| LED Digest 1964: AdSense in RSS Feeds |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. May 3, 2005 Issue #1964 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Problems with Web Design ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson ~ Catherine Parvensky ~ Rick Gortatowsky ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== The Only AdSense in RSS Feeds ==-- ~ Rich Dudley ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Web design > Thanks in no small part to my "expert advice", > that little company is no longer around... - David Yancey, LED 1963 David, You are beating yourself up needlessly. In fact, they should be patting you on the back. You put them on their feet. Their own failure to find other similar contracts seems to be what did them in. Nothing is forever anymore. Not your fault. The trouble with playing the role that you did is that you were acting as a substitute CEO for them, and went out and got them what the needed in the first place. They'd have folded long ago if you hadn't. Once you were no longer in that role, they reverted back to their own limited strategic skills. Most small business owners are very strategically challenged, and, except for plain old bad luck, that is almost always what does them in. Those who are the most strategically astute are the ones who generally succeed and grow. Those who are not qualified to run a business can be self-trained, but admitting the problem is the first step to redemption. Most refuse to make that admission, and they allow their ego and personal bias to drive their strategy and approach, while the changing, competitive marketplace swirls around them. Their failure to address the market conditions and their own management shortcomings with a pro-active strategy finally consumes their working capital. Even large companies (K-Mart) can suffer from this condition. The lucky ones see the writing, and get out whole. The rest fail. This scenario is often played out on a smaller scale when a small business hires a skilled web strategist who can integrate the business with the website, and also handle the website marketing role. Then the business owner decides that they don't need that kind of advice, or the cost, and they begin to dismantle or revise what has worked. For their own long term survival, business service providers need to identify and focus on those owner / managers who have their management act together, and attach to them, and avoid the rest like the plague. Best regards, Dirk Johnson - owner LinkStrategy.com http://www.linkstrategy.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Catherine Parvensky Barwell Subject: Web design Hi Martha, I have been watching the thread on "web design costs" and "targeting corporate clients" rather than "small businesses" and have a couple clients and a couple questions: 1. I have had no luck obtaining larger clients, probably because there are many many other people out their who do what I do (i.e. web site design). So, trying to get in the door with a larger company is somewhat difficult. 2. I happen to think that my site designs are well planned, user friendly and visually appealing. My clients are always thrilled with what I provide them, and I have never had a complaint that I am too expensive. Judging from this thread, I may be at the low end of cost for this group, but there are other companies around here that charge half of what I do. But, I had my first encounter with a client who needed a web site design. He was one of my first clients and the look of his site was outdated. He was looking for a new look and decided to change hosting providers to one of those cheap $4.95/month mega companies and rather than having me re-design his site, he told me that the new hosting company has a "template" system which allows him to design his own site for free. I was really caught off-guard with the conversation and couldn't really come up with a response. Then I started wondering, what should my response be if this ever came up again. I was hoping that this post would generate some ideas for a response on the following 2 questions: 1. Why should someone pay $14.95 for quality hosting service (i.e. not a mega company offering unlimited bandwidth and storage space for $4.95 per month)? 2. Why should someone pay a web designer $100 per page when they can use a "template" program for free? I know some simple answers like "with a template your site looks like every other site out their", but there are so many templates available anymore, that this argument isn't necessarily true anymore. And, if it is true, does it really matter when there is such a difference in cost? Another response is that "the learning curve" for learning the template program may be so high that although the template is "free" the cost of your time to enter the data is not. I have never purchased a template, so I don't really know what is involved in using one. I do basic website design (html, flash, JavaScript and limited php). I do not do database integration. Although I have a consultant I work with who could do database integration if the client requires such, I do not solicit this type of business. I have, however, started doing search engine optimization work, but have yet to get clients to buy in to the cost of this service. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Catherine Parvensky, President Integrated Learning Technology www.iltwebsites.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Rick Gortatowsky Subject: Web design Hi Everyone! Some of this thread is rather moot. Within the next two years time, three on the outside true "Plug & Play" websites will be the standard. Many of the larger hosting firms and indeed ISP's are working quite hard at software to do just that as we speak. In fact, we are involved in one such contract for some eCommerce based tools. Hosting firms and even more so large ISP's are seeing marketshare being lost due to various reasons such as broadband which is a either resell someone elses services and be happy with your commission or die, perhaps slowly. Plug And Play web's that are quite robust be they commerce or services based are on the way. They assure the prospective customer such as businesses effective sites, real SEO, real security and much more. The project we are working on for example is unique and not. While we are under a NDA on it suffice to say the commerce end of it will be a true blessing for small and medium businesses and give any site be it a eBay, Overstock whatall a true run for the money (sales) while costing the client no commissions and various fee's. Best of all, they need know absolutely ZERO about being "Effective" on the web, its all done FOR them. The future of the web excludes the current mind set completely as its simply not needed. Web Designers, Web creation firms are as we speak running on borrowed time. I know of at least 8 major firms (including America's two largest ISP's) working on professional plug & play site software for businesses and there is simply no designer or private firm that will 1. Create such outstanding abilities in sites and 2. Deliver them at a cost that is coming. The big boys play on volume, not "How much can we get from this one and that one". The goals are simple: 1. Retain the customers as ISP users 2. Retain and/or get said clients to host with them 3. Provide clients any type and/or numbers of websites they require that are both professionally made/supported 4. Seize those businesses not only for the sites but future growth / opportunities 5. Provide such services in volume so cost is reduced to little more than most hosting costs now... Simple. Can have 1000 clients at $2000 each for sites or have 200,000 for $40-$50 a month 6. Provide all forms of sites needed... Again... All plug and play. Want forums? Want commerce? Want auctions? Want Blogs? on & on... ALL plug and play. But how can this be accomplished via a client? How can they design a site look and feel? Simple to understand. Well... simple to understand for anyone who is a moden day programmer shall I say. The present 3 tier standardized model for RAD (Rapid Application Development) is being applied at a higher level to these plug and play future webs. You have a data layer, you have a control layer or rules layer and you have a presentation layer.. In Visual Basic/C etc. for example a programmer designs a user interface, not much different than using a paint program (in fact less robust!). They then need "plug in" their code that sends of commands (easy terms) to the control/rules layer. That layer then communicates to and fro with the data layer. With the Plug & Play webs all the client need EVER worry about is the Presentation layer. All the rest is taken care of for them. The User interface's are easier to work with than using Microsoft Word, by far in fact. I could take any person reading this in LED, sit them down with Visual Basic and within two hours they could create a user interface. Not a lick of code perhaps, but they could make a user interface that is effective towards a given task. Thus the statment of " in my view most web consultants will therefore either learn how to make it with smaller accounts, or find another line of work." by Mr Yancey in LED 1961 is not correct entirely as small accounts will cease to exist completely, the "Find another line of work" however is true. This by no means states that "Web work" will cease to exist. It will still exist and in large form with custom applications that use the web as distributed computing mechinism for varieties of applications. It does however mean the work that has been the work feeding web designers, web consulting firms, web creation firms and/or privateers is coming to an end. On the other side of the short future coin... I have never understood why a business would hire anyone to build webs for them that are not themselves engaged in similar web activities. I would never hire a designer or firm to build say commerce sites when said designer/firm does not itself engage in eCommerece. This is just a "Duh? type thing". We had several webs we created where others came before us and the clients were never told how to be effective. Not even the basic's. Like, "Sell things at eBay for pennies"... Pennies? Those pennies can result (and usually do) in retained traffic to a website after you communicate with them and its all nice and tax deductible. Most designers/firms dealing with eCommerce are so very very illiterate in sales on literally all grounds its no mystery at all why their clients fail. They fail because the people they hire to help/make the succeed dont have a clue about their business. Dont see many Web Designers with MBA's ya know? Its even a problem in BIG business on the net. Programmers/engineers think selling things is just childs play as compared to the gospel of writing code. Marketers think programmers are weirdo's, like people who weld together car doors but cult-like. Management/corporate are constantly trying to get both sets of entities to get on "the same page". I guess I am unique. I know both and as such I can say with no hesitation at all that "Selling/Marketing" is SO much more complex than programming its just night and day. With programming there are defined rules, defined boundaries, finite this and finite that. In sales/marketing every single person... every single prospective customer is unique. Some will pay extra for service, some will yell no matter what... its completely random and the key is how to find the largest common denominators and appeal to them. Literally every respect of different peoples personalities, wallet on & on come into play. This is where web designers/firms fail and why their clients then fail. Is it a web firms business to know the intimates of a clients business? No... probably. But then again, a bunch of good people would then say, "Sorry Mr. Client, we really cannot represent/create your interests as we dont know enough to do so..." and pass them to someone who does. But no... Instead they see green $$$ and thats what they care about. In our case, we do web sales also. So, we do understand sales. We wont accept building a site for "DVD reviews". Want DVD Sales and Reviews? Ok, we're game. We're game as we know that when that client succeeds and they will that they will then refer some kiosk seller in a mall to us. 85% of all webs we have created are due to prior clients who run into someone or are talking to someone interested in getting sales on the web. We do not even promote on the web that we create commerce sites. In fact, some of the software we are now engaged in creating is for small/medium sized businesses to create storefronts and then some. This due to the fact we got tired of paying others for their software and then having to meddle with it to make it do various tasks outside of the normal operations of said software. With our own we can just "Make it so". But all mucus aside :) IF someone wants to be a web professional no STANDARD exists. Thus that entity should be saying, "To be a web professional means that I represent/understand my clients interests to the best of my ability. If I do not have the ability to do so for said client(s) then I either refer them to someone who does or I become skilled and knowledgable enough about their interests/business to service them". In the case of sales businesses that means understanding product, prospective customers and things such as marketing/tax deductions etc. It means at least having some MBA qualifications. Course then again... If one has an MBA why would they be making websites? LOL Rick Gortatowsky Software Society ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Richard Dudley Subject: Google AdSense in RSS Feeds This just cross my aggregator today: Today I launched a project that has been a long time coming. LonghornBlogs.com launched new RSS feeds (http://www.longhornblogs.com/mainfeed.aspx) with AdSense ads embedded in each entry. I'm very pleased to be the first (and currently the only) site sanctioned by Google to test out this new product. I can't talk about much more than that, but you can read a bit more about it here (http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2005/04/26/13905.aspx). It's interesting to see how the ads are integrated with the posts. These ads only appear in the syndicated feed, at the very bottom of the post. Of course, there is regular adsense on the site when you visit it. Rich Dudley www.bloomeryweddings.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "What great delight it is to see the ones we love and then to have speech with them." - Vincent McNabb |
