eBiz News: Market Demands Digital Download Pricing

This week e-commerce news includes two new small business offerings, one from Adapt Technologies for those who want to automate PPC tasks, and another from Doba for those who want to expand their product catalogs. Plus, Sort price.com, a comparison search engine, enters the social network fold and we report on good news for digital music sellers: a new partnership provides an application for variable pricing. Finally, affiliate service LinkShare expands its ad network.

PPC Management on a Budget
Adapt Technologies unveiled a new small business tier of the company's SEM-in-a-Box pay-per-click software. This tier offers an economical suite of Web-based applications for PPC management, providing marketers with small-click budgets the capability to analyze and optimize keyword campaigns for a flat monthly fee of $199 per month.

Adapt said that it created the Small Business tier in response to feedback from e-tailers who spend less than $5,000 per month in Google or Yahoo click charges, but still need affordable help with the daily analysis and management of PPC campaigns. The new service offers key features to better manage bids and improve paid search campaigns, including automated performance analysis, bid management and ad text testing and optimization.

Due to advances in data management, automation and scalability, Adapt says it can now offer a PPC solution to Google and Yahoo advertisers who need just as much help with their paid search campaigns, but at a price that makes sense relative to their monthly click costs. No software installation is required. And, unlike some other PPC management solutions, pricing is not based on the number of bid updates or keywords in a campaign. To sign up for SEM-in-a-Box, register for a demo, review product features and read testimonials visit the company's Web site.

Expanding Your Catalog
On the product-sourcing front, Doba this week introduced Doba Pro, a product sourcing solution for small- to medium-size e-tailers. Doba Pro's new features include a bulk order upload tool, custom data export feeds, additional product filtering, the capability to save and name search parameters and enhanced site navigation for high volume sellers. Also, in addition to the 75 core wholesale distributors that all Doba members have access to, Doba Pro retailers have access to an exclusive group of 100 additional specialty suppliers and manufacturers.

Doba Pro also features an updated merchant retailer qualification process that facilitates the integration of a rising number of specialty suppliers and manufacturers who demand tighter control over their supply chain. As soon as Doba Pro was launched, 30 previously unsigned suppliers who had requested stronger involvement in the retailer approval process, added their inventories to the Doba Product Catalog.

Variable Digital Music Pricing Made Easy
In digital music developments, Javien Digital Payment Solutions, an e-commerce platform provider, and Digonex Technologies, a provider of price optimization technology for the digital media market, announced that they have partnered to offer the digital music market and other content providers seamless integration between the two platforms.

With Digonex's platform, Javien customers who are selling music now have the capability to price each MP3 according to market demand. For example, a rarely downloaded MP3 from 1999 could be priced at 25 cents while a red-hot single from the latest pop star could sell for 50 cents or more due to high consumer demand. That same single's price could be driven upward the next day to reflect buyer behavior after a national media exposure event.

Javien DPS V8.0 is an e-commerce platform that includes built-in support for online and mobile sales of digital content and physical goods. Merchants can take advantage of a host of billing options including bill to cell phone, bill to land line phone, Premium SMS and WAP billing, bill to PayPal and Click and Buy accounts. The platform also offers an adaptive micropayment aggregation engine called Javien Micropay ideally suited for music sites due to the small ticket sales associated with their digital content.

Get Listed for Free
Sortprice.com — a search engine that lets shoppers sort results by lowest price, brand or within a price range — is designed to combine price comparison with social networking. Consumers can share their shopping rosters with friends with a "shop, drag and drop" list-making feature. The company says it has 175,000 visitors per day, more than 5 million each month, and that the user increase from 2006 to 2007 is 200 percent.

Sortprice accepts any data feed format and will list a percentage of products for free (basic), with options (enhanced) offered at a flat rate to deliver unlimited clicks and eliminate click fraud worry. Merchant increase from basic to enhanced listing is over 300 percent, according to the company. To get listed visit the Merchant page here.

Share and Share Alike
Finally, in affiliate news, LinkShare, a pay-per-action marketing network, announced the addition of 30 new advertisers to its network for the third-quarter of 2007. Additions to the LinkShare network include companies in the retail, media and fashion markets.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

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