Yahoo Income: How Anyone of Any Age, Location, and/or Background Can Build a Highly Profitable Online Business with Yahoo

Yahoo Income

How Anyone of Any Age, Location, and/or Background Can Build a HighlyProfitable Online Business With Yahoo

by Dana E. Blozis

and Sharon L. Cohen

Yahoo Income: How Anyone of Any Age, Location, and/or Background Can Build a Highly Profitable Online Business With Yahoo

Copyright © 2009 Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-60138-254-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blozis, Dana E., 1967-

Yahoo income : how anyone of any age, location, and/or background can build a highly profitable online business with Yahoo / by Dana E. Blozis and Sharon L. Cohen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60138-254-2 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-60138-254-5 (alk. paper)

1. Yahoo! Inc. 2. Electronic commerce. 3. Business enterprises--Computer networks. I. Cohen, Sharon, 1949- II. Title.

HF5548.32.B597 2009

658.8’72--dc22

2009015120

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

Yahoo! is a registered service mark of Yahoo! Inc. Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc. is not a partner, affiliate, or licensee of Yahoo! Inc., nor is it in any other way formally associated with Yahoo Inc.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Introduction to Yahoo!

CHAPTER 2: Yahoo! Small Business Overview

CHAPTER 3: Are You Ready to Yahoo!?

CHAPTER 4: Getting Started: Business Basics, Part

CHAPTER 5: Getting Started: Business Basics, Part

CHAPTER 6: Choosing Your Yahoo! Plan Level

CHAPTER 7: Yahoo! Tools and Services

CHAPTER 8: Put Up Your Storefront, Part 1

CHAPTER 9: Put Up Your Storefront, Part 2

CHAPTER 10: Control Panels for Easy-to-Make Store Changes

CHAPTER 11: Running Your Yahoo! Store

CHAPTER 12: Marketing Your Yahoo! Store, Part 1

CHAPTER 13: Marketing Your Yahoo! Store, Part 2

CHAPTER 14: Marketing Your Yahoo! Store, Part 3

CHAPTER 15: Yahoo! Just Keeps Going

APPENDIX A: List of Yahoo Services

APPENDIX B: Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

About the Authors

CHAPTER 1: Introduction to Yahoo!

Yahoo! – A Slice of Online History

From its humble beginnings in 1994 as Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web, international Web portal Yahoo! has exploded in popularity, now serving more than 345 million users every month.

Founded by Stanford doctoral students Jerry Yang and David Filo, the site originally began as a personal listing of Internet sites the men visited frequently. As the list grew into the hundreds, it became difficult to manage, so Yang and Filo organized the information into categories, and eventually subcategories, essentially creating a primitive online directory.

Word of the project spread to their friends and other users, propelling the directory from homegrown status to an international Web portal offering countless resources and services to users around the world. The following fall, the site celebrated its first million-hit day.

According to the Yahoo! Web site, Yang and Filo recognized the business potential of the newly renamed Yahoo!, an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, and incorporated in March of 1995. The following month, the pair received an initial investment of $2 million from a group of venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. Additional funding was secured in the fall of 1995, followed by a successful initial public offering (NASDAQ: YHOO) in April of 1996.

Yahoo! Now

Thirteen years later, Yahoo! is more than just a search engine. Its Web site reports that it has evolved into an online giant, serving more than 500 million unique visitors in 20 different languages. Based in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo! employs 12,000 staff members and serves more than 20 different global markets, including Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Canada, and the United States.

Why Yahoo!?

Ask both new and long-term Yahoo! merchants why they chose Yahoo! as their online business platform over many other competitors, some as well-known as Amazon, and you will hear numerous positive comments about the Yahoo! brand’s easy-to-use yet robust Web site and excellent customer service. As you will see in the case studies, developers and store owners alike say that Yahoo! is the best option for starting a new home business or growing an existing one. Better yet, over the years, thousands of small and large e-commerce owners continue to successfully use Yahoo’s! Web site store platform to build highly profitable business ventures. In fact, in 2008 PC Magazine gave an Editors’ Choice award to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions. The editors noted that Yahoo! SiteBuilder is a Web site program that gives thousands of merchants the power to construct their site from scratch or from their available templates.

Yahoo! has built in a non-vanilla look to its merchant sites. Not only are the Web sites able to be tailored to the sellers’ needs, but the Yahoo! software actually offers customizable, highly professional templates for e-commerce owners to use. The Yahoo! SiteBuilder system also gives sellers the ability to use specific positioning in addition to drag-and-drop editing and layering and FTP uploading capabilities. It is also possible to add royalty-free graphics and use e-commerce functionality and clip art. The SiteBuilder application can be run from the merchant’s desktop while they are designing their own Web site offline. In addition, the Yahoo! platform allows multimedia content and embedding of audio and video files directly into the Web pages.

Yahoo! does not leave anyone in the lurch, not even newbies who never put up a Web site. The customer service team is right there for their customers, just like they should be. Plus, there is a 530-plus page manual that goes over everything, step by step, to help build the site.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions provides all Internet sellers, from Internet newbies to million-dollar businesses, everything they need to build, host, manage, expand, and promote their online store. For what many developers charge thousands of dollars, Yahoo! starts at about $40 or less, if you are new and just want to establish your presence online. Sherry Comes from Coffeecake.com calls this one of the best-kept secrets.

Although someone who has little or no experience in building an online store can create, manage, and maintain Yahoo! Merchant Solutions’ online tools, such as Store Manager, Catalog Manager, and Store Editor, it is also always possible to add on numerous advanced store features as needed that may require external Web site development expertise. These services include constructing complex Web site templates; integrating your store with external back-office applications, with CGI scripts and XML; or providing product lists to external shopping engines. Yahoo! even recommends a list of highly qualified developers to provide these extra services for reasonable costs.

One of the strong points of going with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is that you are not just buying a Web site, but rather, a full solution for your business. Therefore, Yahoo! is not just there to help you put up your Web site, but to give you the tools and techniques, as well as the input of other Yahoo! merchants. Yahoo!’s Small Business resource site and library includes a host of articles that cover everything from writing a business plan and determining a domain name to employment law and shipping suggestions. There are also videos of successful Yahoo! store owners who provide some of their tips and best practices on how to grow a business. You can also view the tutorials on such subjects as sponsored search and analytics and attend webinars about topics such as creating special campaigns and pricing. Rather than starting from scratch, it is best to see what does or does not work with others and then adapt it to your own needs.

When Jerry Yang and David Filo decided to call their tiny Web site Yahoo!, it is doubtful they realized how the name would become so well known around the world. This unique name helped build the company’s branding and positive image as an approachable place for a fun Internet experience and a friendly place to do business. Over the years, it has become a strong brand that has helped Yahoo Inc. to continue its growth, despite the ups and downs of the industry and competition and takeover tries from rivals, such as Google and Microsoft. For Yahoo! merchants, the most important aspect of this branding is the fact that the name is not only well known, but also perceived as a safe, reliable place to do business.

A Web site that says powered by Yahoo! is backed by millions of dollars of advertising and marketing dollars that continue to make the brand name strong throughout the world. Where other sites, such as Google, do not stick to their brand name when adding services (Gmail, for example), Yahoo! proudly slaps its name on nearly everything it produces, from Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Shopping, and Yahoo! Autos, to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions. It interconnects its various services with links throughout its sites, which draws customers into your Web business from many different portals.

With your monthly low-cost fee, you get several tools to help get your new business going. Yet, as you want to grow, additional marketing and advertising will be important. Once again, this could be costly if you did not have the support and strength of a company like Yahoo! behind you. Yahoo!, for example, offers easy, affordable ways for display advertising, where you can create your own ad without the expense of a designer or developer, build a campaign for your target audience, and even track daily performance against desired goals. Perhaps even more important, the ads will be seen. Every day, 47 million people use Yahoo!, and users conduct 2.4 billion searches every month.

Yahoo! is regularly improving its small business services. Geo-targeting enhancements help you pinpoint your target customers. Knowing that your advertisements will show up for the right people in the right locations is critical, particularly when your business specifically caters to a niche audience. Geo-targeting gives you the opportunity to tailor your targeting strategies, whether you want to reach the whole country or just zoom in on a city or ZIP code. Geo-targeting analyzes search queries, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and similar information to determine where a user is located and what ads to serve to that user. For example, if you select Boston as a geo-targeted region for the sale of your product, users with an IP address in Boston will be served your ad. If you are a Boston-based business, you likely will get more relevant traffic, which can lead to more sales.

The case studies demonstrate that Yahoo! merchants also greatly appreciate another recent addition to their marketing efforts: the analytic tool that allows Web sites to track metrics on their customers’ online behavior. One of the key benefits of the analytics is real-time reports. If you have someone come to your Web site at 8:04 a.m., at 8:05 a.m., you can see what that person did after arrival. Watching such behavior can have a major impact on conversion rates, since you can see why a person does not buy everything put into his or her shopping cart. If only 2 percent of people are converted, how come the other 98 percent are not?

Case Study: Chip Bulkeley

Chip Bulkeley, Owner

CHiP’s V6 Specialties

P.O. Box 151035

Fort Worth, Texas 76108

817-726-2781

http://www.chipsv6specialties.com

Chip Bulkeley, owner of CHiPs V6 Specialties, has used the power of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions to increase the sales power of his business. In 2003 Chip and Linda Bulkeley were spending tons of time searching the Internet for information on how to fix up their 1997-3.8L V6 Ford Mustang. His father wisely asked, Did you ever think about setting up your own Web site for Mustang V6 and GT enthusiasts? After initially thinking, You got to be kidding! Chip Bulkeley saw the wisdom in this question. We wanted a site that would cater to the beginner and beyond.

He started looking around for a way to start his new Web site and balked at the prices of $10,000 to $15,000 from designers. Then he read about Yahoo! and decided the $39.95 monthly Internet service provider fee to build the site was much easier to digest!

With the help of the 384-page Web-site Getting Started guide and the 24/7 customer service team, little by little, he says, I grew my site. There never was a time when someone in customer service didn’t help me.

In 2006 at the request of his visitors, he began adding V6 Mustang performance products and upgrade kits to his Web site. He now has agreements with five wholesalers and still finds it quite easy to add and change his product listings.

He’s pleased to see that Yahoo! is improving its search functions with the Store Manager function, which has been a problem. Also, when Yahoo! signed an agreement with PayPal for the shopping cart, Bulkeley’s sales went up 35 percent.

Bulkeley is glad that he went to Yahoo!, not only because of the price and ease of use, but also because of the brand name. He knows that the Yahoo! Secure Buyer Protection statement on his site shows that he is a reputable merchant. He also knows that Yahoo! keeps its quality levels high: If you prove yourself less than aboveboard, Yahoo! kicks you out, he explains. Anyone who understands the high-quality and performance of the Mustang V6 knows that his Web site has to convey that same quality.

Yahoo!’s analytic’s tool provides information that the majority of stores do not have at their fingertips. Yahoo! owners use this tool to decrease the number of dropped carts, lower the bounce rates to other pages, see why customers leave the site, determine whether ads are in the right position, and look at particular niche usage of the site. Owners can watch the movement of a customer from search engine, to landing page, to product page, and then to the check out or exit. In other words, the Web sites can see what they are and are not doing right. Analytics is a powerful tool for increasing sales and monthly income.

Similarly, the checkout page cross-sell tool tells your customer about other products you sell that are similar to the ones being purchased, and thus increases your value order per order. Customers can find similar products and get discounts for purchasing any cross-sell items to which they are alerted. It can increase your average sale and help your customers readily add products directly from the shopping cart. Benefits include: selling accessories with the main item; increasing the order value per order; showing item-specific or storewide cross-sells; increasing the average size of each order; providing merchants with an easy-to-use, easy-to-update process; keeping customers on the specific-product page, decreasing customer time needed to purchase cross-sell products and enhancing customer satisfaction.

The Internet presents endless opportunities for retailers of all types, and merchants have a host of companies that want to sell them Web sites. Yet, in order for netpreneurs to maximize their online results and be economically successful in a business, it is essential that they have the advantages of a well-framed online store. Yahoo! store development can be the perfect solution to all the complexities associated with virtual stores. The design is an excellent opportunity for newly launched online stores that want to continue their growth. It presents e-commerce Web site design in a way that has the capability of engaging target customers, holding their attention, and encouraging them to make a sale and then come back for more.

Here is a quick review of the reasons why you should seriously consider using Yahoo! as your online store:

• The Yahoo! brand is recognized and respected throughout the world. Shoppers feel safe with Yahoo!, which means they will feel safe ordering your products.

• By using the Yahoo! name on your Web site, you are benefiting from all of Yahoo!’s marketing and promotion.

• Yahoo! can be considered a grandfather of the Internet. It was one of the first major online entities and has grown ever since.

• Customer service ranks on the top of Yahoo!’s list. Not only does the company care about the customers who buy its products, it also cares about the success of its merchants. The customer care center is open 24/7 to help with your needs.

• The Yahoo! store is known for its ease of use and flexibility. It is just as effective for a person starting up in the business as it is for someone who has thousands of products to sell. It expands as you expand your E-commerce venture.

• It is unlikely that you could you get a Web site, support, and marketing anywhere else for such a low fee.

• Yahoo! is continually adding new, state-of-the art technology, such as its analytics tool.

• Placement of your products on Yahoo! Shopping.

• Discounts, coupons, or special promotions and products featured on both Yahoo! and Google search engines.

• Cross-promotion or products at customer checkout.

• Return on investment (ROI) for high-traffic marketing.

No one who has opened a successful store online will say that it is easy. It takes a great deal of time, commitment, and effort regardless of what platform you use. Now, with greater competition than ever, it takes someone who has found the right business niche and is willing to do whatever it takes to promote it. However, when you begin your venture with a name like Yahoo!, it is like you have a strong head start. There are thousands of new netpreneurs who are successfully using Yahoo!, in addition to several well-known names, including Lance Armstrong Foundation and its Livestrong® Store and Ben&Jerry’s Ice cream by Mail.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

It would take years and many books to write about everything Yahoo! has to offer in the online marketplace and beyond. To make it easier, we will narrow our focus to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions. We will show you how to leverage this opportunity to your benefit, so you can own one of the 72,000 Yahoo! shops online today.

As will be described in greater detail in the following chapters, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions offers online store owners three different packages, depending on the level of services you would like to receive. Upgrading plans is extremely easy, so you can always upgrade later as your business grows.

Real-Time Strength of Yahoo!

According to many of the Yahoo! storeowners and developers, one of the big advantages of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Web site development is its unique use of RTML (Real Time Markup Language), a powerful, yet flexible programming language.

The history of RTML stems back to 1995, the earliest days of the World Wide Web. Paul Graham and Robert Morris created a company called ViaWeb, using their proprietary language, RTML. It not only was useful for making Web sites, but was extremely search engine friendly.

In 1998, Yahoo! acquired ViaWeb because RTML was believed