"A Shot of Success Using Cartfly"

This morning's edition of the Houston Chronicle profiled Dani Campbell from the hit show "A Shot of Love" with Tila Tequila and her recent success using Cartfly. She is one of two finalists with the season finale airing tonight at 9pm on MTV.

"Amidst all this chaos, 29-year-old Dani Campbell (pronounced Danny) became a fan favorite as well as one of Ms. Tequila's final picks for her natural, down-to-earth personality. Going into tonight's finale, it's down to her and the remaining male contestant, Bobby Banhart. In spite of whether the firefighter from Florida earns that top spot on Tila's more than 2 million-strong Myspace.com friends list or not, she's keeping her head on, ahem, straight.

She's already had success with her first item, a "Team Dani" T-shirt, which she sold using Cartfly.com, an application that lets users embed a storefront window on their blogs, personal pages and social-networking sites. When the line launches, she hopes to continue pushing online sales."

Cartfly in Dec' Issue of Entrepreneur Magazine

Widgets That Wow
These nifty tools add oomph to your website. The best part? They won't break your budget.

Static web pages are a thing of the past. Now you can spice up your site with all sorts of handy widgets to capture your customers' interest and help you stand out from the crowd. Think of widgets as bite-size web applications that can be placed in websites, whether it's your business's homepage, blog or web community profile. Online store widgets are a clever way to extend your e-tailing reach beyond your main website. Widgets can also be a quick way to add social networking features to your online business. Here's a roundup of some handy web widgets to get your internet business started on the right foot:

Cartfly: Cartfly is similar to Shopit. You can customize your portable store to fit your business's look and style. Accounts are free to set up but include a 3 percent transaction fee. The emphasis is on a simple interface with a fast setup that will help you get your store out and about on the web in no time.

"A Shot of Love" with Tila Tequila

One of our top sellers Dani Campbell is currently a finalist on MTV's hit show "A Shot of Love" with Tila Tequila. Check out her store, she's been selling these shirts like crazy! If you want to support her sales be sure to copy and paste her share code into your blog or social network profile...

New Cartfly Merchant Services!

We'd like to announce our newest resource available to Cartfly sellers, a full Merchant Services Package! Instead of just using PayPal, you can apply for a full merchant account attached to your personal Cartfly Store and also power any existing e-commerce site you might have.

In the hopes of keeping the application process simple, you will find an easy to fill out form by logging into your CF account. Here are some of the benefits attached to your new merchant account:

No Monthly Minimum Processing
Secure Online Payments
Easy Application
24/7 Merchant Support
Free Online Merchant Reporting
Guaranteed Low Rates
Receive payments in your account within 48hrs.
CISP Compliant
Virtual Terminal for manual entries
Off Line Voice Authorizations

"Bands Flock to Do-It-Yourself Web Stores for New Revenue Streams"

As music increasingly becomes free, legally or not, bands are taking a two-pronged tack on the Web: selling products that can't be copied, and selling easily-copied music through simple user interfaces so fans don't defect to P2P networks if they find checkout and playback frustrating. Though tecent data suggest that digital sales are far from recouping CD losses (WID Nov 21 p2), for many smaller bands every little bit helps, and the Web has proven a low-hassle revenue stream. But a recently collapsed deal offers a cautionary tale.

Smaller bands' most stable revenue stream is tour- related sales. Cartfly.com is helping artists sell concert tickets and merchandise, such as t-shirts and hats, apart from the box office gate and the back table at the club. Customers use the do-it-yourself online store platform to create a sales destination, posting the code to their social networking pages and inviting fans to spread the code to their own Web pages and even to community forums.

About 40 percent of Cartfly customers are musicians, its original target demographic, President Bob Schober told us. The company, founded in summer 2005, released its flagship product this year. "Bands have never really made a lot off their record sales, unless you're Madonna," Schober said. "This gives them the opportunity to hit their demographic readily," apart from touring. More than 25,000 bands and artists have created stores. The average purchaser spends $25-$30, more than the company initially expected, Schober said: "They're not just buying smaller items." Several bands use Cartfly in conjunction with Snocap, among the better known do-it-yourself download store providers, Schober said. It also has a deal with PerfSpot, a social network focused on nightlife and music.

Schober spent a year "paying attention to everything e- commerce," to avoid competitors' user-interface missteps, he said. Bands wanting to sell items on a conventional social network would have to post each item one at a time and link it to a payment source like PayPal. Cartfly was designed to vest administrative control with the band. Additions, deletions and modifications automatically spread to every site hosting the store code, he said. The company's next hurdle is to reward fans for posting bands' codes, Schober said. Another project in "widgetland" is letting average users create their own mix-and-match stores, selling merchandise offered by a variety of bands, he said.

But the do-it-yourself space has its perils. CDBaby.com, one of the earliest music e-tailers, began talking with Snocap in 2004 about adding CD Baby's artist catalog to Snocap's P2P fingerprinting service. In 2006 Snocap changed its business model, amid contract negotiations, to powering artist stores across the Internet.

Featured Article in Revenue Magazine

Feature Story: 5 Questions With Bob Schober

Bob Schober is president of Cartfly, a kind of social networking approach to e-commerce. Cartfly recently teamed up with PerfSpot, a growing social networking site with more than 4 million users. Cartfly's viral technology allows e-commerce stores to be embedded just like a YouTube video. Cartfly charges a transaction fee per sale but
creating a Cartfly store is free and can be done in minutes. All users need is a valid PayPal email address and inventory to sell. We caught up to Schober and asked him a few questions.


Q: Tell us briefly how Cartfly works.

A: Cartfly offers a free "traveling" store, with a shopping cart, that you can cut and paste anywhere on the web. Basically you can turn anywhere you hang out online – whether it is your blog, your favorite social network or your website – into a sales portal.

Q: What kind of products can I put in my storefront using Cartfly?

A: You can sell whatever you want as long as it abides by our terms of service. We have bands selling tickets, CDs, T-shirts, we have a ton of photographers, artists and models selling prints and paintings. We have everything from skateboard shops to clothing companies. We have one guy on there selling fossils and another selling used auto parts. There is an electronics store where you can get cell phones or iPods as well.

Q: Your partnership with PerfSpot allows Cartfly stores to be easily added to PerfSpot's 4 million users on their social network. Are you targeting other networks?

A: Yes. We have built our application to be extremely modular. PerfSpot was most surprised that they integrated our platform in their administrative section within a couple of hours. Why spend months and tens of thousands of dollars on development, when you can integrate us so easily with a total turnkey application. We also can do a revenue share, and most importantly, our partners can brand the stores that they offer to their customers with their own company logo. So as with our PerfSpot integration, you will see stores out there that are in people's blogs and websites that have the PerfSpot banner.

Q: If users can set up the Cartfly widget on their sites for free, where is your revenue coming from?

A: It is free to set up. There are no listing fees, setup fees or annual fees. We take 3 percent of the total of whatever is sold. So if a band sells a CD for 10 bucks, then we would receive 30 cents.

We will also be offering a Premium Cartfly account, where our merchants will receive their own merchant account with immediate approval. Our primary goal is to empower the merchant.

Q: With Web 2.0 technologies sprouting up like weeds, what do you think is the future of e-commerce?

A: I think it will be in peer-to-peer or business-to-business sales. There are millions of bands, artists, photographers, models, etc., that have something to sell and we offer them the ability to quickly and painlessly reach their immediate demographic. Typically in e-commerce, your goal is to drive people to your website or store; Cartfly empowers our merchants by giving them the toolset to take their store to the world.

iCandy Clothing's new Cartfly

This is a great example of the larger store version now available for merchants.

Cartfly named Official Shopping Cart of Perfspot.com

Cartfly.com is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with Perfspot.com, the "world's fastest growing social network" according to a recent article in Forbes Magazine. Every Perfspot user will have instant store-building capability from directly within their admin section. New stores will publish directly into their SN profiles. It's a great example of our new integration kit for existing third party applications. Perfspot.com has experienced tremendous growth with more than 30,000 users on average signing up daily.

“We’re thrilled to be associated with Perfspot and are looking forward to growing with them to provide customized and secure shopping carts for all of their users,” said Bob Schober, President of Ustrive Inc.

Featured Review by KillerStartups

"Cartfly is an e-commerce blogging tool you can use to set up a free mini-ecommerce store from your blog, site or social networking websites. If you have something to sell and a Paypal account, you are already halfway there, setting up an account on Cartfly couldn’t be made easier. Each individual cartfly shop widget comes with a sharecode, ratings and feedback you can use to get visibility and comments on your product. Best of all, this is all completely fee."

"This is a great tool, considering it could make anyone with a product, a social network or blog and a PayPal account part of the millions that reap the benefits of e-commerce."

-KillerStartups.com

Merchant Credibility and Ratings

Cartfly.com now offers each individual merchant a rating and feedback system with every store created! We realized it was important for our sellers to provide a comfortable online buying experience. After searching endlessly, we were completely thrilled to find Rapleaf.com. Their services and platform are exceptional. A ratings and feedback section is now integrated directly into each cartfly store. Rapleaf ratings also travel along with every replicated or shared store anywhere on the web. Credibility is critical for any online merchant. It was great to find a rating system that avoided user manipulation. Our sellers deserve an accurate reputation not easily swayed with a few biased opinions.

The Rapleaf team has spent a lot of time refining their algorithms to prevent gaming, as fraud is one of their top concerns. They also provide information beyond ratings, such as social networks and profile stats.

"Cartfly is an exciting service and we look forward to watching them grow! They’re definitely filling a niche market."

-Dan S.
Rapleaf

Private Labeling and Third Party Integration

We'd like to announce that Cartfly Technology is now available for private labeling and third party integration into existing social networks, web communities, etc. For now, the Cartfly Integration Kit is on a per request basis but will eventually open up. This type of integration will come with additional private labeling and branding. Large user generated communities will now have the opportunity to provide an entire user base with an e-commerce tool dircectly from every user's profile.

'User Defined' Product Options

Since our recent launch we have had numerous inquiries regarding product options for our merchant's inventory. An interesting thing about the feedback was that almost every merchant was asking for a different option or variable. We took everyone's feedback and put some serious thought into a solution. We wanted to give users a broad options tool that could be used for almost anything!

Thanks to our speedy development team, every Cartfly merchant now has 'user defined' options. This feature allow users to quickly define multiple product options and values for extremely specific items. Every product can have multiple options and related drop down values. We'll be enhancing this feature even more over time.

Cartfly "Swinging For The Fences"

We think we're about to do for e-commerce what YouTube did for video. In a different arena of course. Cartfly deals specifically with replicated and shareable e-commerce. These stores can be passed and shared like video clips. We are definitely swinging for the fences. We invite feedback, criticism, suggestions and all that other good stuff. This is an easy to use tool for anyone who wants to sell online. So let us know what your thinking!!

Users can create a free store and open up shop directly from their individual profiles on social networks, blogs, personal domains, etc. All you need is a valid PayPal email address and something to sell. Buyers pay the merchant directly similar to eBay. Cartfly Commerce allows users with large social networks to branch out with products and services. Got 120 social networking friends? Now you can have 120 replicated stores all updating automatically. More stores, more visibility, more sales. We look forward to giving our users what they ask for.

Here's a little clip describing what we do...BTW, we never want to take ourselves too seriously!