Author: Al Krulick

Bit by Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies Gain Ground

bitcoin2Bitcoin is gaining popularity very quickly in the online world. A number of large businesses have begun accepting it for online transactions, including Virgin Galactic, Lord & Taylor, Overstock, Newegg and Tiger Direct. Now Dish Network is getting into the Bitcoin game. Even companies like Amazon, PayPal, Ebay, and Apple are making moves that lead those in the know to think they are leaning towards adoption of the currency as well.

With all this positive publicity, Bitcoin proponents seem to be beating back the waves of negative press from early this year, including the collapse of Bitcoin giant Mt. Gox and the arrest of pioneer Charlie Shrem for money laundering. Issues remain, however, and it seems clear that many cheerleaders of Bitcoin, along with businesses considering early adoption, do not often truly understand what Bitcoin is and how it works, leaving the chance for users to be badly burned.

In this blog, we are going to explain in simple terms what Bitcoin is (and what it isn’t), how it works, cover a few of the issues inherent to the system, and hopefully leave you, the e-commerce business operator, with enough information to make an informed choice regarding accepting Bitcoin as part of your business strategy.

What Is Bitcoin and What Are Its Issues?

Bitcoin, simply put, is a “cryptocurrency.” While there are others (such as Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Peercoin), Bitcoin seems to have become the most common of these seemingly innumerable digital currencies on offer. Bitcoin is “mined” by computers. In simple terms, this means that users task their computers (at this point, usually specially-made, extremely powerful devices) to solving increasingly complex math problems, and are rewarded for doing so with currency.

Purchased or mined Bitcoin is stored in online “wallets”, encrypted accounts that record transactions in much the same way as a bank account. Coins are traded through public sites like Coinbase and Bitpay. Proponents of the technology claim that these encrypted wallets are anonymous, and hence so are transactions, making Bitcoin a favorite for shady deals around the worldwide. Unfortunately for those wishing anonymity, a growing amount of evidence is surfacing indicating Bitcoin is not quite as anonymous as many users think. For instance, if a wallet can be linked to a person, every transaction that person makes through the wallet can be tracked, since transactions are public.

It is also important to note that Bitcoin is basically unregulated, meaning that users have essentially no recourse if their wallets are hacked and the money stolen, transactions go badly, or computer crashes cause the loss of money (a very real possibility.) This also means your Bitcoin wallet cannot be insured in any way. In a very real way, it is the digital equivalent of having gold bars hidden in a hole in your backyard.

Bitcoin is also not a “real” currency. This means it is not backed by any bank or country,and hence, its price is subject to constant swings in value of extreme volatility. While some view this volatility as an opportunity for arbitrage in much the same way as day trading, price volatility makes pricing difficult for ecommerce businesses, and storing Bitcoin collected through sales can subject businesses to wild swings in the value of their Bitcoin portfolio. The nature of Bitcoin also makes it susceptible to price manipulation by individuals or cartels that control large amounts of it, and should any group control 51 percent of it (an event that is coming alarming close to reality), they gain almost unlimited power over price, as well as strange repercussions like the ability to spend the same coins over and over. Additionally, despite the fact that Bitcoin is not an official currency of the United States or any other country, the IRS has ruled that Bitcoin earnings are taxable and must be declared on tax forms, so if you’re looking to hide or shield your earnings from the government, you are doing so at considerable risk. We suggest consulting a tax professional in this regard.

Bitcoin volatility, Jan- July 2014.
Bitcoin volatility, Jan- July 2014.

Should All This Scare Me Off Bitcoin?

Maybe, maybe not. Bitcoin does have some powerful advantages, or else it wouldn’t be so popular. For one thing, it is almost an instant transaction (at most, within 10 minutes.) When a user hits “buy”, the money is moved almost instantly. Online payments such as e-checks can take days to go through, and even sites like Paypal often charge fairly steep fees for their use. Almost all businesses also know the drain that is merchant fees, and the haunting nightmare of chargebacks. Bitcoin, in addition to being instant, is free to use. This could save your business thousands of dollars.

Bitcoin also helps avoid the hassle of doing business overseas, dealing with foreign exchange and the reticence of sites like Paypal to allow users in many countries to use their services. These people also often have trouble with using banks or other financial institutions for online business. Bitcoin is a potential way around these issues. Another advantage of being an early adopter of Bitcoin is how popular it is: many users are using it as their primary way to pay for online transactions. In the world of e-commerce, the physical location of your business is nearly irrelevant, so being the first or one of the first in your particular niche to accept Bitcoin can set your business apart from others, attracting customers that may simply refuse to do business any other way and thus direct all their business to those companies that accommodate them. (It’s like taking Discover Card, if Discover Card was actually popular.)

While there will always be some risk, many of the issues around Bitcoin can be dealt with appropriately. For instance, while volatility cannot be controlled, regularly converting Bitcoins back to dollars or another currency of your choice can sidestep some of the risk. Additionally, Bitcoin earnings can be reported to the government in a legitimate way, avoiding tax issues. Again, consult a professional. Good online security can help prevent hacks and thefts of Bitcoins, in much the same way good physical security thwarts robberies of brick-and-mortar stores.

I’m Sold! How Do I Start Accepting Bitcoin?

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If accepting Bitcoin seems to be right for your business and you need help integrating it into your e-commerce site, or if you would like a custom e-commerce site built for your business and taking Bitcoin is a requirement, here at The Click Experts we can help. We have the skills and knowledge it takes to integrate Bitcoin (and other online payment methods such as PayPal and Amazon Payments) into your site, increasing the payment options available to potential customers and attracting more business. What’s more, we do these things the right way, not the easy way, minimizing risk to your business and your finances. We offer free quotes, so contact us today to see what we can do for your business.

The Surprising Uses of Pinterest for Online Business

Pinterest, long considered an irrelevant-to-business haunt of women who have delusions of Martha Stewart-hood, has been waging a battle against that perception for the last year or so. Now it has made its most aggressive move yet in its bid to oust Facebook as the king of social media- or more realistically, carve out a niche for itself as a respectable competitor.

While Facebook and Google+ have both been offering place search for some time, Pinterest is a late-comer to the game, only having begun offering the service, which it calls “Place Pins“, six months ago. In that time, however, the company has managed impressive growth, now boasting over a billion (yes, billion with a “b”) Place Pins, on over 250 million boards, in locations representing over 300 countries or territories.

Pinterest Places California

Not content to rest on their laurels, however, Pinterest has upped the game, making the place-search process more intuitive and easier to use. The company already uses Foursquare for venue information (have you listed your business there yet?), and has now enlisted the services of Twofishes (an open-source geocoder also by Foursquare) to parse searches to separate the “what” of the search from the “where”. This leads to easier searches and better results, increasing the odds of users finding what they’re looking for and doing so easily and quickly.

What does this mean for your business? To put it simply, more visits to your brick-and-mortar store. Users can take pictures (for instance, of a meal, or a cute new outfit, or a cool doodad) and pin it to the board, coupled with an address, a location on a map, and even other contact details. Businesses can also do the same. Think: a user can log in from their smartphone, look for boards that contain pins in the local area, and find pictures and posts from other people relating to the subject in which they are interested. They can find your business, and if they like what they see, they can immediately find the phone number and address, complete with a map directing them to your store.

Combine this with the ability of Pinterest to promote your business (both online and brick-and-mortar) organically, and you have what looks to be a winning combination. Pinterest is, in its very essence, a platform more amenable and designed for commercial use, in a way Facebook can only in its wildest dreams. Pinterest users regularly sharing things such as recipes, fashion finds, cool gadgets, fun craft ideas and the like with each other. While this may not translate well for every business, many enterprising owners will be able to shoehorn even unconventional businesses into this arena.

Not sure where to start? Don’t worry, we have you covered. At The Click Experts, we offer comprehensive social media management. We can help you establish and grow your business’ social media footprint, including building profiles, managing accounts, and making posts, all across a wide variety of platforms. We can even link those accounts to your business’ web site. Don’t have a web site yet? We can help you with that, too. We build custom pages, with attention to detail and prompt service. Our knowledgeable staff know the ins-and-outs of online business, and deliver professional results each and every time. To find out what we can do for you, contact us for a free quote.

Want to know more about using Pinterest? Watch this quick, informative guide:

Net Neutrality Falls: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, America

angrycomputermanThere’s a joke Will Ferrell makes: “Before you marry a person you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.” It’s funny because it’s true. Ever think back to life just 15 years ago and think, “How did I ever deal with dialup internet?” The world has changed so much, so fast. We as a society have become used to having information available at the snap (or swipe!) of our fingers. We expect entertainment to be instantly available on demand. Surveys by Akamai and Gomez.com found that 47 percent of users expect a page to load in two seconds or less, and 40 percent will abandon a site that takes more than three. Additionally, KISSmetrics reports that 79 percent of online shoppers won’t return to a site with which they had trouble, and 44 percent will tell friends about a negative experience. Time is most definitely money: a one second delay could cost your business 7 percent of its conversions. Clearly, loading speed matters. That’s why net neutrality matters.

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What is net neutrality, you ask? Simply, net neutrality is a policy literally as old as the internet that internet service providers (ISPs) such as your cable or satellite company are not allowed to favor one site over another. That is to say, net neutrality dictates that end users ought to have access to any site they want with the same speed and efficiency of other sites. In other words, net neutrality dictates that ISPs cannot charge sites for faster access to consumers. There is no pay -to-play on the internet…or at least, there wasn’t until recently, when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. struck down the FCC rules requiring net neutrality. This January 2014 ruling opened the door for ISPs to begin charging some sites for faster access, and companies like Verizon and Comcast have already burst through into the scene, already reaching agreements with companies like Netflix to charge for faster access.

How does this matter to your business? After all, you may not have a large company. You may think your business is unlikely to be targeted. Here’s the good news: It isn’t…at least directly. That’s the bad news: This still affects you. Why? Simple. Chances are you pay for website hosting. Chances are that company is big. Therefore, chances are your website hosting company is likely to be targeted. If they don’t pony up the dough, your website, along with all the others they host, are likely to get throttled, which means, as we covered above, lost sales for your business, and perhaps a significant amount of them. Do you think they’re going to just pay the money and absorb the additional cost out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course they aren’t. You’re going to get dinged for it. That’s bad news for your business, but don’t freak out just yet.

Although the FCC says they don’t plan on appealing, this court ruling isn’t necessarily final, and the FCC is also working on amending the net neutrality rules to make them enforceable and able to withstand future legal challenges. Additionally, Congress could pass a law explicitly requiring net neutrality and outlawing pay-for-play practices. If you want to get involved to enforce and protect net neutrality, writing or calling your representatives is a great idea.

You can also help your business by taking steps to let your page load faster regardless of net neutrality. There are plenty of things you can do, such as streamlining your page by reducing graphics and other flashy whiz-bang features, and by using software that caches the page in order to help it load faster. Did that just lose you? It’s okay, we’re here to help. At The Click Experts, we are experts in designing web pages that load fast while maintaining slick design and curb appeal. We can also evaluate and help with your hosting. Best of all, we’ll take a look for free and let you know how we can help! Contact us today to see what we can do for you.

 

The Young Turks break down the net neutrality ruling and what it means for the country:

 

Arthur Chu Has a Superpower, and You Can Use It, Too!

arthurchu

Have you heard of Arthur Chu? I hadn’t until recently. However, if you’re an avid fan of the gameshow Jeopardy, you probably have. He is, quite simply, perhaps the most polarizing champion of that show’s long history, and when his 11-show winning streak ended on March 12th, his winnings of around $298,000 stood at the third-highest total ever. You may be thinking, “Fine, so he won a lot of money. That’s great, but how does that mean he has a superpower, and why does that make him so polarizing?” The answer may surprise you.
Arthur Chu is so controversial because he used his superpower to win, and here’s the kicker: his superpower is nothing more than math. Yes, math. As in, that subject you always knew your teachers in school were lying about when they promised it would come in handy one day, and time has, up til now, probably done nothing to disabuse you of that feeling. But if it can help you make some big money, that may make it interesting indeed. So how did Arthur Chu use math to be so successful at Jeopardy?
In short, Chu used game theory, a mathematical model of decision making that is particularly useful in economics, psychology, and biology, as well as for, you know, winning games. Namely, Chu skipped around the larger-value squares in the game, looking for Daily Doubles and denying them and the higher awards to the other players. He also, at one point, made a final round wager that tied him with an opponent instead of the more common wager to win by a dollar, because game theory favors that strategy when a player is unsure of their answer. These tactics are against the social mores of the game, and were what made him so controversial, yet also so successful.
But how does this help you and your business? After all, you’re unlikely to get on Jeopardy any time soon. You can, however, still use math to help your business. Don’t know how? That’s okay, here at The Click Experts we do, and we can help! From managing your PPC campaigns effectively with mathematical models to using statistical analysis on your website traffic to ensure the efficacy of your SEO and content, we have the know-how to make the superpower of math work for you! In the same way Arthur Chu optimized his winnings and reduced his risks by following the appropriate mathematical models, and the same way the Oakland Athletics revolutionized baseball by playing Moneyball and became successful despite revenue woes, we can put your business at an advantage in online marketing without costing an arm and a leg by using math to ensure our strategies are rigorously effective. Contact us today for a free quote, and put us to work making your business’ online presence the best it can be.
Watch Arthur Chu in action:

Why Paying for Facebook Advertising May Be a Bad Investment

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A new video is taking off on the internet, particularly among Facebook page admins. Made by the YouTube channel Veritasium, which primarily makes and posts popular science-related videos, this video takes on a slightly different subject: advertising on Facebook. In the video, Veritasium host and Creative Director Derek Muller talks about Facebook likes and the various ways to obtain them, and then several experiments that led him to conclude that paying for Facebook likes in any way may be counterproductive and cost admins even more money in the long run.

To understand why Facebook likes and other measures of engagement such as likes, comments, and shares on posts are important, it is important to understand the concept of EdgeRank. EdgeRank is a proprietary gradation system developed by Facebook to tell it how popular some pages are when compared to others, and to a lesser extent which posts of a particular page are better than others. At its heart, Facebook is a popularity contest, and EdgeRank is a way to codify this. Pages with more EdgeRank are more likely to be seen by fans, and the more popular a post is on a page, the more people who will organically see it, which is to say, more people will see the post without the admin having to pay.

So how does an admin get more people to like a page? Well, there are several ways. The most common way, because it is free, is to allow the page’s likes to grow naturally and organically. If you post good things, and people like and share them, their friends may then see these posts and also be drawn to like the page. Another way is to buy likes, either through a third-party company (known as a click-farm) or through Facebook itself, via Facebook advertising. It is important to note that paying for third-party likes is against Facebook’s terms of service, and any page caught doing it is liable to be deleted. Additionally, as Muller explains, since these click farm accounts are fake, they may not really provide good likes.

In theory, getting more people to like a page or a particular post can up the EdgeRank and thus put the page in front of more people. At least, that’s the idea, although according to Muller, this doesn’t really seem to hold true in the real world. This is because of engagement. When you make a post, Facebook initially only shows it to around 5 percent of your followers, and then uses their reactions (via clicks, likes, comments, and shares) to decide how many of the rest will see it. Posts that get lots of engagement get shown to more people, but admins may find themselves needing to pay for their followers to see posts without much engagement. Because click farm likes essentially come from fake accounts, these accounts are likely to provide very little, if any, engagement.

Muller then gives Facebook some credit, saying that they are unlikely to be paying these same click farms to generate likes when you pay Facebook directly for advertising. Regardless, Muller says that when he did pay Facebook for more likes, he found that many of his likes came from these fake accounts anyway. Why does he think this happens? He suspects that in order to hide which sites are paying for likes, these click farm accounts will like almost anything and everything. So, although you aren’t paying them to click, they are being reached by Facebook advertisements and are clicking on them.

Bad likes are bad likes, Muller points out, no matter who you paid for them. Bad likes dilute engagement and ultimately hurt a page’s reach, causing admins to have to pay again to get their posts out, creating a vicious cycle. Facebook has been hurting for revenue and ways to monetize its product, and it generates a lot of money of this process. Thus, it has little incentive to work very hard on changing it.

TL;DR? Watch the video here:

Don’t Drop the Ball on Your New Year’s Resolution for Your Website!

nyetceblogThe New Year is upon us. It’s a time for fresh starts and to make new decisions. Chances are you have made some resolutions along these lines. If you are a business owner, one of those resolutions may be to finally get your company that website it needs, or to finally get your existing website into optimal shape. Businesses without an adequate and professional online presence are increasingly being pushed out of the market in today’s business client, and the path to business success these days often leads straight through the Web.

If you have ever considered getting a website for your business, you know that it is a complicated prospect. There are lots of choices when it comes to domains and hosting, and myriad choices for the platform on which to run the site. On top of that, designing and building a website is a complicated process that is time-consuming. Some companies offer “free” websites and “all-in-one” services, but when you read the fine print, you find that the monthly fees are much higher with these companies and “free” becomes anything but. What’s worse, you don’t own the finished site. If you ever want to switch hosting, you cannot bring the website with you, and are forced to start from square one.

Having The Click Experts design and build a professional website for your business is the solution. Savvy business owners know that letting professionals do their jobs is the best way to succeed. Don’t waste your own valuable time muddling through the design process. We take the time to get to know your business and its needs, then take the guesswork out of the design process by recommending the right CMS and E-commerce platform for your business. We design and build the site for you the way you want, and you own the finished product. Let us make the process of designing and building a website for your business simple and easy for you, and avoid the long term nickel-and-dime tactics of so-called “free” website builders.

If you already have a website for your business but are looking to upgrade, redesign, or add custom or advanced functionality, we can help! We offer custom coding and software solutions for any situation. Don’t settle for a website that is less than exactly what you want. Let The Click Experts design a solution for your business and give your site the custom functionality that will optimize performance and set you apart Don’t wait for the website of your dreams any longer. Set your business apart from the crowd. We offer solutions to fit a wide array of budgets and applications. Contact The Click Experts today and let us provide you with a free quote.

5 Resolutions for Your Business This Year:

Google Has Updated Its Policies Again. We Explain What That Means for Your Small Business.

05_Flatbed_2 - SEPTEMBERGoogle has a problem. A big, big problem. It turns out that search engines aren’t actually  inherently worth any money. Since Google lists any page on its search results for free, and since Google’s search engine is available to use for free, the largest search engine company on the planet (and its shareholders) are slowly discovering an unalienable fact: it’s hard to make money off a search engine. So what do you do if you run a company whose net worth of billions is largely based on the success of its largely-worthless search engine?

The answer is easy: relentlessly monetize anything and everything possible about the search engine experience, and constantly change your policies to force people to utilize those monetized services.

We’ve seen Google do this repeatedly, most recently with this new Hummingbird update, and a few months ago with their Penguin update, which was ostensibly aimed at making life difficult on black hat SEO types but really ended up penalizing small businesses who engage in any SEO to compete with the big boys. This seemed deliberate, as the main choice these businesses then faced was either paying Google for PPC ads or suffering from lower rankings and being relegated to back pages in search results. (See this past blog post in which we cover this issue in more detail.)

Unfortunately, it didn’t end there. Google has now updated their policies regarding the availability of search terms. Google is now encrypting and will no longer provide the specific search terms used to generate organic clicks, and so webmasters can now only access the specific terms generated by Google PPC ad clicks.

It’s not hard to see how this happened to Google. Many people have invested in the company without fully understanding their business model and the way monetizing search engine traffic works. These investors are now understandably demanding a return on their money, and this has put Google in the position it is in now. It’s hard to blame Google for making these changes from a business standpoint, even when the end result may not necessarily be the best thing for your bottom line. Google is a business, and businesses need to make money or die. This is the easiest and perhaps best way Google has to monetize it’s primary product, and it took the opportunity. In the end, this model will likely become the standard practice in the industry.

You may be asking yourself right now, “Why should I capitulate? There are other large search engines! I’ll just use the information they provide, and not worry about Google!” While this may seem like a good idea, and while focusing solely on Google is not a good idea (we explain why here), the truth is that Google is the 400-pound gorilla in the room of search engines. Bing and other smaller (but still large) search engines like Ask only collectively account for around two-thirds of all searches, and the vast majority of the searches on those engines are for the term “Google.” There are also demographic differences between Google users and users of other engines, sometimes very large differences, and these may change the relevance of their search term information enough to really make a difference for your business. The fact is that when it comes to search engines, it’s Google’s world, and everyone else just lives in it. This means that for better or worse Google, and its policies, ct of online marketing life that must be reckoned with.

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So what does all this mean for your business? If your business is not a large player with a big share of the online market in its field (which it probably is not), then the answer is simple: if you want to be able to see the exact terms people are using to find your business, you are going to have to start a PPC campaign. If you don’t understand why knowing the exact terms is important, we covered that in this earlier blog post.

There is both a downside and an upside, however, to being forced into a PPC campaign. The down side is that PPC costs money. In the current economic climate, many savvy and/or frugal business owners are loathe to spend more money than they absolutely necessary, and expanding a marketing budget that may already be a large part of overhead is not an idea that is particularly relished. The upside, however, is that PPC campaigns are often much less expensive than other traditional marketing modes, and a well-managed PPC campaign rarely actually costs more than it generates in additional revenue. We explained why in a past blog post on how to manage PPC campaigns, but it really boils down to the way the PPC model works. You are literally only paying for ads when they actually send customers to your site, and as long as the campaign is effectively managed, this will never fail to be a net revenue generator. The truth is that in a business world that is growing increasingly orientated towards the internet, any business that wishes to be successful would do well to run a PPC campaign, and if this is the kick in the pants you need to bring your business into the 21st century, you may very well bless the day this happened.

Managing a PPC campaign can be time-consuming and difficult for the novice, however, and that’s why we here at The Click Experts offer PPC campaign managing by experienced professionals. We work tirelessly on behalf of our clients to ensure that the money they spend on PPC ads is well spent. With The Click Experts managing your PPC campaign, you can rest easy knowing that every dollar is generating the maximum revenue for your business without the need for you to spend hours managing the details and sweating the minutiae. It’s time to get your business the online presence and sales it needs and deserves in this brave new digital world. For a free quote and see all the benefits working with The C,lick Experts has for your business, be sure to contact us today. You’ll be happy you did.

If you would like to learn more about the Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird updates and how they may effect your business, watch this informative video:

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