#if you happen to be in Canada you could probably send us an Amazon gift card code but I'll probably just do them for free

[cold--carnage]

I feel like absolute shit rn and idk how to feel better but it looks like Ben suggested I take wing drawing requests and it looks like the poll is leaning towards me doing that so I think I'll maybe make a little info post about wing stuff

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, late-January 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the mid-January report, although some may be older than that. 

Right now I am trying to get at least 2 of these out each month. Is that enough? Too much? Am I missing topics you want to see covered? Please let me know! Comment here, message me through Tumblr, Twitter, or my website.

Also, I am once again working on plans to start an ecommerce business forum, where small business owners can learn and discuss topics like the ones I post about here. If you have any preferences for a suggested platform/forum space,please let me know! I will be running a survey once I narrow down my list. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Etsy introduced alternative shipping for US sellers shipping outside of the US & Canada, run by Asendia. Etsy Labels will no longer offer USPS First Class International for those shipments, but faster levels will still be through USPS. The Help file doesn’t give that much more detail; discussion is here. 

Having educational/information pages on ecommerce websites can help product page search rankings. Blog posts, pillar pages and tutorials can all be a good investment. 

Excellent article on how to keep your existing buyers (aka customer retention) rather than always going after new ones. It cites decent research in the area, with examples. (As regular readers know, I love Help Scout’s customer service articles!) For example, “When it comes to highly rated customer service, quality and completeness matter more than speed. According to research from Gallup, customers were nine times more likely to be engaged with a brand when they evaluated the service as “courteous, willing, and helpful.” “Speedy” service, on the other hand, only made customers six times more likely to be satisfied.”

ETSY NEWS 

More updates to listing categories, including a new Presets & Photo Filters category, and Cribs & Cradles is now called Moses Baskets & Hammocks. 

Tips on marketing your Etsy listings for weddings. “Etsy wedding shoppers are often drawn to Etsy because they identify as creative people themselves, an asset you should consider when developing and marketing your products. By offering DIY versions of some of your popular items, you can draw in crafty shoppers, who may end up purchasing a finished handmade item from your shop instead. Offering both options can also be a great way of hitting multiple price points.”

If you sell jewellery and/or accessories, here is Etsy’s advice for marketing in the first half of the year. “While high-end jewelry is often a carefully considered purchase, more affordable everyday items make easy impulse buys and gifts due to their small size and approachable price points.” Also, people are still shopping by gender: “70% YoY increase in Jewelry, Accessories, and Bags category searches containing “him”. “We expect the bags category to grow the most out of these three categories in the next year, led by the increasing popularity of small leather goods such as wallets, dopp kits, and items for travel. A recent increase in average order value within the Bags category suggests buyers are willing to pay more for high-quality materials like leather.” But note that “Buyers tend not to use the term "purse" in their searches.” Finally, “From July through September 2019, over half of Etsy US and global GMS came from purchases that shipped for free.”

In case you missed it, Disney is going after Etsy sellers of Baby Yoda merchandise. Some speculate that they are mostly focusssing on the listings making the most sales. More sarcastic & humorous take here.

Interesting interview (podcast & transcript, including a pdf) with CEO Josh Silverman, on business strategies.  I do like this quote: “When you’re successful, what can be really hard is to tell you’re successful because of some things and in spite of others.” To be very honest, I have this problem a lot, and have seen other business people misjudge their success as well. This is telling, though “And you have until December 31st to ship it.�� I have a hunch that is what happened with Etsy Ads and the free shipping tools. So they shipped unfinished tools, and that was bad for the business. Finally, “HOFFMAN: Until this point, Etsy’s focus had been on its sellers. It saw itself as a marketplace for handmade items, and the people who made them. Josh knew he had to change this perspective… SILVERMAN: It was a really big shift in focus. I think Etsy, like many two sided marketplaces, has very deep empathy for sellers, so much so that it can forget to have empathy for buyers. And when you talk to your sellers, they really mostly want three things. They want buyers, they want buyers, and they want buyers – in that order. In order to serve the sellers, you’ve really got to focus on buyers...By the end of my fifth week almost everyone in the company had a new job.”

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google confirmed a core search update that started to roll out January 13 and took about 3 days, and showed substantial changes on most tracking tools. Early analysis indicates this has once again affected sites based on trustworthiness, but big winners and losers are still unclear. The take from Moz is that this hit health sites like previous updates, but also hurt diverse sites such as Orbitz, Yellow Pages, Poshmark, USA Today and Forever 21. RankRanger noted that there was more volatility in finance rankings than the December update. 

Remember Google’s algorithm change late last year, called BERT? George Mueller offered a bit of advice [text and video] on how to optimize for it: “if ... there’s anything that you can do to kind of optimize for BERT, it’s essentially to make sure that your pages have natural text on them...So instead of stuffing keywords as much as possible, kind of write naturally” 

Google is now highlighting some products (clothing & accessories) in organic search results on mobile in the US & India; you have to have a Google Merchant Centre account set up, but you do not need to buy ads to get this organic boost. Here’s the Google help file on how to optimize. 

If your website has many related pages on a specific topic, organizing the info on one “content hub” (aka pillar pages, or even category pages in some cases) is an excellent way to get user and search engine attention. 

Brief video from Google for SEO beginners: how to optimize images for Google search. They also link to their support file on this question, which has more advanced info. And here is another beginners video on Google SEO considerations for your website. (More links in the video comments.)

Google has a “SafeSearch filter” that removes porn and other mature content from search results, but sometimes it catches innocent sites as well. 

Another good article on how internal linking can serve multiple purposes on your website, especially keyword ranking.

Sites that get the “featured snippet” position in Google search results can no longer get organic ranking on the first page. This could change, though. 

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

Excellent tips & advice on how to make email marketing work for you. Not using emails? You should. “...email has over 3.8 billion daily active users. Take a minute to think about that. Most people who use email probably fall between the ages of 15 and 64, and since there are only about 5 billion people on the planet in that age range, that means email has over 75 percent market penetration.” And “Almost three-fourths of people prefer to hear from businesses via email.”

Do you think that every email campaign needs its own landing page? I’m not sure, but there are some convincing arguments here. And don’t forget to plan to send your emails at the right time for your list subscribers. 

Updated for 2020, HubSpot does an excellent holiday calendar that can help you plan social media posts and other content ahead of time, including hashtags where applicable. 

Tips on converting your existing content (blog posts etc.) into podcasts. “Podcasts tend to be longer-form content than video or blogs. Many videos that companies produce are relatively short, ~2 minutes. For someone looking to listen to your podcast, this may not be substantial enough in terms of the information covered.”

Here’s a useful list of demographics of social media users - think about which sites would work best for your business based on who is using them. 

Reddit is an excellent source of content ideas (video & transcript), as people are usually discussing and upvoting things that interest them, and it is all organized by topic for you. 

Instagram is adding direct messaging (DM) access to their website. 

Facebook is accused of denying data access to potential competitors. 

A surprising number of American adults use LinkedIn, and their numbers are growing faster than expected. “LinkedIn users make up around one-third of all social network users in the U.S.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Another tutorial on setting up a Google Ads account. 

Google ads were less evident in organic search results, for about a week. This mirrors the changes on mobile several months ago, & includes favicons next to brand sites. But more people complained about the desktop layout, so they have backed down and will continue to test new versions. 

Facebook, Google & Amazon are not the only advertising options out there. 

Short infographic on how to advertise on TikTok. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

If you haven’t set up Google Search Console for your website or blog, you should. [YouTube Video, from the Beginners series]

A good basic guide to using the Google Keyword Planner, including more tips on how to get in without setting up a paid ad campaign. 

Instagram is most useful when you track your stats - use Insights to track your reach, clicks, impressions etc. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

The growth of ecommerce purchases has been detrimental to US retail sales overall, due to brick and mortar store closures, lower b&M profit margins, and fewer jobs. Remember that Amazon now gets around 50% of ecommerce purchases in the US, meaning that the increase of online retail is more consolidated than the lost brick and mortar sales. 

Amazon will now be reporting counterfeit goods sold on its site to the authorities: "The hope has been that Amazon’s coveted data will help law enforcement make connections about criminals." 

Amazon has started a delivery program in Australia called Amazon Flex. Requiring drivers to sign up for shifts up to 4 hours that they choose, driving their own vehicles, the program is being compared to Uber. 

Shopify now has over 1 million merchants, and is growing rapidly. “This past Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, the company saw $2.9 billion in total sales; during its peak, Shopify software was processing $1.5 million in sales and 16,000 checkouts a minute.”

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

Smartphone purchases continue to increase: $5.9 billion spent on Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and 48% of online purchases in the US on Christmas Day. 

Supposedly, USPS is the most trusted brand in the US, followed by Amazon, Google, and Paypal. Actual quote: “levels of distrust are high in America, but it found that brands can win trust by protecting consumers' data privacy, not hiding important information in fine print and treating employees better than the minimum required by law.” I’m struggling with Amazon & Google in the top in particular, given that quote, but at least Facebook didn’t make the top 25. 😉 Note that age is a differential factor here: “Google is the most trusted brand among Gen Z and millennials, while USPS is the most trusted among older generations like Gen X and baby boomers.” Study details & top 25 list available here. (There is a large difference between the generations, according to this study; it’s worth a scan.)

MISCELLANEOUS

If you are looking for a new search engine, here are 7 that aren’t Google. Some of you  probably hadn’t heard of all of them, because I hadn’t. 

Anti-virus software Avast is still selling user data to major companies.

[efosa123]

Sites That Pay PayPal Money Fast – THE SAME DAY! do you want PayPal money fast deposited into your account on the same day in less than an hour well that's what this video is all about what's up guys big mark here welcome back to my channel it's so great to see you here today alright so on this video we're gonna talk about two websites that are gonna pay you PayPal money fast same day right into your bank account and in most cases in less than an hour so I'm gonna give you all the details right on this video now before that remember to subscribe to my channel right now because I come out with videos every single day that will show you how you can make money online I mean look at all these videos how you can make money online how you can work from home and how you guys can become an entrepreneur and if you guys would like to learn how to make a full time passive income right online okay this is what I'm doing alright if you want to make money while you sleep and while you're out on vacation and traveling well check out the link below in the description of this video right now and I will share with you some more information on how you can do that okay alright so let's go ahead and jump in to the video the website you guys are gonna want to check out is Q me this is over at QM aecom now with Q me you guys can get cash directly deposited into your PayPal account immediately alright they also have no payment threshold or anything like that they're open in the US the UK Canada and Australia okay so here's what you guys do you're going to install their browser extension you can install it into your Chrome browser if you're using Chrome okay and then you will browse online like you normally would you're gonna visit various websites like Google being eBay Amazon Walmart and then you guys are going to get paid okay so let me explain to you how this works okay so you're going to install the extension you're going to search for different things on Google right so in this example stylish women's jackets or something like that but instead of clicking on the links in Google search results what you guys are going to do you're going to click on the links inside of the kyoumi panel that's going to appear on the left side of your browser so when you click on these links as soon as you click on them you're gonna get that cash added to your kyoumi account okay so let's just say you type in stylish women jackets or some something like a sofa or a leather sofa or something like that and then you're gonna have different results over here well cue me they want you to click over here on these links okay because these guys are getting affiliate commissions and what they're going to do is they're going to share their affiliate commissions with you all right even if you don't buy anything if you want to go over there and click on the links here like such as over here on JCPenney or maybe Wal Mart or maybe Nordstrom's you just want to go over there and take a look well even if you do that they're gonna add that money right to your kyoumi account okay so that's pretty cool and they will also give you discounts so let's just say like in this example here's a camera or something like that that you guys are looking for and you're browsing around well instead of going directly to Amazon or Walmart to purchase the item what you guys can do is search for that item inside of Google and then up over here on the left side you guys are gonna have a little cumae panel and you can actually purchase through one of these links okay and they're gonna get their affiliate Commission and then you guys get a portion of that Commission and so what happens is is you save money so instead of just going directly to Amazon you use the links inside of the kyoumi window there and then you guys can save like something up to like 30 or 40 percent on your purchase it's pretty amazing but I know a lot of you guys you don't want to have to buy things to make money and I'm kind of like with you so if it was me I would just click on the different links and things like that so basically you are getting paid to click you are getting paid to click you're earning points are earning cash all right and this will build up into your kyoumi account alright so when you guys have accumulated a lot of points and different things like that you're gonna have several options that you guys can do you can cash out you can help charity I don't know about you but I like PayPal so all you guys got to do is just log right in check your balance and then sync your PayPal account with your cute me account okay that's how it works now looking over on Trustpilot comm this has pretty amazing reviews okay so it's about four stars out of five just by looking at this it's quite amazing I really like you me and will.i.am and we recommended humne is a great company fantastic app for earning money easy to use for both surveys and searches to me is the best survey app ever yes they do have surveys you guys can earn money doing that as well cue me calm is easy fun and quick a great site an alternative to other sites I absolutely love this site and app people are going crazy over this guy's so go ahead and check it out that's cue me calm and the next website that we're gonna take a look at right now is bankroll bucks okay so this is an entirely new site that I've never actually reviewed before some users have reported getting PayPal money in less than 30 minutes okay and actually have a video I'm going to show you some proof here in just a moment but the first thing is to sign up and it's a hundred percent free and then you guys will need to confirm your address and then you are ready to go alright so the tasks are going to include things like the paid surveys get paid to just click write which is what I love but you can also watch videos and you can also click on ads and get paid you can also complete different little tasks and there's so much much more that you guys can do so looking over here on a video by workers on board she's created a great video that shows actually some payment proof so what I'm gonna do is go ahead and play that video back right now and show you what this is all about here we go I recommend that you go to take it click the daily surveys possibly some of the offers and start there before and even here to on poll fish different things like that before you start on the games because like I said you could lose some of your bank rolls now I'm gonna show you guys a payment proof I have it download it to clip ler and this was 15 dollars that I had cashed out from bankroll bucks it was a while ago as you guys can see right now currently I have one hundred and forty nine dollars and ten cents that I can either cash as you guys can see here or for instant Amazon gift codes or um I can't receive a check and they send them out every Friday I only need a dollar in order to receive a check dollars American um but I just in like I said you convert you can convert cash the points if you want to one bankroll equals one cents in cash okay cool so she can have that money directly sent to her bank account if she wants to or she can have it directly sent to her PayPal account it's totally up to you guys I will leave a link below for workers on board great channel to go over there and check it out for different ways in different videos on how you guys can earn a supplemental passive income online I will go ahead and post that link below in the description so there you go guys those are a couple websites and you know I go through several different websites every single day I review around 10 to 20 websites every single morning and you know a lot of these websites you know I don't really put I don't I don't make videos about them because I don't really think that you guys are going to like them you know I mean they're probably legit but it just takes too long to get paid so that's why these are the best two websites that I found today I want to share these with you now you are still trading time for money and if you guys would like to make better use of your time okay if you want to start doing a little bit more maybe somewhere around two hundred three hundred dollars a day right well if you would like to learn how to create a full time passive income right online okay this is what I'm doing and you know if you want to have more time and freedom to do what you want to do and you want to make money while you sleep and while you're out on vacation maybe you don't want to always be on the computer all the time well check out the link below in the description of this video go ahead check it out right now click on that link and I will share with you my number one most recommended opportunity and I'm gonna show you how to create a full time passive income right online okay alright so there you go guys if you guys got some value on this video hey you know what to do give me a thumbs up I would appreciate that and if you guys want more videos about making money online working from home and becoming an entrepreneur which I highly recommend that you do so you have more time and freedom to do what you want well subscribe to my channel right now and I will share with you and I will update you whenever I come out with a new video that's it for today guys you guys make it an awesome day and we will see you on I hope I see you on the next video peace out 7 more words