Verecom Web Design Blog

It’s all about long term, World’s largest e-commerce company Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says. Ten years ago, when the stock crash of U.S. NASDAQ, the Internet companies have experienced tremendous turbulence baptism, “God opened the new web economy is a joke?” Many people doubt it, but there are many people persist in the conviction that the great potential of online business is coming, Bezos is one, and he is right!

Amazon, overcome the internet bubble slump, had 3.9 billion US dollars revenues in 2002, and 24 billion US dollars revenues in 2009 which grew more than 5 times within 6 years. “People who are always trying new direction will be too concerned about failure. But if the failure can bring success in the future, that the cost of failure are very slim,” Bezos said.

During IT stock market crash, the management guru Peter Drucker commented: “A new type of economy won’t shape without decades ” Decade, the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs in fact did not subside, compare them in ten years ago, they are more pragmatic and use the creativity as a career to manage, but is not like Drucker’s comments, “Many online entrepreneurs are not creating a business, but in playing a stock market gamble.”

During the hindsight, many people think that the Internet bubble is due to the ignorance and crazy, But in fact, the distance of success from these companies are not far, even the previous Internet businesses founder during that year has changed the face of business. Unfortunately some of the company’s business model is not sufficiently comprehensive, or just pure bad luck.

Study after the failure
Many later proved feasibility of product strategy at that time failed due to the environmental and technological immature factors. Services such as PointCast launched in 1996, won many praise with its free services and rich content, however the rapid accumulation of the number of users, the computer processor speed was too slow, excessive bandwidth consumption, and without much commercial interests to find. Which made the PointCast disappeared in the internet sea.

If PointCast or any similar service launched today which has convenient mobile internet and accurate geo-location system, it will be great opportunity to get business from many manufacturer, and then open up a wide internet market potential.

This is a learning, growing, and dynamic society which doesn’t look backward, but should be in line to the successful model. Now no one doubts about web economy, and more and more people keep finding new ways to make money from it. Have a good business idea is not surprising, because lots of people have the same idea, even people move more quickly to make idea come true! Hence we create a viable business model, and it is a ticket to success.

Business model is important not only because it involves a source of profit, but also for company need to consider the marketing, business, research and development, customer service and management factors into account, and put himself to meet the needs of customers and design the most business value chain .

Web business model Part 2

Edited By Henry Lu

For many small to median businesses, it is quite expensive to establish an online conference system. However, we collected 3 web online conference services which have very good service price (You can also advance free trial) to help your business grow.

GoToMeeting

This is veteran online meeting service; users can easily interact with global user for real-time sharing of presentations, demonstration videos, online training, or edit documents together. Through GoToMeeting, the user can use the telephone, e-mail or instant message inviting others to attend the meeting.

Free trial period is 30 days, with unlimited web meeting appointments, during the trial period, limited 15 people per meeting. It costs 49 U.S. dollars per month, or 468 U.S. dollars a year.

WebEx

WebEx have being bought by Cisco, but it doesn’t become a Cisco proprietary services. WebEx offer unlimited web meeting appointments, desktop sharing among users, simultaneous recording, playback video, or VoIP calls. Each session can accommodate 25 users. WebEx and even allows a user to temporarily relinquish control to another user.

WebEx offers 14-day free trial period, the monthly fee is 69 U.S. dollars, and 708 U.S. dollars annual fee will receive a complimentary 1 month to use.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting

Developed by the software giant, Microsoft Office Live Meeting is desktop application based software which requires users to maintain it by themselves. It provides an online presentation, notes, sharing, collaboration and other basic functions.

It offers 30 days free service, and only supports Windows platforms after trial period the monthly fee per user is 4.58 U.S.

Edited By Henry Lu

For the booming market of mobile internet, not only hardware industries, but also many online service providers actively try to grab this market. Yahoo, with monthly 500 million unique visitors not only want be a world biggest global internet portal, but also try to be the integrator of online services and make internet users rely on it completely

During April this year, yahoo announced its new personalised mobile homepage with combination of oneSearch, oneConnect and onePlace which these three online services are used as the search engine, social network and LBS (Location Based Service) for the individual.

According with their own personal preferences and needs, users can add various internet services (including services not belong to Yahoo) into their own homepage, and this service is able to support more than 300 kinds of devices.

Support hundreds of different devices

Marc Davis, Yahoo Chief live action Scientist explains its core strategy of mobile communication:

“We will not focus on hardware or operating system development, but to create a platform, a layer to provide services for thousands business and industries.”

For Yahoo, the “size” is obviously the focus of considerations, and through the strategy of use universal platform to achieve the purpose of provide services for global users. Davis said that Yahoo’s software will be covered by the mobile browser and application software (client) to support for hundreds of different devices.

Yahoo said: through the centralized management strategy by the new executive director Carol Barts, we greatly reduce the time for new product development. And for Asian market, Barts is full of confidence:

“The next five years, there will be masses of users come from Asia this emerging market.”

Now this area is either on the turning point of pc based internet to mobile based internet, or have the low rate of computer penetration. In comparison to Europe and the United States, Many Asia industries still not ready to transfer their advertising budget from traditional media to the internet, which also represents the great potential of the Internet advertising market to be developed in future.

Edited By Henry Lu

IT industry testing released the report says the growth rate of Microsoft search engine Bing.com already run ahead of rivals since his launch on May this year.

Microsoft new search engine provides many search services. According to data released by Hitwise showed that, the growth rate of Bing.com reached 25 percent in June. But however, its
U.S. market share is still only 5.25 percent.

This new search engine attracts the close attention of media. Microsoft plan to spend 100 million U.S. dollars to promote Bing.com, and intends to take the territory from Google, the current number one search engine company.

However, Google still remains the dominant position of the U.S. market with 74 percent market share. Yahoo still has the second largest market share of 16%. Ask.com has fourth place with 3.2 percent market share.

Analysts said that, the growth rate of Bing.com is faster than the other three well-known search engine companies. And Microsoft hopes Bing.com can grab more market for online ads.

On Thursday’s stock trading, Microsoft shares fell to 22.44 U.S. dollars. And Google rose 2% to 410.39 U.S. dollars.

Edited By Henry Lu

MSN robot, a messenger written by computer programming, not only send messages to a real person, but also even capable to talk with the users. MSN Robot is also a popular advertising method this year. The general manager of MSN online group in Asia pointed out that McDonald’s MSN robots in Hong Kong already have 600,000 users to set it as friends, which is the world’s second-largest robot.

When an enterprise has 600,000 loyal clients who recognize its brand name, there are lots of marketing opportunities. For example, a questionnaire coupon, limited time promotions and many more, and today’s Internet technology is capable to limit users with certain age range to receive particular message.

In addition, MSN Robot can also be a good media for exchange of uses’ opinions, the customers’ data and use behaviors can be recorded in the background as valuable information for future development and amendment of e-business.

The prospects of Internet advertising are brightening, and it is an inevitable trend in 2010. Experts said “Internet advertising is one of integrated marketing, although it still can’t replace other types of ads, but it will gradually become the main advertisement trend.”

Edited By Henry Lu

Reach Media advertising applications bring lots of fun to the window ads, and its features are suitable for style marketing, because they can customize a wide variety of advertising space. Even bring the big ads show to the entire webpage without bothering the web browsers.

As Taiwan has eight million users of WLM instant messaging (Windows Live Messenger, commonly known as MSN instant messaging, and during 2003 SARS outbreak, occupy the lower right corner of the desktop of many users. by 2009 world economic crisis, it is expected to have more users to see the ads. Therefore, published ads in instant messaging, also has a huge exposure opportunities.

The difference from other web ads is that instant messaging provide real-time platform to users, it developed the functions such as playing games, watching movie trailers and find maps to allow users to communicate with each other, and these all are the idea place to place ads.

Edited By Henry Lu

Compared to traditional advertising, what are the characteristics of Internet advertising?

The most important thing is “interactive”, which is benefited by todays internet technology. The broadband internet and advanced platforms bring the people closer to the online advertisement. At present, the more popular types of Internet advertising including: keyword advertising, instant messaging advertising and pop up window advertising. The development of these 3 types of advertising has been for many years, in 2009, these advertising have developed their own new method respectively.

“Keyword advertising” is suitable for small and medium business due to its low barriers and less limitation. According to statistics from IAMA, in 2008 the keyword advertising grows 30.64% and reached 80 millions dollars. It also is the fastest growing advertising method and reached 35% of the total amount of Internet marketing.

Keyword advertising is flourishing for a few years, and there are new changes. Over the past, delivery method of keyword advertising is for business owners to purchase a set of keywords, and when users use one of keywords to do search, his website or related links will appear on the search results page.

But this year, MSN online market development manager pointed out that “a picture can express things better than 1000 words!” In the search results page, in addition to the text but also add photos and pics to show and demonstrate the creativity of ads content. And business owners pay for advertising costs according to the clicks amount.

Since 2007, MSN launched these advertisement ideas; its clients increased the advertising budget by more than 100% for this advertises method. We can see the results are satisfactory. In deeper level, the database can record users’ past search behaviours, and delivers advertisement more precisely.

Edited By Henry Lu

These are the questions and answers for the one who just starts online business. Even they have opened the online shops, but the business goes very irregular. It is the time to know what has happen to the sales clearly. In addition, in the early stage, the owners can be bolder; they can be more creative in creating styles, taking the picture and writing the text. They should try to taste the market and find the original point of their products.

Q1: I am still an office worker, I never sale anything online. Am I able to open an online shop?
A: It is better for you to try to buy some things from different online platforms. Firstly, you have to know what kind of problems you may experience when you buy and how sellers deal with these problems.

Q2: If I never sell anything online, I should not open an online shop directly, shouldn’t I?
A: If you already own an “entity shop”, you can open an online shop directly, but first of all, you still have to be very clear about the online shopping flow, or you should find assistants who have idea about online sales to help you manage the shop.

Q3: Should I dedicate to do online business full-time?
A: It is better to start it as part-time work. If you find “tricks” and feel great interest about that, then you can decide whether you want to do it with all you efforts or not.

Q4: If the products I sell cannot be purchased directly, I should not open online shop, should I?
A: Besides selling products, online shop always brings advertising effect. Some products are custom-made or very expensive and the deals cannot be made online. Although online shop doesn’t support directly transaction in this case, the advertising effect it brings is still very great.

Q5: What are the intrinsic requirements of online shops?
A; Online shop is a 24 hours shopping tools. The business is non-stop, but this also means the working hour will be very long, and the work can be complicated and trivial. Therefore only the one has not only great passion on E-business but also the great patient towards the inpatient online customers can run the business well in the end.

Q6: If I don’t want to open the shop on online platform, can I make my own website to sell products?
A: Better not. Same as in the real world, it is better for you to open the shop in the place which has great crowd. Although most of the online platforms charge money, it fulfilled the purpose of “gathering people”. It is more difficult for the independent website which has low expose rate, low popularity to earn money at first place.

Q7: How much I should prepare as the initial capital?
A: The sum of initial capital is related to the product you sell. The owner can refer to your “half year running and store up expense” as the standard.

Q8: What kinds of product suitable to sell online?
A: The products which is difficult to find in the market. Although online market grows 30% every year, the competition among the popular products is very fierce. The shop can only find the ground to stand unless the products are special and price is reasonable. Therefore developing new type of products is the way to brings more chance to win.

Q9: Is it still a good idea to sell ready-made clothes or products?
A: In recent year, really-made products business is not as good as before, because the competition is great. In this case, the business is always involved in price war. Even the sales goes very well, the profit is still very low. But it doesn’t mean there is no way to do it, there are still new shops which try very unique way in combination achieve great success. It is because they create the new value of the really-made clothes.

Q10: which kinds of product have the highest profit?
The same as in the entity world, the products which is creative and unique or hand-made have high profit. But the atmosphere of online market is still more like a parity market. It is difficult for the customers to make the orders just through few photos and texts. The acceptable price for own created brand in online market normally is below 1,000 dollars.

Q11: Does selling foreign products have high return on online?
A: This is a very subtle situation. If certain foreign product is very popular in e-market, that means the demand is great, but it will also lead to price war. If owners develop new products, then it needs to expand the popularity of the products, the time to earn profit may be delayed and risk is higher. However the profit will be good and this business can last longer as well. Therefore we need to evaluate the situation according to the market of individual products.

Q12: How to set the price?
A: Because the price of each product is clearly revealed on the sales pages, through searching and comparison, it is not difficult for the owner to know the average price in the market. According to the fact that an online sale has saved the store management cost, product price should be 10%-30% cheaper than that in the entity market.

Q13: How should I take the picture of the product?
A: In the early stage, owner should try best to save the cost; the main standard for the photos should be “clear in detail, lightness is appropriate”. It is not necessary to use professional camera in this case. When the business grows bigger, when more details are needed to be shown in the photos, then you should consider changing to professional equipments. But, the premise is the one use it must be professional as well, or it may look even worse.

Q14; Do I need to hire model to take picture?
A: When the amount of the products is not that much, you can just find some friends which look good as your models. One famous online model once said:” The best model for online business is the one just looks like your neighbors, people feel trustworthy to see this kind of faces.” If the amount is great, using professional model can help to reduce the time to take photos and make the work become more effective.

Q15: Is the online customer service is the same as that in entity shop?
A: You can say it is the same, you can also say it is different. Basically, to be nice and kind is very important. Moreover, because the most common online communication is sending text messages, your way of expression has to be gentler. It is important to do the emotion communication (for example, using the symbol like “:)” to get them feel your kindness) when you face your online customers.

Q16: How to do free sales?
A: You can do it through joining the activities your platform provided, joining more forums and participate the discussion actively. It is better for you to set your signature as your web address.

Q17: How to write the title to let the products to be found more easily?
A: Use “hot key word” in product title. Pay attention to the hot key word in this products category. Also you can search good product keyword from some top-ranked website and then put them into the product title skillfully.

Q18: How to do blog sales?
A: Blog is also a very popular sales channel. One method is to discuss your own products and tell your brand or products story. Other way is to attract the fans or users of certain products through providing the related knowledge of the products.

Q19: Is that worthy to buy charged advertisement?
A: When goods supply and sales are not stable, it is better not to buy long term advertisement, but you can try as short term sales.

Q20: Can I avoid paying the platform trade fee?
A: You should not avoid it or you will lose the guarantee of your trade and the risk of having dispute will increase. If you want to keep your business longer, it is better for you to provide the true trade fee information to the platforms.

If you feel difficult to manage online business by yourself, you can always find the related services even the agents since e-business has development so well in recent year. But it is better for you yourself operate the business for a while to have some basic ideals first.

Edited By Vicky Yin