Amazon launches new mp3 preview widget

Amazon.com recently introduced a cool way to promote it’s DRM free iTunes competitor, the MP3 clips widget. Bloggers who are amazon associates can now post 30 second previews of music they are talking about (or best sellers on the amazon mp3 store or all music from a genre or songs they recently purchased). This adds to amazon’s already extensive suite of widget type ads offered to associates.

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eyahoobay

Now that Microhoo is officially dead, could a YBay be on the cards somewhere? Thoughts?

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Google Product Search is a price comparison engine - Again!

Froogle - Google Product Search, which launched as Froogle many years ago as a price comparison shopping engine later changed it’s format to a simple product search engine that would display the stores that sell a product you are searching for, without grouping the stores that sell the searched product according to prices, but simply in random algorithmic order - each product listing displaying a merchant-specific description and other details.

This was probably because froogle would, at the time, crawl e-stores for price and product information and the index was anything but accurate. Since introducing google base, the product search engine has stopped crawling the web for product info, it instead relies on data-feeds submitted by merchants - in a manner much similar to Shopping.com, Shopzilla and other price comparison sites. Despite the added accuracy, few people actually use google’s product search feature independently of the top-three product listings that appear within universal search.

Now, again, google seems to be experimenting with the price comparison engine format, complete with one description, and product specs per product - which is great news shoppers - there is now a real price comparison engine that includes more buying options than any other out there. As for merchants, most of whom already have their datafeeds uploaded to google base, This would be one of the few price comparison sites that is completely free - merchants don’t pay for clicks or sales, and if your store offers competitive prices, all the better, expect additional traffic!

Not all searches are showing up as price comparison results, but more SERPs are changing their skin real quick. Probably not very long before the transition is completed.

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Text Amazon to buy it

In what is a giant leap in it’s mobile-commerce offerings, Amazon launched “Amazon TextBuyIt” yesterday - Something that will let customers find, and make purchases via something as simple as text messages.

“With today’s launch of TextBuyIt, any Amazon.com customer can now use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere they are”

How, Simply text a message to “AMAZON” (262966), with the name of the product (or UPC/ISBN, if you have those), search results - with product name, a single digit code, and prices - are immediately texted back to your phone. Reply to amazon’s reply with the single digit code amazon sent for the product that is to be purchased. That’s it! If it’s the first time you’re using the number to buy something you are asked your amazon.com account details from where amazon picks up your shipping and billing info, and calls you up to confirm the order)

There is a discussion going on here about the new service, the first few reviews seem positive. One of the comments made me think, we’re already into the ‘future’. “Imagine when you are wandering inside a BestBuy or circuitCity Store and really like some item and begin to wonder if you will find a better deal on Amazon… well, now you can just send an SMS and Voila!”

More on Text Buy It:
FAQs
Press Release

Update: Discussion also at Techcrunch

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Coming soon — Video on shareasale

This is very exciting news. Everyone’s favorite affiliate network, ShareASale is hard at work on developing what they call a “v-commerce” solution - a video player/widget built for the sole purpose of affiliate marketing.

Carolyn Tang of SAS announced this to members of the shareasale group in facebook and is currently inviting ideas and suggestions in an ongoing facebook discussion here.

“we’re gettin’ with the times and exploring v-commerce. Nothing like bringing the magic of television online! Our tech team is hard at work developing a player with embedded tracking for affiliates to use on their sites.” ~ Carolyn Tang

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Big News: Ebay Leaving CJ, to launch the ebay partner network

Wow, this is huge. Online super-auctioneer, e-Bay always had an affiliate program, and it was always through a “trusted third party” At first, they were on a microsoft-owned affiliate network (remember clicktrade?) and later migrated to CJ sometime in the early 2000s.

Anyway, Today is an important day in affiliate marketing history. CJ has lost one of it’s biggest affiliate programs. e-Bay is going in-house. They announced this in an email to affiliates today that all the worlds ebays (including ebay US - Not including some of ebay’s non-auction properties such as stubhub, prostores, etc.) will need to be promoted via ebay’s own system beginning the first of April 2008.

“The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform. “

More details at the announcement page on ebay

Update: See also: AffiliateTip.com - Apparently, this was probably in the works since september 2006. See link on the affiliatetip post to “project rover”.

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Coupon affiliate retailmenot launches social network. TechCrunch has the details

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Social Shop on Facebook with Amazon’s latest apps

It’s the social-shopping week, it seems. I already wrote about two new social shopping apps on facebook that launched this week. Now, it’s e-retail giant Amazon’s turn to get facebook users to social-shop.

“By combining Amazon’s vast selection of products with Facebook’s millions of users, we are able to make activities like gift-giving more efficient and rewarding for Facebook users.”

In a news release earlier today, Amazon announced the launch of two new facebook applications - Giver and Grapevine. “Giver” lets users view their friends’ Amazon wishlists and share their own, “Grapewine” populates the user’s facebook feed with their activity on amazon.com (one gets choose what type of activity to share upon signing up).

“Use Amazon Giver to let your Facebook friends know and buy what you wish for, as well as gift suggestions, and Amazon Grapevine to show your friends what you’ve been up to on Amazon.com, such as writing Customer Reviews, adding items to your Wish List, and tagging products”

It would have been even more awesome if amazon had somehow added an affiliate marketing element to their facebook suite of apps. Say, if someone buys something on your wishlist by clicking on it - for someone else - you get the standard amazon associates revenue-share on the sale credited to your affiliate account. something like that would boost their apps’ usage and make social-shopping recommendations on facebook a lot more fun.

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Europe Clears Google’s DoubleClick Bid

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Social Shopping is Huge in China. “In China, 58% of all purchase decisions were influenced by user-generated content such as consumer reviews and rating sites, forums and discussion boards, blogs and other UGC. In the US, only 19% of purchase decisions were influenced by user-generated content.” (via emarketer)

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