Archive for November, 2007



E-marketplaces from Sellers Perspective

Thursday 22 November 2007 @ 10:37 am

What is an E-marketplace anyway?

E-marketplace is a business to business web based venue, where buyers and sellers meet online, generate business leads and conduct business transactions. The e-marketplace features are tailored in a manner so that a large numbers of buyers and suppliers can be serviced as a community. A participant of an E-marketplace can be a buyer, a seller or both. Unlike an E-distribution portal which is oriented to assist suppliers selling their products or an E-procurement system which is focused on buyers solely, an E-marketplace is a platform which caters buyers and sellers equally. As a participant of an E-marketplace you are able to explore buying and selling opportunities, make sales offers and buy products and services, add products and services to aggregated e-catalog and use numerous other value added features.

E-marketplaces are tremendously beneficial to all businesses that decide to participate in them. However, the potential benefits that a company can accrue from an E-marketplace are directly proportional to the factor – how heavily the company uses the offered features of that E-marketplace. Naturally, a company that makes e-marketplace as its primary sales channel and integrates its sales resources to supply chain solutions of the E-marketplace avail more in sales and administrative overhead cost savings, reduced paper work, better customer service, reduced product distribution costs and online sales growth than a seasonal user of the e-marketplace.

A committed participant of an E-marketplace can benefit from and improve two primary factors of company productivity: Revenue Growth and Cost Savings.

Revenue Growth

Expand Customer Base

A seller, once registered with an E-marketplace, gets immediate access to a large community of prospective buyers of his products or services.

Revenue Increase from Existing Clients

Existing clients get faster and easier access to product information, quicker response to their requests, get better customer support and buy products online.

Revenue Increase from Value Added Services

Once an E-marketplace is set as primary sales channel, freed resources can be used to create more value added services for clients. Some of the services that the E-marketplace offers also can be utilized to generate more value.

Cost Savings

Order Processing Cost

The supply chain solutions of E-marketplace allow sellers to reduce order processing cost significantly. Studies show that cost of processing a purchase order can be reduced from US$ 70 down to US$ 6 only.

Sales and support costs

By automating sales and customer support processes companies can reduce over head costs over 25-30% easily.

Inventory keeping costs

Clearer visibility and forecasting ability allow companies considerably reduce inventory keeping costs.

Most executives agree that primary reason why they feel that the companies should participate in E-marketplace is its ability to streamline supply chain mechanism. Many inherent inefficiencies of supply chain process can be eliminated thanks to integrated to e-marketplaces supply chain solutions.

What sellers have to do in order to participate in E-marketplaces and reap numerous benefits that it can provide?

As most of the administrative and operational tasks are done automatically by the e-marketplaces, participation in them is not a difficult process.

These are the basic steps that a seller must take to participate in an E-marketplace:

Register

Registration might be an easy job of filling up a form. It is much better to take some initial preparations before doing this.

Choose a good login name: your login can be used by the E-marketplace to give you subdomain name, i.e. login.e-marketplace_name.com.

Profile: A well-written profile increases company image.

Logo: your logo helps you brand your company.

Add your products or services to E-catalog

Most E-marketplaces furnish with easy to use forms or wizards for sellers to add their products to E-catalog. As the product and service classification used in the E-catalogs often is an industry standard, it is important to spend some times to find the perfect subcategories for your products or services. If you have any doubt contact the customer support of the E-marketplace. Fill up as many given fields are there for a product as you can. The more information buyer gets right away the faster his buying decision would be.

Create offers

Most sophisticated E-marketplaces have various sales platforms apart from the E-catalog inclusion. Make general sales offers, time sensitive offers (hot offers – with offer expiry dates) and auction offers of your products and services. Determine the terms and methods of price, payment and shipment.

Decide how you will handle portions of the supply chain that you have to do offline.

Although, most of the supply chain process can be done online, not all e-marketplace offer a complete end to end solution. You also have to figure out what part of your back office can be integrated to the E-marketplace.

Share



Start doing online business using B2B Portals in Six Steps

Thursday 22 November 2007 @ 10:34 am

I registered with a B2B site but what’s next?

This is a question many first time users of B2B marketplaces ask themselves. A few expect that the registration itself will bring them a number of new customers. In some cases this might by true! Especially, if you are a seller of some much coveted items. But for rest of us, things are a little trickier! A large B2B marketplace has a lot of suppliers of similar products, who are vying for the attention of potential customers. To establish your company as a favored one among them is not an easy task! However, a little planning and thorough follow up of some basic guidelines improve your chance of getting noticed by buyers significantly.

Below, I outlined some of the basic steps that you should take once you seriously decide to market your products using B2B marketplaces.

1 Write a nice profile

When a prospective client sees your trade lead ad or your product on the marketplace and feels interested, the first thing he does is – checks your company profile out. That’s where the buyer gets his initial information about your company. If you have a virtually blank profile with a very little information on your company, doubtful that the potential client will even bother to make a request for quote. That’s why you should spend a little time on writing a nice company profile. Here are some aspects that you should emphasize on while writing your company profile.

Start your profile with something noteworthy about your company. This could be the distinct quality that sets your business apart from your competition.

Describe your present customer base, target market and any new products or projects that you are planning to come up with.

Write a bit about your company history. When the company was incorporated? What is the business form?

If you have something to boast about, do it! If you feel that your sales figures are impressive, why not mention them.

Be brief! The profile should not be more than five paragraphs. You don’t want your buyers to get bored!

2 Include your logo on your Storefront page

If you would like to separate your company from many other similar vendors, you have to think seriously about creating a brand for your company. Brand is the distinctive pattern of your business operation. It portrays the nature of your service or product, your uniqueness in comparison to others etc. A nice looking logo is a key to branding your company. Customers will remember your company name better if you have a great logo to go with.

3 Add products to your storefront

It is important to have your main products, products that are your primary sale generators, added to your storefront. Products with nice picture and well descriptions capture buyers attention more than any thing else. After all the reason that the buyers are on your page is to look for the products that they need.

New Great Storefront Services

Whether you are a small enterprise, which sells goods and services locally, or you are a medium to large company with global reach, Rusbiz is planning to introduce great storefront services with complete corporate site to match your every business need. Features include:

Basic

Single page storefront

10 products in E-catalog

Sales through e-marketplace

RFQ and Quotation

Negotiations

Internal Messaging Service

Many other features

Available now and it’s free!

Enterprise

10 different templates to build multiple-page storefront

100 products in E-catalog

Sales through e-marketplace

RFQ and Quotation

Negotiations

Purchase Orders

Invoices

Tax Calculation

Shipment tracking

Internal Messaging Service

Merchant Account

Many other features

Coming soon!

Corporate

10 different templates to build multiple-page storefront

1000 products in E-catalog

Sales through e-marketplace

RFQ and Quotation

Negotiation

Purchase Orders

Invoices

Tax Calculation

Shipment tracking

Internal Messaging Service

Merchant Account

Many other features

Coming soon!

4 Make nice pictures of your products

Nothing can turn off a prospective buyer than a hazy or blur picture of the product that he intends to buy from you. If your competitor’s product with exactly same features has nicer picture, guess who has a better chance to get the business? Spend some money and take professional pictures of your products. Make sure that you followed all the instructions of the Portal before uploading the pictures.

5 Post your products for sale on the marketplace

Product visibility is the name of the game! Don’t confine yourself just by adding products to E-catalog and your Storefront. Post products for sale on the E-marketplace.

There are numbers of great advantages of posting products on E-marketplaces:

Frequent browsers of marketplace can see your products

Buyers can compare your products with others on marketplace

Buyers can take an immediate buying decision and make an instant Purchase Order.

6 Post trade leads

For many not-so-savvy users of B2B sites it’s a bit complicated to make buys and sales through marketplaces. They prefer to get trade leads from the site and make contacts with buyers or sellers by fax, phone or just emails. Posting trade leads is a great marketing method to tap new territories. Don’t be disappointed if you do not get immediate feedbacks. Repeat trade leads at least once in a month. Since normally a portal constantly acquires new members, in order to expose the leads to bigger audience, it is worthwhile to post trade leads frequently.

Share



Government halts plan for 65 new airliners

Thursday 22 November 2007 @ 9:45 am

Thai Airways International’s plan to buy 65 new aircraft at a cost of 400 billion baht might have to be passed on to the next government for consideration due to several unclear details. Transport Minister Adm Theera Haocharoen said some issues remained vague and needed clarification.


Thai Airways’ board chairman and air force commander ACM Chalit Phukphasuk endorsed the plan to buy the planes on Saturday. The 10-year plan starts next year.


The national carrier is waiting for comments from related agencies, including the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) and the Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning, on its rationale and investment worthiness.


A ministerial source said marketing, projection and operation targets must be clearly set out before determining the types and numbers of new aircraft purchased. Issues which must be worked out in more detail include growth projection of the Asian market, particularly China and India, and market segmentation.


Thai Airways is expecting to retire 47 aging aircraft and get the 65 new planes through rental and purchase arrangements.


The airline plans to add 16 planes for long-haul flights, each with 300-500 seats.


Also on the shopping list are 29 medium to long-range jets, each with 250-50 seats, and 20 planes with 150-250 seats for domestic and regional routes.


Meanwhile, Deputy Transport Minister Sansern Wongcha-um said Don Mueang airport would serve international flights over the next five to 10 years while Suvarnabhumi gets expanded.


The Airports of Thailand (AoT) was told to submit plans on the Suvarnabhumi airport expansion and the use of Don Mueang to the cabinet before the Dec 23 election.


“We are rushing to seek cabinet approval for the overall framework, but not going into budgets or any investments,” Mr Sansern said.


With the number of people using Suvarnabhumi airport approaching the annual capacity of 45 million passengers, the new airport needed an additional terminal as well as other buildings, he said.


As part of the plan, the AoT must conduct a feasibility study and draw up a plan for transferring some international airlines back to the old airport.


The AoT needed to work on connections between Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang as well as logistics management, because the skytrain project linking the two airports would take a long time.


Don Mueang now serves non-connecting domestic flights.


The 93-year-old airport was decommissioned when Suvarnabhumi opened in September last year, but was reopened in March to ease pressure on the new airport.

News from : http://www.bangkokpost.com

Share



Thai Cargo sets up perishables distribution centre in Europe

Thursday 22 November 2007 @ 9:42 am

The Operations Centre Building in Thai Airways International Suvarnabhumi Airport has signed a deal to set up a Thai perishables distribution centre in Germany this week.

The joint venture will enable Thai agricultural products to enter Europe and South East Europe, with a framework yet to be negotiated to reflect the objectives of both groups.

The centre based to be in Munich Airport was secured when managing director of Thai Airways International Cargo and Mail Commercial, Vorapravat Suebsaeng; Chairman of Thai AirFreight Forwarders Association (TAFA), Kovit Thanyarattakul; Chief Operating Officer Munich International Airport, Peter Trautmann; and CEO and President, Cargogate Flughafen Muenchen.Roger Scheifele all entered into and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

As a result, it is anticipated that Munich international airport will become the main gateway for the cargo shipment of agricultural products with the business helping to support and serve the public sector exports.

The Thai Government and Thai AirFreight Forwarders Association (TAFA) hope to find support from the private sector to this project and along with the Bavarian Government policy to approve the joint venture plans for Thai investors in relation to Munich Airport.

TAFA and four other companies will assist in an operational capacity to manage the temperature control cargo at the centre at Suvarnabhumi Airport through to its arrival in Munich. Cargogate will draw up designs for the centre and help develop the business plan.

This venture will also have the potential to increase profitability because both parties will be using the service.


Article from : http://www.etravelblackboardasia.com

Share



Airport-area residents seek halt to flights

Thursday 22 November 2007 @ 9:39 am

Residents affected by noise pollution around Suvarnabhumi airport filed a lawsuit at the Administrative Court, asking it to ban air traffic at the airport between 10pm and 5am.

About 50 residents went to the court on Wednesday morning, saying that the period should be their rest time.


Chaisak Angsuwan, director-general of the Aviation Department, admitted that Thai economics especially aviation business will be greatly affected if the court grants the residents emergency protection and bans the air traffic between the time.


Airport of Thailand (AOT) chief executive Chana U-sathaporn said he was worried.. The matter will be brought into a board meeting on Thursday for urgent discussion.


Air Marshal Chana insisted AOT is not neglecting the complaints of residents, adding that it is willing to pay them compensation if new studies show they should have higher payment.


He said AOT has set aside a budget of about 3 to 4 billion baht or so to cover the compensation cost.

News from : http://www.bangkokpost.com

Share



Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi Airport campaign to become a top ten airport

Monday 19 November 2007 @ 11:16 am

The Airports of Thailand Public Company Limited (AOT) announced its intention to make Suvarnabhumi a serious contender in the ‘Airport of the World 2009’ contest.

These comments were conveyed by AOT at the recent Incentive, Travel & Convention, Meetings Asia (IT & CMA) show held in Bangkok, Thailand. AOT hopes to enter Suvarnabhumi Airport into the Airport Council International’s (ACI) 2009 global contest.

Deputy General Manager of Suvarnabhumi Airport and flying officer, Narongchai Tanadchangsaeng believes that Suvarnabhumi has the capacity to handle 45 million passengers a year and to increase this to 54 million in the future.

The airport is in the process of completing 700 evaluation surveys which is one part of joining the ACI’s Airport Service Quality program.

Six main strategies have been drawn up by a working committee to oversee the campaign for Suvarnabhumi to become a top ten airport.

The first one is to improve security in charge of handling baggage and any help given to staff.
The second aspect is the development of adequate facilities in the Passenger Terminal and services for travellers such as clear direction signs, toilet amenities, efficient trolley service and many more.

The exterior and interior environment will need to undergo improvement and all other relevant airport staff including security guards needs to be briefed on what is considered excellent service.

The airport will also have to seek cooperation from the various operators and businesses within the airport to improve on the current standard of service to satisfy passengers.

As well, there is a need for sufficient commercial areas like restaurants, money exchange booths and retail shops to meet passenger needs.

Narongchai Tanadchangsaeng expressed hope and said that the airport will do its best to submit to the best level of performance and life national pride.

“Suvarnabhumi is the front door in welcoming the country’s guests. If our guests are warmly welcomed, they will be more impressed with Thailand,” he said.

Share



Web Store – Why Do You Need One?

Monday 19 November 2007 @ 12:20 am

Internet has opened a new era of business opportunities. Each day, thousands of new consumers are joining the Internet. More and more companies are adopting Internet as their primary sales and distribution channel. According to Forrester Research -The survey of 130 U.S. companies indicates consumers spent $76 billion shopping on-line in 2002. This represents a 48 percent increase over 2001, and projections for 2003 come close to $100 billion, representing 4.5 percent of total retail sales.

As a business you probably understand that in order to stay competitive you must integrate ecommerce to your present business strategy. A little research will show you that there is an extensive array of technology and solutions for enterprise and web store building available in the market. You also perceive that ecommerce sites can cost you from a mere couple of hundred bucks to hundreds of thousand of dollars. How to choose something from so many options that will exactly fit your present need?

Although, this might look like a daunting task, a little preparation will definitely help you taking the right decision in your quest for an appropriate ecommerce solution. To understand your requirement better and create a proper ecommerce strategy, you have to ask yourself a number of questions. Below I jotted down some of the questions that, hopefully, will spur your imagination.

  • What should be the look of my web store?

  • Do I need a database for my product catalog?

  • How should the purchase order generate on my web store?

  • Do I need to handle different pricing system for dealers, wholesalers and end customers?

  • How do I bill my customers?

  • How easy can I make my web store to navigate?

  • How many search options should we have?

  • Can I show my customers a product comparison table?

  • What should be my merchant account gateway system?

  • Finally, how much should I invest to build my web store?

If building an ecommerce site from scratch feels too overwhelming to you and you are a small business, my suggestion is – to build a web store with one of the providers similar to Yahoo, Bigstep, Rusbiz etc.

The web stores that you can build directly on the Internet have all the necessary features like shopping cart, product catalog and payment gateway as any regular ecommerce site. In most of the cases, you construct web store online from templates and easy-to-use editor and you hardly need to know html or other script languages.

You can order your Web Store from Rusbiz right now.

The benefits of using a web store that you can build online are enormous.

Quick to build: If you have all the materials handy, you can build a web store within a day.

Easy in use: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a fully functional ecommerce site. Step by step procedures of making pages from templates allow anybody to create a professionally looking web store in no time.

Affordable: Although, some of the providers charge commissions on your sales, as Yahoo does, in most of the cases your expenses are less than US$ 100 a month to have a good web store.

The only disadvantage you have with this kind of web stores is you might not be able to give the customized look and feel to the site as you intend to. Then again, once you start generating enough sales through your web store, if you must, you can always build an ecommerce site by hiring web design companies.

If you are still hesitant in starting online business using web stores I would suggest you to read the following eventual benefits that you may have from ecommerce.

Increase your sales & profits

If you are a brick and mortar company, online commerce will definitely increase your sales and with it profits.

Enhance your company image

Today, even small companies understand the importance of having a website. Planned, sophisticated and professional website creates positive image of the company and help building brand name.

Reduce costs and save money

If required features are available on the website practically all business processes are possible to carry out on the Internet, which allows you to reduce overhead costs, costs incurred due to documentary mistakes, document processing costs, etc.

Improve customer service

Frequently Asked Questions pages, forums, Internal Messaging Service, chat lines, etc. all these features help you effectively running your customer service.

Become a global player

Thanks to the reach of Internet you are no longer confined to a certain geographical boundary any more. You can sell products to any place of the world 24 hours a day.

Add sales channels

By joining e-marketplaces and B2B exchanges you can significantly increase the number of sales channels available to you.

Reduce supply chain cycle

If you automate supply chain processes through Internet, you will be able to shorten the entire cycle from months to days. You will be even able to eliminate certain phases of your supply chain process.

Market products and services

There are numerous ways of getting traffics on your site and popularize your products. In fact, you can get more people in your web store than it is physically possible to accommodate in a bricks-and-mortar shop.

Compete with large companies

On the Internet you may successfully compete with the behemoths of your industry and even curve market shares out of them.

Low start-up costs

Normally, starting a brick and mortar business requires significant cost involvement. On the Internet – opposite is true! To start a business online you hardly need any major investment.

No entry barrier

As you know, many businesses in real world are tightly controlled by certain groups. On the internet there is no such barrier! Anybody can start any business of his choice.

No need to close existing sales channels

By adopting Internet as a sales channel you do not loose anything as your web store only complements existing sales conduit.

If you are new to ecommerce world, I would advise you to go slow! First create a plan with long term and short term objectives. Try implementing your plan gradually. Make sure that you do not spend too much money on your initial ecommerce project. Remember! Over 80 percent of all software projects do not finish in time within the budget; and do not work as planned!

From http://www.rusbiz.com.

Share



Joomla! Wins ‘Best CMS Award’ Again! : จุมลา ได้แชมป์ ‘Best CMS Award’ อีกแล้ว

Friday 16 November 2007 @ 1:14 pm

best-open-source-php-cms.gif Packt Publishing today announced Joomla! as the winner of “Best PHP Open Source Content Management System” for 2007.

Packt Publishing ประกาศให้ จุมลาเป็นแชมป์ “Best PHP Open Source Content Management System” ประจำปี 2550

The award marks the second time Joomla! has won a prestigious Packt prize. Runners up were Drupal, followed by e107.

จุมลาได้รางวัลนี้เป็นครั้งที่ 2 แล้ว ส่วนรองแชมป์ได้แก่ Drupal และที่3คือ e107 นั่นเอง

The judges indicated that Joomla! is ‘possibly one of the biggest success stories in open source of late’. “Its first release came in only September 2005 and since then has grown to be one of the most downloaded Content Management Systems on the web.

ทางคณะกรรมการกล่าวว่าจุมลาเป็นสุดยอดของ open source ในยุคนี้ ตั้งแต่เปิดตัวครั้งแรกใน เดือนกันยายน 2548 และุจุมลายังมีคนดาวน์โหลดเป็นจำนวนมากในบรรดา CMS ต่างๆ

The judges also noted a number of factors that helped Joomla! secure the Award. “Most notably its good front-end for administrators and end-users, which gives users a simple and traditional company website straight out of the box. Once again, judges commented on the size and responsiveness of the community, which translates to potential problems being dealt with quickly.”

Joomla! Project Manager Johan Janssens said adding this latest award to Joomla’s steadily growing collection of prizes was recognition of the project as a whole.

“While I can’t pretend to read judges minds, I’m sure Joomla’s wealth of community and focus on creating the foundations of a next generation framework, demonstrated the true strengths of the project,” he said.

“I’d also like to thank Packt for its continued support through its publications and awards. Packt understands open source spirit, that’s for sure.”

Source : http://www.joomla.org/content/view/4122/1/

Share



Six Components Of A Good E-Commerce Site

Monday 12 November 2007 @ 1:54 am

Businesses, which are still sitting on sidelines and not doing business on the Internet, should think seriously about their position! If you are one of them, chances are there, that you have to pay dearly for your indecision as you might lose significant market share to your more proactive competitors in a very short period of time.

Apart from the fact that e-commerce is growing at the rate of more than 25 percent a year, the use of online features can bring efficiency to virtually every aspect of business process, be it supply chain management or customer support management.

But, how can you build an e-commerce business and take advantages of all these great possibilities? After all, you are pretty sure that anything to do with new technology is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive.

Believe it or not, this is just a misconception that most business owners have about the Internet technology. The truth is – in order to run a business online and reap profits, like any new effort, you need to do a little homework, have patience and determination, and get going.

Take the following steps seriously and in no time you will be able to embrace fascinating world of online business.

Take your products online

Getting your product online does not simply mean – having a nice picture and a product narration to go with it. Effective use of the Internet is based on standards. Standards, as you know, are created to facilitate common use of a technology. If you ever imported or exported a product or service, or if you registered your product with some kind of authorities ever; you certainly know that each product falls under certain subcategory according to the classification system that you encountered. Internet is the same thing. Since the emergence of Internet, several classification systems have been developed.

If you think long term and would like to use same catalog with multiple e-marketplaces, you should adopt one of the prevailing classification system in the Internet. The best online catalog classification available from my point of view is UNSPSC. For one thing, many prominent e-marketplaces adopted this particular system, which allows you to post your products on multiple e-procurement systems and e-marketplaces.

How do you do this? I would suggest you to become a member of one of the e-marketplaces, where you can aggregate your products using some kind of simple wizards or forms. E-marketplaces based on Commerce One’s the largest B2B e-marketplace enabler, have this facility.

Our own Rusbiz e-catalog system, which is also based on UNSPSC, also allows you to integrate your products using a very simple but sophisticated form. If you do not have time to do it by your own, you can use the service of a B2B exchange. Rusbiz also provides with similar service.

Get an online presence

What should be your next step once you have all your products transformed into e-catalog? Naturally, you need to have an online presence to sell the products. There are number of options how to do this.

Become a member of an e-marketplace

This could be a large geography oriented fairly large horizontal market or a vertical e-marketplace specific to your industry. The membership fees are in most of the cases not so expensive. But many of them charge some percentage on your transactions, usually, from 1 to 3 percent. If you expect big sales volume, you may think this might not be the best choice for you. However, if you get new customers, thanks to your mere presence in an e-marketplace, the percentage that you have to pay on the transaction you should consider as customer acquiring cost. Under any circumstances, it is good to become a member of at least one e-marketplace as you -automatically get exposed to thousands of new prospective customers.

Build a website

There are several ways you can construct an e-commerce site to your need.

You can build a website in house by employing developers or you can hire a web development company to do this for you. The advantage is you can have a website with the look, feel and functionality according to your given specification.

However, both of these methods could be way costly for a small business. Average cost of building an e-commerce website runs starting from US$ 600 plus hosting and maintenance charges for a miniscule site with limited features to several hundred thousand US Dollars for a powerful e-commerce website.

Another option that you have as a small business is to build an e-commerce site from prefabricated templates. While this is affordable and easy, you considerably lose flexibility and customization possibilities in comparison to building a site from scratch.

Build a web store

All these above mentioned cases do not allow you to have the potentials and advantages that come with an e-business website integrated with a B2B exchange. Which means, whether you are a business to consumer company with occasional sales to businesses or you are a pure play B2B company, a Web Store merged into an e-marketplace is what you need.

A web store from a B2B exchange gives you the best of both worlds. You are having a professional e-commerce site which incorporates all the features that an e-marketplace has to offer. And you build a site from simple and easy to edit templates.

For a detailed information about the features that come with a web store and benefits that you can get from them, follow this link: Powerful E-business Store

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business e-commerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, e-marketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a bi-weekly E-zine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.

nowshade@rusbiz.com

Share



The Clickbank Crash of 2003: Lessons Learned

Monday 12 November 2007 @ 1:52 am

I had a rude awakening recently. I checked the days worth of sales from one of my sites and there were none. This had never happened before and of course I was anxious to find out what was wrong.

I quickly found out that the credit card processor Clickbank was under a hacker attack. Their service was effectively paralyzed by computers around the world flooding Clickbanks computers with bogus requests for information.

They weren’t the only web site being attacked. Similar attacks have happened against Yahoo and CNN in the past.

This is the first one that effected me directly… right in the wallet.

Time For Emergency Action

Nobody knew how long Clickbank would be down.

I wasn’t going to wait around to find out! I had to take emergency measures to cope with it.

I was not only losing sales that couldn’t be placed, I was also losing money on online advertising. Pay per click accounts were sending people to my site which they couldn’t order from.

The first thing I did was pause my pay per click accounts until I got things under control. This saved me from wasting money on useless advertising.

Alternate Payment Choice

I needed another credit card processor to handle my sales and quick! I was lucky that I already had a Paypal account in place.

I quickly created Paypal payment links so that customers could pay for my products. It was a matter of creating the links correctly and changing the webpages to handle the paypal transactions.

I don’t normally use Paypal because Clickbank’s affiliate program is exceptional. In this case, I did not have much choice and it was easy for me to start accepting money again.

Once Paypal was up and running, I reactivated my pay per click campaigns. I was happily rewarded within the hour with a sale… My first in a day.

Thankfully Clickbank was back on its feet after about 3 days or so. I then switched things back to normal.

Handling My Affiliates

By using Paypal instead of Clickbank, I was denying my affiliates commissions on traffic they had sent me during this incident. I wanted to make it up to them as I didn’t think it was fair to them.

I did this by averaging out how much commission they had earned in the 30 days prior to the incident. I divided that total amount by 30 to come up with an average amount per day they had earned. I then gave them 3 days worth of this commission with an explaination of what happened. Ironically, I sent them their commissions through Paypal so they got them instantly.

I received excellent feedback from appreciative affiliates. Some of them stated that my commissions were the only money they made during the time that Clickbank was down.

How You Can Prepare Ahead Of Time

There is no guarantee that Clickbank or any other payment processor won’t be attacked by hackers again. It is extremely difficult to defend against.

It would be smart getting a backup plan in place just in case.

Here’s a good back up plan:

  • Get a paypal account in place now in case you need it

  • Create your alternate order pages with the Paypal links and keep them ready “just in case”

  • In the event something does happen, keep good communication going with your affiliates. They will appreciate it and will likely reward you with more loyal sales in the future for you

I am sure a lot of lessons were learned during this time. I still love Clickbank, but now I have the experience of having a backup plan I can quickly put into place should anything like this happen again. You may want to prepare ahead of time also.

About The Author

Article by Tim Kerber from the Small Business Web Site. Learn proven secrets to make your web site a profitable success. Tips, tutorials, videos, interviews and more. Click here now — http://www.SmallBusinessWebSite.com

Share



Next Posts »» «« Previous Posts