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.

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.

OR

(Kj-Rf)=(Ko-Rf)

Kj= return for the job
Rf= risk free rate
Ko= cost of capital for entire organization

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.

http://www.bloomberg.com/

http://www.cfo.com/

http://cxa.marketwatch.com/finra/BondCenter/

http://cxa.marketwatch.com/finra/MarketData/Default.aspx

http://www.edgar-online.com/DataDocuments.aspx

http://www2.fdic.gov/idasp/

https://cdr.ffiec.gov/public/ManageFacsimiles.aspx

http://finance.yahoo.com/?u

http://finance.yahoo.com/bonds

http://www.mergentonline.com/compsearch.asp

http://www.mergentinvestoredge.com/search.php

http://www.nasdaq.com/

http://www.netadvantage.standardandpoors.com/NASApp/NetAdvantage/index.do

http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&mod=mdc&symbol=ERF

http://premium.hoovers.com/subscribe/

http://www.standardandpoors.com/home/en/us

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield

(use the Treasury.gov site to predict interest rates as well as what interests were predicted to do in the past. Rates are based on t bills)

http://www.wikiwealth.com/start

http://ycharts.com/?gclid=COqe5YypsKUCFYK5KgodXRpaZQ

Enjoy!

In practical terms, it lets you decide which features to develop and for which market segments. For example, if you wanted to predict the success of a new computer introduction, you would ask questions to evaluate the importance of Brand, vs. Price, vs. Features. You would do it by asking users to evaluate the importance of one feature over another.

For an example and for software to help you create and manage conjoint analysis, visit the following website: http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com.

For a more detailed explanation of conjoint analysis, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjoint_analysis

I came across this on a website and had to share. This is a trend that exists in ecommerce for checkout pages but this is the first time I've come across it used in this way. It's a brilliant move I might add.

Go to this link and hit "Contact SAP Online" in the top right:  https://www.sap.com/usa/

Please note, they take away all the unnecessary links and leave you with only those that you need in order to submit the form. This is probably very effective at getting people to fill out the form rather than browsing away. In other words, this reduces your bounce rate or abandonment rate.

How much is this modification worth? It could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more to SAP because if even 1 more person fills out the form in this format over the traditional format and that contact results in 1 more sale, that single sale could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to SAP. I trust that they split tested it (A/B tested it) before they launched it and it must be successful at increasing conversions.

Take note of your favorite ecommerce sites. They are doing this during checkout. Take a look at Amazon today.

But they didn't stop there... NO. These guys are bright people. If you close the form before filling it out, it warns you that you haven't filled it out yet. It's hard to believe that more companies aren't doing this. It makes such intuitive sense especially if online referrals are a big part of your business.

There are pros and cons for both but in short, if you sell it through a buy-back program, most companies pay shipping and will send you a check or put money in your PayPal account fairly quickly. You won't get as much as you would if you were to sell it yourself directly to a customer but you'll have to plan on doing a lot more work. For example, instead of printing a label from your computer and dropping it at the nearest UPS location, you'll have to post it with a description, answer questions and ship it. Shipping may be a big pain depending on whether you have access to a UPS/FedEx account or not. Most sites that facilitate selling will also have rating and some kind of protection for sellers and buyers. Regardless of where you decide to sell it, you'll still feel like you overpaid and aren't getting as much back but you may feel less so if you sell it yourself.

In short, if you're looking for a quick buck, sell it to Amazon or another company that will buy it back and be done with it. You won't have to worry about the dropping value or the time it takes to sell it (both transaction time and the hassle of doing the work). Below is a partial list of companies that will buy your books and resale them taking the hassle out of your life. I sold all of mine on Amazon.com because they tended to have the highest trade in value because they give you money via online credit. Since I love shopping on Amazon, I don't mind spending my proceeds there.

Amazon (they will give you trade-in credit): http://www.amazon.com/tradein

• http://www.bookbyte.com
• http://www.betterworld.com/buyback.aspx
• http://www.sellbackyourbook.com/
• http://textbooksrus.com
• http://www.bookjingle.com/
• http://www.cash4books.net
• http://www.textbookrecycling.com
• http://www.firstclassbooks.com/
• http://valorebooks.com/
• http://www.webuytextbooks.com/
• http://buyback.collegebooksdirect.com
• http://www.textbooks.com
• http://www.chegg.com/
• http://www.textbooklink.com/
• http://www.powells.com

I highly recommend that rather than checking the price at each of the above sites to find out where you could make the most, just go to www.bookscouter.com and they'll search these sites and tell you how much you'll get and where.

Here are the top markplace sites that enable you to sell it directly to a customer:

Ebay's Half.com site: www.half.com is probably the best and biggest marketplace for used textbooks followed by Amazon.com.

The challenge with DIY is that if you don't sell regularly online, you could end up with the books after they have lost even more value.

Also, you may consider trading your books: BookSwap.com and BookMooch.com

Finally, instead of buying your text books, you could lease them for much less. Check out www.chegg.com for details.

If you know of other DIY sites, please let me know.

Today's outage has lasted for at least 2 hours and is till continuing. If you think about it, given Amazon's revenue of $26.7 billion (according to their financial statements), each hour represents ~$304K in sales. Using 22.47% gross profit margin from their financial statements, that's roughly $68K in profit for each our that it is down. I'm sure EVERYONE at Amazon is aware of the issue and they are doing everything they can to restore service.

Here is a site that currently uses Amazon's store software and they are also affected by the outage: DVD Storage company.

Here is a link to an article that goes into more details: Amazon outage.

There are multiple configurations for this scenario. Is this a one-time event, e.g, you're ordering for the holidays or is this something where you have constant demand and you just need to establish an efficient Re-Order point that takes into consideration service level agreements, lost opportunities, ordering costs, and liquidation costs?

Here is the basic formula for Excel: =SQRT((2*DEMAND*ORDERING_COSTS)/(CARRYING_COSTS))

Where Demand= Number you expect to sell
Ordering Cost = The cost of placing the order (this is NOT the unit cost)
Carrying Cost = The cost of carrying inventory-this includes things like shrinkage, warehousing, etc. This should be calculated as a percentage of the unit cost. For example, if it costs me $10 for a widget and 10% to maintain it, the inventory carrying cost is = (10 *.10) = $1.

For a more detailed explanation, please see this website: Economic Order Quantity- EOQ

Also, see this Spreadsheet with some examples of One-Time event ordering. One Time Event Ordering.

I'll post some additional examples as soon as I get more time.

(Disclaimer- this is material adapted from an Operations Class at the University of Utah and not my original material)