One of my first online ventures involved information services. I was already engaged in the information services market, we just did most of our advertising in the nationals section of the Thrifty Nickel and phone number tear-offs on payphones.

We entered the online market selling our services for a slightly increased price, advertised online using Overture an early search engine PPC that eventually became Yahoo Search. Things were moving along great, we saw an immediate increase in responses until, someone copied our program and was offering the same service (and even our exact service list mind you). It was before the DMCA act was around and it was too expensive to go the lawyer route.

After a fruitless game of cat-mouse in bidding wars, we decided the only way to combat this guy was to give away our services absolutely free, rely on affiliate commissions from e-mail subscriptions and drive him out of the market.

Did we fail, or was free a key part of our eventual turn-around strategy?

What is the Purpose of Free?

Being free doesn’t guarantee you online success; however it has some very attractive aspects seriously worth looking at. Offering free content attracts a larger audience. If you can garner the trust of your visitors, you gain access to them in a more direct method example through an e-mail newsletter or direct mail.

A Free Model

For free to work you have to have a constant stream of new readers, ample ad inventory space and advertisers willing to fill it. Many publishers rely on services like AdSense, Bidvertiser and thousands of others but the real money is in a direct relationship with the advertiser. A free model also works if you are able to “sell” something later on.

So is Free the Perfect Business Model?

I would say “maybe”. Despite apparent current profitability of select free models, the rush to find a micro-payment model for some if not all content of some publishers is just too enticing to ignore. That along with increased operating and development costs pushes many publishers and website operators to at least explore the options as they are developed.

Oh, and that guy who copied our program eventually gave up competing directly with us, so for us it was the beginning of what is today the Blue Bayou Network of web properties.

Investing in your website, whether by money, time or both while we’re in a downturn is probably one of the single best and most affordable ways to invest in your business.

The best way to invest in your website is in content creation. Devoting 80% of your time and resources into content creation will pay off in multiples. See our earlier posting on the value of content creation for more.

Investing in your website now will keep you in the top of your field or propel you there sooner and prevent your competition from usurping your rightful search position.

Other ways to invest in your website:

- Show Google you mean business and register your domain or extend your current domain registration to 10 years or more. This demonstrates that you are committed to the success of your venture. Of course this is one of only hundreds of factors that Google utilizes to rank your website, but it is one that you can lean in your favor.

- By default dedicated servers are limited to 10mbit speed. Request that your provider increase this to 100mbit. This will allow more visitors to squeeze in your doors and can usually be accomplished for no additional cost.

- Increase or add meta tags to your website. Again only one factor but search engines, other than Google use meta tags and even Google has been known too incorporate their wording into their search results earning you a better customer viewing experience.

As we talk to a number of prospective clients, we invariably will get the “I can get unlimited server space and RAM for $insert some low price here$, why would we pay twice to four times that amount?” question.

First let’s discuss the unlimited space and RAM question. The companies who extend these offers do not intend to provide you with unlimited speed and space on a virtual server. What they are offering is space, limited to no more than the average user on that server. RAM speed, if it denies the other users on the server access you can bet they will be placing limits on your website or denying your access entirely.

Who does the company want to hear from?, one user who needs more server resources or 100 that can’t access their websites because your website is placing too much demand on the server?

Server space, like a retail storefront has to have enough parking spaces to get the customers in, you have to have enough registers open to handle a rush and the doors have to be big enough to get the merchandise in and out of the establishment. Placing your website on a shared server environment may work if you don’t anticipate more than 1-2 visitors an hour but if you expect more you will encounter more growth pains than you will with a private or dedicated server.

Finally let’s discuss price. Our prices are based on fair-market value for what is provided. We offer 24 hour server support and one of the best up times in the industry. You may find cheaper web hosting services but we will be there for you 24-hrs a day, seven days a week and that kind of peace of mind is worth the money.

Who do you want working for your company? A lackadaisical teen thinking more about what he’s doing next weekend?, or an experienced company interested in your own success as much as their own? If you answered the latter, Blue Bayou would like to speak with you. Contact us today at 404-567-6095 for a no hassle quote on any of our services.

As the year-end nears, alot of website owners become nervous. It’s at this time of year that Google has been known to update its algorithm shuffling many search results and making website owners pull out their hair either in anticipation or relief from what does or does not materialize.

Google is supposedly postponing the release of the next update until after the holiday season. Though already live in one data center it won’t be moved into more data centers until the end of the 4th quarter. This is good news for most but I am eager to see the effects of caffeine (code update name) and the inclusion of more social networking results.

Stay tuned for more on the Google caffeine update after its rolled out further.

If one thing is for sure, the U.S. economy will rebound only after the seeds of innovation have been planted and had a chance to prosper. It won’t be corporations that propel us out of this economic downturn, it will be hard-working individuals who have as they always do, arrive to rescue our economy and provide the real opportunities for job growth.

I highly suspect that we will see another technology and Internet boom as more web-based applications become reality. And as is the case with the last two recessions, even more service oriented businesses and product choices.

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Yesterdays post talked about the ins-and-outs of maintaining a Facebook account to represent your business. Today we’re going to expand on those points with this follow up post of an example of a failed campaign, that is ‘one that draws more bad press than good press’.

Texas Pete began its Facebook Fan campaign alluding to an offer that if they reached 100,000 Facebook Fans by 11/15/2009 their Fans would get a coupon for a FREE bottle of Texas Pete Hot Sauce. Recently, Texas Pete posted on their Texas Pete Fan Page that the offer was for a BOGO (Buy One Get One) coupon, NOT a free bottle.

Of course, Texas Pete Fans soon began stating their displeasure with the alleged bait-and-switch and made comments that were not flattering or positive. This one from Melanie FeehanWow, “pretty sneaky. Will have to switch brands. Maybe you should rename to Sneaky Pete”. and this from Chrystal Hawthorne “Not that BOGO free isn’t great, but this did say free bottle. Kind of misleading!”

What this says is that social marketing can be a powerful and beneficial move for your business, but like any part of your business it must be well thought out, and each campaign must be thoroughly tested before unveiling it to the public.

Miva Merchant recently announced it’s plans to move from a License model to a SaaS (Software as Service) model beginning in May.

As a webhost we can appreciate the fact that the Miva Merchant shopping cart software now promises to offer all of its future software improvements, upgrades etc as part of its per month fee, but I must condemn the act of doing so without regard to those licenses already sold as a perpetual one-time cost.

Blue Bayou has chosen to not pass along the cost of these monthly fees for it’s existing Private E-Commerce clients, however by default all new accounts after May 1st, 2009 will only be offered as SAS packages.

For more about Blue Bayou’s Private E-commerce Hosting call us at: 404-567-6095.

Centerville Utah, a local municipality became the first city, as far as I know anyway that has joined the rush to Twitter.

Though I can’t argue that getting information to city residents in a timely manner is important, rushing to use an as of yet unproven technology to disseminate that information could be a problem.

Will the system (Twitter) stand up to a crisis or catastrophic event? Will Twitter be able to be relied on as a technology now and in the future? Does the existing Privacy Policy of Twitter conflict with any local privacy issues or laws?

Time will tell but for now I don’t think that municipalities should be engaging in the Twitter fad.

Blue Bayou, offers the popular WebSite Tonight® product, providing key features for those yearning to get involved in the .MOBI revolution.
 
Now anyone can design and create a .MOBI-compliant Web site easily and affordably. Pages designed for .MOBI are optimized for on-the-go devices, making them easy to load and navigate from the smaller, more limited screens of wireless phones and PDAs.
 
According to industry news, over 100,000 .MOBI domain names were registered during the first four days of the Landrush period beginning Sept. 26. General registration opens up to the public on Oct. 11 when even more registrations are anticipated. To put the excitement into perspective, it took more than 10 years for other top-level domains to garner 100,000 registrations in the early days of the Internet. The fast popularity of .MOBI registrations may support estimates by Yankee Group, an industry analyst, that the mobile data services market could reach $698 billion in yearly sales by 2009, according to a CNNmoney.com article.
 
Companies large and small and across all industries can embrace the power of the .MOBI top-level domain. Using WebSite Tonight offered by , users can easily create Web sites that are formatted specifically to provide on-the-go mobile content and services. For example, Web sites that are .MOBI compliant are designed with content and graphics suited for a two-inch screen rather than a 17-inch desktop monitor. Long download times and excessive scrolling can be a thing of the past.
 
“Providing on demand information about your company, as simple as a calendar of events, current coupons and specials, phone numbers, hours and locations is a must. Even if you’re not looking to develop a .MOBI domain now, immediately reserve your brands .MOBI name now.” Says Nick West, CRO.

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