Category: Online Marketing

If you have your domain with an active blog, and if you are serious about branding your blog then you must have a subscription form to build a better visitor base.

What is the use of such a subscription form?
Some people visit you blog through search engines (or other reference) but due to customer forgetfulness syndrome they forget the visit soon. Subscriptions will allow them to keep a track of your blog posting. This is the first step in building an active blog visitor.

How to enable a subscription form?
Since I have my own server supporting php I decided to use a better subscription application (rather the best of all), phplist.

10 great features of phplists are :-

1. phplist keeps sending messages from your web server, even after you shut down your computer.
2. No duplicate messages. No ‘forgotten’ messages. phplist manages message delivery with a message queue, ensuring that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list!
3. Click Tracking tracks links and URLs. Statistics can be viewed by message, URL or subscriber.
4. Templates are completely customizable, and make site integration a breeze.
5. RSS feeds can be automatically sent to a mailing list weekly, daily, or monthly.
6. Batch Processing is useful in shared hosting environments. Set the maximum number of sent messages in a given time period.
7. Throttling can limit the load on your server so it doesn’t overload.
8. Domain Throttling limits the number of emails to specific domains to keep on the friendly side of their system administrators.
9. Attachments can be uploaded and included in messages for download.
10. Open/View Tracking tells you how many users opened your email message. This provides a minimum statistic, as many email clients with privacy or security policies block images (gmail, thunderbird, and others).

No other application will be able to provide such a great integration with your blog. It is very simple to use. You can create a template and modify the pages as per your need.

I do not have php what do I do?
You can use http://www.feedblitz.com/ , there are many such application providers. They surely have some limitations.

Should I make it automated or manual?
In my opinion, keep it manual for the following reasons,

• People do not like automated mails as such; they prefer some personal touch to it.
• Not all blog post may be of common interest.
• With manual mailing you can even send some other information.

If you need some help in installing such a subscription list please let me know I can help. Try subscribing to my blog to get a feel of it (top of the right panel of the page). I am planning to write some real good stuff in the coming days.

When I started working at the community innovation center of AmpmInsure (only with my requirements and few technical advices), I started learning some hard facts about these syndication widgets. Let me try to put 5 points that I have learned about these syndication widgets:

1. Fast – The tools should deliver fast on your server. The tools embed on your pages should not make your existing pages slow. I saw the community people at AmpmInsure really techy to address these queries. As per evan, “We are delivering the plain JS and nothing can be faster than that. A simple small JS file, no database operations, no server side scripting, just plain and simple JS”.
2. Graceful failure – When the syndication tool fails it should appear as if it never had syndicated such a tool. More details at http://evan.ampminsure.org/2006/08/13/graceful-failure/
3. Widget analytics – http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/08/widget_analytic.html , which will allow the webmaster to see what is going on with the tools.
4. Overall feedbacks – Let the people put the real feedback for others to read, right with the tools. How many sites are using it? What do they feel about it?
5. Customization – There should be an option to customize the overall tool as per the site.

These days I am working at ampmInsure innovation center for some cool widgets for my blogs. I am true believer of reusability. I never liked to invest my energy for something, which is already done in style. Some cool tools which I liked are

1. A mini widget enabling Yahoo style answers:
   
   This tool will help my blog visitors ask and discuss related topics right on my blog. Wow I can’t wait to make it happen. A true discussion platform on my blog. This will increase the participation level on my blog. This is very much like Yahoo Answers but somewhere better as it is much simpler to place and use.
2. Joke manager:
   
   They call it “Funny 24 carrot viral tool”. I think it can really be used as an effective viral tool. This will allow my visitors to share and discuss jokes right on my blog. If you allow your users to share jokes it really works, one such example is http://www.idealwebtools.com/nimc/forum/index.php?showtopic=737 , where I have seen people participating with much interest.
3. Quote Manager: When I introduced a quote section at http://www.idealwebtools.com/nimc/forum/index.php?showtopic=529 I got an unexpected participation. Many who never participated in any other thread started participating in it. Why so? May be it is to get recognition. Some of the quotes like “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital” got very popular among the members. The submitted also got appreciated for his collections. I saw this to be an effective tool to attract more participation.
4. Digg type News manager:
   
   This is just like digg.com but with some additional features like views and “take it anywhere” facility. This can be placed anywhere on the website. Even it can be repeated across the sites. This helps you share the news and findings with your blog visitors. Also this is a little better than del.icio.us as it not only allows you tag but also participate with votes and comments. Overall a good tool to use.

There are many other tools available in the innovation center. I will be trying each one of them before recommending it to others. I have test few widgets and have suggested some changes. They are working on it and making it happen for me. I can clearly see a community feel and that’s where the center of innovation lies. Diversify thoughts and experience can make the product even better. Keep watching the home of Idealwebtools for recommended tools. I will try to keep it updated.

Three years ago I joined web industry with a vision to understand and create better brands. At that time many of friends were not comfortable with this industry. By then India was only known for its cheap labor available to create websites and small programming. You could only find Indians bidding for smaller contracts at much cheaper rate.

The story is changing much rapidly than expected. Now I can see special but regular Web related items on News channels. “Gang of girls” advertisement by sunsilk asking girls to blog, Mblog by Nokia N-series, Rediff mail ads are few examples of the change. Now people talk about blogs, forums more often than those days. BSNL’s recent plans have attracted many to get an Internet connection. I can get a good Internet connection by just paying Rs 500 per month.

I can also see daily newspapers like telegraph, times of India, economic times covering wikipedia, blogspot almost everyday. I also heard that Vonage is planning a launch in India.

PCs going cheaper were an add-on to this growth. Now anyone can get a good configured PC for approx Rs 25,000 ($600). Also India is expanding a government-led program to provide free, local language software to all of its citizens, as it tries to broaden computer use in the country.

Overall it is going better. There is still enough Indian web space vacant for entrepreneurs. Hope to see many more B-schools promoting web as a better marketing platform.

Is it the growing popularity of blogging or just another government policy? Whatever might be the reason, the truth is that Gov India is going to ban many blogging sites like *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/* (the list will have more sites). I just read it in eco times front page. India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs to block several websites. Till 9:00 IST I am able to access all the above said sites.

Earlier it was Google Earth and now Google blogs, google is surely not finding a place in Indian Gov’s heart.
Continue reading “Indian Government banned dozen sites”

I visited Hedir after quite sometime and thought of sharing a recent joke with the community. Hedir has a good incentive structure for its members; they show our adsense with our posts. I am sure a lot of members are earning good out of it.

Continue reading “Google might be robbing your adsense money”

Today when I saw that Mr Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com has released a firefox extension for SE Optimization I could not stop laughing. This extension really is of no use.

Why is this of no use?
This is there to consume extra bandwidth with every search, that’s it. A person who does SEO never does it this way. If you are a web business owner and have Google toolbar installed with this extension on same machine then you will surely have a good time with Google. If you do not know why read the TOS or Hire a good SEO expert.

Anyway have fun and try http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html, but surely at your own risk.

Last week I could find some time for few articles and discussions. I also studied complete Hebrews (The Bible) last week as I am preparing quiz for our church kids.

Some of my articles are:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum8/1560.htm at webmasterworld.com homepage. If you are not able to view it then let me know. I will be able send you the complete pdf file. Some of the images which you will not find in the article as WMW does not allow images. I had a talk with their moderator Mona but was of no use. Anyway you can enjoy the images right here.

Attributes of a Keyphrase

3×3 Matrix for keyphrase Analysis

Another one is about “7 Ps of Internet Marketing”, you can view it at http://www.idealwebtools.com/mylife/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6.This is a PHPBB3.0 Beta based forum, an extension of NIMC forums.

I am also involved in few discussions; you can view it at webmasterworld.com

• http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/4324.htm – How accurate/reliable is your web analytic tool?
• http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/907.htm – Creating my first forum

There are various discussions where I am involved. I wish I had more time in hand. Waiting for the world cup semi between France Vs Portugal.

I always wondered the future of directory industry and it seems Hedir is on its way to redefine the philosophy behind directories. It is even challenging the DMOZ (which IMO is an early call).

Can this David beat the Goliath and capture the crown? It surely is dressed up for a battle and I am supporting it too. I am constantly in touch with its community members. I keep mentioning about Hedir to my friends. Today I was called as a Judge for a B-School event and I did mention about Hedir to few of my Industrial friends there.

I wish all the best to Hedir and the community.

Slope of year 2005 for Total Sites looks much better than that of 2000 (also known as dot com boom year) . Googles making into more headlines than MS is another indication that online market was very prominent this year.
Continue reading “2005 the real dot com boom”