on life, business, technology & all that

 Sometime back on Matt Cutts blog mentioned that Google is testing new techniques to fight paid links affecting their search engine results.

According to Google webmasters who choose to sell text links on their website should use some method to dislose it to the search engines. More small webmasters use text link ads to generate revenues from their websites.

Its ironic how Google is using webmasters to serve its purpose and sting them back when its jobs is done.

Most of these text links are bought by search engine optimization firms to promote websites in search engines. Its easy for Google to say paid links are bad, but the content that Google serves comes from these webmasters, the ad revenues on Google search engnes should be shared with webmasters too then.

Instead of bettering their own search engine to counter these problems they are resorting to arm twisting whihc will never work.

But this brings me to the main point, has Google become too strong and godlike than we need? The answer is yes.

Something’ gotta give, maybe another good search engine or other ways of finding information on the web so that webmasters can create and sell content like they want rather than how Google tells them to.

As seth godin mentions marketers want to reach the unreachable, maybe something that helps them do that on the web too.

Found on seth’s blog orginally from guardian
1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better. Commit.

2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.

3. Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.

4. Extremism in the pursuit of remarkability is no sin. In fact, it’s practically a requirement. People in first place, those considered the best in the world, these are the folks that get what they want. Rock stars have groupies because they’re stars, not because they’re good looking.

5. Remarkability lies in the edges. The biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. It doesn’t always matter which edge, more that you’re at (or beyond) the edge.

6. Not everyone appreciates your efforts to be remarkable. In fact, most people don’t. So what? Most people are ostriches, heads in the sand, unable to help you anyway. Your goal isn’t to please everyone. Your goal is to please those that actually speak up, spread the word, buy new things or hire the talented.

7. If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable. Part of what it takes to do something remarkable is to do something first and best. Roger Bannister was remarkable. The next guy, the guy who broke Bannister’s record wasn’t. He was just faster … but it doesn’t matter.

8. It’s not really as frightening as it seems. They keep the masses in line by threatening them (us) with all manner of horrible outcomes if we dare to step out of line. But who loses their jobs at the mass layoffs? Who has trouble finding a new gig? Not the remarkable minority, that’s for sure.

9. If you put it on a T-shirt, would people wear it? No use being remarkable at something that people don’t care about. Not ALL people, mind you, just a few. A few people insanely focused on what you do is far far better than thousands of people who might be mildly interested, right?

10. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable. While you might be remarkable for a time, if you don’t reinvest and reinvent, you won’t be for long. Instead of resting on your laurels, you must commit to being remarkable again quite soon.

Moslows Pyramid

In a conversation with Steve harmon wos a well known startup evangelist i realised how entreprenship has a relationship with maslow’s law.

According to maslow confidence achievement freedom comes at the top of te pyramid and security at the bottom.

Every entreprenur knows that freedom confindence and acievement comes before security for him

Internet and mobile association of India has publised some eye popping jaw opening facts about the state of Internet in India

Here are some facts

Job search online
Job Search is one of the top 5 key online activities that Indians do online [Email, Surfing, Chatting, Search and Job Search]

The number of job seekers Online is further expected to cross 9.2 million this year (2006-07) with the estimated market size of the Indian online recruitment industry to reach Rs 241 crores for 2006-07 from the current Rs 145 crores in 2005-06 .The industry is also likely to maintain a year on year growth in excess of 60%.

Referals online

Interestingly 31% having found a shopping site through word of mouth referrals and 18% shopped on a particular website because it was referred.

Online Bill payment
According to research by IAMAI, the number of Indians paying bills online is expected to increase from the current 0.3 million in 2005-06. to 1.8 million by 2007-2008.

Search engine marketing
Rs.230 crores of ad spend on this media is aimed at Indians alone. Of this, about a third, over Rs.70 crores is spent by Indian companies. For an industry that barely got off the ground a couple of years ago, it’s a huge leap.

Though the most interesting figures would be about ecommerce. One thing is for sure the internet and mobile industry will see a huge upswing for the next 5 years.
Surely are good times we are living in.

So What is Cocoon syndrome?

A company creates products and services so that they can sell it to as many customers as possible. The number of clients grow each day and the revenues start flowing higher, with each passing month the revenues keep growing bigger, but suddenly you realize that all though the margins remains same, the profit-revenue ratio as gone down.

Cocoon syndrome is your unstructured growth killing you.

But what happened there?

What happens is that as the number of clients increase, the expenses to provide support operations increase, that takes away your margins, further if market pressure makes you cut down your profit margins, all your profit might just go away in maintaining your previous client, on the contrary if the prices go up but if you have lots of clients in your earlier plans, again your profit margin sinks because you need to provide support to them at a lower price.

This is serious issue with many businesses.

The answer to this issue is to keep your operating costs low, keep your support costs minimal, and keep the minimal support staff.

But you can’t afford giving bad customer support can you?

Learn From Google.

Google in its advertising program services millions of customers. With most customers it earns just few dollars. It’s a volume game for them.

Google cannot afford to have a call center agent for every 20 clients, they need to automate support, in a way clients themselves prefer using the automated system rather than calling an agent or emailing.

How can we help?

To remain in the business you need to scale up, but scaling up does not mean more support staff. You need carefully designed support staff automation.

We increase a company HQ (happiness quotient) and free them from the worry of how a small bunch of support staff will manage thousands of customers.

* We Analyze, priorities and strategize
* We create automation of your support function
* We do it in a way, your clients prefer using automated
system
* we reduce support costs by 15% to 70%

The investment you make with us will be recovered within 3 months by itself no matter what business you are in. If not, we will quietly put the money back in your pocket.
Email: punit@appliedeye.com to know more.

Visit us at AppliedEye.com

A very fundamental question to ask is whats the difference between data , information and knowledge?

I learned in college that data has a surprise value, data can have value for not have any value, data becomes information when it has some value for the one who recieves it. The second time the same data is received it has no value and is not information any more.

The difference between information and knowledge is a bit more tricky
Information becomes knowledge when experts in a particular domain with hands on experience and success use the information to create varifiable understanding of a subject which can be used to serve a purpose.

Now why am i giving lessons in philosphy?

Because as we transit into the knowledge age where knowledge will be the most prized commodity i believe  google and search engines that collect data and sometimes information will need to find ways of presenting knowledge

Its not easy, with googles raw and easily manipulated algorithm its not easy to see the difference between data, information and knowledge.

But theres a opportunity for the ones who would bravely venture into googles territory. A pay for use search engine maybe?

Recently Guy Kawasaki posted on his weblog how online reviews and feedback affects a company product or service.
One thing is for sure as the user created content takes center stage brand protection online will be priority one for all companies.

We got the timing just right babay. Hang on there we have something big up our sleves. Insept will disrupt Amen

This is a take on business plan competitions from my experience at Eureka a bsuinesspkan competition conducted by IIT Bombay.

1. Dnt hope to get any venture funding even if you are the finalists

2. Expect Majority of the finalist to be from IIT’s itself for no real rhyme or reason

3. Irrespective if you win loose network with anyone from industry to participants to helpers take their email ids and keep in contact

4. The more practical a business idea the better

5. Dnt Promise low risk and high returns. You get found out there

6. When they ask what’s the barrier to entry, create one by including some secret algorithm behind your processes success even if there is none and give it a scary technical name, or just say the only real barrier to entry is constant innovation and we have a team that can deliver and then promise some mind blowing list of features. like if you were sergey brin you would say we would integrate our search engine with human thoughts and transmit the results just by thinking using xyz technology you get the point right? . But be sure they are definitely looking fo a barrier to entry even if half of them dnt knw what it means.

7. Team - find all senior position guys you know(ur dads frend who works in the bank, ur ex boss and put them in advisors list, if possible take a letter of intent to join you soon(tey dnt have to join really, its jst the game)

8.Find one Guy who has proved himself in marketing and make a proper marketing plan. If you market well sucky ideas make you money.

9. Get figures, get wrong figures but get figures, they love figures. Also No one gets right figures. The absurdest figure i have heard is “the market size is potentially 50 crores and since there is no competition we can potentially capture the whole market but if we can even get 10% of the market we are breakeven in 6 months.

When was the last time you did anything to your potential?

10. Show them you already got the company going(its okay to work frm your garage), they are not looking for ideas, they are looking for companies.
Show them you beleive in your idea and have already invested time, money, effort

11. Create a buzz before your final presentation.

The fact is the judges doubt their own abaility to select the winners so they go by what others are talking about

talk about your ideas, do a lot o self publicity, tell people prof shirodhkar of xyz university has asked you to submit technical paper in ieee on your project, and xyz venure capitalist has urged you to patent your idea, pass of papers, take email ids of people send them ppts, get feedback from iit profs The more poeple are talking about you the more your chances of winning

Last nugget, apply for a patent of your idea, no one cares if you will be awarded the patent, but there are companies who capture markets by saying we have “petent pending technology” people assume it must be nasa grade technology since noone knows nything about patenting

Pay per click, pay per view, pay per action, pay per lead, pay per sign up, pay per call, pay per sale.

Our online advertising industry is facinated with pay per something models. We just did a quick study on why the popular models suck literally

Pay Per Click

Setting up a account is tough for a a person who is not net savvy
Expensive
Confusing
Time consuming
Click fraud can never be 100% beaten
One visit is not good enough for any

Pay Per sale

Too risky for a publisher and less returns

Pay per action

People would take action if the service provider is offering something good. If he is not and the user does not take any action the publisher is wasting time and valuable resource and most importantly opportunity to earn money

For any model to work

It should give high return to publisher for every qualified lead it can generate
It should ask for the right price in context of a service or product
It should send the target to the best advertiser so that a positive action is taken by visitor
It should be simple, straigh forward and easy enough for a kid to understand, which ppc is not

Whats the solution?

We propose sequential interaction model.

We believe the natural cycle of a visitor is.
Search
Find
See
Understand
Enquire
Interact
Engage

We believe charging unreasonable sum at any of these 7 levels will disappoint advertisers and visitors both.

Publishers should use tracking methods to gauge the particpation of a visitors through each level and charge a advertiser.
Publishers should also award better performing advertisers and penalise and caution the less performing advertisers.

As a user moves up the ladder the advertiser pays more. this way the pay per click price would drop so low that advertiser wouldnt mind paying for some additional fraud clicks and the better advertisers will convert.

We understand like any model this model will need lots of tweaks to work but time has come when many models are merged together to form a hybrid advertising and lead generation model

So you want to be really big on the internet, I mean really big and you are short of time I mean really short of time? You look for get rich quick schemes and you suddenly hear about the rich jerk and you wonder if 47$ is worth it. You visit the website few times read every page and then read reviews and finally land up here seeking nirvana right? So we give you for what you seek. The real unbiased review of the rich jerk ebook and we mean unbiased!

The good:

1. Really lucid and simple to understand language
2. Some good techniques and if you are short of time and don’t like to search and scratch around much this might be good
3. It teaches you how to write a effective sales letter for sure if nothing else that will convert leads which actually you can learn by visiting therichjerk website too;)

The bad:

1. It will still need hardwork Reading this will not make you rich
2. It does explain any concept in detail that a novice would feel confident to attempt
3. It’s not for a seasoned internet marketer but can be a decent read atleast a few pages
4. It will still need hardwork Reading this will not make you rich oh did i repeat that?

The ugly:

1. It’s a fast way to make money by targeting those poor folks who want to get rich quick but will never get rich because they look for short cuts
2. The guy works hard, he has done some research wrote content visited websites and written reviews for himself made hundreds of ads on Google ad words in short the guy who teaches you to make money the easy way has spent countless hours in his attempt to con people.

Topics Covered

Information products sell better on internet

Some marketing concepts of writing good sales letter

Making affiliate website Made for adsense websites

Affiliate programs on the internet Selling 0n eBay and from where to get supplier information.

Along the way he has also promotes some of his own products services and affiliations

Moral of the story if a guy has to hide his identity he probably doesn’t believe in his own products enough and neither should you.

Conclusion:

Its not a scam and may be good for some people but wait till the price drops to 11$ then go ahead and buy it

One thing that he mentions in the ebook which I find is so good that the rich jerk guy deserves his affiliate commission and the 97$ is Perry’s course.

So if you are a novice marketer,a computer geek, a businessman, a graphic designer or anyone who finds internet marketing interesting should read This

Lastly if you search well enough for the e-book you might find it for free somewhere, bit torrent, livewire, p2p you get the picture right shhh don’t tell on me.

Disclaimer: We are strictly against piracy of intellectual property