Growing a business is no small feat.  In fact, it is often one of the biggest failures for small businesses -- trying to expand too big, too fast.  Fortunately, my company, Market America, has been able to weather the growing pains that are often associated with an expansion.  Just this past weekend, we made global history in Taipei, Taiwan, where we had 18,000 UnFranchise® owners at our Taiwan Convention.

Not only were we able to use Skype to communicate with the 18,000 attendees, but we also announced a number of new updates. We launched a redesigned Market Taiwan web portal, we also rolled out ma Network, an app for the social networking site, Facebook, to make social shopping easier for Taiwan customers.

Fundamentally, there are four categories of social shopping that have emerged.  Social shopping spans a wide range of definitions but can largely be divided into four categories:[1] Group shopping sites, Shopping communities, Recommendation engines and Shopping Marketplaces.  Market America’s model uniquely positioned to do be  able to do  all of these and to create a better experience with a community and a shopping environment  and experience like non other.

Group shopping sites include companies like Groupon that has blown up recently where basically friends or people in a geographical  vicinity  buy a product or service together to get deep discounts or deals. Consumers share information and basically use their collective buying power and the  promoters of the site entice the merchant to give up theprofiyts for the exposure and traffic and at a certain quantity threshold to offer the product or service at a very low price.  As a result if Groupon's success we have seen many of these spring up like: Grooster, SocialShopper, Tippr, Half Off Depot, , Kactoos, LivingSocial, GoodNews, and BuyWithMe.These sites encourage groups of people to buy together at wholesale prices, essentially a Costco-like model for the online world. Media companies such as Television, Radio and Newspaper organizations are also getting into the market by launching programs under their own brand through partnerships with white-label technology providers like Tippr.

Market America’s acquisition and partnership with Shop.com leverages the social shopping trend, revolutionizing the shopping experience like no other company.

Social shopping is an emerging paradigm that is sweeping the country, and the world. So what is it? Social shopping happens naturally when people share their feelings about products, brands and prices through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Marketamerica.com has a network of 180,000 social shopping consultants who lead people to the best prices, best products and now, with Market America's acquisition of Shop.com, the best shopping experience on the Internet. Through social shopping, we are positioning ourselves to dominate the online shopping marketplace.

Why is this partnership so important and why it will make us a shopping experience like no other! In part one I explained the magic of this pure business deal and how are timing couldn't have been better for the Bloomberg TV announcement, but there are 3 major things, that when combined make this partnership magical:

1. Market America's people power, providing UFOs that serve as Shop Consultants ( a personal shopper or guide and product broker on the Internet)

COMBINED WITH

• World class search and intuitive navigation with narrowing to find exactly what you want
• The recognized best in comparison shopping, not only in comparing products and prices, but providing content and expert advice.
• Patented One Cart checkout, dropping everything into one cart with one payment.  The cart remembers you.
• Fabulous merchandising displays and Trend Shop to put together outfits, wardrobes or even design rooms.  Select from over 50,000 products and the ability to share with friends and get input (Social Shopping).

2. Shop.com's technology (the pioneers of and leaders in comparison shopping): The two sites have combined 50 million products online across 3000 merchants, stores and name brands, plus Market America's 2200 branded products wide acceptance, a loyal following and healthy profit margins.

Add one more ingredient to get magic:

3.       We pay people to do their favorite thing: SHOP! We pay them 2 to 35 percent on their purchases, and if they like it and invite friends (Social Shopping) they get paid on all of their purchases (.5 percent) forever.

As if that were not enough to make waves, Market America brings an army of entrepreneurs and a registered customer community (PCs) to the social networks to discover or develop product interest and trends (Social Shopping). We even have a tool (the ma Network Facebook application reaching into the 600 million-strong Facebook universe) that collects likes, dislikes and comments to make individualized recommendations. Want an example of the reach? When we made this announcement, we had a combined celebrity and Market America community send out over 23 million tweets reaching 650,000 people who opened the links. Consequently, following the announcement, ma’s traffic spiked 248 percent and Shop.com‘s traffic increased by 60 percent. Internet sales were up by 40 percent!

Of course, there is one other secret that powers this partnership and business model. It’s powered by the entrepreneurial passion of our UnFranchise Owners who serve the customers as Shop Consultants. These are people who are driven to succeed and passionate about the customers’ best interests. They are One-to-One Marketers and product brokers who know the customer and help them find what they want and get the best deals and service. We provide our UnFranchise Owners a Shop.com or MarketAmerica.com Portal, or an Amazon-like platform “in a box,” if you will. The website and shopping Portal we provide is their storefront. We provide the technology, products, SEO, marketing, support and fulfillment. It is a turnkey operation. They (the UFO/Shop consultant) focus on the customer and promote the site.

Think about how much power 180,000 of these UFOs and their 6 million Preferred Customers bring to the table. It’s not the first or only time we have seen this entrepreneurial power at work, because Amazon generated hundreds of millions in sales through its Associate program that, in the end, got crippled from state tax tolls. Of course, eBay had their Power Sellers that drove their business. But Market America’s model is much better because we provide the systemization, standardization and support of a franchise model, but without the risk or investment. In fact, we provide the technology, products, fulfillment, SEO, training and marketing support without paying franchise fees or royalties, thus we coined the phrase “UN-franchise” Owner. The UFO is incentivized to make sure their portfolio of customers is satisfied and there is a pair of caring eyes monitoring the metrics to help find things each individual customer wants, while promoting the Portal to new prospective customers.

At the end of the day business-wise, Shop.com brings five times the traffic and customers, but instead of visitors using Shop.com to find what they want and then leaving the site to buy elsewhere or directly from the merchant, we capture the customer’s information and make it easy for them to purchase everything at one location, on the one cart, with one payment. We become the merchant of record, retain the customer and repeat sales.  We focus on the lifetime value of the customer and how many things we can help them find. Most importantly, we pay the customer to shop. Then, if they like the experience, we pay them to invite others to shop, which can accumulate to a lot of spending money. This puts economic glue behind Social Shopping. We assimilate data on customers and build relationships to practice One-to-One Marketing where we match product to people and people to product. We focus on what the customer wants to buy and is shopping for rather than what we want to sell. Converting their traffic into our customer and profitable sales model rather than just getting paid for customer clicks changes everything by generating sales and respectable profits.

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 44 255 Market America 2 1 313 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false I am not sure where the old cliché “high tech, high touch” comes from, but this is the epitome of it. Wasn’t it John Nesbitt’s book Megatrends that suggested a world built in high tech with high touch? But seriously, who has really done it? No one, until now. That is why we will change the way people shop.

Stay tuned for Part 3 where you will learn several aspects of this partnership that make it both powerful for growth, and profitable combined companies and to UFOs qualifying as Shop Consultants and IBV requirements.

What are your thoughts, drop me a comment or send me a tweet @jrridinger

I had a great interview on Bloomberg TV on Friday, that made waves in the Internet and Online Industry.  We had a tremendous amount of support from bloggers, social networks and our team at Market America.  Our social media and PR efforts resulted in a media blow out, from Bloomberg TV to celebrity tweets Market America's presence was felt nationwide.  No doubt this combination makes our online shopping experience like none other and we will change the way people shop.

Here are some stats:

• Our traffic went up 248% and Shop.com went up over 60% increasing and conversions (sales)up by 40% 
• We  were "tweeted" by some of the most influential celebrities on Twitter such as Kim Kardashian, Swizz Beatz, Alejandro Sanz, Paulina Rubio and many more
• Our twitter message reached to over 650,000 people
• We received press coverage from all over the world including blog, print and TV like: techcrunch.com, Dow Jones, Bloomberg TV, News & Record to see the entire list click go to www.marketamerica.com

As I sit here and ponder the strides that my young company, Market America, has made over the past year, one cannot help but be amazed. What started out of a garage with my beautiful wife, Loren Ridinger, has blossomed into something remarkable. Earlier this year, we launched the ma Cashback program, where we pay you up to 50% cashback on your purchases. If you refer others, we pay you 1/2% on their purchases too. Since the launch, we've added more stores, increased cashback amounts, and made a huge push into solidifying our place among the elite online retailers, but we're still hungry. Today marks a historical moment - a magic moment for us, the acquisition of a company that will help to bring together our people power with their technology and merchandising capabilities - I'm talking about the acquisition of Shop.com by Market America.