Central Perk: 5 ian. 2011

miercuri, 5 ianuarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Laid Off Firefighter Panhandles On Street
Playing Chicken with Debt Limits: Obama as a Senator vs. Obama the Hypocrite President Today
Sound Money, Gold Fever, and Crackpot Ideas
Hedge Funds Raise Crude Bets to Four-Year High; CFTC's Position Limit Plan Gains Steam; Everyone is Happy; Impact on Silver and Crude

Laid Off Firefighter Panhandles On Street

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 07:14 PM PST

Here is a story of a laid-off firefighter blaming the wrong thing for his woes. Meet Jason Pickering begging for money.

"We took an oath to save people's lives ... and the city just threw us to the curb," Jason Pickering told WGN-TV.

The 34-year-old Pickering, a 10-year department veteran and one of 34 Gary firefighters who lost their jobs, now goes out begging, dressed in his cold-weather firefighting gear, collecting dollar bills in a boot. A hand-made cardboard sign he has strung around his neck reads: "Laid off Gary firefighter. Family of 6. Thank you and God bless."

Since Sunday, he has collected $475. But he says it's not enough to make ends meet for his wife and four children. At the end of January he will lose his health insurance, and he gets only $350 a week in unemployment compensation.

Jason says he will continue begging and protesting the layoffs.

Hello Jason. The city did not put you on the curb. The union did. Gary is broke. And now so are you. And the reason why Gary is broke is the same reason why you are broke. That reason Jason, is the union. The union refused to take pay or benefit cuts to save your job. That is why you are on the curb.

You see Jason, the union does not give a rat's ass about you. All the union cares about is preserving the pay and benefits of senior members.

Jason, if you want to protest, I suggest you stand outside your former headquarters and ask every firefighter going into the building why they voted to put you on the curb.

Then again, Jason, how did you vote on those wage and benefit cuts the city needed? If you voted no, the harsh reality is you helped put yourself on the street.

By the way Jason, unemployment benefits are taxable. Now that you are panhandling, how does it feel to have taxes collected out of your small check to pay monstrous benefits to the remaining union members who tossed you on the curb?

Think about that Jason while you are whining about your lost job begging everyone else who has been in your situation for years, paying taxes so that you accrued benefits they will never see.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Playing Chicken with Debt Limits: Obama as a Senator vs. Obama the Hypocrite President Today

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 12:21 PM PST

President Obama is very concerned that Republicans might "Play Chicken" with the debt ceiling. The president is so concerned his aids are sending out dire warnings about dollar defaults and "catastrophic impacts" to the economy.

Please consider Don't 'play chicken' with debt ceiling

Some Republican lawmakers said Sunday they opposed raising the ceiling on the nation's debt without tackling government spending, and President Barack Obama's top economic adviser warned against "playing chicken" on the issue.

Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said that refusing to raise the debt ceiling would essentially push the country into defaulting on its financial obligations for the first time in its history.

"The impact on the economy would be catastrophic," Goolsbee told "This Week" on ABC. "That would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008."

Goolsbee added: "I don't see why anybody's talking about playing chicken with the debt ceiling."

Flashback March 20, 2006 - U.S. Senate Floor

Inquiring minds just may be wondering what the president's position was when he was a senator, just a few year's back.

Please consider Flashback: Previous Debt Limit Votes Have Not Been Good Ones

March 20, 2006: This was the last stand-alone debt limit vote on which then-Senator Obama voted. He was one of 48 members to vote against the increase, which passed with 52 votes.

He said: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

Truer Words Never Spoken

America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure"
We have "reckless fiscal policies"
Washington "shifts the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren"
America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.
Americans deserve better

Yes Mr. President, America does deserve better. I suggest you do the best thing you can possibly do for your country today: Resign.

Since that is unlikely, I urge Republican to take the measures Obama recommended in 2006 when he crossed party lines and voted with Republicans in 2006 to not raise the debt limit.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Sound Money, Gold Fever, and Crackpot Ideas

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 09:58 AM PST

Larry Hilton, an attorney and insurance salesman has authored the "Utah Sound Money Act". A couple of state legislators are considering sponsoring the bill. Here are a few things the bill would do.

Requires State To Accept Gold As Money

Among other things the sound money act requires the state to accept gold as payment and would allow but not mandate businesses to accept gold as payment.

Creates Defense Force to Protect Gold

Part 5 of the bill requires the governor to "recruit, form, train and deploy such troops and regiments of the Utah State Defense Force ... as the Governor may deem necessary and appropriate to store, safeguard, protect and transport the Registered Specie holdings of all Utah Governmental Entities, as well as provide a means for the exchange, between and among Utah Governmental Entities and Utah Taxpayers, of Registered Specie, either by transfer of ownership of the same held in a secure storage facility or by physical delivery according to the recipient's preference."

Mandates Treasurer to Fix the Price of Gold and Silver Periodically

The Utah State Treasurer would have responsibility to "periodically set a Specie Exchange Rate for gold as well as one for silver. These rates shall equate a specific quantity of Federal Reserve Notes, or fraction thereof, to one Troy grain of each metal."

Periodically means "no more than once per day, bank holidays and weekends excluded. Newly set Specie Exchange Rates shall not be disclosed to anyone other than the Utah State Treasurer's staff until such new rates take effect at 12:01 a.m. the following day, at which time the new rates shall be published and readily available to Utah Taxpayers, residents and citizens."

Limits Price Movements

Moreover "No single Specie Exchange Rate change effected by the Utah State Treasurer shall differ by more than one percent from the previously effective rate."

Crackpot Idea?

The Salt Lake Tribune "Gold Fever" editorial calls Larry Hilton's proposal a "crackpot idea".

The 2011 session of the Utah Legislature is looking like uncommonly fertile ground for crackpot ideas. So far there is a bill to name an official state gun and two calling for conventions to amend the U.S. Constitution. But the most outrageous scheme to surface yet is the Utah Sound Money Act, a system of commerce within the state that would be based on gold and silver coins.

So far, the bill hasn't found a sponsor. Here's hoping it doesn't. Utah can't secede from the Union, and it shouldn't try to secede from the federal currency, either.

Volatility Argument Flawed

The editorial's primary argument against Hilton's bill was in regards to volatility of the price of gold, measured in dollars. The irony of that logic is that price volatility of nearly everything is a result of boom-bust cycles caused by the Fed and fractional reserve lending.

Prior to the Fed, boom-bust cycles were exacerbated by banks lending out more paper gold than there was backing for it. Fractional Reserve Lending has always been a problem with banks and needs to be stopped.

It is governments, paper money, and fractional reserve lending that create volatility.

Hilton's Bill Fatally Flawed

However, Hilton's bill is indeed fatally flawed for numerous reasons including price fixing by the treasurer and authorization of a defense force to protect stored gold. As a practical matter, gold owners would not pay dollar debts in gold in the first place.

One does not (or at least one should not) attempt to fix the price of gold in dollars. Nor can one set prices once a day or hold price movements to 1% a day. Those are flawed ideas that cannot and will not work.

Instead, one dollar should represent a fixed amount of gold and every dollar should be 100% backed by that amount of gold.

Gold will buy what it will buy, and prices of goods and services will fluctuate by supply and demand. As a result, prices will be far more stable under a 100% gold backed dollar. Those who disagree need answer this question: How can the purchasing power of dollars backed by something not be more stable than dollars backed by nothing and conjured into existence at will by the Fed?

In spite of Hilton's good intent, a 100% gold-backed dollar is a proposal that must happen at the federal level. I am quite sure Ron Paul will introduce a valid proposal in due time.

In the meantime, as convoluted as Hilton's bill is, it's important to remember the crackpot idea here is not a gold backed dollar, but rather crackpots who would rather have a dollar backed by nothing than gold.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Hedge Funds Raise Crude Bets to Four-Year High; CFTC's Position Limit Plan Gains Steam; Everyone is Happy; Impact on Silver and Crude

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 01:55 AM PST

Hedge funds, pension plans, and small speculators have all been plowing into commodities with abandon. The result is easy to spot, particularly in the energy markets.

Bloomberg reports Hedge Funds Raise Crude Bets to Four-Year High

Hedge funds raised bullish bets on crude oil to the highest level in more than four years on speculation that futures will climb as the U.S. recovers from the deepest recession since the 1930s.

The funds and other large speculators increased net-long positions, or wagers on rising prices, by 4.6 percent in the seven days ended Dec. 28, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's weekly Commitments of Traders report. It was the biggest total in records going back to June 2006.

Oil prices will average $93 a barrel this year and are "very likely" to climb above $100, Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics in Austin, Texas, said yesterday in an interview with Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack."

Futures advanced as high as $92.58 yesterday after the Institute for Supply Management's U.S. factory index climbed to 57 in December, the fastest pace in seven months. Fuel demand increased to the highest since May 2008 in the week ended Dec. 24, Energy Department figures showed last week.

"Crude oil prices are up, and people expect them to keep going up," said Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citi Futures Perspective in New York. "It speaks to the frame of mind that people are in more than it speaks to the underlying reality. We have no physical tightness here."

CFTC's position limit plan gains needed support

Please consider CFTC's position limit plan gains needed support

A top official at the U.S. futures regulator said on Tuesday he was now in favor of a stalled position limit plan, a key turnaround that would allow the controversial rules to advance to the public comment stage.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission introduced on December 16 its long-awaited plan to curb speculation in the metals, agriculture and energy markets but at the meeting, Chairman Gary Gensler abruptly postponed a vote on the proposal.

Commissioner Bart Chilton, the most vocal proponent of cracking down on speculators, was key to the postponement as he told Reuters he would have voted against the plan. It would have included a two-step approach to allow more time for the agency to gather information on the opaque swaps market.

"While I will now support publishing a position limit proposal for public comment, I will continue to make the case that we need to address excessive speculation in these markets immediately," Chilton said in a statement on Tuesday.

A coalition of businesses dependent on buying commodities which has pushed for the limits said it supports Chilton's plan as an interim measure.

"In light of the existence of large speculative positions in today's energy and agricultural markets, it is imperative that the Commission to do something now, and without delay, in order to address these large positions and send a message of confidence and certainty to market participants," said Jim Collura, spokesman for the Commodity Market Oversight Coalition.

U.S. Commodity Regulator to Review Speculation Limits

Let's flash back to December 16 and a recap of U.S. Commodity Regulator to Review Speculation Limits

The top U.S. commodities regulator will consider today steps to curb speculation in raw materials including oil, gold and wheat as part of the most sweeping rewrite of Wall Street rules since the 1930s.

Four of five members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they will vote in favor of publishing a two-part proposal to restrict the number of contracts one firm can hold. The plan, if approved after a 60-day public comment period, would limit traders to 25 percent of deliverable supply in the contract nearest to expiration, followed by an all-month ceiling of 10 percent of open interest up to the first 25,000 contracts and 2.5 percent thereafter.

"At the core of our obligation is to protect market integrity," Gensler said at the hearing today. The rule will shield the markets from excessive speculation by ensuring positions aren't too concentrated, he said.

Gensler, along with Commissioners Bart Chilton, Scott O'Malia and Michael Dunn said they will vote today in favor of publishing the rule for comment. Dunn and O'Malia said they may not ultimately support imposing position limits. Commissioner Jill Sommers said she would vote against the rule.

"It's bad policy to promulgate regulations that are not enforceable," Sommers said, adding that the commission lacks the data needed to enforce effective caps.

"Without specific swaps data, we have no ability to claim we are applying enforceable limits without understanding the full size of the market," O'Malia said in a statement.

The plan exempts so-called bona fide hedgers who use contracts to offset commercial risk. Swaps dealers, who sell derivatives, are free from limits as long as the transaction is made on behalf of an end-user, while facing caps for trades made to mitigate bets dealt to speculators.

The proposal covers 28 commodities, including crude, natural gas, gasoline, heating oil, gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium, corn, oats, rice, soybeans, soybean meal, soybean oil, wheat, feeder cattle, live cattle, lean hogs, milk, cocoa, coffee, orange juice, sugar and cotton.

The commission estimated that the spot-month rules would affect 70 traders in agricultural contracts, six in base metals, eight in precious metals and 40 in energy. The combined caps may affect 80 agriculture traders, 25 in base metals, 20 in precious metals and 10 in energy.

Nearly Everyone Is Happy (For Now)

"Super Silver Bulls" want limits thinking it will force prices up and crush JPMorgan. Meanwhile, buyers of energy and agricultural goods think limits will reduce prices. For a while, this means bulls, bears, and buyers all all happy.

The only ones not happy with limits are a the few commissioners who think limits will not work. I side with those who think limits will not work. I have both short and long-term reasons.

Short-term, position limits will likely reduce liquidity and further distort the markets.

The most likely long-term impact is that trading will move to less regulated foreign exchanges. If so, US commodity exchanges will lose their global importance.

Long-term, commodity prices are going to go where they are going to go anyway. Attempts to curb speculation brought on by loose policies of the Fed cannot work in the long run.

The Impact on JPMorgan

Short-term prices might depend on exactly what the limits are, who is affected, and how the CFTC implements the rules changes.

Here is one key paragraph: "The plan exempts so-called bona fide hedgers who use contracts to offset commercial risk. Swaps dealers, who sell derivatives, are free from limits as long as the transaction is made on behalf of an end-user, while facing caps for trades made to mitigate bets dealt to speculators."

I fail to see how that will necessarily curb JPMorgan's massive short position. (I am assuming JPMorgan is hedged). However, let's assume JPMorgan is not hedged.

How will the CFTC phase in the rules? If they do so by limiting the buying of silver futures until position limits are reached (the method used to end the Hunt cornering attempt) , then silver will likely get hammered short-term.

Thus, I do not agree with zero-hedge who writes "And if indeed this news was the catalyst for today's precious metal and other commodities sell off, it is woefully misinterpreted, as the only major institutional parties impacted will be those who hold outsized short positions in the precious metals space."

It's not that Zero-Hedge is necessarily wrong; it's just that he is not necessarily right.

However, if I had to bet one way or another, I would bet that whatever method the CFTC comes up with will not adversely impact JPMorgan in any significant way.

Thus, if anyone is impacted in the short-term, I suspect it will be silver longs, even though long-term the price of silver will get to wherever it is headed.

My friend "HB" agrees. He just pinged me with this comment. "The GATA crowd should be livid when it realizes that position limits may - gasp - depress the silver price."

Crude COTs

click on any chart below for sharper image

Crude Weekly Chart

Commodity charts and open interest are not always as correlated as show above.

By the way, much of that crude open interest is hedging various crack spreads (crude vs. gasoline, heating oil, diesel, etc).

Crack spread is a term used in the oil industry and futures trading for the differential between the price of crude oil and petroleum products extracted from it - that is, the profit margin that an oil refinery can expect to make by "cracking" crude oil (breaking its long-chain hydrocarbons into useful shorter-chain petroleum products).

In the futures markets, the "crack spread" is a specific spread trade involving simultaneously buying and selling contracts in crude oil and one or more derivative products, typically gasoline and heating oil. Oil refineries may trade a crack spread to hedge the price risk of their operations, while speculators attempt to profit from a change in the oil/gasoline price differential.

Is the CFTC ready to sort this all out?

Silver COTs

It is hard to predict anything at all regarding the price of silver from the following COT chart.

Silver Weekly Chart

Finally, it is worth pointing out that commodities in general simply might be ready for a strong pullback. Sentiment is extreme. It it happens, attributing precious metal declines to a smackdown by gold and silver shorts is beyond silly.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Help Us Build the 2011 Search Ranking Factors

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 04:19 PM PST

Posted by randfish

2011 is here, and that means it's time for our biennial search engine ranking factors survey to be renewed. This year, we're planning something much bigger and, we hope, better. Our plan is to offer a report that provides:

Aggregated expert opinions on the importance of factors individually and ranking influencers overall (as with 2009's version)
Correlation numbers for the factors (on as close to a 1:1 basis comparing data against the question asked to those surveyed)
"Causation" numbers on a relative scale derived from our machine learning-based ranking models (with error margins)
A representation of the relative chunks of the algorithmic pie by their contribution to the overall algorithm

This is, obviously, a huge undertaking for SEOmoz's team, and we could use your help. First, we need your help to recruit the right experts. The form below will enable you to submit nominees:

We'll likely take between 1-200 participants (possibly more), so please send us your best and brightest!

In addition, we'd love your help in defining the factors we'll be measuring this year.

Rand's Current List of 224 Potential Factors

The list below represents my first stab at creating a list of datapoints to use in our correlation and ranking model analysis. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to add potential factors (not listed here) that we could gather and analyze in the comments below. This means they'd need to be available on the page/domain itself or fetch-able on the web through an API or other request in a scalable fashion.

In addition to adding your own ideas in the comments, please upvote your fellow mozzers if you like the ideas they're presenting. The comment with the most thumbs up at week's end will earn a special gift from the mozplex and recognition in the final report.

Obviously, not all of these will be directly translated to ideas/concepts of ranking factors for the survey participants to vote on, but many can help to inform their construction and compare against as a datapoint.

Some additional notes on our plans:

Use only Google.com US results for this version (but plan to replicate in other geos/countries)
Retrieve geographically agnostic results using a query structure similar to this one for barber shop and this one for ice cream
Record the presence of ads and universal results on the page, but don't count these URLs/references in our analyses
Segment the data in several variations (by popularity of the query according to Google's AdWords estimates and number of words in the phrase, for example) to be provided as drill-downs from the main report

If you have other suggestions, feel free to comment below or use the form above. I'm looking forward to a remarkable step forward in the understanding of Google's ranking system - thanks so much for your help!

p.s. A huge thanks to our many contributors from years past, many/most of whom we'll be "nominating" for inclusion this year ourselves :-)

p.p.s. You'll likely notice lots of factors on my list that are obvious non-factors (meta keywords, for example). I'm including these only to help us show data on their impact (or lack thereof) which will hopefully assist those of us who need further evidence to help convince clients, managers, etc.

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Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

Interview with Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers.com

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 07:38 AM PST

The following is a sponsored post.

For today's post we're going to be talking to Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers.com, for my readers who don't know you can you tell me a little about yourself, and your background in internet marketing.

My career in Internet Marketing is still very young, having recently graduated from school in 2007. My first start was for the pre-eminent music startup Grooveshark.com in a business development role. From there, I taught myself programming and began building my own web empire. Our goal is to ensure our customers’ success and to do anything in our power to make you happy, no matter the cost.

As every SEO knows links, are a critical element for ranking, what's your approach to building links, and what are some the types links you feel should be part of every websites backlink profile.

For every new client, we recommend they invest in some of the best directories on the web, which we use on all of our sites. Yahoo Directory ($299/year), BOTW.org ($159/year with coupons available), and Business.com ($199/year). If you look at the sites with 100s of 1st page rankings, they all have these links, and you should too.

Your company offers link advertising in the form of link wheels. For the readers who might not know what is a "link wheel", and how is it going to help their site?

Link wheels are the evolution of the backlink. When Google first created their algorithm, the way to get top rankings was to get links. The more links, the better, no matter where the links originate.

Everyone knows this doesn’t work anymore. Spam farms, inlinking from your own site, and other forms of garbage links do nothing for your site and are a waste of time. Today, the goal of most site owners is to get High PageRank, quality links.

So how do you get these links? Article directories , web 2.0 sites, and high PageRank blogs. A link wheel is a collection of sites that interlink (randomly) passing on PageRank to each individual site, and all sites pointing to the “money site”. Take this example below:

3 total sites

Site #1
A 200 word article is written on a blog, the blog has 2 links, 1 link goes to site #3, 1 link goes to the client site (ie “money site”)

Site #2
A 200 word article is written on a press release site, 2 links, 1 link goes to site #1, 1 link to the money site

Site #3
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etc. etc.

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Let's talk about the 800lb gorilla that's now sitting in the room, paid links. Google has taken a pretty hard stance against link sellers in the past, whether or not we agree with their stance it's something as SEO's we have to be mindful of. Where do you feel your product falls on this issue?

Paid links are one of the most effective way to increase your sites’ ranking, there’s no doubt about that. If you look at some text link brokers, these sites are doing millions every month, but there’s a couple problems I have with this.

We run our own content sites in addition to providing SEO services, and all of our SEO services we use on our own sites, which is one of the reasons we are constantly evolving our services, so with that out of the way, here’s my take on paid link sites:

1) Google does not like directly paid links. Paid links are pretty easy to detect (ie any list of random links in a sites’ sidebar) or any sites that operate in the public marketplace are guilty, and may be punished at any time.

2) The paid links model is a rental model. Every month you are renting these links. If you stop paying, you lose all your rankings, so it’s just like PPC, so if you are looking to buy paid links, you are better off just using AdWords

– Our link building is permanent, and personally, I like knowing that every link we build for ourselves and our clients is an investment. Over time, you have to spend less and less money, which is how every business (I think) should operate.

Let's change gears a bit, Google has always been a link based algorithm, but in recent months they have have admitted they are looking at other signals, like social media. Do you ever see links becoming less important than other factors?

Definitely.

Any SEO company who thinks what is working today is going to be working 3, 6 or 12 months from now is crazy. Google is going to evolve their algorithm, and its our job to follow their changes and make changes to our services to ensure they still work.

The main trend I believe we are seeing is a shift to quality content. The days of spammy 1990s websites ranking on the 1st pages of Google is going to fade away. As a site owner, I suggest everyone to get engaged in Facbook, Twitter, and as opposed to Google completely ignoring links, I think they are going to use social media sites to build a “trust factor” for domains, and only if you have certain “trust factors” are you going to be showing up at the top of the search engines.

It’s in Google’s best interests to display quality sites, and these “trust factors” are the best way to do that and also eliminate the spam.

If you ran a search engine what things would you be looking at in social media as signals of trust and quality? Are there places other than social media you think search engines should/might be looking now?

If I was building a new search engine, there are a couple of things I would use to determine how trustworthy a site is, how good of a source of information the site is going to be, etc.

1) RSS/subscriber count — the fact is, the more followers a site has, the more likely they are going to be to be a good source of information
2) Does the site have Facebook accounts? Twitter? GetSatisfaction? Yelp? etc.
3) How often is the site updated? This is a known piece of the Caffeine algorithm but its yet another indication of quality
4) If it’s an eCommerce site, what are the ratings of the merchant? Is it doing well on shopping.com, Google merchant center, etc.

Obviously we haven’t seen exactly what Google is doing on this front, but this is going to be the evolution of their algorithm in the future.

Since you have taken the time to answer these questions, give us your best pitch as to why someone should look at your companies services …

As I mentioned above, we use our services for our own sites. Everyday we are working on ways to improve our services and are constantly investing more money into our product. This past year, we expanded from a network of 100 blogs to more than 2,000 PR3+ blogs that we own and continue to expand in 2011.

From a customer service perspective, we are a small team, it’s just 4 of us, which means we’re selective. We want to work with people we like and who like us. The majority of our customers are referrals and we strive ourselves on making people happy and delivering them a great first class product at a business class price.

We’d love the opportunity to work with you, and we are confident we can help you increase your rankings. We’re US-based, and you can call us at 352-509-5736. If we’re on the line, just leave us a message or shoot an email to help@seolinkwheelers.com, we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.

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Interview with Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers.com

Back to the White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011

Photo of the Day

With pen in hand, President Barack Obama sits at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as Staff Secretary Lisa Brown organizes a stack of 35 bills for him to sign into law, Jan. 4, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Five ingredients of smart online commerce

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Five ingredients of smart online commerce

While it might be more fun to rant about broken online forms and systems, we can learn a lot from sites that aren't broken as well.

Consider the Ibex store. Here are five things they do that make them successful online:

They sell a product you can't buy at the local store. This is easily overlooked and critically important. Because it's unique, it's worth seeking out and talking about. Just because you built a site doesn't mean I care. At all. But if you build a product I love, I'll help you.
They understand that online pictures are free. Unlike a print catalog, extra pictures don't cost much. Make them big. Let me see the nubbiness or the zipper or the way you make things.
They use smart copy (but not too much).
They are obsessed with permission. Once you sign up, you'll get really good coupons and discounts by email. Not too often, but often enough that my guess is that they make most of their sales this way. 25% discount on a product just like a product you love--just before Valentine's day? Sign me up.
They aren't afraid to post reviews. Even critical ones.

No site is perfect, of course, and I hesitate to tell you that this one is. I'm sure there are glitches and your mileage may vary. But the checkout is simple and the customer service, while not trying to be Zappos, is pretty good too.

Penguin Magic, I just realized, follows all five of these rules as well. While the site is very different in look and feel (and has a different audience), they're using the same principles.

The amazing thing to me is that none of this is particularly difficult to do, yet it's rare. The state of the art of online retailing is moving very very slowly.