Archive for July, 2007
Business Success
July 22nd, 2007
MatthewMike Walrath, 32, founded Right Media Inc. in 2003 as a New York-area consulting firm for buyers and sellers of internet advertisements. It wasn’t long, though, before he created an online network where buyers and sellers could come together in a real-time internet ad auction. The concept caught on, and in 2005, VC firms started funding the company. After two rounds of venture financing, Right Media sold to Yahoo this spring for about $720 million. "We see this as the next logical step," Walrath says. "We don’t talk about this as an outcome or an exit."
For the VC funds that nurture companies such as Right Media, however, acquisitions are typically an exit. Even with IPOs showing a small resurgence this year, M&A remains by far the most common exit strategy for venture-backed companies. "Even during the dotcom boom, more VCs were exiting through M&A than through IPOs," says Kurt Roth of Intercap Merchant Partners, a merchant banking firm. "That’s always been true."
What has changed are the sectors likely to find M&A suitors and, by extension, VC funding. Historically, software has vacuumed up the largest share of VC dollars, but it was toppled early this year by life sciences. Sectors likely to be attractive in the coming years are medical device makers, media and entertainment (internet-related and downloading companies), green energy, and telecommunications (alternative communication networks).
Walrath says the best strategy for attracting VC dollars and, ultimately, generating a good outcome is to be an expert in your industry. "[If you’re] in an area you care passionately about," he says, "you’ll discover things that aren’t intuitive to others but that are fairly obvious to you."
Truth in Marketing
July 22nd, 2007
MatthewSpam blockers and do-not-call lists are a challenge for marketers who want to contact customers, while consumer backlash against commercially buzzed or intrusively marketed offerings makes it difficult to gain customers’ trust once you do reach them. In Truth , marketing consultant Lynn Upshaw shows how integrity-based marketing can overcome these obstacles and win new customers.
If you’re the sort of entrepreneur who considers a marketing claim or strategy acceptable once it passes your attorney’s critique, you’ll need to ramp up your standards to satisfy Upshaw. Stretching the truth legally doesn’t pass muster. He doesn’t even like so-called "weasel words"–like saying a food is "virtually fat-free"–that some marketers use to exaggerate claims or minimize weaknesses of products and services.
Marketing with integrity, Upshaw says, requires recruiting everyone in the company to adhere to a high level of truth and honesty in all customer interactions. He also prescribes a comprehensive approach to measuring your investment and return on integrity-based marketing. Apparently, virtuous marketing doesn’t come easy. But, as the numerous anecdotes and studies he quotes illustrate, relying on truth in your marketing can pay you back richly with greater customer loyalty, lower costs and other benefits. Virtue, it seems, is not the only reward when it comes to marketing.
Best Ticket Price
July 22nd, 2007
MatthewBecause airfares change frequently every day, when you book your ticket is a huge factor in how much you’ll end up paying. The variance can be $300 or more on a domestic round trip. So how can you tell when you should buy and when you should hold off? Two data-mining websites can help you calculate the odds that you’re getting a good price.
FareCompare.com looks at historical prices for trips on 77,000 city pairs in the U.S. and Canada. Type in your flights, and up comes a “Fare Trend” chart that shows whether prices have been increasing, decreasing or staying steady. A four-star rating system shows how good a particular fare is compared with past prices on the date and route you’ve highlighted. By considering volatility, you can determine whether it makes sense to wait for a dip before booking. You can’t make reservations at FareCompare.com, but you can click though to airline websites.
Farecast.com, one of PC World’s 20 Most Innovative Products of 2007, uses roughly 100 variables to determine expected price changes for flights from more than 75 cities. Plug in your details, and you’ll see four graphics: “fare indication,” an arrow symbolizing rising, dropping or flat prices; “confidence,” a percentage based on the site’s track record for predictions on the flight you chose; “average fare change,” a volatility measure; and a “buying tip,” suggesting you either buy your ticket then or wait for a possible fare dip.
Also, consider using the site’s Fare Guard feature. For $9.95, you can protect a fare for one week and receive daily e-mail updates to track the lowest fare. If the price drops after you book, you get a check for the difference.
Virtual Tradeshows
July 22nd, 2007
MatthewVirtual trade shows, expos and conventions are coming into their own. While event producers all insist that virtual shows won’t replace real-world shows, there are some decided advantages to attending, hosting or exhibiting at online events. Entrepreneurs save on the costs of travel, booth materials and employees’ lost productivity.
Robin Cowie, president of WorldwideBrands.com, a Maitland, Florida, wholesale and drop-ship resources provider, went from attending virtual B2B e-commerce trade show eComXpo to hosting a booth at the show. "We treat it like a normal convention," says Cowie, 35, whose company reached more than $3 million in sales last year. "We have three staff members dedicated to it. They’re constantly chatting and exchanging information during the show, and I don’t have to pay for travel."
Virtual trade shows have a lot in common with their physical counterparts. There are exhibit halls, educational seminars, booths manned by live staff and networking lounges. Events run the gamut from business trade shows, consumer-oriented trade shows, job fairs and corporate training to events that are open for up to a year. "We’ve built mechanisms to do very complex reporting and analytics for lead qualification ranking," says Brent Arslaner, vice president of marketing at Unisfair, a virtual event solutions firm.
The cost savings and ease-of-use are compelling arguments for virtual events and for virtual online components to physical events. "Physical events are becoming much more tightly coupled with virtual events," says Arslaner. Already, these virtual trade shows and conventions are morphing into business communities–entrepreneurs are using them for ongoing networking and education.
Cheap Stock Photos
July 21st, 2007
MatthewOne of the biggest secrets to a great website is the photos used in the site. I have put together a few links to help you out when searching for images to use on your website.
Fotolia is currently the smallest of the smallest stock photo websites around, with approximately 125,000 photos in their database.
However, they do have all the usual functionality as far as their site is concerned. In fact, for good or ill, Fotolia is more ‘web 2.0′ than their competitors, with tag clouds and a ’suggest’ feature built into their search engine, which is actually pretty useful if you’re not quite sure what search terms to use.
They also provide email alerts and RSS feeds for your searches, although I’m not sure how useful this would be.
Prices start a little cheaper than their two competitors, at $1 per image (although for web usage, prices can go up to $50 - not that I found any images at that amount). They also have an affiliate program for members.
Another great stock photography website is Big Stock Photo . It looks and works pretty much like iStockphoto, which is certainly no bad thing.
Their selection is good with over 150,000 images to browse through (although iStockphoto just hit the 500,000 milestone), and the quality is very good. Take a look at the most popular photos to see what I mean. They have all the usualy categories, advanced search functionality, lightboxes, etc, that you would expect to find (although I was surprised to see a sexual category!)
Pricing is about the same as iStockphoto, with a similar discount if you order download credits in bulk.
Online Image Editors
July 21st, 2007
MatthewImage Editors Compared
A common request my web team receives is to do some sort of simple image editing for a clients website. I also sometimes hear that someone is getting Photoshop installed so that they can edit images and add them to their web site themselves.
This is crazy when you consider how much Photoshop costs and the learning curve to use it properly.
In this new era of web-based applications I thought it would be worthwhile to see if there were any online image editing tools that would meet these requirements and maybe more.
The Options
I looked at the following online image editors:
Online Photo Tool
Fauxto
Picnik
Snipshot
Cellsea
PXN8
Phixr
VicImager
Picture2Life
NetImager
ImageAuthor
nexImage
LookWow
My Opinion
Overall, I was very impressed with what’s available when it comes to editing images online. By and large the tools were easy to use and had an impressive array of features.
The majority of the tools had solid basic image editing functionality — crop, resize, adjust color, brightness and so on. Some had unlimited levels of undo and redo, which was especially handy.
Some of the features available were up there with full-blown graphics tools. For example, Cellsea included the unsharp mask function for accurately adjusting sharpness.
Two of the image editors (NetImager and nexImage) allowed you to use layers to apply your changes and effects in a non-destructive way, which was a nice feature.
The tools were integrated to varying degress with online image storage services like Flickr and Photobucket. Some also enabled you to view all the images from a web page and then choose which one you wanted to edit, although apart from Cellsea, this was done via a bookmarklet.
The tools had varying capabilities when it came to uploading and saving images from/to different formats. However, between them all you could probably upload and save an image in most of the main file formats (e.g., JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, PDF, EPS).
Microsoft and Ask.com Partner Up
July 18th, 2007
MatthewMicrosoft Office Live today announced that it is adding Ask Sponsored Listings to its adManager Beta search advertising service.
Through adManager, small businesses will be able to purchase and manage search-based keyword advertising from the Microsoft Office Live platform and appear within Ask Sponsored Listings. This is a very big deal as it may signal further consolidation within the competitive search engine and Internet advertising industries.
”We are very excited about the integration of Ask Sponsored Listings, as this provides more options for our small businesses to market their companies and attract new customers,” said Baris Cetinok, director of product management and marketing for Microsoft Office Live. “Adding Ask Sponsored Listings to our adManager service gets us one step closer to our goal of providing small businesses with an all-inclusive search engine marketing service.”
Google’s Ad-Free Site Search
July 18th, 2007
MatthewYou have a clean, attractive website. But you also have loads of content and pages that your visitors may need help finding. Previous versions of Google Custom Search would allow you to place a search box on your site - albeit with Google branding and AdSense all over the results page. Google’s Custom Search Business Edition now includes ad-free search, where you can employ a Google search box on your site to search only those sites, pages or portions of your website that you determine. After a search query is entered, only results will be returned, not Google ads that can disrupt the feel of your website. It’s a nice way to use the power of Google site search without sacrificing your site design or exposing customers to ads that may cheapen the look of your site or worse, drive traffic away. And, some can argue, AdSense on your site gives visitors the impression that you’re a small-time business, looking to coax as much revenue as possible from your website.
Simply sign up, customize your search box, add the sites to be searched and get the code to place on your site. The fee is on a sliding scale, starting with $100 annually for searching 5,000 pages and up to $500 for up to 50,000 pages.
Introducing me, “The New Guy.”
July 18th, 2007
adminHello clients and miscellaneous web surfers! I’m the notorious ROB. I’ll most likely be handling your web, graphic, and other creative needs under the masterful guidance of Mr. Matthew B. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at rob@7daywebdesign.com.
Oh and Matt, “The more you click the better it gets…” although sounds like it is a quote which references 7DayWebDesign web creations - was referring to Pandora.com (or as I like to call it, PimpRadio).
Stuff to check out.
July 17th, 2007
MatthewGoogle Checkout: Google Checkout™ is a new way to process online transactions. Checkout can work independently to pay for or accept transactions or, in tandem with Google’s AdWords search advertising program, to increase sales and minimize expenses throughout the online purchasing process. Google Checkout also offers fraud protection as well as a unified page for tracking purchases. An added benefit, merchants can process sales from Google Checkout for free until the end of 2007.
Snap Preview Anywhere: Snap Preview Anywhere provides link previews for site visitors. Users can get a glimpse of the link destination without needing to click on the link and leave your site. Snap Preview Anywhere is a complimentary service and supports nine languages — English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Spanish and Portugese. In a world of information overload and short attention spans, tools like this are providing value to end-users and advanced functionality for websites.
ClipSyndicate: A new Web publishing platform that enables users to find relevant video clips for use on their sites. Search by keyword or browse content providers like AP, Bloomberg and others, or through pre-defined channels such as News, Entertainment or Health. Then reformat video content for your website or blog through various integration formats like HTML, JavaScript or RSS. The ClipSyndicate Media player is launched directly upon click, allowing users to view a selected video and browse deeper into a channel. Still in beta, ClipSyndicate presents an interesting alternative with an opportunity to share in revenue. It might be a competitor to big players like YouTube that will ultimately release a competing service.
AnswerTips: If your website is loaded with jargon or complex terminology, you may want to look into AnswerTips — a free product from Answers.com that displays small “bubbles” of information when users double click on a word in question. It’s quick and easy to integrate and won’t distract readers or cause site owners to lose visitors, as new browser windows are not initiated. Make sure your users are aware of the feature so that it does not get overlooked.