Blog only for individual? NO!!

When the word "blog" comes to you, what will you think of? Something that an individual use to communicate with others, reflect and share their live? If this is your answer, the followings will be useful for you as it may helps to broaden your knowledge.

Nowadays, blog has become one of the hottest communication tools on the Web. Not only individual maintains a blog, According to Fortune 500 Business Blogging, many companies are following the trend. One of the purposes companies maintain corporate blogs is for marketing use.

Advantages

Maintaining a corporate blog is less costly and less technical skills needed. It is an ideal marketing tool as it can be access by potential and existing consumers from any part of the world. And this will eventually helps to boost the company profit. Most important, it gives consumers opportunities to express their feeling about company's products and services. Consumers can also comment or give any suggestion on it. From that, the management will have knowledge about what are the products that preferred by consumers. And what are the problems with those less preferred products and ways to improve them.

Corporate blogging brings benefits to the companies, but some how, there are also limitations.

Disadvantages
A blog is open to everyone. This means that, any one can write something on it. If someone post something bad about the company's products or services (even it is not the truth), it will harm the company's reputation. Since the corporate blog can be viewed by everyone around the world, the impact is very huge.

Starbucks is maintaining a corporate blog called “My Ideas in Action”. Basically, it is a blog that allows members to share, vote, discuss and see. When a consumer post an idea to Starbucks, the management will know what action needs to be taken to improve. Besides Starbucks, other large companies such as Nike and Nokia, they are also maintaining a corporate blog to get closer to their customers.

For those who thought only individuals maintain blog previously, hopes that the above helps you to gain additional knowledge.

Review on post on Legal issue from My E-commerce

Currently, there are many legal issues arising from piracy problem. The piracy issues can be illegal download of songs and movies, and trademark as well. The common piracy issue is the illegal downloading of songs and movies. Everyone can easily get the songs or the movies from some web services provider without paying any money. This has created some problems to the producers of songs and movies because they lose up many of their revenues from there. Thus, there is down trend of those industries whose is producing such products. However, there is a new proposed law in UK where there will be an action taken against the users who use their account access to pirated material by the internet services provider. As the result, any users who get caught will be brought to court and face the compound imposed.

Google? Froogle? Guge? Sounds similar? As the result, there are many lawsuit cases where Google suing or being sued by the competitors who is using the similar name. For more information, please click here. Furthermore, there is also an issue on Youtube where they faces the lawsuit from EPL and also Viacom.com, which own MTV and Nickelodeon for showing 160,000 unauthorised movie clips. For your information, Youtube is under Google which means that, Google has accumulated many lawsuit cases.

Click here for more information and your benefits as well......

Original source from My-Ecommerce

Local e-commerce website

Florist Malaysia

Love.com.my was launched in year 2004. Love.com.my Sdn Bhd is a Malaysia Florist (online florist) specializing in free delivery of fresh flowers including Hand Bouquets, Flower Basket, Fruits & Flowers, Gifts & Flowers, Congratulatory Flora Stands and Cakes. The area delivered is within Klang Valley and main cities in Malaysia.

The flowers they sell are more affordable or cheaper than others because their business model is not based on physical shop or store, hence, can avoid and save a lot of rental. They also do not spend a single cent on mass marketing such as billboards, newspaper or TVs. Besides, they also do not incurred money in printing flyers, catalogs, brochures and so on in order to promote their sales. People just have to check up their website in 24 hours per day, 7 days per week which is fully updated.


They provide the best service for their customers by delivering flowers to specific someone that required. The flowers will be delivered to the designated address on the same day when the orders take place before 3pm. However, if the orders take part after 3pm in the afternoon, the flowers will be delivered the following working day. They accept payments through Visa or MasterCard credit card and Maybank2U. Others methods like postal or money order and cheque are also acceptable.
Here are the assistance and contact details to online florist within Klang Valley.

e-Government in Malaysia---> www.gov.my

As Malaysian, how often do you access to Malaysia government websites (http://www.gov.my/) and use the online services provided?

Actually, these government websites and online services provided are referred to as e-Government (electronic government). It is an electronic platform for us to interact with the government, exchange information and use the public services provided from our homes. There are various services that we can perform in e-Government such as pay taxes, renew driving license and etc. Besides, it also improves the efficiency and effectiveness of government functions and makes government more transparent.

e-Government can be classified into four types: government-to-citizens (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G) and government-to-employees (G2E).The followings are focused on G2C.

e-Government- Success or Fail?
It depends on the citizens' willingness to adopt and utilize the services provided through Internet. No matter how efficient and effective the system is, without the support from citizens, e-Government will be a failure. There are quite a number of reasons why citizens do not utilize the online services provided such as unfamiliar with Internet and lack of confidence with the security of information.

Citizen's Adoption Strategies
In order for e-Government to be adopted by citizens, it should be citizen-centered which means provides end-user or demand-driven services. Moreover, since some of the citizens are unfamiliar with online transaction, the design of government website should also be taken into consideration. It should be ease to use and convenience. Citizens are concern about how secure the information is when performing online transaction via e-Government. Thus, the system must ensure that the users' information are secured and not disclose to any unauthorized party.

We, as the Malaysia citizen, should work together with government by adopting and utilizing the online public services provide to make e-Government a success. Success in e-Government not only benefit the government, but we will also benefit from it such as no need to travel all the way to government department to renew license and pay summon.

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud

Nowadays, Auction does not neccessary to be held in an auction room or a hall. Due to advancement of technology, Auction can be conducted at your house, even in your bedroom. This refers to the "e-auction".




E-auction websites should have considered the followings in order to prevent e-auction fraud. Now, let's take a look on some of the tips preventing
e-auction fraud.


User identity verification
It is basically a program that encourages users to provide some information in order to be verified online. This information could be IC number or even date of birth.

Escrow services escrow.com
Escrow services could help to protect e-auction fraud as both sellers and buyers are protected with a recommended independent third party. Third party will hold the funds untill buyers received and inspect the items.

Feedback forum
Feedback forum allows the users to comment on their experiences with an individual. This could help to build the sellers' and buyers' online trading reputation.

Nonpayment punishment
Warnings and punishments such as suspensions from auction will be taken towards those buyers who commit the offense.


There are also some other protections could be taken place against e-auction fraud. The link below would provide you more tips on preventing e-auction fraud.
http://www.fraud.org/tips/internet/onlineauctions.htm

MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM

Having no time for payments? Lazy go to banks or post office to clear the payments? Now, these problems can be solved by using our mobile phone. It is very easy, simple and efficient as well. This is called as mobile payment system. Mobile payments are payment for goods and services with a mobile device in which money or funds are transferred from payer to receiver via intermediary or directly. Mobile devices include mobile phones, PDAs, etc. It enables consumers to receive and send money using mobile device such as mobile phone, Smartphone, Cellular telephone and personal digital assistant (PDA). With that, consumers no longer need to bring any cash or credit card while travelling; they just need to use their hand phone as their credit card to make the payments. It is more convenient for consumers especially in this fast growing market.

Potential Mobile payment system in Malaysia:
Bank Negara Malaysia sees tremendous promise in mobile telecommunication networks as an electronic payment channel since mobile phones are already in the hands of most Malaysians, with 88% (25 million) of the Malaysian population subscribing to mobile phone services. Moreover, mobile phones are integrated into consumers’ daily lives, so there is potential to develop a robust business model around mobile payments. Mobile payment also acts as an efficient payment mode which can increases operational efficiency, simplicity and convenience at minimal cost for the public.

The strategies to encourage consumers to adopt mobile payment system are:

• provide more payment possibilities, timely access to financial assets and an alternative to cash payments. For example, users can pay the car parking without need to visit the parking metre.
• If the transaction cost of mobile payment included in the price of the purchased items become lower then it will attract more consumers.
• Organize more seminar and campaign about the advantages, benefit and awareness of mobile payment

There are many benefits of Mobile Money system as following:

(1) This system is easy to sell to anyone, anywhere and anytime. The trader can sell goods to customers of other countries and receive payment on time.
(2) It provides safe and secure transaction. The Mobile Mon

ey Payments System is subjected to strict requirements by Bank Negara and certain banks. Therefore, consumers not need to concern about fraud or mistake during the transaction.
(3) The transactions get done almost instantly. Mobile Money guaran

tees those merchants are paid in two working days, whereas other payment systems need more days than that to process it.
(4) Merchants can use multi-methods to request for payments. For example: merchants can choose to pay the payment through the sms, Mobile Money website, online storefront

system, or others. It is easier for merchants to choose which methods are more convenient for them.

Pay your parking using mobile phone

For more information, can click here

Electronic Currency.....

What is meant by Electronic Currency? Electronic currency is also known as electronic money, digital money or electronic cash which exchanged electronically. This can be performed by using internet or network in computer. Electronic currency allows its holder to buy the goods and the services that the vastness of the internet offers. Electronic currency trading mean buying and selling thru this internet money.

Bitpass is a prepaid account that allows you to purchase digital content and services in a couple of clicks. It was founded in December, 2002 and partnered with major technology and financial services companies such as Microsoft, PayPal, the Royal Bank of Scotland and First Data.

Bitpass provides an innovative commerce, loyalty, promotions and commerce that bundles authentication, payment and access control. Bitpass enables a la carte- and subscription-based purchases at any price point. Their products are designed to be easiest way to promote and sell digital content, required very little time or technical expertise to get started. For the content buyer, Bitpass worked like a pre-paid telephone card. The buyer just needs to sign up for the service and put money into an account using a credit card or PayPal. This stored-value amount could be used to purchase digital content or service.

Review on a post on E-tailing from E-commerce blog

Touch 'n Go

Commonly, Touch ‘n Go card is used by Malaysian for toll payment of using toll expressway and highway operators as the sole electronic payment system (EPS). But nowadays, there are many usefulness of Touch ‘n Go card. The card can be categorized into 4 types: prepaid card (standard card), postpaid card (Fleet Xs card- mainly used for toll fare payment, Biz Xs card- mainly purposed for corporate used), Auto-reload card (Zing card- link to Visa and Mastercard) and multi-purpose card (Mykad-identity card as e-purse). SmartTag works in combination with this card to allow user conveniently to pay toll. By using SmartTag, the payment transaction become fast and thus avoids traffic jam. Start from May, 2008, Touch ‘n Go Sdn Bhd was offering motorists a personal accident (PA) insurance policy worth RM10, 000 and hospital reimbursement worth RM2, 000.

Apart from that, we can use Touch ‘n Go card to buy fast food stall for our favorite burger or doughnut. Customers no need to bring so much cash in hand however; cash can be replaced by a credit card sized which made of plastic. Customers no need to find parking lots and just need to drive through the service counter and immediately will get their orders. Besides, Users can easily reload their Touch ‘n Go card at Maybank Kawanku ATMs which located in various Maybank branches, shopping malls, petrol stations, LRT stations, 7-Eleven and McDonald’s outlets nationwide. Users can also check their balance via Kawanku ATM. Want to know more about Touch ‘n Go card? Please check Touch 'n Go website.

Shopping with a credit card is better than shopping with a bundle of cash. Do you agree?

Bring along lots of money when shopping is very risky as money will be stolen or lost. However, shopping with credit card do not seems to be perfect. In 22 June 2008, it is reported in The Star that more than 6000 credit card holders declared bankrupt. One of the reason is they "swap" their credit card without control until over limit.

Heard about pre-paid cash card before?
It functions like a credit card and enable users to purchase something with a card instead of cash. However, there is a big different between credit card and pre-paid cash card. Prepaid cash card allows the users to spend only the amount preloaded and no overdraft is allowed. With this special feature, it can prevent the card holders run into debt.


In Hong Kong, there is a card called "octopus card" or more commonly known as "Baat Daaht Tùng, 八達通". It is a pre-paid cash card launched since 1997. Users need to preload an amount in order to use the "octopus card" to make payment. Hongkies can use the card to make many kinds of payment. "Octopus card" can be used for transport payment, shopping, and parking. Besides, users can also use it to make payment at fast-food restaurant. With "octopus card", there is impossible for users go overdraft
as they can only spend the amount preloaded.


In Malaysia, many of us use "Touch 'n Go" to pay for toll and parking in shopping mall. We also use it when travel by public transport such as Rapid KL and KTM Komuter. "Touch 'n Go" also considered as a type of pre-paid cash card as we need to preload money into the card before we can actually use the card to perform transactions.

In conclusion, instead of taking high risk of bringing lots money when shopping and having a high possibility to go bankrupt with credit card, pre-paid cash card is highly recommended. Some of the banks in Malaysia are offering pre-paid cash card such as "Impian Unembossed MasterCard" introduced by Eon Bank Group.

Causes and Preventions of credit card debts

“ Wao! The dress is nice. I would like to have one. But I do not have enough cash to pay for it. It is expensive!”
“It’s OK dear. I have credit card with me. I can pay for it. Here you are.”

It’s a conversation between couple and it reflects a true situation of consumers’ purchasing behavior nowadays. The usage of credit card has been common in the society. However, there is another issue arose by the MISUSE of credit card, which is the credit card debt. Some statistic show’s that, even college students are facing credit card debt. This is an unhealthy matter for the society.

The main reason that caused this issue is part of the credit card holders live extravagantly. They can use credit card to purchase whatever they like without having to plan for their budget and knowing how much cash left in their wallet. This is a very dangerous service offered. Most of the people will not be aware that they are spending more than they can earn. Debts will be accumulated from time to time until they become too much to handle if they do not pay the bills in time. Having a credit card in hand makes them more convenient but at the same time, makes them poorer as well as they do not manage their finances effectively.

In order to have a good financial health, few steps should be taken to prevent ourselves to fall into credit card debt.

Manage your finances
First of all, card holders should plan for a budget based on monthly income and needed expenses. As a consumer, we should always be rational and buy only goods that we really need. Always choose the right product at the right price. Besides, we should use the card like cash, not like a credit card. Do not use credit card when it is not needed as we cannot physically feel our charges climbing higher and higher. By practicing this, we could spend our money wisely, avoid extra expenses and at the same time, having some savings.

Limit the credit cards in your wallet
Different credit card comes with different terms and conditions. These terms including vary interest rates, penalties and due dates. Therefore, it is easier to have only one or two cards as it is much easier to remember which card has the lowest rate and make payments on time.

Pay the balance in full and on time
It is recommended to pay the balance in full and do not brought forward the balances. Therefore, we should always ensure that we have sufficient money to pay for the bills before we use the credit card. Furthermore, we can save up money on interest if we could pay before the actual due date. This is because the interest that we pay is calculated based on the average daily balance. Hence, we would only need to pay less interest if we could do so.

By taking these few steps today, card holders’ financial health will have a clean bill of health.

Safeguarding Personal and Financial Data

I do not like my private data to be viewed or noticed by others. I think most of you out there agree with my feeling. Now, let us share some ways that could safeguard our personal and financial data.

First of all, password or pin number is the most common way to sageguard our data. Nonetheless, when we are trying to use pin number to protect our data from accessed by unauthourized person, we should always be smart in choosing the password. Most of us like to use our date of birth or name as our password as these are easy to remember. However, we should be alert that others can easily guess these passwords and they'll eventually get to know your personal and financial data. Therefore, we should avoid using these as our passwords. Besides, we should not review the password to others in order to protect our data.

Apart from that, we should always remember to completely log out from the website that we have visited, especially those brokerage firm's website. For example, if you have completed your E-Banking process, it is wise to log out rather than just closing the browser. This is to ensure that you have completely terminated the access to the aacount and can also prevent others to misuse the data.

Nowadays, there are more and more cyber attacks. There are hackers or even crackers out there hacking into others computer system to steal data.Therefore, it is important for us to install and update some software such as spam-filter, firewall, anti-virus or anti-spyware software from time to time. These software are usefull as they could help to block or prevent our personal or financial data for being stolen.

That's all from me for this blog. If there is any additional information about safeguarding our data, kindly share with me by giving comment. Thanks a lot.

VeriSign --> Secure Scoket Layer (SSL)

When you are required to provide your personal information such as address and IC number over the Internet, what will you do? How are you going to trace whether the website is a "true" website or not? There are increasing numbers of phishing and spoofing attacks on Internet, if you are not alert enough, you will be the next victim whose money gets treated through Internet.

As consumers, we often feel that it is not reliable to perform transaction through the Internet. And this becomes a big problem faced by those companies that provide e-commerce transaction. However, this problem can be solved with the help of “third party certification program”.

Third party certification program
Third party certification program is performed by certification authority (CA). Its main objective is to guarantee that parties involved in e-commerce are really who they are. In other word, with the help of CA, we are able to identify whether the website is a true one or not, and whether it is safe for us perform online transaction.

There are quite a number of CA such as VeriSign Inc. and MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd.






VeriSign is well-known CA which provides trusted internet infrastructure services for digital world. It offers many types of products and services that help to improve the consumers’ confidence in every transaction done over the Internet. Since it is the leading Secure Socket Layer (SSL) CA, let’s look at how SSL works.

Secure Security Layer (SSL)
VeriSign helps organization to establish consumers’ trust toward online transaction by offering Extended Validation SSL. It is very easy to verify whether the website is a highly secured website by looking only at the address bar.

When you see a green address bar with the name of the organization that own the SSL Certificate and the name of CA that issue it, you can actually perform any online transaction as you like without any doubt.

Do the third party certification program really helps in improving customers' trust toward online transaction?

As the issue of security over the Internet is being more and more concern by the consumers, most of the companies have involved themselves with the third party security program. Well-known organizations such as eBay and Paypal are VeriSign’s customers.

When the website visitor saw this logo, the tendency fror them to carry on an online transaction is very high. The reason is the website visitor are confident that the other party over the Internet is who they claim they are. And the transaction is secured.

How safe is our data?

Spyware is being created for the purpose of recording others personal data such as passwords and credit card numbers, or hacking browser, or grabbing web dialer. There is a research showed that a total of 650,000 PCs were contained more than 18 millions spyware tools. A newest spyware threat is on e-greeting cards. It was designed to monitor the internet activity of the recipient, thereby sending an emailed record to the sender containing email activity, passwords used and so on. Let’s see how this e-greeting card spyware work. Initially, the recipient gets concentrate looking at a romantic email message with an attached or linked greeting card. The email appears to legitimate and show something such as “I love you”, “I miss you forever” and so on. When recipient clicked on the linked, the spyware is instantaneously and silently being installed into the computer. Once installed, spyware begins to monitor silently until can’t even be detected by the recipient’s antivirus software. It logs every website that is visited as well as every password entered and sends those records back to the sender of the greeting card. He could be your lover or criminal.

Hacker is someone involved in internet security that specializing in obtaining unauthorized access to systems through skills, tactics, or detailed knowledge. Hackers broke into the systems of an Ohio hospital and personal detailed of up to 230,000 patients or their family members, and even banking information on around 12,000 financial donors might have been compromised. Ohio was being attacked when the hospital was upgrading its systems. Besides, there was also a case occurred in University of California. Computer server was being hacked into which contained confidential information approximately 46,000 people. FBI team has been called to investigate this incident.

Phishing is a technique used to obtain personal information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from legitimate businesses. Paypal, eBay and online banks are usually become their targets. Phishing is typically carried out by email or instant message that directs users to enter personal details at a website. Let’s take an example, there were four eastern Europeans attended in a London court charged with defrauding online banks about hundreds of thousands via a ‘phishing’ scam. Scam emails that form the basis of phishing pose as ‘security check’ email from well known banks. These messages required users to handing their account details and passwords. There is a website launched to warn consumers about the risk of phishing attacks. (banksafeonline.org.uk)

Review on post on Internet Security from My E-commerce Blog

When the world is becoming more advanced and high-tech, problems will become more as well. With the new technologies, there are a lot of new problems will be created. For example like computer threats from viruses, Trojan, malware, worms and many more. According to Symantec bi-annual Interest Security Threat Report, for the past 12 months, there are more a million computer viruses. There are a total of 711,912 new malicious code threat found in 2007 and Symantec just only can detect two third of it.

Recently, the computer viruses have affected some countries in the world. For example, one million of the computers in China were hit by the viruses. This has caused this computer to crash. Besides that, there is a cyber attack in Estonia. The disasters turned digital which caused a national security situation in Estonia. The attack also shut down the country’s digital infrastructure, clogging the websites of the president and also shutting down the biggest bank in Estonia for an hour of its online banking causing it to lose around US $1 million. This has make our country, Malaysia alerts and has set up an international centre which offer the world the best brains and facilities to help fight cyber security threats. Well know names like Symantec Corporation, TrendMicro, F-Secure and Kaperskylab have agreed to be the key partners and serving the advisory board. For more information, can click here.

For our own benefits, here is some prevention steps can be taken.

Phishing = Fishing??

Hi, everyone! Does anyone of you know what the meaning of “Phishing” is? Oops! I don’t mean “fishing”. It is not the hobby where someone sitting at the river bank, waiting for the fish to eat the bait.However,it provides the similar meaning. Phishing simply means the fraudulent links created by perpetrators that lead their prey to a legitimate-looking website in order to steal their personal or private information as they enter the information required. These links are usually sent through e-mail or instant messaging.

Phishing is one of the biggest threats that an online user might experience nowadays. There are some examples of Phishing email that designed as it was delivered by well known and trusted websites such as e-bay and PayPal.

Here is one of the examples which was designed as it was sent from a famous E-commerce company, e-bay.

This is an e-mail sent to require the targeted users to re-enter their information by threatening the users that their account would be suspended and finally terminated if they do not re-enter their information. Some users might starts to be worry and follow the instructions to re-enter their information in the fake website and information will be stolen.

Other than companies online, banks have become a common path for phishers to gather information from the victims. As what we can see below, there are some perpetrators trying to lure the internet users for information regarding their ATM card as well as pin number. They can then transfer the funds to other account or use the information gathered for any other purposes. Users should be smart and always be alert when receive these emails to avoid becoming the victims.



Since we have found out that there are lots of phishing emails on the internet, preventions should be taken by the internet users like all of us here so as to keep track from the scam. There are some guidelines suggested in order for us to protect ourselves from not to be hooked by phishing scam.

First of all, we, as undergraduates of a quality university(UTAR) should be smart and have sufficient knowledge in not providing personal information freely online. As an internet user, we should be more cautious whenever there are pop-ups or emails from business or unknown persons that requires for personal information. Users should ignore and do not click, reply or downloads forms from those emails as email is not a secure method for transmission of personal information. If there is really a need for giving out personal information online, it is more rational for us to navigate the company’s website through search engine like yahoo or google.

Other than this, it is wise for us to install spam-filter, firewall, anti-virus or anti-spyware software that could protect our computers. It is basically a need for those friends out there who like to download online games, free movies or mp3. Why do we say so? This is because some of the scam emails contain software that could cause damages to our “beloved” computers. Some of the phishing emails can further detect our activities without out knowledge. Therefore, by having all the software mentioned above, the possibility for us to be spammed is lower. However, we should continuously update our software in order to ensure that they could help in blocking new virus and spyware. Apart of those mentioned above, this link shows other tips on preventing phishing. http://www.anti-phishing.info/avoid-phishing.html

So friends, after reading this blog, always be alert and try to protect yourselves from being so dump to be hooked by the phishers.

Compare revenue model

Google’s yearly income is generated from advertisement fees. Google’s design, Google AdWards is a pay per click advertising program to allow advertiser to present advertisement to people online. Information related to the advertiser has being offered instantaneously to people who are looking for it through Google AdWards. An advertiser has to pay every time his ad receives a click. Google generate most of the revenue from Google AdWards. Besides, Google AdSense is an ad serving program that allow Website owner to enroll in this program to enable text, image and video advertisement in this site. Advertisers are required to pay Google a fee each time user click on one of their ads displayed on Google site. This is known as affiliate fees. Furthermore, Google also offer a research service called Google Answers. When customers ask questions, offer a price for the answer and researcher will answer them. The researcher is not Google’s employee but Google will keep 25% of the payment and the balance will subject to the researchers. Of all the revenue for Google, AdWords generates the most, which is more than 90% of the revenue. Currently, Google is testing a new revenue model that pay site owner based on a Cost-Per-Click model. It is a new way offered to advertiser to earn revenue from their Websites that are compensated based on Cost-Per-Action (CPA) basis.

E-bay earned transaction fees from each successful transaction made by the bidders or seller in an auction. It has built a streamlined and globalized person-to-person trading community on the Internet through World Wide Web. This facilitates easy exploration for buyers and allows the seller to immediately list those items for sale. Sellers and buyers are brought together in a manner where sellers are allowed to list items for sale and buyers can bid on the items interested. In the meanwhile, all eBay users can browse through the listed items in a fully automated way. Sellers are charged with two kinds of charges. First charge is charged on an item that are being listed on eBay which is called as nonrefundable Insertion fee which ranges between 30 cents and $3.30, depending on the seller’s opening bid on the item. . A fee is charged for additional listing options to promote the item, such as highlighted or bold listing. Secondly, a fee is charged at the end of the seller’s auction which ranges between 1.25% and 5% of the final sale price.

Amazon.com is an American electronic commerce company in Seattle, Washington. It is one of the first major companies involved in selling of goods by Internet. It was started as an online bookstore but later was diversified to product lines of DVDs, VCDs, computer software, video games, furniture, food and etc. In 2001, Amazon.com has launched the Honor System that allowed customers to make donations or buy digital content. With that, Amazon has collected 2.9% of the payment plus a flat free of $0.30 USD. For example, after 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indonesia Ocean, Amazon has set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross, waiving its processing fee. Besides, Amazon has also launched an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage Service. The service charges monthly fees for data stored and data transferred. Using Amazon technology, Webstore, allows businesses to create e-commerce websites. Merchants can customize their websites using their own photos and even branding. Sellers have to pay a commission of 7% to Amazon.com, which includes credit card processing fees and fraud protection fee; subscription fee of $59.95 per month for an unlimited numbers of webstores and listings. Moreover, Amazon has launched Associates affiliate programme which run like this way: associate drive internet traffic to Amazon.com through links that allows user to track sales and other activity. Then, associates can earn up to 10% in referral fees on all qualifying revenue made via their links.

How E-commerce reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support.

No doubt, internet usage has been more and more popular. Almost every single man on the streets including the aunty next door is using internet to carry out online activities such as searching for information. The wide usage of internet had caused a revolutionary business phenomenon, which is the electronic commerce(E-commerce). Nowadays, thousands and millions of companies regardless of their firm's size use e-commerce as one of their business strategy. They create websites in order to promote and sell their products online. These companies allow business transactions to be carried out electronically. E-commerce makes them more competitive and stands out among the others. Now, let us have a peek on the benefits of the E-commerce.

Cycle time is basically the period of time from the order take place to the end of the transaction. Time is always precious to human beings as well as a business. If a business manage to reduce its cycle time, it has greater advantage over others. By implementing E-commerce, it helps to eliminate some unnecessary business transaction processes. For example, without the intermediaries, E-commerce speeds up the purchasing process as customers place their order directly to the producer after viewing the online catalogues. The producer on the other side will receive the order almost instantaneously and starts to respond and process it. By having E-commerce, there will be no purchasing order that are needed to be transfered from one department to another for authorisation which will take up time. Therefore, the process can be done within seconds. This does not only reduce the cycle time, it also helps to cut down the cost.

Other than reducing cycle time, E-commerce improves employees' empowerment as well. As we know, employees' empowerment means giving employees the authority to act and make decisions on their own. In firms that are using E-commerce, customers are put directly in touch with the staffs. The employees are given authority to deal with customers' needs and enquiries directly. They can also receive and responds to customers' comlpains in a short period. These enable the companies to build strong relationship with customers and maintain customers' loyalty. Besides, the companies' website is the most vital asset. It serves as a platform that introduce goods and services to all the potential customers. It is equals to the traditional shop lots or counters. Therefore, it is important for the employees to have authority to access and retrieve the companies' lastest information in order to update the website.

These days, most of the companies which are using E-commerce offers services in assisting their customers to make cost effective and correct use of a product. Customer support can be facilitated by a wide range of technological solutions. Customers can send enquiries to the websites and there will be a quick response. E-commerce also enables customers to shop online through out the day as it operates 24hours per day, 7 days per week. This will be more convenient to the customers as they do not need to rush to the shops or complexes before they closed. Besides, having full range of options or products attached with description facilitates the customers in understanding the products well and eventually made the right decision.

In short, E-commerce not only benefits the organization but also provide a better place for customers to shop in.

History and Evolution of E-commerce

Have you ever go to shopping with your pajamas in the midnight?
May be you may think of whether any shopping center is operating in the midnight. Even if there is, you will feel very embarrass shopping with your pajamas. But with the evolution of Internet, we can go for online shopping anytime and anyplace as you like even is at home with pajamas.




" Shop with anything you like even with

your pajamas and at anyplace!! "




E-commerce (also known as Electronic Commerce) referred to any transaction of products or services over any electronic system. In other word, E-commerce is the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet or others. Today, when we need to buy something, no necessary we have to go to the shopping mall or any place. What we need to do is, switch on computer and connect to Internet. We can purchase anything we want through Internet.

Many of us think that, E-commerce is a new creation that emerges in this new era. Actually, E-commerce has been appeared few decades ago. However, it is not common. Until the early of 1970, the first extended use of form of E-commerce was introduced and it was Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT). EFT allows us to transfer money from one bank account to another account without the transfer of money from hand to hand. For instance, instead of queuing up so long to pay bill, you can actually go for online bill payment. It can save you a lot of time!

In the late 70s, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was devised. It enables companies to exchange documents such as purchase order and invoices electronically. With EDI, suppliers can also notice the stock level of their customer. When the stock level is running low, suppliers will ready to deliver stocks to their customer. It builds a paperless environment and helps companies to save up the cost for printing various documents.

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) that is very familiar to us was emerges in the 1980s. It is also forms of E-commerce. At the same time, financial institutions introduced new service which is known as telephone banking. It operates like the ATM, just that customers no need to go to ATM to perform transaction. They can perform any transaction over the telephone.

The term “E-commerce” is expanding broadly. From the 1990s onwards, E-commerce included Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), data mining and data warehouse. Basically, ERP is referred to a comprehensive set of systems used in an organization that allow every department to operate as a whole. Integration achieved among departments and it helps the company to perform more effectively and efficiently.

According to world-gazetteer and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, the total population of 2007 in Malaysia was amounted to 28,294,120 and the total Internet users as at September/06 were 13,528,200. www.internetworldstats.com/asia/my.htm It indicates that there is more than 45 % of Internet user in Malaysia. There is a bright future for the growth and acceptance of E-commerce. May be few decades later, the traditional purchasing process will be very weird to our next generation. If possible, they will perform every transactions over the Internet.


Amazon.com
Amazon.com Inc is the American company which is the first company that engaged in e-commerce. It was formed and launched in 1995. It was started by selling book over the Internet. Later it diversified its business. Now, Amazon.com serves as a global shopping mall. We can buy any products we want from anyplace over the world at anytime.

eBay
eBay Inc. is another Internet company. It is also a worldwide shopping center. Besides, it also provides online auction. In eBay, we can bid for any product that we like.