At a time when JC Penny has stopped offering coupons and discounts to consumers, other retailers such as Office Depot have continued the practice to great success. What surprised many Wall Street Analyst is that when JC Penny went to their everyday best price model and stopped providing coupons, foot traffic to their stores along with sales dropped dramatically. JC Penny commented that its taking a while for the consumers to adapt to the pricing model. As a result of their earnings shortfall the stop dropped significantly.
Office Depot which is in the ultra competitive business supply market has continued to provide coupons. Office Depot Printable Coupons help attract foot traffic into their stores, most of their coupons are targeted for either certain products or services which as a result don’t hamper their margins as much as general across the board coupons would.
In the end, only time will tell if JC Penny’s move to a no coupon environment will be successful or a disastrous failure.
Yesterday Facebook announced that is was buy Instagram, the maker of the popular Instagram App. Instagram is a phone app which allows people to take pictures on their phone then edit them and share them online.
The acquisition is facebook’s largest. Mark Zuckerberg stated that they don’t expect to do any more of these type of deals. Instagram which recently had a venture capital round that valued the company at $500 Billion.
Instagram iphone app has 30 million users but generates no revenue, they also released an app for the android phone operating system., which was quickly downloaded by over 5 million people.
Facebook, which lacks a mobile phone picture sharing platform hopes that Instagram will help fill its gap in that area. One reason people spend so much time on facebook is looking at pictures, and with people spending more time on cellphone Facebook had to do something.
Since opening the applications (app) market to developers the numbers of programs skyrocketed to over 250,000. The number of Apps has helped Apple build a lead in terms of sales for their iphones and ipads which are connected to the app marketplace. It also has allowed developers to make a living either by developing applications for companies or developing applications for consumers.
While most apps are free, there are some pay application. The cost of pay applications is usually less than $5.00. While the applications that are free are usually supported by advertising. As a result it has sprung up a new industry of app advertising.
Another surprising number is the number of apps purchased and downloaded. The latest figure from Apple is that over 24 Billion apps have been downloaded. Their app market covers everything from Business, finance and productivity to games and entertainment. One of the nice things is that you can have both productivity and business apps on your phone or iPad.
Some of the more popular entertainment apps are Angry Birds by Ravio and Words with Friends by Znyga. Angry Birds is Ravio’s 17th application that they released.
Another Popular App that is on a lot of phones and tables is Facebook. People like to spend time on facebook and apps help people access their facebook accounts.
Apps can be downloaded through itunes accessed either by computer, ipad or iphone.
Well its not really free, but Amazon.com in order to promote its local deal service is offering a $10 Amazon.com gift card for $5. AmazonLocal is a deal site which is similar to Groupon. Daily deal sites have sprung up recently with everyone from Google to Amazon joining in on the action. The Amazon $5 for $10 gift card is a pretty good deal, however we would of loved to see a $10 for $20 gift card deal. In either case to purchase the Amazon gift card for $5.00 please check out out your local listing
Everyone knows that content is king, and while the Android app market is getting better, it still can’t compete with Apples app store. What I noticed that Amazon has been doing recently is giving away free content, the content that they are giving away are books. The books are usually investment, self help, information related. We know that Amazon.com loses money on the Kindle, they maybe paying for the content that they are giving away for free to entice traffic and buyers of the kindle.
If you would like to find out what amazon is giving away for free, I usually visit http://www.fatwallet.com which lists amazon’s daily deals. The nice thing is that you don’t need a kindle to get the free books, however a lot of the deals are only available to amazon prime members.
Coupons for Baby Formula
There are times when nursing mothers can’t or are unable to provide their babies with natural breast milk. A great solution during these times is Baby Formula. It’s quick and easy, just add water and warm it up and when you have a baby that’s hungry and crying, especially during the middle of the night, quick and easy is your friend. One downside to baby formula is the cost, while prices of baby formula vary by size, store and maker, they tend to average around $40 for a can. One solution to help ease the cost of purchasing baby formula is using Similac Coupons on the purchase of Similac Baby Formula. In order to win over buyers of baby formula, the makers over coupons, sometimes as much as 15% off the cost. Finding coupons for baby formula isn’t as hard as it used to be as there a numerous websites that now either provide coupons that can be printed and taken to the store or provide links to where you can download coupons for baby formula. Never has there been a time where it’s been easier to find coupons for baby formula, it’s just a click of the mouse away.
You don’t have to be a hedge fund manager to make money in the stock market, one sector that is extremely lucrative is the Penny Stock sector of the stock market. Penny stocks are stocks that are usually priced under $1.00. Because of the small price they have a tendency to be very volatile. In the stock market volatility can equal huge profits. There are many different ways to trade Penny Stocks, which every way you feel the most comfortable and knowledgeable that is the route I would take to trade penny stocks. Before you put your actual money into penny stocks I would try your trading strategies on paper. Write down what you would buy, when you would buy it and then when you would sell it, track your profits/loss and see how you do. If your paper trading is profitable the go ahead and put your money into a broker and start trading. If your strategy is not profitable then it’s time to go back and refine your trading strategy.
