Todays interview is with Jason Chance of JCCommerce.com. Some of you might know him better from his other product, Secure Delivery. If you know of Secure Delivery but don’t read Jason’s blog, you’re missing out.

• Question 1: You’ve shared a lot of details related to the development and growth of SecureDelivery. Do you feel that the use of the jccommerce.com blog has helped with the popularity of Secure Delivery?
  

  In the beginning, before anyone started using Secure Delivery, my
  personal blog at jcCommerce.com was the top (and pretty much only)
  referrer of traffic to Secure Delivery. Now we get the bulk of our
  traffic from Google, sellers who use Secure Delivery and recommend it to
  others, etc. and jcCommerce attributes maybe 1% of traffic- but in the
  beginning my blog was it.

  The real value of having jcCommerce has been the ability to network with
  others through comments and trackbacks, and even start friendships with
  people I have met while blogging. The whole idea for Secure Delivery
  came from talking to readers of my blog who wanted a better alternative
  to what was out there, so in all honesty my blog is at least partially
  responsible for the start of Secure Delivery.

• Question 2: Can you give us an example of the benefit of having 37% more “YEAH!”? 😉
  

  I added that tagline along with the exclamation point in my site title
  partly as a joke and partly as a statement to the world of money making
  bloggers. I was talking with a few friends one day about how serious
  other bloggers were, how everyone made themselves out to be “experts” in
  whatever field they were targeting even if they weren’t, and how it
  seems most money making bloggers inflate their importance in both the
  internet in general as well as their readers lives.

  I guess what I am trying to say (and the “benefit” if you will) of
  having 37% more “YEAH!” is that I’m not one of those guys who treats
  blogging as Serious Business. You are not nearly as important as you
  think you are if someone can kill your message with a mouse click or
  flip of the power switch no matter how much you tell yourself
  otherwise. I don’t make myself out to be an expert online money maker,
  programmer, or whatever. jcCommerce was first and foremost my personal
  blog where I could post whatever I wanted and I’d like to continue
  that. I write about what I want without thinking of the monetary value
  of posts and I try to have fun while doing it. If you want post after
  post of linkbait there are plenty of blogs that serve that up daily. If
  you want a to read about a guy trying his best to make some money online
  while having a little bit of fun then jcCommerce might be your place.

  That and I might flip out and post a rant. I like those too.

• Question 3: There has been some talk recently about whether affiliate links should be banned if not clearly disclosed. Do you have a stance on the subject?
  

  Much like my quasi-libertarian political views, I don’t think anything
  should be banned 🙂 I really don’t have a problem with affiliate links
  as the affiliate is staking their reputation on the products they
  recommend. Like any other promotional method, affiliate linking
  practices are self-regulating based on the reputation of the affiliate.
  If an affiliate shills crap products with no value then they will soon
  lose credibility and their readers will be less apt to purchase
  recommended products in the future. Based on this I think it is in the
  affiliate’s best interest to disclose what products they recommend vs.
  what products they are merely commenting on, but no, I don’t think there
  should be any requirement.

  A non-disclosure ban is a pipe-dream anyway- how would you enforce it?
  There are ways around any link-blocking strategy and rules and laws do
  not enforce ethics- something I think many people forget.

• Question 4: What were some of the deciding factors in pairing the blog with SecureDelivery?
  

  I write about Secure Delivery on jcCommerce because its my personal blog
  and thats what I’m working on right now. You write about what you know-
  as one of the two guys behind Secure Delivery I happen to know a lot
  about that particular subject 🙂

• Question 5: You are pretty well immersed in the ecommerce world. Do you see ecommerce as being a market that has a lot of growth left or is it becoming saturated?
  

  I think the ecommerce market has a lot of growth left although I have
  not seen much innovation of late. In the past few years I have
  converted to almost exclusively online shopping because it fits in to my
  busy schedule, and I don’t see this trend changing for myself or
  others. There are a lot of options online that make it harder for small
  shops to compete but unique, specialty items sell well for smaller
  vendors just as specialty shops do well in the brick-and-mortar world.

  What I would like to see is broader acceptance of shared authentication
  / purchase information such as Google Checkout and aggregator services
  that recommend products based on my buying preferences that are beyond
  basic services offered by Amazon and the like today to name just a
  couple. It seems to me that ecommerce development has become stagnant
  as of late and some innovation that would make it easier to purchase
  online would be welcome.

A special thanks to Jason for what may be the best interview of the week.  I truly appreciate all of my interviewees’ taking the time out of their busy schedule to entertain my questions.

If you haven’t given Secure Delivery a try, it truly is a leader in it’s industry.  And Jason’s writings on his blog are sometimes very invaluable insights into the underpinnings of Secure Delivery.  Other times, it’s just good writing. 😉