How Brands Are Navigating Online Marketplaces, Especially Amazon

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I connected with Dani Nadel, president and COO of Feedvisor, a firm focused on Amazon optimization, to discuss the state of online marketplaces, Amazon strategies, and alternatives for businesses looking for other platforms.

5 Staffing Marketplaces for On-Demand Vendors

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The on-demand economy relies on a steady stream of self-employed workers who are willing to trade steady paychecks for flexibility and autonomy. But as the number of on-demand platforms increases, it’s becoming more of a challenge for companies to hold on to qualified workers.

Florists Hate Valentine’s Day — BloomNation Thinks It Can Change Their Mind

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Americans will spend $18.9 billion on flowers, candy and more for the holiday — but the spike in demand typically does not translate into big profits for small flower shops…

5 Local Marketplaces for Housecleaners

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Marketplaces aimed at providing consumers with easy ways to quickly find and book local housecleaners and home services providers are heating up, with frontrunners like Handy and Homejoy enjoying major investments from well-known venture firms like Revolution (led by AOL co-founder Steve Case and Groupon chairman Ted Leonisis), Google Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. Here are […]

6 Strategies for Onboarding Merchants to a New Marketplace

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Being unable to attract qualified sellers is one of the biggest obstacles a local marketplace will face. And, as Harvard Business School associate professor Andrei Hagiu described to Street Fight in an interview last summer, it’s an obstacle that many marketplace founders are unprepared to overcome. “If you don’t have buyers, then you’re not going to have sellers, and visa versa. That prevents a lot of marketplaces from getting off the ground,” Hagiu said…

Street Fight Daily: RadioShack Shutters Stores, A Rollup in Food Delivery

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyRadioShack Plans to Close Up to 1,100 Stores (Wall Street Journal)… With Eye On Growth, Just Eat Buys Meal2Go To Offer EPOS Tech To Its Takeaway Partners (TechCrunch)… NCR Updates Its iPad Cash Register With Loyalty Features (GigaOm)…

Why It’s So Hard to Create Marketplaces for Local Commerce

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Recognizing the success of Uber, startups and incumbents alike rushed to replicate the company’s model in other verticals, developing new products to help business and consumers buy and sell local services like car repair, house cleaning, and haircuts. MyTime, the 9-month old project launched by RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson, is one of these and is staying the course. When I spoke with Anderson last week, he outlined a few key strategic decisions and clever hacks, which have helped the company get some early traction for its marketplace..

5 Tools for Building a Community Marketplace

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With their built-in audiences already in place, hyperlocal publications are able to easily overcome one of the biggest obstacles to getting a community marketplace off the ground. However, technical challenges still remain, and building a marketplace from scratch can be extraordinarily time consuming and expensive. Now, a handful of vendors are offering a solution, providing publishers with the tools they need to create custom marketplaces that can be up and running in a matter of days…

6 Strategies for Building a Local Online Marketplace

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Local marketplaces are notoriously difficult to build, and yet the rewards are significant for publishers who are successful. When done right, local marketplaces can create additional streams of revenue, and they can serve as page-view generators for the hyperlocal news sites they’re associated with. We spoke with several folks who have built marketplace products for local to get some insight…