Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Reviews
There’s big money in counterfeiting name-brand goods. Sales of knockoff products over the Internet climbed to nearly $120 billion in 2007, up from $84 billion the previous year, estimated MarkMonitor, an online protection firm that works with eBay and other online auction houses to shut counterfeiters down.
For most businesses, data security is a mission-critical undertaking, and a summer of weather calamities drove home that point. “As the recent hurricanes reminded us, off-premise backup solutions can make the difference between being out of business for good and being on hiatus for a few months,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group.
With shipments of Apple computers on the rise — to the tune of 38 percent year-on-year, according to Gartner — software vendors appear ready to accommodate the shift in the marketplace. It may be hip to go Apple, but companies need software that’s compatible with Mac computer systems, and the software industry is finally responding to the call.
Online auction site eBay grew up on the receipts of smaller-scale sellers. Now, as the San Jose, Calif.-based company reaches out to larger, big-volume dealers, some of those original core customers are drifting away. Some sellers have moved on to competitors such as Amazon.com, said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT.
Things are changing at eBay. eBay says it is evolving to adapt to changes in the larger market, but it’s not clear how the auction giant will fare against an emerging army of specialized competitors, and it’s far from clear whether sellers will warm to its new internal price structure.