and doubled their total viewing hours of Prime Video titles, compared to 2014
• Biggest holiday ever for Amazon Devices – up 2x over last year’s record-setting holiday


• Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday season
• Prime Now has busiest day ever on Christmas Eve
• • Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday
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Alibaba To Invest $1.25B In Restaurant Delivery Service Ele.me, Says Report

Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.

According to Crunchbase, Ele.me has raised about $1.09 billion dollars. Its list of investors is noteworthy because it includes Alibaba rivals Tencent and JD.com. Ele.me’s largest round, a $630 million Series F, was announced in August.

If the deal goes through, it strengthens Alibaba’s O2O strategy. O2O, which can stand for online-to-offline or offline-to-online, is shorthand for the business of convincing e-commerce customers to spend money at offline businesses or, on the other hand, getting customers who usually shop in brick-and-mortar stores to make online purchases.

Alibaba’s other O2O investments include its affiliate Alipay, China’s largest mobile payments platform, electronics retail chain Suning, and taxi app Didi Kuaidi.

Micromax sells a million Canvas Spark series 3G phones in six months on Snapdeal

Home-grown handset maker Micromax Informatics has sold more than a million Canvas Spark series 3G phones in less than six months of its launch exclusively on Snapdeal.

The Canvas Spark series 3G phones– Canvas Spark and Canvas Spark 2–received more than 90,000 positive consumer ratings, the company said in a release. Canvas Spark 2 is now available bundled with a data package from Airtel that allows consumers to use Whatsapp free of charge for a period of five months.

Micromax Informatics has now decided to make the phones available on open sale exclusively on Snapdeal without any pre-registrations.

Vineet Taneja, CEO, Micromax, said, “The consumer response for the Canvas Spark series has been phenomenal and overwhelming at the same time with the demand for the range is increasing with every passing minute. We expect the sales of this device to touch a new high in the coming weeks and hope to further strengthen our leadership in mass smartphone category in India.”

Kunal Bahl, Co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal, said, “We are delighted with the response that this phone has received. The Canvas Spark series has been amongst the best performing smartphones on Snapdeal with a phenomenal response from our customers across more than 5,000 towns and cities of India. There is a huge untapped market for smartphones in India and we will continue to offer our customers access to the best smartphones at great value.”

Get the perfect two-toned lips

                       

                                 

In flat two minutes, get the hot-on-trend two-toned pout, using our easy-to-follow guide…

1. Splash some water on your lips and use a mild scrub or exfoliator to clear off the dead skin. If you don’t have an exfoliator, take some sugar granules on your finger tips and rub them gently on your lips. Once they are well polished, apply a lip balm or a not-too-shiny gloss.

1. Using a nude lip liner, line your lips and fill the upper lip with the darker of the two lipstick shades. Try and pick shades from the colour family of ombre. Or, for a more experimental festive look, you can include metallic shades of gold and mixing them with pinks, reds and oranges.
2. On the lower lip, using a brush, sweep the same colour along the outer edge, blending upwards and keeping the centre of the lip free of colour. Use a lip brush or your finger tips to blend.
3. Apply the lighter lipstick shade on the centre of your lower lip and blend the two shades together, going from light to dark.

Using Paypal for eBay Purchases

Paypal is the preferred payment choice for many buyers because Paypal allows buyers to pay instantly for eBay purchases. In this article, we will review using Paypal on eBay from the buyer's point of view.

Since eBay purchased Paypal, it has become even easier for buyers and sellers to complete auction sales. Buyers like Paypal because they can quickly and easily pay online. In fact, some bidders will only bid on items they can pay for with Paypal.

One thing that confuses buyers is some sellers accept Paypal payments through credit cards, while others only accept transfers. You see, with Paypal a buyer can fund the transaction in three ways. This can confuse buyers, and cause problems.

Here's the three ways to fund a Paypal transaction:

1. Transfer from a bank account tied to the user's Paypal account.

2. Transfer from a Paypal balance.

3. Payment from a Credit Card.

The first two options cost Paypal nothing in processing fees. Credit cards cost about 2 percent to process, and Paypal passes this cost on to merchants. Some eBay sellers do not want to pay this fee for service, so they only accept payments by transfer. This confuses buyers who win auctions and assume a credit card transaction is fine.

Paypal wants users to transfer funds, and not use their credit cards. Not only is this cheaper for Paypal, but there is no risk of a chargeback.

A chargeback is when a buyer reverses the charge on a credit card by contacting his bank. Most, maybe all, banks will reverse a credit card charge with little or no investigation if the card holder contests the charge. The money is taken right out of the merchant's bank account -Paypal in this case.

Paypal makes it difficult to use a credit card to send money through Paypal. This is done making the credit card payment option difficult to find, and warning users about the "risk" because you cannot buy Paypal's insurance.

With a credit card purchase, you do not need Paypal's insurance. Your bank will reverse the charge free if the seller scams you.

One other way Paypal makes it hard for users to instantly send money with a credit card is by limiting the total amount you can charge.

The first time I tried to use Paypal to pay for an eBay auction, I was unable to use my credit card because the amount was above the limit. That was a $700 item. I think the single item limit is $500, but could not find confirmation of this. The lifetime limit, or total amount you can send all eBay sellers with a credit card is $2,000.

If you wish to pay for an item with a credit card through Paypal you should confirm the seller takes card transactions. This can be done reviewing the auction and looking for the credit card logos adjacent to the Paypal logo in the payment methods screen.

Whenever you pay for an eBay auction through Paypal, you should check the seller's Paypal status. Do not send large amounts to unverified users, and watch that the user's address matches the auction details.

Paypal is an easy way to pay for your eBay purchases.

Apple is reportedly in partnership talks with Croma to launch its stores in India

Apple has been planning an official entry of its retail stores in India, and It’s been in the news for quite a while, but was mostly brushed off as a rumor. If a new report is to be believed, Apple is planning to launch its official retail stores in India in partnership with Croma. India does not allow FDI without partnership for brands, which is why Apple is reportedly planning to seal the deal with Tata-backed Croma stores.

You might spot a separate space for Apple products at Croma, the space will be designed as per Apple’s niche style, just like its stores overseas. The space will be attended by designated Apple employees who will be well trained in dealing with customers. As per the reports that surfaced earlier, the demo space will have the capacity to showcase 10 to 15 devices, and Apple will bear half the cost of setting it all up.

In a report by a national daily, these stores could soon be spotted in Croma stores located in Mumbai (Juhu, Oberoi Mall, Phoenix Mall, Malad, Ghatkopar) and Bangalore (Jayanagar). Avijit Mitra, CEO of Infiniti Retail, said in a statement,“These stores will be modeled on the global design and will offer the best experience to consumers, showcasing the entire range of Apple products.”

Past reports have also claimed that Apple is planning to open 500 retail stores in India to strengthen its market presence. The company is also said to be lobbying for the Indian government to ease the FDI laws. Apple CEO, Tim Cook recently met India’s PM Narendra Modi, and rumors are that they have come to an agreement for easy FDI policies. This festive season, Apple is all set to unveil its much-awaited Apple Watch in the Indian market.

Making Money on Amazon - Four Ways You Can Turn Amazon Into Your Personal Goldmine

Maybe you know about Amazon Marketplace. Maybe you're already an Amazon Affiliate. But that's just the start. Read on for more about both of these plus two more ways to make money with Amazon.com even if you're not a best-selling author (yet).

1) Amazon Marketplace

Amazon Marketplace actually offers several ways to make money, but I'm going to lump them all together for the sake of simplicity. Basically, if you have an item to sell that's being offered on Amazon, you can sell it there as well. Just list it alongside the main listing, offer it at a good price, and voila! You may have your first sale.

Of all the "make money online" strategies, selling your stuff on Amazon has got to be one of the simplest -- and most foolproof systems. As long as you pick something where there is a demand, and you price it well and describe it accurately yet enticingly, you're just about guaranteed to sell your item.

And best of all, until you sell it, you won't pay a cent of listing fees. Only when you sell it will Amazon take out its share (which, admittedly is a sizeable chunk). But then they do the advertising, and you save lots of time since you don't have to create the descriptions as you have to do on eBay.

2) Amazon Affiliate Program

You can also be an affiliate for Amazon. Basically, simply advertise Amazon products on your website or anywhere you like, and wait for people to buy stuff. Once they do, you'll get a commission. It's even easier than selling things on Amazon Marketplace.

3) Publish your information products on Kindle

If you are the author of electronic information products of any kind, you can publish them for Kindle. It's not hard, and you can have your products listed on Amazon practically in no time at all.

How much will you sell? It depends. However, selling your products is the least of your benefits. Being listed on Amazon gets you found on Google and will help with establishing yourself as an authority.

4) Publish physical books through Amazon's CreateSpace.com program

Finally, there is also the option of publishing your physical books on Amazon.com. Through its publishing arm CreateSpace, Amazon now makes it possible to publish -- and sell -- your very own physical book, or even your CD, DVD, and more. Not only will this help you with making money on Amazon, but it will help increase your visibility and authority as well!

Online Poker and PayPal Deposit

PayPal is possessed by eBay and is currently one of the largest online payment processors in the world. Plenty of people have PayPal accounts which they practice for performing online business transactions, buying and selling products and services and even for depositing funds into online casinos. Poker PayPal is a excitement that is taking off with a flourish. Having the ability to play poker with a PayPal deposit has made it much comfortable for many people to get into the game of online poker playing.

Poker PayPal

Whereas Poker PayPal is a comparatively new trait and not many online casinos give the ability to pay with PayPal funds, it is expected that this excitement will flourish extensively over the time. Having the easiness of playing poker with a PayPal deposit will cause many people who do not have access to credit cards to search their place in the online casino world. Whereas there are few states that are not completely in agreement over using a PayPal deposit for playing in online casino PayPal, lots of them have come around to the idea of PayPal poker and are granting users to deposit funds via their PayPal accounts.

 Other countries are viewing the idea of letting players use their PayPal funds for poker PayPal and within just a few years many countries are expected to approve of the action.

Meanwhile, there are only some online casinos that at present accept PayPal deposits that many players are not familiar that they can use their accounts to play. A number of online poker sites are considering the execution of granting PayPal poker and the all those who do is expected to raise drastically in the next few months. 

At this moment there are more than ten diverse countries that grant for PayPal poker deposits, with more considering the execution. Greece, France and the UK are only a few of the countries that will grant you to use your PayPal account to finance your online poker deposits. As more people find out the effortlessness of using this technique of deposit it is protected to say that many more countries will shortly add PayPal deposits to their online poker funding options.

PayPal Deposit

Using PayPal to finance online poker deposits abolish the tension of using your credit card or bank account. You can forget about the worries of disclosing your private details all over the internet. PayPal is a trusted and highly safe online banking option that allows users the easiness of making deposits without the tensions of having their money stolen. 

PayPal is basically an e-wallet payment way out that grants you the protection of understanding that your money is protected when you transfer funds. Making a PayPal deposit in an online poker room is done securely and unnoticed. With the increase of PayPal poker on the prospect it is expected that many more people will find themselves playing poker online. 

Without worrying over using their credit card details or banking account details, people will feel more safe in their playing and poker PayPal will drastically increase as more and more players find themselves with the ability to pay for play with a PayPal deposit.

To eBay Or Not To eBay - That is the Question!

Ebay is a relatively new phenomenon, but the company feels like it has been around for decades and has taken the web world by storm. Here are some brief stats:

·         eBay was founded in 1995

·         eBay has a global customer base of 181 million

·         eBay has a global presence in 33 markets including the UK and USA

·         eBay UK was Launched in 1999

·         eBay in the UK's number one ecommerce website

·         eBay UK has 3 million items listed at any given time

·         eBay UK accounts for 10% of all the time UK users spend on the internet

We could go on and on discussing the merits and stats of eBay, but the one that sticks out for me is number 5: eBay in the UK's number one ecommerce website!

All ecommerce websites endeavour to get customers through online marketing activity like search engine optimisation and paid for marketing without ever considering a mechanism that is already in place to help them - eBay!

There is a misconception within many businesses eBay is not for businesses (The term beggars has been used often). However, they should consider these startling statistics:

·         Profitable since its launch, eBay net revenues totalled $1.329 billion in Q4-05 and $4.552 billion in 2005.

·         eBay International achieved net revenues of $604.1 million in Q4-05 and $2.081 billion in 2005.

·         In Q4-05, gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total value of all successfully closed items on eBay's trading platforms, was $12.0 billion. In 2005, eBay's GMV totalled $44.3 billion.

·         eBay users worldwide trade more than $1,511 worth of goods on the site every second.

·         There were 546.4 million new listings added to eBay worldwide in Q4-05. At any given time, there are approximately 78 million listings worldwide, and approximately 6 million listings are added per day. eBay users trade in more than 50,000 categories

·         Based on Q4-05 GMV, the following categories delivered $1 billion or more in worldwide annualized GMV: eBay Motors at 13.0 billion; Consumer Electronics at $4.4 billion; Clothing & Accessories at $3.9 billion; Computers at $3.4 billion; Books / Music / Movies at $2.8 billion; Home & Garden at $2.7 billion; Collectibles at $2.6 billion; Sports at $2.2 billion; Toys at $2.1 billion; Jewellery & Watches at $1.9 billion; Business & Industrial at $1.6 billion; Cameras & Photo at $1.5 billion; and Antiques & Art at $1.2 billion.

·         While eBay is well-known for its auction format, users can also buy and sell in fixed-price formats, which accounted for 34% of total GMV during Q4-05.

·         At the end of Q4-05, eBay hosted approximately 383,000 stores worldwide, with approximately 212,000 stores hosted on the U.S. site and 171,000 stores hosted on eBay's international sites.

·         More than 724,000 professional sellers in the U.S. use eBay as a primary or secondary source of income. In addition, 1.5 million individuals sell on eBay to supplement their incomes. (Source: ACNielsen International Research, July 2005)

·         As of December 2005, eBay members worldwide have left more than four billion feedback comments for one another regarding their eBay transactions.

·         The most expensive item sold on eBay to date is a private business jet for $4.9 million.

Makes interesting reading doesn't it and begs the question are online product based businesses missing a trick? In our opinion the answer is yes and it about time businesses cottoned on to this fact and started embracing the eBay concept with open arms.

How do you take advantage of eBay? 
Millions of listings on eBay more or less look the same and say the same thing. However, by delving a little deeper, you start to unearth some gems that are excellent benchmarks for you or any business to follow. Listed below are 2 eBay considerations:

1. Selling Manager Pro

Selling Manager Pro is an online selling tool to help you create listings, manage post-sale activities and manage your inventory. If you are a volume seller who wants a robust, web-based eBay tool then this is the one for you. It's cost - £4.99 per month. It will.

·         Automatically list and re-list items for you

·         Inform buyers by auto notification

·         Let you know when payment has been received

·         Tell you what items you have shipped

·         Provide Auto feedback upon buyer payment

·         Allow the scheduling of items

·         Offer Reporting

·         Allows you to Design Professional Listings

·         Restock alerts

This is a fantastic eBay tool that automates much of the information for you and helps you engage and interact with your eBay clients. Everything is controlled from one area and is generally easy to use once you get the hang of it.

The best things about this facility is that it allows you to create professional and business like listings that when displayed on eBay provide a look and feel that can be similar to your company's website. For example, our client the Funky Group is currently using this facility to list all products with a branded and professional look and feel that mimics the company's actual website. This has resulted in the first month of going live in well over 4 figure sales with over 300 products sold!

Our tip for this facility is to brand it as your business and to produce something that uniquely reflects you and allows you to stand out from the crowd and at the same time maintain very professional image. Granted there are eBay fees and costs but these are reduced once you start to receive higher volumes of sales. The more you sell the less you pay!

2. EBay Shops

Creating a successful eBay Shop involves four basic steps: building and customising your shop; managing your listings and sales; promoting your Shop; and tracking your shop traffic and sales.

An eBay shop allows you to

·         Set up, brand, and customise your shop to maximise success.

·         Save time with powerful tools to manage your listings and sales.

·         Drive traffic to your shop and trigger repeat purchases from your customers.

·         Optimise your sales strategy with advanced reporting tools.

An excellent benchmark for a company that does this well and takes eBay shopping to a new level is online shoe retailer Schuh. This eBay shop is an excellent example of how to do it right and well and is worth a visit at Schuh eBay.

Why is Schuh such a good example? Well for starters, the eBay shop is branded with the Schuh logo and includes professional graphically designed images. Additionally, the eBay shop is very similar to the official Schuh retail website! EBay acts as a tool to promote the Schuh brand, even increasing sales activity on their own official website.

Each individual pair of shoes has 6 images of it from varying angles that help highlight and sell the shoes to potential consumers. The Schuh eBay shop works just like a well designed ecommerce website should- with simple navigation to the product of your choice with the main difference being you can bid on the product first before you buy it.

Consider

·         eBay hosts approximately 380,000 stores worldwide (2005), with approximately 212,000 stores hosted on the U.S. site and 171,000 stores hosted on eBay's international sites.

·         More than 724,000 professional sellers in the U.S. use eBay as a primary or secondary source of income. In addition, 1.5 million individuals sell on eBay to supplement their incomes. (Source: ACNielsen International Research, July 2005)

Still not convinced? I do agree that eBay has certain pitfalls for business and individuals to consider together with some expensive fees that can be off putting. However, in our opinion it does make sense to consider eBay. Put it this way, your target market may be already using eBay and you could use it to reach these customers that you have never engaged with before - increasing sales and turnover.

Additionally, having an eBay presence can lend itself to search engine optimisation because - eBay listings appear in Google and Yahoo for consumer searches! Consider Schuh - try a Google search for some of their products!

So to summarise - is eBay an opportunity or is it something to be dismissed? We think that it is something that every business that is selling online should consider as part of a range of online marketing activities.

Com.Motion would like to thank EBay, Nielsen/NetRatings and Econsultancy for the statistics in this article.

Com.Motion Consulting [http://www.com-motionuk.com] is in the business of internet marketing - ensuring that your website appears on the top search engines including Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

We provide effective internet marketing solutions to ensure that customers find you and the products you sell on the web, and work with you to increase your profit through your online sales.

YouTube Marketing For Business Owners

If you have heard of YouTube you will know it is a free online video storage site which lets you view video content for free. More and more business owners are slowly discovering how YouTube marketing is going to benefit their business.

YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen who were ex PayPal employees. While at PayPal they saw the power in simplifying a process and giving everyone a solution.

Because YouTube has grown and grown since 2005, you should really be using this in your marketing strategy. In just three months YouTube went from having zero visitors to over four million.

Today the number of visitors continues to grow. Did you know that the average YouTube user will spend between 15 and 25 minutes a day on the site?

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. You have the power of the world's biggest search engine teaming up with the biggest online video site. This gives the business owner considerable YouTube marketing leverage.

In February 2011 YouTube had 490 million unique visitors each month from around the world. They accounted can you believe for around 92 billion page views each month. These are incredible figures. It is estimated that people spend around 2.9 billion hours each month on YouTube.

YouTube grew bigger than sites such as Craigslist, eBay, MySpace and Blogger.com. A diverse selection of content is streamed from YouTube including concerts, TV clips, movies etc.

In the bad old days however there was no way of sharing video content. The videos took ages to load and tended to be long. You needed some kind of special program to run the videos. This was never a pleasant experience for people and many turned off.

When YouTube came along it changed everything for the better. You could finally embed videos in other websites or watch the video in your chosen browser. Gone were the days of slow loading video and jerky footage. We could finally watch in style and a pleasurable experience for all was had.

What about the quality of YouTube video. The picture and sound quality is down to the creator of the video, but the general playback quality of the video on YouTube is very good. There is little lag and the video starts immediately. You can pause, fast forward or rewind the video.

How Does This Apply to Internet Marketing?

Video online is rapidly growing and seems to be getting bigger and bigger. It is time you were creating your own YouTube marketing strategy in order to promote your business or products. Think about how you can best use video in your business.

You can use YouTube advertising to spread your message and drive traffic back to your website. Have you thought of all the sales you could be getting with your YouTube marketing videos?

What about all the subscribers that could come your way from YouTube traffic. The more subscribers can mean more profit for your business. You need to start using online video today.

Internet marketing YouTube traffic will result when you create some videos of your product or service. Video marketing is not expensive and YouTube hosting is free. This is not the case with some other sites however and they could burn a pretty hole in your wallet. Not want you want at all when trying to keep costs down in these tricky economic times.

Are you starting to see why getting involved with YouTube marketing will actually be beneficial to your business?

Generally it is easier to rank a video than say a website or blog. The more people that look at your video on YouTube, the more visitors you will get back to your website. As more people view your video it will move further up the rankings also.

You will need some special YouTube marketing software to create your video content. Obviously you will need some kind of video camera. Yes you can use your smartphone or even one of the small Flip type cameras. However, for better quality a camcorder is always my preference.

If your video becomes popular then you can earn some revenue from this as part of the Google/YouTube revenue program.

Text sales pages into video content

Whenever I am faced with a long sales page I tend to scroll to the end of it pretty quickly. There is just too much to read and most of it is just not interesting enough. It would be much better to use one of the best kept YouTube marketing secrets and that is to convert the text sales page into a video sales page.

Moving content engages better with the viewer. Nobody likes to read so much text, but if you have a voice in the background or even a demonstration of the product you are promoting then you are giving out a great visual experience.

People are naturally visual people, having grown up with the cinema and television. We love to watch video content so do not be afraid to create videos.

Video testimonials

Have you ever received feedback in written form for any of your services? If so then go and dig these out because you can turn them into video testimonials. You show the text on screen and speak out loud the testimonial. This could be added of course to your video sales page.

Video articles

Do you publish articles or any kind of written content? Again this is a great candidate for YouTube marketing video content. Turn those dry text articles into video articles and get them loaded up onto YouTube.

Presentations

Ever given a presentation to an audience? Well now is the time to take the video camera out and film your next one. You can load this footage onto YouTube of course as part of your YouTube advertising strategy, but why not package it up into a product also. You can sell this on your website or on a DVD.

Conclusion

You need to imagine how a YouTube marketing video strategy is going to benefit your business. Do you really want your competitors to get ahead? Try turning those dry text based sales pages or articles into online video content and watch your profits climb.