0 The Tech Behind That Wine Website

One thing that most of us don’t realize about buying online is that there is often a lot of technology behind each and every purchase.
As an owner of an online wine club I can attest that the process that goes on behind the scenes of an industry, like the wine industry, that is highly regulated would surprise a lot of people.

Credit Card & Billing Checks

Like most ecommerce sites, you have the regular checks of credit card details and billing zip codes.  The goal here is simple and straight forward, to make sure the money is available either in the bank account in question or on the credit line and to ensure that the person ordering the wine is in fact, the owner of the card.  You might be surprised to learn that only a zip code is checked and a name is not associated with the credit card in any way.

Shipping Address & State Regulations Checks

Secondly, wine offers a second set of unusual checks on the ecommerce side of things.  After Prohibition ended over eighty years ago, the federal government decided that each state should be allowed to make their own alcohol laws.  As you might expect, that has led each and every state to allow a different set of laws which govern anyone’s ability to ship wine into their state.  A few examples to show how careful and meticulous any check of a shipping address has to be for wine:
California: As you might expect given that it is America’s largest wine producing state (by far) the law for shipping wine into California is considered reciprocal.  If you want access to America’s largest wine market of consumers, you have to allow California wineries and retailers to ship wine into your state.
Utah: Given the religious nature of the state (in the Mormon religion drinking alcohol, like caffeine is forbidden) it isn’t surprising that there are no direct shipments of wine to consumers.  Now, like anything there are certain ways around those type of laws.  I know at least a handful of wineries that ship wine to a place of worship, where it can be marked as sacramental and then passed on to the ordering consumer.  This isn’t common though and for my wine business, Utah is a no go state.

Texas: Without a doubt, the most frustrating state for my online wine club.  We have a ton of family and friends in Texas.  It’s the biggest market for wine that we aren’t allowed in.  The laws are simple.  If you’re a winery, you are generally able to get a permit to ship wine into the state.  Out of state retailers are not allowed to have permits, unless you are big enough to open a warehouse and move jobs into the state.  It’s a weird law and one where a state with the idelogical bend of Texas (free market love and all) should be allowing all the competition into the state, right?
In any case, I hope you have enjoyed that fun and slightly frustrating look into the world of wine being sold online.

Featured images:

•  Image courtesy of MyBlogGuest

Mark Aselstine is the owner of Uncorked Ventures, an online wine club focused on servicing consumers looking for the best wine around, not the cheapest.

2 8 Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger Should Have

Who doesn’t like free things? In my opinion, unless you’re freely giving used socks, chances are high that I’ll take it. Recently I found myself in quite the riddle. I had maxed-out my disc drive with free blogging tools. With such a big amount of free tools on the market to bloggers, UN agency is to mention what’s definitely worth the go, and what’s not. therefore there i used to be, mouse in hand, associate degree endless provide of free blogging tools, and not a clue on wherever to start. i made a decision that if there was progressing to be any hope in freeing-up some gigabytes, i used to be progressing to got to consistently review all of those tools and choose once and for all what’s obtaining used, and what’s obtaining purged.

So once several months of little around with free on-line goodies, I finally settled on my better of the most effective. What most thespian ME to those specific tools, was that every one was developed with the only purpose of serving to you, the blogger, improve your web site. This list is my greatest hits compilation. These area unit the tools i feel any blogger desires so as to achieve changing into a professional blogger while not breaking the bank. All of the blogging tools on this list area unit fully free.

1.Gmail, Google Calendar and Drive

A professional blogger is aware of the way to use his email account to his improvement, and Gmail could be a nice free email account that will assist you organize your blogging world. Google’s calendar permits you to manage your day-to-day schedule, and prompt you of vital returning deadlines and conferences, whereas Google Drive could be a glorious place to showing neatness store revealed, and unpublished works.

2. Google Adwords

It should come as no surprise that Google controls most aspects of the web world. although it should be straightforward to huff and puff concerning all of Google’s rules and regulations, the large Guy will offer some pretty cracking free tools, that may facilitate create any blogger’s life that abundant easier. Google Adwords is a nice free tool  to market your blog, or business through an internet campaign. With this free service, you offer some keywords from your web site, and Google provides the platform to allow you to start out gaining more recognition, and bucks with CPC and CPM campaigns.

3. Google Analytics and Google Webmaster

I really like Google. however extremely currently all the way down to business, Google Analytics, and Google Webmaster are 2 free must-haves for any blogger. First off, Google Analytics permits you to observe and perceive your traffic. Any smart blogger is aware of that the key to success is knowing his or her audience. With Google Analytics, you'll be able to spy on what your users are up to whereas they're browsing your web site. determine wherever your traffic is coming back from, however long your readers be your journal, and what posts your readers love most. On the flip facet, Google Webmaster let’s you retain a watchful eye on your blog’s blueprints. With this valuable free tool, you'll be able to look for any links that cause dead ends, further as pages that aren’t obtaining high scores on Google search. 

4. Feedburner

In order to be a professional blogger, you've got ought to have your ear to the bottom. currently I don’t mean grabbing your portable computer and blogging within the vertebrate position on the ground. Being a professional blogger means that being in-the-know with what's happening on alternative websites and belongings your followers simply gain access to your work as it’s announce. so as to become a professional blogger it’s essential to deem your feed. Google’s free tool Feedburner is a simplethanks to produce RSS Feed for your diary. The blogger UN agency permits users to follow his feed, is setting himself informed a path to nice exposure on the online. there's associate degree endless quantity of free tools that area unit kind of like Feedburner, however in my humble opinion this can be the foremost easy and economical tool to induce the work done.

5. Paint.Net

If you’ve got the money, then Photoshop is that the sensible way to go. Paint.Net may be a nice free blogging tool that permits you to edit your pictures like sort of a professional. The tool needs a little of patience and power before you'll very start, however some time and energy are going to be well spent once you begin banging out some National Geographic-worthy photos. 

6.  imonomy

 This free tool professional blogger’s best dream. This beat one service makes scouring the web for high-quality, copyright-free pictures a factor of the past. Not solely will this knock-out tool save time by mechanically providing bloggers with free pictures to match the content on their web content, imonomy conjointly will increase page views, and improves user engagement. With such a large amount of free image tools offered to bloggers currently, imonomy extremely helps slender down the choices.

7. Plagium

If you thought they were strict concerning plagiarism at school, attempt re-posting someone’s work on the web. the globe Wide Wide doesn’t assume too extremely of a thief, thus to create certain you don’t accidentally get caught within the wrong crowd, here’s a free blogging tool that's guaranteed to become your new best crony. Plagium permits you to make sure that the new guest post you're getting ready to publish hasn’t already been announce in other places. This free tool can allow you to keep one step before the sport, by permitting you to post confidently that the content you're golf shot out for the globe to ascertain is exclusive. By being certain your new posts haven’t been traced from in other places, you're conjointly making certain that your SEO won’t take a unexpected hit

8. MailChimp

Before you begin mail blasting, i might suggest you provide this free blogging tool a glance. Email promoting is a difficult game, and unless you've got a pocket packed with gold coins to pay on knowledgeable campaign, creating your emails stand out is a challenge. With MailChimp, you get a free, and artistic tool that permits you to style the proper email to shoot to your followers. thus whether or not you're associate degree amateur or semi-professional blogger wanting to travel professional, MailChimp is certainly price a strive so your emails don’t get unnoticed.