Amazon is a leader in ebusiness and content management

At the ebusiness blog, like to talk about Amazon.com because it is a company that has created the perfect marriage between e-business and content. Not only does Amazon has some interesting content on its websites, its affiliates use content as a tool to create demand for almost everything that it sells. No surprise that the model works.

Amazon.com has announced it has finished its busiest holiday season ever during which time it set a single-day record with more than 2.8 million units ordered, or 32 items per second, worldwide. Additionally, even while its books business set a new Thanksgiving Weekend record, consumer electronics sales surpassed book sales and was Amazon's largest sales category for the first time.

Below are some interesting facts that we are using to develop strategy in the eCreativa network of online media properties (which includes, among others, MYNIPPON Lifestyle, LuvCube: Find, live, and enjoy love, Lindisima Latina Lifestyle, Vioxx recall, and iProceed Management Consultant). You may want to read these to figure out what type of content should you be creating in coming months because these statistics tell a lot about the trends.

• Amazon.com shipped to 217 countries and delivered over 100,000 shipments to overseas US military personnel at APO/FPO addresses.
• More than half a million gift certificates were ordered between November 25th and December 24th 2004.
• The Music store broke a new sales record, selling more than one million units per week for two consecutive weeks in December.
• The DVD category capped off the year by breaking the one week order record (for the week ending December 12), and by setting a single title one day order record of over 13,000 units of "Lord of the Rings, Return of the King Extended Edition" on December 14.
• In Home & Garden, kitchen items topped the list this year. The Black & Decker Lids Off Jar Opener, the Hamilton Beach Waffle Stix Waffle Maker and Riedel O Cabernet/Merlot Wine Tumblers were the three top sellers in the store. Cookware was also very popular, with classic pans from Calphalon, the Casa Moda "S'mores" Maker, and George Foreman grills being among the best sellers.
• In Gourmet Food, Harry & David's Christmas Classic Tower of Treats and the Ghirardelli Tower were again the most popular gift baskets. See's Candies Gold Truffle Box and Godiva's Holiday Gold Coin Bag were top selling chocolate gifts. Other popular items included the Kona Coffee Sampler and Cranberry Fool unique cranberry sauce.
• In Sports & Outdoors, flashlights, poker chips and exercise equipment (including full-sized treadmills, home gyms, yoga and pilates gear, and the Ab Lounge 2) were the hottest items this season. The Flybar 1200, a high-tech pogo stick sold exclusively on Amazon.com, was so popular that Amazon.com fulfillment centers scrambled to keep up with customer demand. Other areas that did exceedingly well were golf, fan gear for every sport, and, surprisingly, SCUBA and snorkel gear.
• Top sellers in Computer & Video Games were Halo 2 (Xbox), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Playstation 2) and the Incredibles (Gameboy Advance). The Sims 2 and Half-Life 2 were the top selling games for PCs.
• In Health & Personal Care, the ever popular nose hair groomers, shavers and electric toothbrushes were the top sellers. A surprising top seller this holiday was the new Philips HeartStart Home Defibrillator, which is the first defibrillator cleared for over-the-counter sale.
• Tools & Hardware top sellers were the Black & Decker 25' Auto Tape Measure, the Strait-Line Intersect Laser Level, the Porter-Cable Finish & Brad Nailer Combo Kit, and the Toro Electric Power Shovel Plus.
• The top selling books this holiday season were "America (the book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" by Jon Stewart, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom - which also topped the list in 2003, and "Chronicles Vol. 1" by Bob Dylan.
• In Music, the hottest sellers were U2's "How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb," Clay Aiken's "Merry Christmas with Love," Nirvana's box set "With the Lights Out," Allison Krauss and Union Station's "Lonely Runs Both Ways," Rod Stewart's "Stardust...The Great American Songbook Volume III," Green Day's "American Idiot," Josh Groban's "Live at the Greek," and Ray Charles' "Genius Loves Company."
• In the DVD/Video category, it was the season of multi-disc sets as the "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition," "Seinfeld" Seasons 1-3 and the "Star Wars Trilogy" led the top sellers. This holiday season also proved that there is strength in sequels as "Shrek 2," "Spider-Man 2," and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" all finished in the top 10.
• In Beauty, the most popular products this season were samplers from Yves Rocher and Caswell Massey, Curious Britney Spears perfume, and Philosophy's The Gingerbread House. LUSH Bath Bombs have also been a regular favorite.
• The top selling electronics products this year were the Apple 20GB iPod, the Apple 4GB Silver Mini iPod, the Phillips DVP642 DivX Progressive Scan DVD player, the iTunes $15 prepaid Card and the Canon PowerShot SD 110 3MP Digital Elph camera.
• Diamonds of all sizes were popular in earrings, pendants and bracelets. Other top selling jewelry items include Sterling Silver Blue Topaz Earrings, Paris Hilton's Sterling Silver and Swarovski Crystal Heart Pendant on a Satin Cord (16 inch), Paris Hilton's Sterling Silver and Swarovski Crystal Star Hoop Earrings, and a Floating Heart Pendant with Diamond.
• In apparel, comfort was king. The Ugg® Australia Classic Short Boot, Land's End Women's Regular Flex Fleece Clog Slippers, and the Carole Hochman Fleece Pajama Set were all hot sellers.

Success strategies for publishing business

This is the best time to be in the content management business and as a nano-publisher we can see that things couldn't have been better. Thanks in particular to Google that has not only redefined the advertising landscape but also the publishing business. And as a nano-publisher it is nice to feel wanted again by the advertisers. As anyone who has noticed, Google is still adding publishers to its already large and powerful army and is treating publishers like us extremely well, including Christmas cards and gifts (We love you, Google!).

Why will Google continue to be a great company (even if it does not remain the greatest search engine)? Because it values its customers and partners. Both Amazon and eBay became great companies by developing armies of partners and Google is doing the same. It is the little guy that makes the big difference on the Internet. And that is a classic example of how the Internet is about empowerment and democratization. We have come across publishers in remote parts of India basically running websites targeted at Americans (these publishers do not write Queen's English; they use perfectly American English) so that they can attract high-value advertisements. And since their cost structure is significantly lower than an US-based business, their operating margins are huge. All because Google allows you to do that.

We have heard some rumblings from some advertisers who are not necessarily happy with the AdSense program, but the bottom line is that life is not that simple. An average consumer just doesn't search on Google to find a product and goes and buys it. People love to read what others are saying, what are they missing in their lives, how can they make it better by using products or services, and only then they think about making a purchase. That is where nano-publishers like us create enormous value for advertisers. We have so much power that we can even create demand for a product by simply talking about it.

We love doing business with Google and are almost fanatic supporters of the company. No wonder the Google sales and stock price are going through the roof!

Recommended article: Advertisers motivate content developers

How to get a high rank in Google organic search results?

When we launched the Vioxx recall blog we were hoping to benefit from the advertising revenue that it would generate (we were closely monitoring how fast the rates were rising at Overture), what we did not know was if we would be successful in having the blog pop up in search results. And then as soon as we launched and made some progress and declared that the Vioxx recall blog was a success, we were attacked by spammers and crooks, hired by Vioxx attorneys (Related article: Vioxx recall battle in cyber-space). Of course, we were discouraged but we have never given up on the strong connection between ebusiness and content management since it is a model that we have tested dozens of times in the eCreativa network of online media properties.

Since we used a blog instead of a website, success at Yahoo and MSN was immediate. In fact, within a matter of days, Vioxx recall blog was on page one. But the really depressing news was that we were on page 13 in Google. Now like every other content manager and nano-publisher, that is as good as not being found at all. In any case, Google has driven us nuts to a point that we have simply stopped worrying about on a day to day basis. We have now started to take Google for its word: "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

And Google has shown that it really does what it says. Vioxx recall blog is now on page one of Google search results. Indeed it took Google more than four weeks to get there (Yahoo was way too fast and we have now learned that if you want something to be found right away, Yahoo is the best to find it if it is in a blog form), but it did make it. While this is great news for us, it was not so good news for people who were looking for Vioxx information. Google continued to serve them with outdated results even as the story was changing several times a day during the month of October and November of 2004.

Message to Google engineers: You have to do something so that you can provide newly published information faster even if it does not have a high PageRank (getting "votes" to a new page can take days/weeks, particularly for small websites). Sometimes information changes too fast and that is a limitation of the PageRank system. In this context, Yahoo does a terrific job since it captures content from a blog within a matter of hours. What Google may want to do is to provide an option that allows users to search "most popular" and "most fresh".

Recommended article: Advertisers motivate content developers

Vioxx recall blog is a content management success story

The launch of the Vioxx/Celebrex/Bextra news blog has been validation of the fact that consumers appreciate content that is written in a language that they can understand and appreciate. News stories related to drug recalls can be either too legal or too medical or both. And if you add a bit of legal/medical jargon, you can turn it into a really dull story. So is there an opportunity to provide easy-to-understand content for readers by keeping the complexity out? Absolutely.

The finall result: our news website is at the top simply on the basis of high-quality content. We have made this section as one place that has all the news. The stories are not written for lawyers of medical professionals (there are special websites for them), but for an average consumer who wants to make sense of the current news without getting a headache.

Another important point to note is that you cannot win by simply copying search results in your website or republishing press releases or using any other techniques. You actually have to process the vast amount of information and put it in a form that it makes sense to an average arthritis patient. And that requires hard work and creativity.

Similar model being tried with Social Security privatization

When President Bush decided to push his agenda for Social Security privatization sometime late last year and early this year, we knew that if and when he succeeds, life of every single American will change forever. Even non-Americans will be impacted since it will have a huge impact on the financial markets worldwide. Social Security privatization has a huge impact on retirement planning and personal finance. So we have launched a Social Security privatization news center that puts the whole debate in the context of its impact on personal finance and retirement planning.

What does it mean for you?

1. Content wins. So it makes perfect sense to even hire a journalist to generate good content for your website, as our company has done.
2. Many developments that have only news value initially also create a lot of content opportunities. Analyze market trends and see if you can provide a totally new perspective on what might appear to be just dull news.

Recommended article: Strong forecast for ebusiness and nanopublishing

Lawyers abuse search to attract Vioxx recall clients

If you see domain several names like this (www.scgrassroots.org, www.nychildrenschorus.org, www.palermoconference2002.org, www.peruusany.org, www.gunnm-seraphim.org, www.improvinbiz.org) what will you think? You might think that these are not-for-profit websites. But when these websites show up right on page one in a search for information on Vioxx recall, you start to wonder why the Children's Chorus in New York will be writing about Vioxx. The reality is that all these are fake websites run by two law firms: The Peterson Firm and Waters & Kraus. No matter which website you click on you end up on a website (www.cc2000.org) owned by these two law firms where they are trying to find clients for Vioxx related lawsuits.

Why would two respected law firms use such trickery to drive traffic to their websites? No one knows but it does not speak very highly of them. There is nothing wrong or illegal with using the Internet to find new clients particularly if you can do that through organic search results. But using fictitious names to get higher ranking in search results is definitely not a way to create trust.

It also goes to show that Google and Yahoo with hundreds of supposedly very smart engineers are no match for a bunch of crooks out there who can easily trick their search engines. Search engines are supposed to reward content rich websites and the order in which they appear in a search typically indicates their quality. It clearly is not happening right now with search engines which have a hard time keeping up with spammers and crooks. After it seems that $38 billion is at stake in the Vioxx recall case.