Pay for ebooks with PayPal

Not long ago I did a web search to find an ebook company that would allow me to pay with PayPal. Unfortunately, Amazon does not so that ruled out buying a Kindle book. As a result, I did a little more digging and was happy to find out that I could have bought it on Barnes and Noble.  I can install Nook software and read my books on the iPad or my Samsung Smartphone.

However, I ended up buying "Inheritance" by Christopher Paoloni from Kobo eBooks. I was surprised that I hadn't heard of them before but that appears to be doing a great job. The site is Kobo Ebooks. It's a platform neutral book site complete with apps for every major tablet, smartphone and computer system. I downloaded it to my iPad 2 and my Samsung Galaxy S smart phone. It kept my book synched between both devices. My only complaint is that it seemed to take a lot of energy from the iPad on account that it continually synches and thus requires a near constant wifi connection. I'm sure they'll work that out soon enough. And they too take PayPal. But what makes them different is that they are trying to add a social element to book reading.

Just think about it, you can get clarification on a passage, or discuss the deeper meaning of a chapter with members of the community. Plus it keeps track of your personal reading statistics. I would not be surprised to see authors having direct conversations with readers as this technology grows up.

In general, I think it's a really great concept but it has its work cut out for it if they are going to be successful given the powerful competition: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes. I think in order for Kobo to be successful, they are going to have to get the word out and quickly. With the right marketing plan and perhaps first book discounts, they may be able to obtain the critical mass that would be required to make it a success.  At any rate, I highly recommend that you check it out. The software was easy enough to download, install and use.

Amazon.com Prediction

If anyone has been following Amazon.com's movements, it should be clear that they are planning something big. I predict it will be one of two things.

They have or are building distribution centers all over the country. They have invested millions and employed thousands. Why would they do this?

The most obvious reason is that they are trying to blur the lines between traditional retailing and online retailing. As the world's largest pure ecommerce company, their stiffest competition comes from the store that is within driving distance. Brick and Mortar customers don't have to wait, they can touch and feel the product and they can use it that same day. How do you overcome this as a 100% online retailer. You do this in one of two ways.

1- You minimize the time it takes to get items into customers' hands. They've done a great job with this. Amazon's Prime program allows 2-day shipping from their distribution centers anywhere in the continental USA for a reasonable annual fee. The next logical step is to find a way to offer SAME DAY DELIVERY. Given how many distribution centers that Amazon has built, it wouldn't be a very hard thing for them to offer same day delivery on select merchandise. I predict this will be something they launch in 2012.

2- The other way for online companies to compete with bricks and mortars is to become one. Yes, that's right, how difficult is it to imagine that Amazon would shy away from creating physical warehouse-type retail locations? If nothing else, it could be a liquidation arm for merchandise that comes back from customers. At some point, this may even be essential for Amazon to maintain its top position. As proof of this, all you need to do is look at the companies that are growing significantly and those that are spending significant amounts of cash on online advertising. Take a look at Target and Walmart. These companies have a keen understanding of what it takes to be successful in retailing and advertising is one of those pillars.They spend millions on online advertising. And if you can order online and pick it up in-store, why would you order from Amazon and wait for it to be delivered?

I expect that we'll see same day delivery in 2012 and bricks and mortar by Amazon in 2013 or 2014.

What NOT to do if you want to be found online

One of the reasons I started this blog was to test different things that I wouldn't otherwise do on a website that is very important to me. Case in point, take a look at the post below. Before I made that post, I had a Google Importance Rank of "3". After the post, I have a "0". The reason why this happened is because it looks to Google like I'm just adding links. There are a tremendous number of sites out there that will sell blocks of links from sites that have Google importance ranks of 2-3.

I may have been able to mitigate the damages if I had used the rel="nofollow" in the link html. In other words, I should have entered links like this (I've since updated it so we'll see how long it takes until I have a Google importance rank):

<a href="linkehere.com> rel="nofollow">link anchor text</a>

The above link looks like this on the page:

link anchor text

Had I included the "no follow" tag, it would have told Google that theses are primarily for my users and not meant to be sold to would-be advertisers.

One might argue that it may have been simply an algorithm change at Google and not something that I did. The counter argument is with the other sites that I manage-- they did NOT go down in their Google importance rank.

Fortunately, some of my most popular posts still receive a significant amount of traffic so I'm not sure what the real value of a Google rank is these days.

Moral of the story- keep a "learning" site like this so you don't kill a major site.

3/24/11 UPDATE

It looks like after I put in the No Follow tags, my site regained an importance rank of 3.