Articles
How GOOGLE makes money? Interesting.
Jan 22nd
Google now has become a synonym for so many things we do in our daily life, being personal or professional. As an example, we mostly say [Google it] when we suggest someone to search online for the thing or an information he/she is looking for. We mostly rely on google some or the other way in our daily life, which shows that we adore google. But, being honest, Google does not deserve it. Even you will stop adoring google for its doing.
What I am explaining might be known for years but I have recently came across these cases and thought of writing something for the one which is the biggest source of Google’s income, that it does not deserve.
A couple of months back i created a google AdSense account and Google successfully activated it in 24 hours of time. My primary motive was to use that AdSense code on my personal blog as well as some of the legally permitted sites by google according to the rules and regulations. I never intended to make money from the same so there was very few impressions as well as clicks on those advertisements.
Most of the readers of my Blog are my friends and family members who likes what I write.so they are the people who might click on the advertisements displayed for the things they are interested in. Now google is very rigid about this and thinks that these might be the paid clicks or the clicks by the owner himself. Even though google has every possible data like IP, location, etc… to track the true clicks, it never cares for the users and straight away suspends your account without any intimation or notice.
The funny part is that google does not suspend account the day it thinks that the clicks are false, but it lets you earn the money and the day you reach the amount you can withdraw, it suspends your account. Also it never gives you the money you earned which is now blocked by google and the same money was charged by the advertisers. In a nutshell, google eats your income, never refund the money to the advertisers, and make profit.
This happens in each and every possible advertising option google has made available. According to my knowledge and what I have seen, google has never developed a mentality to be transparent neither with the publishers nor with the advertisers. Being in an IT field, i have seen several accounts of Advertisers too and google does not provide any concrete data about the clicks made. At one side Advertisers have to believe what google shows, and at another side google eats money of small publishers without any notification to them. For any complaint to this, there is only one form which might not be checked by google and is just for the satisfaction of the publishers.
In a nutshell, people should rather use another search engines which can keep you away from being victim of google.
Brand-building basics for Software Product companies
Jan 8th
Indian product start-ups have struggled to convert superior products to sales. Very few companies have crossed the chasm, and while their accomplishments are laudable in light of the challenges, the scale is abysmal. Fortunately, the new mode of marketing and branding on Web 2.0 has made the game a lot easier for Indian product companies by reducing barriers of cost and geography. This post will address the basics of brand building for product Start-ups.
Several Indian start-ups have developed very innovative, world class products. Sadly, as we all know, superior technology does not translate into sales success without superior marketing. While the Western model of product development is market-first – teams start with a strong marketing capability and anchor clients – Indian companies are still largely technology-led. Unable to support the high cost of marketing in Western geographies, Indian companies have relied on lower price, superior technology and freebie services – with very limited success.
With Web 2.0, the traditional marketing model has been turned on its head. Brand building does not require extensive local market spending. It is time that Indian product companies grow into marketing-led organizations by proactively building their brand.
But first, what is a brand really?
I like to define a concept by what it does. What does a brand do for your product or company? The brand permeates all your strategy and execution, but sales cycle is where the rubber meets the road. Operationally, brand building is about:
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reduced cost of sales,
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increased pricing power and margins, and
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higher customer retention.
Brand-building is not to be confused with ad spends or splashing the company logo everywhere; rather, it is about building a positioning in the customer’s mind, a history of experiences, and a trusted relationship with the customer.
The most fundamental change in marketing in the last decade has been that once a prospect recognizes a need, they will research and discover new brands (including hopefully, yours) toexpand the consideration set; whereas traditionally, a prospect would narrow down a consideration set from brands they were already familiar with. Therefore, rather than build general awareness of your product, the most cost-effective point to engage a prospect (reducing cost of sales) is when they are actively researching available solutions.
The key is to make:
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relevant, compelling information about your product, tied to customer need,
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readily available and comprehensible to prospects, and
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build trust by providing verifiable reviews, testimonials and feedback.
Operationally, build a functional and easy-to-navigate website. Make it information-rich. Monitor user behaviour on the site and present relevant information only, keeping it simple and allowing a drill-down for details. Invest in SEO, it is your best marketing investment. And most importantly, be honest. Trust is crucial to sales effectiveness, customer retention and success of a brand. The web has a long memory!
Some fundamentals do not change
Simplicity Make your communication simple, so that it does not distract from the key message.
Consistency Be consistent in your look-and-feel, graphics and key messages. Every brand impression should be additive.
Focus One of my favourite themes. Focus allows you to get a much higher ROI on your brand spend (as well as on R&D, sales and other spending, but that is another subject). Focus allows you to create a premium brand (master-of-one rather than jack-of-all) with pricing power in the focus segment. Focus allows you to create network effects around your brand by tapping into an existing community. Focus goes beyond branding and is an essential strategic element of scalability, but that is the subject of another post.
Do not Under-price The product game is not about price, as the license cost is a small component of the customer’s TCO. The key is therefore reliability and value. A low price could actually be counter-productive, as it creates a perception of low brand value. Be competitive on price, and win on brand, by creating and communicating product superiority.
Increase your effectiveness
Web 2.0 is a two-way street. It is about conversations, engagement, and community. Learn from your customers. Engage them. You can leverage the web to understand your brand: why people buy from you, why they would not leave you for a cheaper price, and what would enable them to buy even more. The holy grail is to build a community.
Your brand is being built every time someone mentions your company or product, good or bad, on the web. You might as well engage in the process!
Some basics to Operationalize:
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Allow users to respond on your site, both privately and publicly.
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Google yourself regularly, study comparison and customer review sites, monitor your web presence using online tools (such as Alerts)
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Keep your content fresh, actively monitor usage of your site with an analytics tool and keep re-organizing for ease-of-use
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The worst thing you can do to a customer response is ignore it. Ensure that you have people responding to all queries and posts
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Once again, be honest and transparent. A few negative customer comments have actually been found to increase sales, probably because the feedback becomes more credible!
Invest online even if your target is the domestic market…
Realize that internet presence in India, though low by western standards, is already very significant among your target audience. 45 million internet users compares very favourably to other media: English print (30 million), leading business newspaper (<1 million), leading English daily (6 million). Among trade media, the portals-to-print ratio is higher still.
…Or you are selling Services rather than Products – the same principles apply.
* Article Courtesy : http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/author/subinderk/
Microsoft uses Technology Conference as a new way of Marketing
Dec 23rd
Technology companies, now a days are using different ways to market their products and brand, but Microsoft started entirely new way to market their products to cope up with their direct competition with Open Source world such as Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP.
A couple of days back I received an invitation from Microsoft to attend a Conference in my City and I registered for the same thinking I would know something better which I already don’t know. The subject of the conference was energy efficiency using new technology. When I attend the conference, the truth was entirely different from the subject. I also thought that the conference would open the new doors to meet the CEOs and CTOs of the IT companies in the city and act as a platform to exchange new ideas and technology.
But the fact was quite a bit different from my usual expectations. I am not sure whether it was positive or !@#$%^&*() ? Most of the conferences have less time dedicated to the marketing of the products of the sponsors of it but this time Microsoft used this way to market their newly launched products such as Windows 7, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, and so on.
Most of the time spent by the speakers, were to explain what their product does and how they help you which was very painful when we especially spend our quality time to attend this kind of conferences. The conference did not serve the purpose of the title given to it.
I found that the conference was not meant to provide a platform but to fill the gap for the competition they are facing with the other companies and corporates. This should never be a way to market the products at least from a company like Microsoft.
The audience was mostly filled with developers and junior level staff of the companies which was never expected by the management staff of the IT companies attending this conference. This certainly helps Microsoft to spread the name of their newly launched product but never help them attract technology innovators participate in their ideas.
I personally am not against Microsoft Technology but do not expect to waste my time attending such conferences which do not serve the purpose of its own title.
WINDOWS AZURE IS HOSTING WORDPRESS! IS IT REAL? OR JUST A LONG TERM GAME PLAN?
Nov 23rd
In this era, there are hundreds and thousands of companies providing their products built on Microsoft as well as Open Source technologies. These are either chargeable or free under GNU/GPL licensing.
Since its inception, Microsoft has been known for their chargeable products and has never launched a FREE product or supported them. IT seems they do not believe in the word FREE or they do not want to contribute anything to COMMUNITY.
But we will find it strange if a CAT is supporting a MOUSE. Surprised? Yes, Microsoft has recently announced that one of their recently launched products called Windows AzureTM will Host WordPress Blogs. They have also announced that the users of Microsoft Office System will now be able to use the newest version of Microsoft Office (Office 2010) as a Blogging Tool using World’s most powerful yet easy to use Blogging Engine called WordPress. Though Office 2010 seems to be supporting several other Blogging Tools like Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, Type Pad, SharePoint blog, none other than WordPress is FREE to Download, Modify, Sell or Distribute.
If you look from the Business Perspective, Microsoft seems to be trying to enter into the FREE COMMUNITY WORLD by delivering small patches to the community, still keeping their reputation intact of a company selling all of their products/services for money.
As described by Microsoft on their Windows AzureTM website, they will now support popular standard protocols including PHP. Please see below four lines from Microsoft.
“Windows Azure is an open platform that supports Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP.”
It seems that Microsoft might still act as an Industry leader of Operating Systems, Office Systems, and Database Systems, being an invisible part of an Open Source COMMUNITY.
Being one of the WordPress Services Providers, we are more than happy to hear that Microsoft is actually now supporting FREE products such as WordPress. IT will now be easy for the WordPress Services Providers to easily work on the services like WordPress Theme Designing, WordPress Customization, and WordPress Development.
Author: Nick
Nick is a professional web developer cum designer having vast experience in WordPress Services like WordPress Customization, WordPress eCommerce (Shopping Cart), and WordPress Article Writing.
A Multi Purpose Blogging Engine by WordPress to Easily Manage your Website
Oct 26th
We often come to a term called BLOG and BLOGGING and think too much or mostly get confused about it. This is because most of the Blog systems available are either too complicated to manage or the management section is not so appealing.
Here we want to introduce a blog engine which is most powerful and easiest to manage the content you want to publish. WordPress installation is very easy and takes only 3 minutes to install and configure. WordPress, a multi tasking Blog engine has very nice, clean, catch and appealing content management section. A feature rich HTML (WYSIWYG) editor helps you format the content for your web pages. WordPress has a Media Management section where you can manage your Images, Videos, and Files easily to use within or outside your Blog. Also it has a Links section where you can publish your other websites or related websites to your Blog on any of your Blog page.
A page management section makes it possible for you to publish the information pages with formatted text, images, videos and almost every type of content you think of publishing within pages. WordPress is a true Web 2.0 Blog Engine and helps people to post comments on their blog. WordPress has a modular development methodology and is easily configurable with widgets management feature.
A huge WordPress community of 6706 Plug-in, 995 Templates (Theme Design), and 2842 Ideas helps you Setup and Manage your blog website easily. To start with you can find thousands of WordPress Themes for free just like any other Open Source product available on the internet. It has got trouble-free user management section where you can manage all your registered users at one place. An easy Import-Export feature is available to speed up the work. And last but not least, if you want to upgrade your WordPress website to a newer version, just click one button and there you are with a new version of it. Now WordPress is also available as a one click installation in mostly all Hosting Provider who uses Fantastico like application management software.
Creating new Design and editing the same in WordPress is easy with the inbuilt template editor. Alongside WordPress Customization is as easy as writing about self.
Above all, WordPress is all FREE and can be used as multiple types of websites like Blog, Content Management System, eCommerce Website and more.
