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Business activities thrive on several concurrent techniques and mechanisms. Internet marketing and web-oriented business is taking new shape and new dimensions are gaining importance. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) across the globe have started experiencing the need for adopting improvised technological strategies and more ‘Information Technology (IT)’ based approaches.

“Personalization” is one such aspect that has witnessed sea changes during past many years. Maintaining constant contacts with the customers, visitors, and viewers has become a vital factor in maintaining the profitability of the business. Sometimes, it becomes obvious and necessary to resell a product or service and make the previous customers understand that why they were offered the first chance in first place. Repeated orders and re-orders are quite often much more profitable in comparison to beginning a new business activity. This strategy helps in reducing the acquisition costs and advantages the discount offers.

Some of the best websites and blogs are what Buzz Bruggeman describes as ‘intelligence agents’. These information media generally have constant updating of contents and current posts that would be of beneficial interests to their target audience, in their understanding.

For such websites and blogs, the golden rule applies, “Try to put yourself in your reader’s and customer’s shoes and figure out how you would want to be treated”, says Edward Craine. It is a “Top to Bottom” approach. “If you don’t do proper things, you’re bound to fail,” he says.

Benedict J.frederick, President of ‘Frederick Realty’ in Baltimore has positive believes about this. In his views it is really helpful to develop “some unique knowledge”. A good blogger must find its niche and should go deep in to that niche and then he can become an invaluable resource to people.

Personalization is one such aspect for any web based business in which taking a few extra steps would always be beneficial for both the business as well as the reader. It helps a reader to remain in constant touch with the business owner.”My goal is always to leave clients with more than they expected. It is not just that I do the job but that they really get value from what I do”, says Deborah E. Harry, CCIM, President of Deborah Harry & Associates in Elverson, Pa. “I believe in building relationships. It is for the long time, not for just once”, she says.

Personalization strategies ensure build up the reputation of a website or a blog. Next step would be to advertise this reputation. Future readers and visitors are more likely to believe certain reputation advertising through the “word of mouth” if they happen to know that somebody just like them has already experienced it. A website always grows exponentially with the help of such reputation and experience stories.

Referrals, testimonials, and recommendations are some of the other important tools for the success of a website that helps in ensuring the coming back of a visitor. “when I asked people to write them for me, a trend was established. The writers felt that I made them look good to their clients”, says Harry. She now asks for a letter of recommendation. “I’ve found my readers are very supportive and happy to help me”, Harry Comments.

For bloggers, no matter how glowing a word of mouth recommendation is, it is still necessary to keep the blog and blogger’s name in front of past and future visitors. A nice combination of well planned marketing activities and updated informative posts would definitely of much help. Craine explains this concept lucidly,” people have an understanding that when you’re just freely giving information, you’re a person they want to stay in touch with. People love them. They want to know when the next story is coming”.

‘Feedback Surveys’ from the readers are of immense help in improving a website. Constant feedbacks keep the business owner always on its toes. An online survey is one of the easiest, fastest, most convenient, and almost inexpensive mode of gathering information about the reader’s choices and the changing trends.’ A Note of Thanks’ in response is as mandatory as anything else. It will further strengthen the inter-personal bonds between the website and the reader. A feedback always makes a customer feel special for its contribution.

A blog is the true reflection of its creator. It demonstrates the creator’s concepts thoughts, vision, and communications, to the entire internet world. Bloggers often reveal so many things about themselves without opening even a single word about them.

A good blog and a well organized website tell the whole story in itself. We find many websites having just a jumble of images and text imposed as momentos. But a well designed, well conceptualized and well managed website will always be more beneficial to the business objectives. Just a collection of links, ads, banners, and some irrelevant text posts would lead to nowhere in web-based business.

Updating the website therefore becomes a key factor. All links on the website should be properly placed and comfortably opening for the visitors else the visitor will just move on. A neglected website or a blog would never be a profitable or popular concept.

“Create the best website that you can with the knowledge that you have. You will never be finished, as there will always be more to say and show”, says Richard Lowe, Jr.

There are varieties of means to ensure continual updating of a website. You could place a message board to start virtual conversations with your visitors. You can also adopt a weekly column or an associated ‘eZine’ as an innovative idea in order to get people to come back. Even if you’ve said everything there is to say, perhaps you can add few pictures, sound and videos or change the layout or presentation. “What’s New” section on a website will definitely serve visitors and customers and they will come back again and again just to see what you have added new.

Periodic ‘eZine’ helps maintaining contacts with the readers and communicating them about new happenings. Similarly, the ‘newsgroups’ and ‘email discussion lists’ such as ‘egroups’ and ‘topica’ are also gaining popularity among the internet marketers and readers both. Posting pertinent information at such communicative platforms helps people to visit back to the website for further exploration of their interests.

“If you want people to come back to your website, you had better be keeping it up-to-date, accurate and adding new content all of the time. Otherwise, your readers will grow and move on to greener pastures”, says Richard Lowe Jr.

‘Personalization’ is therefore an extremely beneficial technique that helps making a visitor come back. If a website or a blog welcomes with smile each time a visitor or reader comes back, a friendly positive tone is automatically established between the two. It is one of the most customer-pleasing features that can be added to the web -business and above all, it costs nothing but the efforts only.

People have become almost immune with most of the conventional websites that are present on the internet today. They all look alike. An element of surprise may hit anyone’s eyes and prompt saying “Wow, This is unbelievable!”. This would help any webmaster cutting through the clutter and make people generate “word of mouth” and say “You need to see this, it is incredible indeed”. Among the big shifts that you can select for your unique website would be shifting the website-marketing from a “riding-shotgun” approach to a well planned strategically designed surprise oriented campaign.

An interesting ’surprise twist’ has recently been offered by ‘Disney’ with its “The Year of a Million Dreams”. This brilliant twist says,” imagine walking through one of the ‘Walt Disney Theme Parks’ when a cast member taps you on the shoulder to offer you a dream come true. Right now, over a million extra-special dreams, some thought impossible, are being randomly awarded to people just like you”.

Surprise web-marketing need to follow generally the golden oldie “giveaway” thumb-rule. We are observing that many of the web-marketers are shifting their attention to this thumb rule, though slowly. Giving away of ‘eBooks’ is one such helpful tool that certainly attracts people. One more innovative concept has slipped in these days. Some of the popular websites and many of the blog marketers also have started giving away “concept papers” and “white papers” to their viewers and customers for no cost. These kinds of free offers are becoming very popular among the websites that are focused on information sharing concepts. Subject and field specific websites are also adopting these new techniques in order to enhance their reach to the common readers. Recently we are observing a sudden rush in the news specific websites also. These kinds of giveaways are actually ‘knowledge enhancers’ and many people love to have them.

A simple surprise element on any website has very high chances of kicking away the annoyance of a viewer on an average. It helps him forgetting and forgiving the wasteful clicks .An element of surprise will always keep a website alive and fresh as it would attract many new and come back visitors to have a feel of the surprise.

Website marketing has full potential if combined with surprises. It’s the key to great entertainment. Surprise fuels great marketing, creates innovative opportunities and generates revenue. Website generally thrives on updating of its contents regularly and the advertisements pushing in the revenues. There exists a large gap in creative conceptualization and marketing of a website. This large gap contains immense potential for creating multiple opportunities with creativity. Montreal entrepreneur Andy Nullman, an authority on surprise marketing says, “small businesses have a great chance to make a difference in their marketplace by using the power of surprise to delight and astound their customers”.

Internet marketers and website marketers need to remember always the golden guiding principle, “little things make a huge difference”. In this world where people tell their friends and believe what their own friends tell them. It is the “word of mouth” that drives sales up to great extent and “not ads for the umpteenth surprise sale that is not a surprise at all”, according to Rogers Wirelesses’ initiative “Share the Joy”.

Website marketers must also understand how to start with surprise marketing. Think what you did last month and try exploring new ideas in order to see if you can do something different. “Ask you, what we could do that we never dared to do?” says Andy Nullman. He further advises, “Marketing is about a relationship, and like all relationships, you have to keep it fresh”.

Surprise web-marketing is not a massive investment proposal in itself. Its cost effectiveness is also a surprising fact. Internet marketers are always leveraged with tactics. If one tactic does not click, try another one. Create one more buzz .After all the website marketers are their own masters. They can opt for more risks and do not require permissions for that. The risks involved in such type of ’surprise oriented website marketing’ are comparatively very light and a webmaster practically has nothing to loose much. A contest, for instance, may cost a few dollars more to the webmaster but the amount of website traffic that would be generated with such contests would be almost unimaginable. Surprise web-marketing thus proved to be a cost-effective technique to enhance the web traffic, page rankings, revenue, and of course the popularity among the viewers.

Surprise web-marketing will definitely add new tools to the existing approaches with low cost, high speed, flexibility and other components. Success depends much on the use of maneuver, surprise, and speed to find an opportunity. It is more like the fighter pilots who understand the importance of “getting inside” in a dogfight by turning and maneuvering quicker than the enemy to fix their guns on the enemy plane well before it comes to know the intentions. This clearly means that such type of web-marketing means knocks with fast and unpredictable tactics giving out surprises. Business with surprises is thus no less than the fighter’s war.

Yong Guan’s laboratory may be the driving engine for the future marketing safeguards for internet advertisers. With his five long formulas deriving various variants and constants would be the future guidelines for all those who are looking eagerly to make a fortune with internet marketing and advertising business. Yong Guan’s formulas contain all bad news for present and future cyber criminals. Yong Guan and his team of students at the ‘Iowa state University’ are working on the development of technologies for fighting the cyber crimes and making shopping more secure for common people around the world.

Yong Guan is Litton Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in collaboration with the ‘Iowa State University Research Foundation’ has also applied for a patent on this new technology that detects frauds.

“Click Fraud”, the new technology of Yong Guan, deals with the problem of false drives and campaigns for hitting the advertisements that are posted on millions of websites. Yong Guan says,” The invention will help online advertising companies such as Google and Yahoo reduce click fraud”.

Guan’s research is expected to facilitate millions of the computer and internet users across the globe. Most of these users do not have enough time and expertise to protect their machines from the growing frauds. They often do not have enough access to the recent security technologies and safeguard measures.

Security issues have multiple faces and the researchers are fighting on this front to solve the complex puzzles for past several decades.”And 30 years later we’re still working on them”, says Yong Guan.

Cyber crimes have many aspects and they are changing constantly. During the late nineties it used to be the hackers attacking computer systems. Since then things have taken a different track now. Trade and commerce is now becoming more online oriented and this online money transaction has attracted the cyber criminals for adopting new and advanced techniques for making frauds. To address the problem, Guan and his co-researchers are working on multiple projects in order to make computing more secure and hold cyber criminals accountable:

Yong Guan is on the verge of developing new technology and techniques that will extract the criminal evidences directly from the computers, network hardware, cell phones and other electronic devices. Guan has three projects in his hands right now. Each of these projects has a specific focus;

•  Network attack attribution to help investigators find the real origins of cyber criminals and attackers.
•  Click fraud detection to protect Internet advertising.
•  Auction fraud technology to quickly identify the people and their accomplices who run bogus Internet auctions.

These projects on which Yong Guan is working, also aim to improvise the security and working of the wireless communication networks.

The first project has an objective of finding out how a new secure network coding model can be generated and protected from attacks during its transmitting the network traffic. The conventional system used to send each individual message hop by hop until it reached its destination.

The new technology has made it differently now. It is based on network coding and cooperative relaying schemes. With this new set up the system sends and combines all messages in different groups. Guan said it’s like loading up a freight train and sending big loads down the line together. It’s a way to increase capacity and save energy. But this also becomes more vulnerable as putting all that network traffic together makes it easier for attackers to hit more targets with a single attack.

The second project of Young Guan intends to develop an exclusively location-based security system that would help almost all existing wireless technology. That means a person would have to be working in a specific place prior to having an access to documents over a wireless network. Such a system in place would be immensely useful for the government employees who are generally required handle the classified documents over wireless connections. Guan’s security system would only allow those documents to be viewed in designated secure rooms.

Yong Guan’s third project will help secure wired and wireless multicasts over the Internet. This will help in protecting and managing multiple lists of Internet accounts. For a software company it would serve many potential purposes. Such a company, for instance, would be able to limit the delivery of security patches to paying customers. Webcasters would also be benefiting with this technology. It will help them manage and limit access to their content.

Yong Guan is also making attempts to develop techniques for protecting the individual’s identity on the internet. Such technology will be immensely helpful for the internet users. Guan intends to develop a set of secure applications. One application, for instance will protect the individual’s medical record using online pharmacies while the other set of application will be preserving the identity of people who are taking part in some online voting system.

Yong Guan is definitely going to trouble the criminals. His technologies would detect the criminals and their bogus accomplices who intend to run bogus internet auctions on the internet. Future may be witnessing major developments and these technologies could develop as a tool that can be used in the courts also.

Yong Guan and his associates are spending long hours with cross-hatched lines on their laboratory whiteboard, struggling with their analyses, calculations and formula. They are sure working for all of us and we must thank them for their sincere efforts and wish them good luck.

Developers got good news last week. Launch of a new beta tool facilitating developers with integrated software as a service platform with application development environment by Salesforce.com created rippling waves.The company named this beta tool as “Force.com Development-as-a-Service”. Several features have been included with these tools like a metadata application programming interface for accessing database schema, user interface code, and business logic on the Salesforce.com platform.

Ariel Kelman, Senior Director of Salesforce.com’s platform product marketing says that the developers can also download from Salesforce.com “an application that enables development and deployment of software from an Eclipse-based integrated development environment”. “Eclipse”  is one of the popular open source development frameworks that the developers commonly use.

Developers can now set up ’sandboxes’ on the Salesforce.com platform. These sandboxes are completely on the same lines of the “SaaS Application”. The ’sandboxes’ will now help developers in building the codes and testing the codes in these sandboxes prior to moving the code for the production line.

Lastly, the Salesforce.com has also configured an API that is readily available for integrating the development process within source code control management systems’, like the ‘Perforce Software Products’ or the ‘IBM’s Rational software’.

Application of the Salesforce.com tool will also facilitate the developers in storing definitions of applications in their systems for sharing and collaboration with other developers. In order to facilitate the online collaboration among the developers, code of Salesforce.com share also supports Google’s online repository called Google Code.

This new launch by the Salesforce.com now reflects how Salesforce.com is adding more sophisticated development tools to its platform. The company also facilitates its customers and users along with the subscribers with an extended flexibility to tailor the company’s hosted customer relationship management and sales force automation software.

Salesforce.com also launched its Apex development platform during last summer. This development platform comprised a programming language and online development tools.

As a matter of fact, the enhanced flexibility in the application development is more favorable to the large corporations with an IT staff available to build on top of Salesforce.com’s core services.

The company was enjoying a good name among the ’small and medium sized businesses (SMBs)’ for a long time as a provider of online services for small and medium-sized businesses. It has climbed up the ladder now and serving the needs of larger businesses as well. “Dell“, the major computer manufacturing giant, joined the club as an esteemed customer last year. Another large company that is already having business with the Salesforce.com is the “Cisco Systems”.

Marc Benioff, the Chief Executive of the Salesforce.com predicted in the month of November last year that the company would expectedly achieve the $1 billion in annual revenues within a year. However, there is a stiff competition ahead.

Microsoft has also launched a new version of its CRM software, CRM 4.0, in the month of December last year. This CRM software of Microsoft provides the company and its hosting partners with the extended ability to host CRM in much higher volumes. This will in turn put a big challenge before Salesforce.com. Microsoft has among its future plans to launch its new and much improved SaaS’ version, called “CRM Live”, sometime during the first half of the current year.

Developers and experts will definitely find this service as one of the more beneficial option with much extended features. Salesforce.com’s new ‘Force.com Development-as-a-Service’ is in developer preview and awaits developers to have a look in to at the company’s developer site. The company intends to make the tools available in the markets for general applications for the customers sometime this year only.

As the web based business is growing exponentially some key issues need to be looked in to having a holistic view. Some of the business makers having a business specific domain prefer to park the domain and on the other side businesses prefer to develop a domain for making a fortune. Experts have different opinions about both of these concepts.Kevin Leto discussed this issue at length in his writings, “When looking at the debate of Parking vs. Development, much depends on the objectives a domain owner has for his portfolio and the types and quality of his domains”.

In common parlance, a high quality type-in domain will normally have a higher ‘Click through Rate’ (CTR) on a ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC) page, usually 30% to 40% or even more. On the other hand, a web site will generally have a ‘CTR’ of just 5% to 10%. Because of this situation there is a drop in revenues initially.

Ironically, a ‘Pay Per Click’ campaign never creates traffic growth. It is also not a helpful tool to create a user base. PPC does not offer any other revenue or site feature options. Meaning thereby, it leaves you with limited opportunities. But on the other side of it, PPC has an extremely upside advantage with its simplicity. It is the single source monetization solution for hundreds of thousands of website domains.

Those who think that PPC is better must take a second look in to the concept deeply. Ultimately, PPC is not a huge monetization resource. Kevin Leto says, “If PPC was indeed better than we wouldn’t have any problems selling our fabulous sounding one word domain names to major corporations all day long. They’d be falling all over themselves to pay any price we ask”. As a matter of, it’s not happening and it’s not going to happen, with rare exceptions of course.

Undeveloped and underdeveloped domains would never serve the purpose for any business. Any major business organization would be least interested in acquiring such a domain that has only type-in traffic for a longer time period. Such organization would rather prefer to have a brand domain with loads of users so that the users can be given a positive experience with product information, and services. Such developed domains would be a nice platform for establishing an interaction with the users and also entertain them.

“One of the most popular website, Business.com went from a $150,000 domain acquisition to a $7.5 million acquisition for development as a search engine with companies paying annual fees of $199 to be included and paying for ad clicks to their directory listing, and just recently to a $345 Million acquisition by the R.H. Donnelly company”, refers Kevin.

It seems to be a good option for the domain owners to have such a PPC landing page and minting money. But this strategy alone would never help them making a money factory with their domain. It is never the traffic alone that hits the treasure always. A careful analysis of such a website would reveal that it is the well managed and meticulously created database that creates an established advertisement empire. The advertisers generated with the help of a well conceptualized database can always be converted in to further advertisers for the entire network of domains.

Internet users and specifically the web surfers have no particular landing base. They just click, spend few seconds or a few minutes sometimes, and then hop up to the next site instantly. They do land up on a PPC page often but this is not what a domain owner could desire. A cherished prospective customer walked in to the store and within seconds it moves out to find another opened up door of someone else’s store. That is not a good business in any aspect.

The number game looks mind boggling indeed. A big domain could have more than 25,000 visitors a day and this may continue for even 10 years making it a site with more than 10 million visitors a year. Meaning thereby, this much people or prospective customers did walk in to the online store but none of them was an actual customer. No one of this huge number left their email addresses for future communications. None even bothered to leave an imprint of its choices, preferences, and liking for products. This is a bit more hypothetical but it could happen also. If not in true sense but it may be possible that just five or ten percent of these visitors did so. Therefore, this can never be a foundation for a big business ahead.

Having a different look at this concept gives an interesting picture also. A typical PPC model, for instance, may pay 15 cents a click and gives 60% CTR for a domain on an average. This way in a period of almost ten years at least $10 million can easily be earned. This is huge money, no doubt. This is a successful business, no doubt again.

Business with a developed domain would be ideally and practically different. In the same period of ten years, keeping the number of visitors as same, a considerable number of these visitors would turn in to customers. Many of them would be repeat customers as well. Several others would have subscriptions and even opt for being registered members. These customers would be assets to the domain in true sense. They will provide free word of mouth publicity. It will bring more traffic and more users and more customers.

The generation of revenue may reach to any level, even unimaginable heights. Doing a business with a website and adopting correct practices would generate cash flow automatically. The amount earned could be simply equal to the PPC or could be in any multiple of that.

Key issue is having a website and an incredibly reliable and valuable domain. A customer at this website would be even more valuable asset. This asset could make a fortune for the domain owner.

Both the techniques therefore, are money making techniques but a developed domain model is definitely an ultimate long term business model for creating wealth and not just making money. Of course, not every developed website does wonders. The only good point about this internet business economy is this that it is really less expensive and anyone can always try several alternative concepts without much investments. “You always have your base type-in traffic. That is not going anywhere. If one building doesn’t work, knock it down and put up another until you get it right. It’s that simple”, says Kevin.