Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert – Nigel Burke's Blog

Phishing is a deceptive tactic to obtain login details to certain websites. Once they get the login details, they can login to the user’s account and steal money and get credit card details.

What to look for
Have you received an email that didn’t quite look right? If a bank sends you an email and asks for your login details, you know it’s a scam. The same for a social media website or online store website.

Bank phishing emails
You may receive emails from banks you are not with so it’s easy to tell that the email is a scam because you’re not with that bank. But what happens if you get an email from your bank. How do you know if it’s legitimate?

If you receive an email from your bank, be cautious, it’s highly likely to be a phishing email. Have a look at the link addresses in the emails. A real bank address would be – http://anz.com.au. A phishing website address may look like this – http://anz.com.au.vcsts.za/login

eBay phishing emails
I just received one that appears to be from eBay, that’s why I am writing this article right now. The subject is – eBay Member : You Received a Question From eBay Member fresh.tickets. It looks official. The body of the email looks exactly like an email you would get from eBay if someone really was asking a question about one of your auctions.

I don’t have any eBay auctions running right now so I knew straight away that it was a phishing email.

There are 9 links in the email. 8 of them go to real eBay pages. Even the link to the member’s profile is real.

The link to “repond” to the questions leads to the bad website. If I submitted my details on the bad website, this person might be able to access my PayPal account and other details on eBay.

The damage bill
It’s estimated that $3.2 billion dollars is lost every year in the US from phishing. Customers need to be smarter with their login details and do not provide it to anyone who simply asks to confirm their account.

If you do receive a phishing email, you can forward it to the real company so they know about it. I think this is more important for smaller stores so they can put out an announcement as soon as possible.

Are online stores affected?
Any online store can fall victim to a phishing attack. It usually happens to the larger companies such as Amazon but it can happen to any store. If your online store is attacked, you need to notify all your customers of the phishing attack. Describe what a phishing attack is and tell them to ignore any such emails that ask for their login details.

Wrap up
Customers and companies need to be aware of online crime and protect themselves from falling victim to such attacks. When your company may have been attacked, be pro-active about it and let your customers know as soon as possible.

If these cybercriminals keep getting away with it, they are going to keep doing it and the costs for doing online commerce will only increase.

It happened to the music industry and now it’s happening to more industries. The music industry ignored technology changes and suffered the consequences. If only if they were early adopters to selling online music, I believe more people would purchase their music online. They have had a hard time playing catch up including many court cases and legal battles.

The local video store under threat
Most video stores and chains have ignored the online world and will suffer a slow death in 2010 and beyond. IBIS World research predicts that the video rental industry will lose $20m in renenue in 2010.

The video rental industry has had a number of threats of late including NetFlix – an online video mail subscription service, DVD vending machines and new disc formats. A lot of people are legally and illegally downloading their movies today.

I’m just waiting for the day when Fox Studio and Warner Brothers successfully start selling their movies online for immediate download directly to customers instead of using distributors.

Travel Agencies
IBIS World research predicts the travel agency sector to fall by $46 million. Customers are now purchasing their travel services through discounted travel websites and directly with airlines and hotels skipping commissions.

Photo Processing Stores
Online photo services are increasing because customers can now upload their photos and receive their prints in the mail within a few days at a much lower price. IBIS World is predicting a 5.7% drop in revenue in 2010.

What does this mean for me?
Is your industry affected by these predictions?
Will your industry be affected in the near future?
What are you doing to take your services online?

Wrap Up
There is no stopping the online train now. It’s been proven many times over that the early adopters are usually the most successful. If you do not shift with technology changes, it will shift without you!

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be defined as optimising your website so search engines can rank your website in the natural search results, as high as possible for those targetted keywords.

But is all the effort in SEO really worth it?
Should you put all that time and effort into optimising your website so that when the search engine bots come through, that your page will rank higher?

Should you even think about paying an SEO professional to do it for you? What return on investment can you expect?

There’s no  guarantees
No one can guarantee number one position for your chosen keywords for the natural search results. You might get emails in everyday with promises but still no real guarantee.

The statistics
The number one ranking website for any keyword has an average click through rate of 56%. So if 1,000 searches are done for that keyword each day, that’s 560 visitors each day on average.

Of these 560 visitors you get daily, 5% purchase a product – that’s 1 in 20 people. That’s a nice conversion rate and works out to be 112 new customers each day from that keyword. If the average purchase was $100, that’s $11,200 a day in revenue. That number 1 ranking is worth a lot of money.

Imagine if it was a popular keyword and it was being searched 100,000 times a day – 56,000 visitors a day and up to 11,200 new customers a day in an ideal scenario. That’s $1,120,000 a day. Now we’re starting to talk big business!!

Would your business benefit from this kind of traffic?
Any online business could benefit from this kind of traffic. On the Internet, targetted traffic is king. It earns money and it’s what some businesses survive on.

Competition is heavy in the search engines and the most profitable the keywords, that more likely there is going to be more competition.

Conclusion
SEO is definitely worth it and can take a company from being good to great! If your website is not search engine optimised, you are not helping the business at all.

If you have any questions about SEO, please contact me – nigel@burke.com.au

A number of our customers have received letters about renewing their domain. The problem is that the customers have never dealth with this company previously.

The domain renewal scammers send out thousands of letters everyday to domain owners and they still get many people’s money. Often the domain name is not renewed after it’s being paid for.

If you receive a letter from a company that you are unsure about that is Internet related or you have received an invoice that you are just not sure about, contact your web developer, hosting company or even email me direct. They should be happy to answer any questions regarding any invoices or letters that could be a scam.

Companies that you need to be cautious of include -

• Domain Registry of America
• Domain Registry of Australia
• Internet Names Group

We recommend throwing all their letters into the bin because they are ‘domain slammers’ (scammers).

Don’t get caught in this scam – use your common sense.

Author : “Pen Kits & Pen Blanks – Timberbits.com“

Most people dream of handing the letter to the boss that says “I quit!” However the reality is very seldom realized.

Starting your own small business is very daunting and traditionally, doing so means mortgaging the family home or borrowing from family and friends.

Where to start.

Ebay has now the perfect vehicle to test and develop you business model and skills. With a few click and some loose change in your pocket, you can compete in a level playing field with the big boys in town.

Should your sales start to pick up and you get into the rhythm of selling on ebay, you will very quickly notice the advantages and disadvantages of eBay.

Pro’s and Con’s

The main disadvantages of eBay is mainly

1. the enormous fees that it charges, and

2. the price wars and race to the bottom which quickly erodes profits.

The next level.

Once you have developed a customer base, it’s time to start to lead them to an environment that you control. Lead them to a place where the big corporation can’t dictates how much their share is (before your even earn a cent), away from the “hand of god” that can delete all your listing because of a complaint of a righteous customer, away from a place which shares all your business statistics with your competitors.

By leading your customers to your own web site, you take back control and you also save a lot of money in the process.

Your website is your shop – give it some street appeal

Have you ever visited a web site that looked like it was done by a 8 year old or a newbie to web design? You wouldn’t get a dodge carpenter or a friend of a friend to fitout your retail premises – we all know this is the case we walk into some shops, why do the same with your web site?

With the invent of the web – small business can compete with the big boys in town. Spend a bit of money up front and get a professional to do the job. To fit out a retail shop professionally expect to pay over $250,000. A professional website is less than $1,000.

I always get complimented for how professional Pen Kits & Pen Blanks – Timberbits.com looks. It cost me less than a $700 to get started – that’s less than 1 months of eBays fees. Now my website’s volume has grown to more than 5 times what I sell on eBay. I now save thousands of dollars a month just on eBay fees, not to mention the time and frustration on eBay.

My word of advice is as soon as you start selling more than 20 transactions a month on eBay, start to invest in a website. When you do build a website, don’t go cheap – we all know what those websites look like, pay a professional because you get what you pay for.