The site will have a shopping cart and customers will be able to pay for the items with a credit card. Generally you will receive notification of an order placed to then fulfill the order. The customer will have had their credit card charged for the fee.

There are many advantages of having an ecommerce website over having a brick and mortar store. The obvious benefits are that you do not need to travel to and from the shop.

A person can fully own and operate an online website complete with ecommerce capabilities for around $25 to $35 a month. The fees vary, but it only costs around $10 USD a year to buy a domain name, then around the same per month for web hosting. The merchant company may have a monthly fee, but it is normally small.

With an ecommerce site in place the ability to reach millions of people are at your disposal. How many you can reach will depend on how you market your website.

You can use paid services, such as Google AdWords for pay per click advertising, or you may want to optimise your website for the organic side of the search engines.

Make sure the design reflects the type of ecommerce you are offering. You want it to appeal to your market audience. Is the layout easy to navigate, are the colors pleasing to the eye.

Next you want to optimize each page to rank well in the search engines. This means using the proper keywords for which you wish to be found. Make good use of the meta tags by including the keywords.

Use images and name the images with good keywords, because you can rank your images on the major search engines as well as the pages. Each page has an opportunity to rank high, so create each page with this in mind. Use social media to help get the buzz out about your ecommerce site.

The success of an ecommerce website design will be determined by how much work you put into it. Keep the pages

Check the website often to ensure the shopping cart runs seamlessly. You want your customers to feel secure about placing an order with your company.

If the website is set up correctly and optimized, it can be very successful for years.

It is a great career choice for anyone that enjoys the challenge of meeting deadlines and staying ahead of the competition. You should also have excellent communication skills, good presentation skills along with the ability to sell just about anything that is put in front of you. If this describes your talents, obtaining an education in marketing is what you were meant to do!

Do not forget that the internet has not only revolutionized the world of advertising and marketing, but it has also brought the classroom into your own living room. Deciding upon enrolling into an online degree program can benefit you by also giving you the ins and outs of internet technology, which is a vital skill in today’s world.

You can start your career by earning an associate’s degree; however, with a bachelor’s degree you will increase your employment prospects plus have more room for advancement. There are fast track bachelor’s degree programs available online that will help to reduce the time needed to graduate, plus if you have been in the workforce for a while it might be possible for you to receive credit for knowledge acquired outside of a classroom. In other words, do not let the fact that a bachelor’s degree is considered to be a four year commitment intimidate you or make you change your mind. The internet has changed many things in the academic world including how long it takes for students to complete the required course load for their degree.

First, it must be mentioned that when investigating the online degrees in marketing you must make sure that the school you are considering has its accreditation from either a state or federally recognized agency. They must also be current with that accreditation, so do not let them dance around this question! There are unfortunately many degree scams or degree mills out there that will gladly take your money, but will not provide you with a quality education, plus if you decide to earn your master’s degree later on your credits may not transfer.

Once enrolled, your curriculum will include such interesting areas as the theory and practice of marketing. Also you will have classes that cover marketing strategy, statistics, economics, accounting, commercial law, and finance plus computer applications. At the heart of your degree will be courses relating to the aspects of product research, design, pricing, distribution and promotion along with acquiring an understanding of human behavior.

After you graduate, you can start your career in the area that interests you the most. It could be in advertising, market research or public relations. Any of these will provide you with an exciting career full of possibilities including earning a good income.

As a business owner I realize the importance of saving money. Not every business is successful but success has more to do with thinking outside of the box than one might think. For me as a consultant and life coach I have taken this thinking to a whole new level. There are two parts to being successful; saving money and making money.

When I was 31 I was sick of working 9-5 in retail. That was when my career began by doing sub contracting work. A big way to save money is to set up a business as home based. From the beginning of my career to the present I have set up a very inexpensive home office.

First of all I save 100s if not 1,000s of dollars on rent for an office space. I meet with clients over the phone or through Skype, instant messaging. I have used the same office set up for years now. I move a lot so when I move into a new place I dedicate a small space of 5×6 or up to 10×10 depending on how big my apartment is. All I ever need is a computer, desk, printer/scanner and a phone.

I also utilize my home Internet and phone for my business. I set office hours and tell people not to call me unless it is an emergency. This also saves me around $100 per month. I also use furniture that I buy from Wal-Mart or Target; even thrift stores can have good buys on chairs and desks. By working from home I do not double my bills but I save on gas and clothing.

Another way to save money is I take advantage of offers that are low cost or free. Vista Print often has free business cards and all I have to pay is shipping and handling. By giving out these business cards to friends, clients or posting them in a few public places like libraries I can get free advertising. There are also many free to low cost Web hosting sites available as well. By using the Internet — from blog talk radio to free search engines — I have managed to find clients.

Another great way I save money and make money at the same time is by taking subcontracting or freelance work. While the freelance work is solely under my name, my sub contracting work is under my business name at times. I take contracts as needed some last months while others last years. I have found these jobs online, through networking or even on Craigslist. While the subcontracts are not always directly related to my field the experience is appreciated and it saves me money from having to hire a mentor.

Any successful business needs to save money and make money to be successful. At the end of the day it is not about how much money you make but how it works for you. Being self-employed is more rewarding than working for someone else; it takes work but it is worth it.

So was the hotel voucher she bought from LivingSocial as a Christmas gift for her brother. And the photo book she and her mother made on Shutterfly.

The thousands of dollars Burns has spent online in the past few months – early holiday gifts, plane tickets, textbooks for her two teenage children – has helped her raise nearly $150 for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Rainforest Action Network and more than a dozen other nonprofits. Through San Francisco’s Ark, about 5 percent of each online purchase was directed to a charity of her choice.

“Everybody would like to donate $100, but it’s hard to do,” said Burns, who lives in San Mateo and also donates separately to local charities. Here, “it’s for stuff I would have shopped for anyway. It’s very empowering to donate someone else’s money.”

The holiday shopping spree is about to begin, as is the annual drive to raise funds for nonprofits. Consumers are expected to spend $465.6 billion during the holidays this year, according to the National Retail Federation, a small incremental increase from last year.

But at the same time, unemployment and the stormy economy are prompting many people to hold back on donating to their favorite causes. Nearly 7 of 10 said that they plan to give sparingly to charity this year, according to a survey by Durham+Company, a consulting firm for nonprofits.

Enter Ark, which launched in September, and San Francisco’s GoodSearch, which also includes GoodShop and GoodCoupons. Both take advantage of how online retailers reward websites for sending traffic – and business – their way. Though the revenue share sometimes only amounts to a few pennies, Ark and GoodSearch set it aside for charity. They also keep some of it to maintain their operations.

“We know this holiday season, given this economy, that people are cutting back on their holiday giving,” said GoodSearch CEO Scott Garell. “If you do your holiday shopping at GoodShop, we can help fill that gap. We can give money to your cause.”

Launched in 2005, GoodSearch began as a site that let people earn a penny for their dedicated charity for each Web search they conducted on GoodSearch, through a partnership with Yahoo.

Since then, it has expanded to include GoodShop, partnering with about 2,500 online retailers to earn anywhere from 0.5 percent to 10 percent of the bill, and GoodCoupons, offering special discounts to encourage its users to shop online. To date, it has raised about $8 million for more than 100,000 nonprofits.

Today, it is introducing its latest addition, GoodDining. By eating at participating restaurants, including about 200 in the Bay Area, and using a credit card that they registered with GoodDining, diners earn from 3 to 6 percent of their final tab for their cause. Through a partnership with Rewards Network, a restaurant marketing service, GoodDining tracks purchases made at any of the 10,000 restaurants.

One of the tricky aspects of the proposition , however, is for people to remember to shop online through the site, and for them to come back again and again.

To that end, Ark has added a social-networking layer, much like Facebook, to its site. Members can sign in through Facebook and connect with their friends and favorite causes on Ark. Each time they make a purchase and raise some money, it is announced in their news feed. Friends can also like it, comment on it and share it.

There’s also a gaming element, with a leaderboard that tracks the site’s top earners. Users can also score badges, such as when they recruit a friend to the site.

In just a few months, the startup has raised about $10,000 for charity. Ark has partnered with about 2,000 online retailers such as Amazon, iTunes and Orbitz to direct 5 percent back from each purchase. Users accumulate a balance and can have it distributed to as many participating nonprofits as they would like.

Ark is also planning to partner with DonorsChoose.org so that users can contribute to local classroom projects. And it plans to introduce a feature to suggest potential projects and causes to donate to based on each purchase.

Ark co-founder and CEO Patrick Riley, who received a doctorate from UC Berkeley this year and is the former director of user experience at Emeryville’s Lithium, a social media consulting firm, said he was inspired to start Ark to harness the Internet to encourage giving.

“Once you start giving, you get into it,” Riley said. “It’s fun.”

E-mail comments to business@sfchronicle.com .

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the SanFranciscoChronicle

Life Enhancement Center is an addiction recovery service thathas operated in Utah County since 2006.

A Google query for “addiction recovery, Utah County” won’t yieldthe company’s name among Google’s first five pages of results, evenif it has several treatment centers in Utah County. Instead, theresults will include facilities in Sandy, Kaysville and a websitecalled addictionhelpchat.com , which is based in Florida.

This is a problem for Russ Gaede, one of Life Enhancement’sowners. Studies show 80 percent of consumers search online beforemaking a purchase within a 10- to 20-mile radius.

“That’s where it gets hard,” said Gaede, who spends about 10hours a week finding ways to ratchet up the Provo-based company’svisibility. “We have a page rank value and I check it quite a bit,and then I check my competitors’ page ranks.”

If Google is the new Yellow Pages, then Gaede finds himselfamong a growing number of local business owners who have to wranglewith tech-savvy competition to achieve virtual visibility.Companies that can wield the largest resources to game the Googlesystem — perfecting the art of search engine optimization, or SEO– earn the Internet’s most valuable real estate, Google’s firstpage. They can eclipse even those that are more locally relevant tocustomers.

It’s not a certain formula, but a using combination oftechniques definitely helps one’s Google prominence. Andmaintaining that effort regularly costs money.

“I choose not to hire a search engine optimization companybecause it gets costly,” Gaede said.

In the pre-digital age, naming your company with a lettercombination like AA1 was all that was necessary to guarantee thetop spot in local print listings.

Today, when few people even click beyond the first page online,small businesses that have not optimized their websites for Googlehave a much smaller chance to be found. In a recent study thatincluded 8.9 million queries sampled over nine months, businesssites received 95 percent of search traffic from page-one results,a sign that consumers favor websites with high ranking.

Rod Martin, an American Fork auto repair shop owner with nineemployees, says he spends more than $6,000 a year on SEO and onlinemarketing, illustrating the pressures today’s small companies faceto stay relevant.

He stopped advertising in the Yellow Pages. “Yellow Pages ispretty much dead,” he said. Half his customers find him viaGoogle.

“To be No. 1, your website needs word tags, blogs, keywords,changing content, having relevant content, linking to other sitesand other sites linking back to you,” Martin said. “Having yourbother-in-law do your website … I’m sorry, it isn’t effective.It’s time for the pros to step in.”

Martin’s company, World Class Auto Repair, ranks first out ofseven competitors on Google under the keywords “auto repairAmerican Fork” in both map and website results. He recently hired acomputer firm to develop an attractive Facebook page for thecompany.

“Word of mouth used to mean that Fred told his neighbor Brianabout an auto mechanic,” Martin said. “Now it’s Fred and Sally andSuzy and Tom on Facebook sharing my business with their friends.Word of mouth is now social media.”

Long-established newspapers are now leveraging their deepaudiences aggressively online and have become a big presence in theonline ranking game with a sophisticated combination of approaches.The Daily Herald, for example, is a major local player with itsmarketing program called “Get It,” which brings together marketingcapabilities like banner advertising, SEO, social networking, emailnewsletters and mobile advertising.

According to Herald advertising director Sarah Ehrmantraut, “GetIt” provides companies with inexpensive access to a huge localaudience and provides the ability to broadcast sale offers to bothpassive and opt-in consumers. Highlights of the program include anextensive directory of local businesses, an interactive businessprofile page and packages that leverage social media, linked deals,coupons and videos.

“It’s a single, integrated resource for local businesses to helpthem be found by local consumers in the way consumers want to findthem,” Ehrmantraut said. “We have a lot of ways to boost SEO and acompany’s online presence.”

American Fork online marketing firm OrangeSoda also specializesin SEO. “The Internet is an incredible disruptive technology. Soevery industry is being shaken up,” said OrangeSoda’s manager ofonline marketing Dan Garfield, who said his company has enjoyedsteady growth.

Still, solid media companies like the Herald look askance atsuch upstarts. “Pure-play companies and internet marketingcompanies are not able to offer a one-stop opportunity andtypically have variable pricing and no guaranteed impressions,”Ehrmantraut said.

One industry investing in SEO these days is home security.NorthStar Alarm decided in September to hire a marketing specialistwho is completely focused on the company’s online strategy. Themove bolstered results. The Orem firm now ranks third in Googlesearch for “Alarm company Utah,” securing a conspicuous spot.

This month, NorthStar created another position that will assistwith computer programming in SEO, underscoring the constantcompetition for Google’s page one.

“One of the most important things is to be proactive,” saidAnais Moody, the company’s marketing and communication specialist.”It’s hard to stay on top. Google is constantly changing itsalgorithm.” The 40-employee firm is getting helped from LeadGenix,a local SEO company.

NorthStar Alarm’s new computer programmer will also be taskedwith developing a mobile phone application, the new megaphone formarketing.

According to Web publication TechCrunch, local search by mobilephones has grown 50 percent year over year and become the No. 1access method for local information.

Garfield of OrangeSoda agrees that mobile search has become thenorm and Yellow Pages has fallen far behind. Industry expertspredict business search will not only be done on the phone butthrough friends’ recommendations on social media websites likeFacebook. Even Google itself, feeling the pressure to includesocial circles in its search, recently unveiled a website calledGoogle Plus.

The website, which quickly grabbed the public’s attention, usescircles of families, friends and interests, potentially assigningtrust to people by topic.

“Until now, a Google search on local businesses provided youwith knowledge; it didn’t give you the ability to determine what’sright, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s bad,” said Mike Burns,part-owner of Gimme Creative, a local upstart that specializes inonline social tools for businesses.

The data on online recommendations are stark: More than 70percent of respondents in a Harris Interactive study claim familymembers’ or friends’ reviews exert a “great deal” or “fair amount”of influence on a decision to use or not use a particular company,brand or product.

So if Google is today’s Yellow Pages, will social media be theYellow Pages of tomorrow?

As for Life Enhancement Center’s Gaede, he says he’s finallydecided to hire a professional to revamp his addiction recoverywebsite. “We’re going to have someone re-design it for us,” hesaid.

“We’re going to be adding links to our Facebook and Twitterpages.”

Tudou’s founder and CEO Gary Wang, in an interview Wednesday, spoke about the IPO, Tudou’s place in the China market, and the differences in the China online video market versus the U.S. market. Wang previously worked at Bertelsmann Group and Hughes Electronics and received degrees from INSEAD, Johns Hopkins and the College of Staten Island.

Considering the market volatility, Wang is happy that investors now understand Tudou’s story, he says. “The most important thing is we’ve gone through the whole road show and had good meetings with a lot of investors,” Wang says. “We’re pretty happy investors liked the story and that they’re with us.”

So what is its story? Tudou, like Youku, is somewhat similar to YouTube in China. Tudou had 90.1 million users as of June, or 16.2% of the massive China online video market, second to Youku with 21.5%, according to Analysis International . Youku went public in December , jumping 161% in its first day of trading.

Tudou’s main revenue source is online video advertising on its website. Unlike in the U.S., in China online video monetizes roughly the same on user-generated videos and premium licensed videos, Wang says. “In China, brands are more open and want user-generated (content) coverage rather than just trying to place on front premium content,” Wang says. “We can monetize very well across the entire library.”

In addition to revenue from video ads, Tudou has been diversifying into two other areas”mobile video content and sub-licensing video that it licenses from other providers. With the growth of mobile market in China, Tudou is increasingly focusing on mobile video. Tudou has partnered with carriers such as China Mobile and China Unicom, providing video for those carriers’ users.

Tudou has been generating revenue on mobile since January 2010 through subscriptions or on a pay-per-clip basis. Tudou shares revenue with the carriers. On China Mobile alone, there were 15.1 million users as of June. Tudou also works with manufacturers and has its service pre-installed on 15 million devices so far. Tudou also has a popular mobile film festival, which is now in its fifth year, which encourages videomakers to compete for prizes.

Tudou faces competition not only from Youku but also other China Internet companies like Baidu, Tencent, Sina and Shanda. Tudou differentiates itself from its competitors in three areas, Wang says. First in user-generated content, Tudou has grown organically, since it was the first online video site in China, launching in January 2005. That is still Tudou’s main focus in providing the best content and user experience, he says.

But a couple years ago Tudou added premium content and it has been showing more and more content licensed from professional producers. “Content producers in China have become more willing to make content available to online video platforms,” Wang says. “Premium content has become quite a massive traffic generator.”

But premium content has also become somewhat commoditized across online video sites in China. So in November 2010, Tudou released its own produced shows. It has produced two drama series, “That Love Comes,” which had 40 million views as of December and another show called “Utopia Office.” These series are also licensed to other sites. “In China there are very few content-exclusive businesses,” Wang says. “Almost none. All content is available across all video platforms. Users cannot distinguish across various sites. For us, original content in a crucial way increases our appeal to users and our brand.”

Wang sees all three types of video”user-generated, premium and in-house produced”as a necessary mix or “total experience” for users.

There have been recent news reports of a number of China-based companies that have not been able to IPO in the U.S. due to accounting problems. Wang says he can’t comment on other companies, but says Tudou has been venture-funded almost from the very beginning and follows international standards. Investors include Singapore-based Crescent Peak, Singapore government-owned Sennett Investments, IDG, Granite Global Ventures, General Catalyst, Jafco, Venrock, Capital Today, and Wang’s personal fund. “Our entire corporate governance system is very much up to global standards,” Wang says. “On the other hand with the team at Tudou we have a lot of international experience.”

As for the main difference between the online video market in China versus the U.S., it’s the availability of content, Wang says. In China, movies or television shows are available online “almost immediately” after they are on television or in movie theaters. That in turn draws more online video audiences. There are no “windows” for exclusive providers like HBO before general DVD release as in the U.S. “Users in China have much greater room of access to new content,” Wang says. “In the U.S. it’s still very much ‘windowing’ restrictions.”

In addition, the content that China viewers watch is much more diverse in terms of country of origin, from the U.S. to China, South Korea and Japan, Wang says. There are no large conglomerates that produce much of the content as there are in the U.S., which benefits companies like Tudou, he says. “There’s various shows, and it’s more fragmented in terms of content owners as a percentage of the overall library,” Wang says. “So there’s greater room to work with content partners to bring content online and you have a good deal more flexibility.”

As for Tudou, the company generated $17.8 million in its most recent June quarter, up 94.5% from a year ago. But it also had a net loss of $12.0 million in the June quarter, an increase of 74.5%.

The IPO gives the company cash to scale out even more to take on competitors. Wang says the online video market is growing fast and believes there will be multiple winners. But getting to scale quickly is key, he says. “The winning formula is all about scale… We can invest in content, bandwidth, improving experience and getting more content to the platform,” he says.

‘Networking Interruption’

Microsoft emailed a note Thursday to its Office 365 customers: “On August 17, customers served from one of our North American data centers lost access to email services included in the Office 365 suite,” the note said.

“Preliminary investigation indicates that a networking interruption in one of our North America data centers” caused the Office 365 problem, the note continues. The outage occurred between 11:30 a.m. PDT and 2:40 p.m. PDT.

The note indicated that the cause was being investigated and the data center’s networking facilities “have been remediated” to make sure an outage doesn’t happen again, Microsoft said.

Office 365 customers automatically will receive a credit equal to 25 percent of their monthly invoice, the company said.

The problems come at a particularly bad time for both Office 365 and CRM Online. Office 365 was launched officially only in June, and the company promoted the idea of IT departments moving from using Office locally to using it via Microsoft’s cloud-based service. The company emphasized the reliability, availability and redundant backup systems in place.

Jacuzzi in the Server Room

As part of the marketing push, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had related the story of a small-business owner who was considering putting a Jacuzzi in his server room, because of all the space left over from moving to a cloud-hosted Office suite.

In January, the company released Dynamics CRM Online, the cloud version of its 2011 product, at introductory pricing of $34 per user. That was less than half the price for comparable products from Salesforce.com and Oracle, which are the main competitors that Microsoft was taking on.

While cloud-based services are all the rage, they come with risks, as recent events have shown. Business services from Intuit and Amazon have gone down, and, on the consumer side, Sony’s game and music services suffered an epic outage after hackers compromised users’ personal data.

Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said the Microsoft outages raised the kind of concerns that “people have about using hosted solutions for their businesses.” In this case, she felt that Microsoft might not have shown the kind of “transparency” that customers might expect, such as updates on when services would be restored, what the issues were, and so on.

“Things like this will happen,” she said, adding that the company has to keep customers informed in order to retain their confidence.

Budgeting is such a turnoff that some financial professionals won’t even use the term with clients.

But some online budgeting sites aim to take the tedium out of money management. And the latest entry even tries to make a game of it – with cash prizes.

Payoff.com, which helps users manage their way out of debt, officially launched at the end of June. You earn badges, like the Scouts, for making progress, and those trophies render you eligible to win money.

So far, Payoff says, it has disbursed $12,000 in $25 checks to members.

“Nobody really tells you that you are doing a good job with your money,” says Scott Saunders, Payoff’s 35-year-old founder, who was in and out of debt in his early 20s. “You only hear from the bank if you missed a payment or you’re late.

“We want to clap for people when they are doing the right thing.”

If you don’t know where your paycheck goes – and financial planners say many of us don’t – an online budgeting site can help. The sites gather transaction data daily from credit cards and online bank accounts and then put expenditures in categories such as groceries and gas. Through pie charts or graphs, the sites show how you spend your dollars month after month.

Most sites are free for the consumer. They typically receive revenue from ads or by offering their service to financial institutions.

To use them, though, you must provide usernames and passwords to your accounts. The sites say they have bank-quality security. Transactions are accessed on a read-only basis, so the sites can’t be used to move money from account to account. The sites never ask for your Social Security number.

Jim Bruene, editor of Online Banking Report, says he knows of no security problems with the sites, although one now-defunct operation revealed users’ purchases to others.

One of the earliest – and the most dominant budget site – is four-year-old Mint.com. It was purchased two years ago by Intuit, the tax software company, and claims to have more than 6 million registered users.

Among them is Patrick Collins, a financial planner in Towson. He has used Mint for years and advises his clients to do so, too.

“Most people don’t either enjoy or have the time to figure out their budget,” he says. “When you ask them to track three to six months’ worth of expenses, it’s a labor and a hard thing for them to do.”

By having clients use Mint, Collins can quickly see what they spend money on and can make recommendations on where to cut back.

Faithful users say budgeting online works.

Lori Biancofiori of Chicago signed up for Mint after her wedding two years ago. The newlyweds used credit cards to partly pay for their nuptials, and later for living expenses when the groom lost his job after the honeymoon.

“We were freaked out and had no money in savings. I needed to understand what we are spending our money on,” says Biancofiori, a 33-year-old software trainer.

With Mint, she says, they discovered they spent hundreds of dollars a month eating out, even though their monthly grocery bill was $700.

“It opened our eyes to everything we spend,” says Biancofiori, who checks Mint daily. The couple’s goal now is to spend no more than $100 a month at restaurants. Mint lets them know when they approach their limit.

Since May, Paride “Steve” Crudi of East Hartford has been trying to get a refund for a four-night stay at the Piccolo Hotel Nogara in Nogara, Italy, he booked through Venere.com, a European site owned by Expedia . Crudi, a wine steward at Apricots Restaurant in Farmington, made the reservation in February for a planned trip in April to Vinitaly, the world’s largest wine exhibition, in Venora. Crudi, who stayed with friends, booked the room for more friends who also planned to attend the event.

“Based on the information online,” he says, “I believed I had three weeks to confirm or cancel the reservation.”

Within two weeks, he says, he received his monthly American Express statement that already showed a $1,440 charge for the hotel reservation. And his friends, it turns out, didn’t need the room. Crudi promptly asked American Express to remove the charge, then called Venere to cancel the reservation.

“I was told clearly and categorically that it would be taken care of,” he says.

When his next American Express statement arrived, his account had been credited.

“Unfortunately,” says Crudi, “the story does not end there.”

Crudi says American Express soon told him that because Venere challenged the charge reversal, his account once again would be charged $1,440. Venere said bookings for the April trip’s dates were nonrefundable.

“I was understandably surprised and confused,” says Crudi, “because this was not the information I had accessed online. If they told me at the time I made the reservation that it was nonrefundable, I would have kept the reservation and at least gotten something in return for my money.”

Next, Crudi called the hotel manager directly and was told his reservation, and charges, were canceled at American Express’ request only to be reinstated by Venere/Expedia.

“He said he was still willing to approve the refund if [Venere/Expedia] would agree,” says Crudi.

So Crudi called Venere, which told him it was the hotel blocking the refund.

“I continued to be caught in the middle,” says Crudi.

Crudi says he called Expedia multiple times, with no resolution. Despite repeated requests, he says, no supervisor ever called him back.

Desperate, he contacted TBL. If this saga sounds at all familiar, TBL recounted another Expedia refund tug-of-war with Cy Yavuzturk of Burlington last month (read it at cour.at/kra62G ). Yavuzturk, a mechanical engineer, had booked a room at a Washington, D.C. , hotel for a meeting about Department of Energy research projects that was later canceled. Yavuzturk, denied a refund by both the hotel and Expedia, is out $868.

Expedia told Yavuzturk it was bound by the hotel’s policy. When contacted by TBL about Crudi’s experience, it again said it followed the hotel’s policy – even though Crudi says the hotel said it was acting under Expedia’s constraints.

“It’s very important to note that in these situations Expedia does everything they can do to advocate on the customer’s behalf to try and secure a refund from the hotel,” says Expedia spokesman David McNamee. “In Mr. Crudi’s situation, all agents involved attempted to contact the hotel on his behalf to get a refund approved.”

This time, it worked. Expedia, the hotel and Venere go-between, arranged a $1,440 electronic transfer scheduled to arrive in Crudi’s bank account Friday morning. It also offered him a $200 travel credit for the inconvenience.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Crudi.

Reader’s Voice

“I am visiting Connecticut to help my father, who just got out of a short-term stay in a nursing home.

“I am a HICAP/SHIP (Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program/ State Health Insurance Assistance Program) Medicare counselor in San Francisco and just wanted to thank you for advocating for these Medicare beneficiaries. (Read “Elderly Haddam Couple Spent More Than $5,000 In Autopays On Health Coverage They Didn’t Know They Had” at cour.at/o11LoL.)

“I also wanted to let you know that CHOICES (Connecticut’s program for Health insurance assistance, Outreach, Information and referral, Counseling, Eligibility Screening), the SHIP in Connecticut, also would, and could, have helped these Medicare beneficiaries with this problem.

“Call CHOICES at 1-800-994-9422.”

Christine Tschummi, San Francisco

By now, you’re probably familiar with local discount-of-the-day sites like LivingSocial , Groupon , and their many imitators. You may even subscribe to a few and get regular dealssent to your inbox andphone.

Guess what? Banks are ready to get in on the action and offer you some bargains too. But here’s the interesting part: They don’t need to target you by vague geography. By virtue of your credit and debit card purchases, they have insider info — like where you shop, how much you spend, and how often.

Learn more from Money Talks News founder Stacy Johnson in the 90-second video below, then read on for more details.

Banks aren’t exactly selling your personal shopping details. But through third parties, they’re starting to partner with retailers to offer you deals based on your purchase history. For example, if you regularly pay with plastic at Walgreens, your bank might partner with Rite Aid and include a 20%-off Rite Aid coupon with your online credit card statement. You get a discount for trying a new drugstore, and the bank gets a commission from Rite Aid for every coupon that gets used.

It’s a potentially lucrative business: By 2015, banks could be raking in up to $1.7 billion a year by helping merchants target shoppers, according to Boston-based research firm Aite Group . They also believe this kind of “merchant-funded incentive” could replace traditional debit and credit card rewards programs.

But right nowthis tactic is still in its infancy– Wells Fargo , Citibank, and Discover have already launched programs, and others will follow this fall, according to CNN — there are bound to be unanswered questions.

For instance, what ifconsumersmake a purchase assuming they will get a discount or creditbut itdoesn’t show up on their credit card statement? With whom do they take it up: the store, the bank, or the third-party company that acts as the middleman? How do people concerned about their privacy opt out? (You are opted in by default.)

If banks do uncover a new revenue stream by using your personal shopping information to offer customized deals, it could be win/win. With a new source of income, banks might feel less pressure to raise feesfor services like checking accounts. And you save moneywith discounts and other offers.

But forgive us if we’re a little skeptical. Given how banks handled the swipe fee issue by raising consumer fees months before the new rules even went into effect, we take any new sources of bank revenue and consumer “benefit” with a rather large grain of salt.

If you’ve been thinking of shopping for a new bank, here’s a quick primer:

Look locally, not nationally . Big banks have more overhead, more investors, and more levels of management that separate them from the average consumer. Smaller local banks may offer better deals, especially as they try to lure away megabank customers and establish themselves.

Check out credit unions . Even better, turn to a nonprofit, community-based financial service. They generally have better savings and loan rates and charge lower fees. You may be eligible to join a local credit union through your job or based on the community where you live. Look them up at the Credit Union National Association and compare fees.

Break the news to your bank. Let your bank know you’re ready to walk out on them over crazy fees.Until you leave, you have some leverage and might work something out. Big banks are never going to care more about you than when you’re about to leave.

Get a switch kit. If you do switch, your new bank or credit union probably has a package of paperwork you’ll need to transfer your direct deposit and tell your debtors that your money has moved. At a credit union, they may even offer to do this paperwork for you. For free.

Moreon Money Talks News and MSN Money:

The 5 best credit card sign-up bonuses

5 tips for finding the right credit card

Mobile payments: Convenience at a cost?

More banks testing debit card fees

Calculator: Is your budget in balance?

What’s next from banks? Prepaid cards