| LED Digest 1511: Outsourcing Web Development |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. February 5, 2003 Issue #1511 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Outsourcing Web Development [was: Darwin] ==-- ~ Marty Milette "Cost is really only one of the benefits of outsourcing." ~ Andrey Chashkov "...by hiring local developers you miss the most powerful phenomenon brought into the new economy..." --== Effective Marketing Tactics ==-- ~ Dejan Bizinger "...my first suggestion would be using email marketing." --== Google Toobar ==-- ~ Ivan Jimenez "Most toolbars record your IP address and will count multiple visits..." ===== GEEK TIPS ================== --== Site Search ==-- ~ Peter Warnock ~ Veronica Yuill ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Yahoo & Inktomi ==-- ~ Jill Whalen ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Outsourcing (was Darwin) Regarding outsourcing, I'm working with a company on the 'other side' of the equation. We do web and business software development from Russia. Small business people are certainly aware of the 'loaded' labor rate and hassles of having a full-time employee. By the time you add on recruiting costs, training, administration, holidays and all the other benefits North American workers DEMAND today -- you're paying at least 2 or even 3 times base salary as the 'loaded' labor rate. (Heaven help you if you employ UNIONIZED workers, who won't work one minute past quitting time without time-and-a-half or double-time!) Cost is really only ONE of the benefits of outsourcing. I view the most IMPORTANT benefit as being TIME. For example, if you want to 'hire' a database developer tomorrow, you're out of luck. You'd be looking at several months or longer to find one decent one (you can afford), and then several months to get them 'up to speed' and productive on the types of work you need them to do. In contrast, with outsourcing, you CAN find one tomorrow, and get one with the SPECIFIC skills and experience you need, who will be productive from day one. For the small business owner, this kind of flexibility means that if you have an idea, you can get it out faster and cheaper than your competitors. Plus, if you find the idea flops, you can dump the offshore workers and / or change them to move in a completely new direction virtually overnight. Other points to keep in mind... Skills and experience are still just as important with outsourcing. CHECK references, and view their work first. Start with a small project, see how it goes, before committing to major projects. Also, keep in mind that some countries close to the possible 'war zone' are NOT going to be good places to rely on for mission-critical or 'sensitive' work in the coming months. Some members suggest farming work out to high school students. I suppose if all you want is a 'brochure' site, then that's fine. However, if you need a professional-quality, highly-available eCommerce site that is designed to SELL -- you need to make sure that the developers and SEO have the necessary sales and marketing EXPERIENCE. At the end of the day, the biggest difference between hiring and outsourcing is how much money stays IN your pocket PLUS how much more you are able to make by bringing buy turning around projects faster. Marty R. Milette ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Andrey Chashkov Subject: Outsourcing > I have awarded jobs to companies from Slovakia, > Romania, Russia, Thailand and Brazil. All have > exceeded my expectations and cost a fraction of > what an American web developer would charge. - Chuck Hiatt, LED 1510 I'm totally agree with Chuck Hiatt - there is a tremendous amount of talent in the world. They are not college students who will be studying for your money. They are professional, reliable and fast. And they charge a fraction of what you used to pay an American developer. I would like to add that by hiring local developers internally you miss the most powerful phenomenon brought into the new economy by the Internet - distributed business organization. Now you are able to concentrate on your primary business objectives and outsource performance to the most cost-effectve production center. What you get with good off shore team: - hire top notch professional(s) in anything. - pay for actual hours worked - not for hours spent just sitting in the office - free yourself or your project managers from overwhelming routine (such as daily control of all the smallest details) and dedicate that time to strategic ideas - get immediate access to as many gurus as your projects might need - have talents in other different technologies on hand ready to jumpstart your projects - reduce operative expenses and get the budget needed to improve your market position - have the pleasure of NOT watching your developers sweating over who knows what - instead, you just get to see the finished work! Now please tell me - is not it "strange" to waste money with local developers? eLance.com is good example of where you can find gurus, but there is some possibility to face with "college students" as well. The reason is eLance bidding system - you place your need and see how developers fight each other bidding lower and lower. The lowest price is not necessary the best solution :) So find credible company with long history and a bunch of clients in the region you live in. If you need an advice - you're welcome to email me. Andrey Chashkov, CEO TechnoArt Labs www.technoart.net ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dejan Bizinger Subject: Effective marketing > ... what marketing tactics will attract more > customers to our website...? - Valerie Harris, LED 1502 As I'm a big fan of email marketing, my first suggestion would be using email marketing. Many of you know that having your own email newsletter is an excellent way to be in touch with your customers and with future customers. You know that getting visitors can be expensive, and that they are only visitors. Getting customers are even more expensive. It is all about conversion: you have to convert surfers in visitors, visitors in customers and, in the best case, customers in repeated customers. The main problem is that many people succeed only in the first part of this conversion game (surfers-visitors). They invest a lot of money in advertising, people come to their web site and leave very fast. It is like throwing away your money. Many people don't realize that they have to make their site sticky and to give their visitors a reason(s) to subscribe to their free email newsletter. That's way you need an email newsletter. For example you can tell your visitors to subscribe and they will get useful news and tips about web developing business. Also, you can offer service discount exclusively to your subscribers. This way, you can make very loyal relationship with them. Also, another good way of using email marketing is to spend money advertising in quality email newsletters that are aimed to people interested in your business. Email advertising can have good CTR. Very useful way of advertising (cost-benefit) is using CPA (Click-Per-Acquisition). You can set-up your own affiliate and pay your affiliates for every new customer. This way you can't lose. Best regards, Dejan Bizinger, Contributing Editor SKYLIST Solutions http://www.skylist.net ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: Google Toolbar Hi John, Most toolbars (Google, Alexa, etc.) record your IP address and will count multiple visits from one IP address only once therefore it makes no sense to keep revisiting your site. Once is enough to get you indexed... eventually. Regarding your competitors, it really makes no difference how many times you visit because I'm sure they've already been indexed and your "one" visit will have little effect on their popularity. What your visit will affect is the fact that both sites are related (I'm not sure if Google is currently measuring this for indexing purposes). That said, your site can take advantage of THEIR leverage (i.e. someone who may not have known about your site but knew about your competitor's may either see your site listed near theirs, Alexa's related sites, etc. etc.). Also keep in mind that the same holds true for them... so make sure your offering is superior to theirs. All the best, Ivan J. Jimenez, Business Development cosmicbreath.com Marketing Group ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Peter Warnock Subject: Site search > I have been trying to find a good site search > engine for a large web site... Does anyone > have any suggestions? - Niki Mcelroy, LED 1508 I use iSearch available from http://isearchthenet.com/twiki/bin/view It integrates seamlessly with my site, and requires little effort to setup; it requires MySQL and PHP. What I like is that it spiders the pages like a search engine. I haven't tested on a large site, but the developer is constantly improving it. Commercial licensing is very economical at $35 for 3 domains. Peter Warnock webstruction.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Site search You don't say exactly what requirements you have that aren't met by the search engines you've tried. But I used to use this one on a site with a couple of thousand pages, and it worked really well: http://www.xav.com/scripts/search/ . The site says it will handle up to 10,000 pages. For remotely-hosted searching, I've found nothing better than Picosearch http://www.picosearch.com/ Hope this helps. Veronica Yuill Archetype Information Technology Ltd http://www.archetype-it.com/english/ ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Jill Whalen Subject: Yahoo Inktomi > Since the Yahoo! directory is now essentially hidden > from the casual searcher, is paying the annual fee > for the Yahoo! Express Directory submission worth > it anymore? - John Richardson, LED 1509 In my opinion, not at this time. The default Yahoo results are currently coming directly from Google. Sure, your Yahoo directory listing may count somewhat towards your overall Google PageRank, but there are plenty of places to get links that don't cost $299 per year. Yahoo is in the process of purchasing Inktomi, but has not said what they will be doing with it. Many have speculated that Yahoo will drop Google results altogether and use Inktomi results instead. I'm not so sure. In my opinion, Google's results are far superior to Inktomi's. Yahoo seems focused on providing a great user experience, and in fact, since prominently featuring Google results the number of searches being performed at Yahoo has risen. Do they want to risk this by removing them for inferior Inktomi results? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It's possible that they may somehow merge Inktomi and Google results. Only time will tell! Best, Jill Whalen High Rankings Advisor http://www.highrankings.com/advisor.htm ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde |
