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The PlumberSurplus.com ecommerce and entrepreneurship blog covers all things encompassed by ecommerce including: search engine marketing, search engine optimization, supply chain management, development, customer service, and data entry.

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Free Email Sending Utility

Mar 12, 2010 9:29am

If you are on the internet, you almost certainly use email. Email was one of the first applications of the internet, and remains (along with the web) one of the most widespread. Online Businesses use email too, for internal communication, customer service, marketing, and general use. So it makes sense...

The Impact of Social Media on the Earthquake in Chile

Mar 1, 2010 11:45am

Now, while I must disclose I am the resident advocate for the adaptation of all things social media at the Gordian Project, arguing against the effectiveness of social media becomes difficult when horrible tragedies like the earthquake in Chile are brought to light via social networking. Like Haiti before it,...

The Expanding World of Online Video February 2010

Mar 1, 2010 9:58am

Let’s start with ReelSEO and their article about the fight between online video ads vs. search ads. They predict that online videos ad revenue will grow from $734 million annually to $5.2 billion by the year 2014, an increase of seven times. When compared to search, which is only predicted to...

Google Apps Stops IE6 Support

Feb 25, 2010 7:41am

We received a communication from Google Apps this month that I was delighted to see. Google Apps is finally phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. Hooray! People have been saying that IE6 is dying for quite a while, but it maintained its grip throughout 2009. Lots of admins have...

Engagement with the Local Community

Feb 23, 2010 4:54pm

My wife loves to watch the great American dream play itself out in arena’s such as American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and the like; anything that pulls at the heart strings of underdog to star. I’ve often wondered what that final night might feel like, contestants’ widdled...

Incomplete Evaluations Lead to Hasty Decisions

Feb 22, 2010 11:46am

We live in a culture of information overload. If you’re reading this online (with certainty, you are) you understand that there are several programs or websites running in the background vying for your attention. This overload is a reality that forces each of us to constantly make hasty decisions about...

How to Really Know When and Where to Hire Next

Feb 12, 2010 9:28am

Identifying the “Knobs & Levers” that drive your company’s profitability is only the first step in a successful business. The second, and perhaps more difficult, is fine tuning those knobs & levers for a desired result. One such knob or maybe it’s a lever, is salaries and wages as a...

Suggestions for the Future of Web Design

Feb 10, 2010 3:06pm

I am primarily a developer. I like to work on the stuff in the background, the stuff that makes our sites work, rather than what our customers actually see. However, in a small IT department you wear many hats, and I tend to also do a lot of design work....

Windows 7: The Upgrade, Review, Tweaks, and Compatibility

Feb 9, 2010 2:10pm

As an IT Manager at a small to mid-size business, it's always a delight to see any system updates that are useful, well-designed, and fully functional. When these things are encompassed in an operating system, it's even more delightful. We operate a few different web properties and I've always wanted...

From Google Street Views to Google Store Views

Feb 4, 2010 11:15am

Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz received a tip from New York retailer Oh Nuts that Google had visited their store location to take pictures. The purpose of these pictures was for their upcoming Google Maps feature “Google Store Views”. The retailer explained that pictures were taken in six foot increments...

Long Tail Broad Match and Negative Keyword SEM Campaign Experiment

Feb 4, 2010 10:12am

When I first started creating keywords for my very first campaign, there were signs everywhere on the internet that said "Don't use broad match!" A little later I learned about negative keywords and how to use those effectively by running a Google search query report. So it caught me by...

Localizing Twitter Data for Businesses

Feb 3, 2010 9:03am

While I may be late to the party and still not very engaged, to say the least I am very interested in a new feature Twitter recently rolled out called Local Trends. It's described on their blog:"As Twitter evolves, and more people share what’s happening in their own world, we...

The Expanding World of Online Video January 2010

Feb 2, 2010 7:22am

It’s that time again where we review what happened this past month in online video! Embedded Videos on Product Detail Pages First off Get Elastic wrote a great post on whether or not to use YouTube embedded videos on product detail pages. Embedding a video is using YouTube's HTML code to put...

Vanessa’s Variety for the Week of January 31st, 2010

Feb 1, 2010 9:54am

It’s always nice to find web applications that make design easier and Rounded CSS Boxes is no exception. This is a tool that generates images, HTML code, and CSS code to create rounded boxes for web pages. You can learn more about the tool and its uses here. Copyblogger is starting...

Twitter Assists Users by Denying Poor Passwords

Jan 27, 2010 10:29am

Recently Twitter.com implemented some password standards for their new users. If you view their source on the sign up page you can find a password list of around 370 banned passwords. Try searching for "twttr.BANNED_PASSWORDS" to see it. It consists of things like simple combinations of numbers, first names,...