2.0 Blogcommerce
Was just reading The Australian Tuesday IT section which had an article from the Financial Times about MeCommerce; Who is the 2.0 version of 1.0 distributed wholesale commerce; The twist being bloggers are the distribution platform for customer generation and transaction. MeCommerce fulfills and shares 50/50 on the margin.
"A new way to earn money from your website or blog, by selling books, DVDs, and CDs. You'll earn 50% of the proceeds above the cost of products sold. You decide exactly what kind of books and music you want sold on your site. You even decide what colors to use in the product window to match and feel like a part of your website."
Retail being low margin, and Etail being even lower margin is always a hard proposition when you then talk about splitting the margin again between 2 parties. This was one of the big lessons of 1.0. If companies like MeCommerce could prove that their offerings make more money than Adsense, Federated, Adbrite, Adblogs and so on- Or at least increase the total amount they sell (incl any cannibalisation effects) then that is a strong selling point.
As challenging as it is making a business on clipping the ticket on low volume etail, the technical platform is something which is definitely needed - In so far as bloggers should be able to maximise the added value and money they make from the time they invest in running their personal brand : Whether it be from advertising, retail, home loans, or services.
Stowe Boyd has the soundbite : "This is another example of commerce moving all the way to the edge, and smart commerce platform builders will realize that the path to success does not require building a huge site a la Amazon or eBay, or even aggregating microformatted reviews a la Edgeio. All that is needed is to put better widgets into the hands of edglings -- the myriad bloggers and mavens out there -- and then watch the marketplace explode."
AttentionTrust also thinks "Me-commerce will be more likely to succeed when they can integrate behavioral data from recommenders' actual purchases and use it to power their Me-commerce recommendations."
BB : The magic will be in distributing beyond-Amazon like inventory in a way that can be tailored to a bloggers audience, then sell enough items at enough margin to make a quid, while still providing competitive value for the blog reader come ecom purchasee.
More and more, the challenge for bloggers, blog networks, and ad plays in this space is to maximise the relevance of additional offers on their site to a by definition micro-community. More science is needed in sourcing and managing different revenue opportunities, and then campaign management tools to maximise profit earnt.
And making it easy (self service, API's, choice, customised UI) to implement for the blogger is the other big factor to drive enough penetration for MeCommerce to get enough scale to secure good product prices. Obviously these make awhole lot of sense when built into a blog platform : The harder configuration elements will need to be left to the blog infrastructure Co' who I assume MeCommerce are trying to cut deals with. (or given its opensource background going commercial, maybe integrate into offerings like Automattic/Wordpress.com)
And as for us non-US second class citizens without local etailers like Amazon or strong self service ad platforms to implement across our sites, local is an inherent problem in this glocal world of ours.
"A new way to earn money from your website or blog, by selling books, DVDs, and CDs. You'll earn 50% of the proceeds above the cost of products sold. You decide exactly what kind of books and music you want sold on your site. You even decide what colors to use in the product window to match and feel like a part of your website."
Retail being low margin, and Etail being even lower margin is always a hard proposition when you then talk about splitting the margin again between 2 parties. This was one of the big lessons of 1.0. If companies like MeCommerce could prove that their offerings make more money than Adsense, Federated, Adbrite, Adblogs and so on- Or at least increase the total amount they sell (incl any cannibalisation effects) then that is a strong selling point.
As challenging as it is making a business on clipping the ticket on low volume etail, the technical platform is something which is definitely needed - In so far as bloggers should be able to maximise the added value and money they make from the time they invest in running their personal brand : Whether it be from advertising, retail, home loans, or services.
Stowe Boyd has the soundbite : "This is another example of commerce moving all the way to the edge, and smart commerce platform builders will realize that the path to success does not require building a huge site a la Amazon or eBay, or even aggregating microformatted reviews a la Edgeio. All that is needed is to put better widgets into the hands of edglings -- the myriad bloggers and mavens out there -- and then watch the marketplace explode."
AttentionTrust also thinks "Me-commerce will be more likely to succeed when they can integrate behavioral data from recommenders' actual purchases and use it to power their Me-commerce recommendations."
BB : The magic will be in distributing beyond-Amazon like inventory in a way that can be tailored to a bloggers audience, then sell enough items at enough margin to make a quid, while still providing competitive value for the blog reader come ecom purchasee.
More and more, the challenge for bloggers, blog networks, and ad plays in this space is to maximise the relevance of additional offers on their site to a by definition micro-community. More science is needed in sourcing and managing different revenue opportunities, and then campaign management tools to maximise profit earnt.
And making it easy (self service, API's, choice, customised UI) to implement for the blogger is the other big factor to drive enough penetration for MeCommerce to get enough scale to secure good product prices. Obviously these make awhole lot of sense when built into a blog platform : The harder configuration elements will need to be left to the blog infrastructure Co' who I assume MeCommerce are trying to cut deals with. (or given its opensource background going commercial, maybe integrate into offerings like Automattic/Wordpress.com)
And as for us non-US second class citizens without local etailers like Amazon or strong self service ad platforms to implement across our sites, local is an inherent problem in this glocal world of ours.
posted by redbarren at 1:31 PM
<< Home