If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Now that Bill Gates has retired my new “wish i was him” is Jeff Bezos. He was interviewed on my favorite radio show, On Point, yesterday where he discussed the future of reading, e-commerce, the economy, and the internet.

Here is the broadcast…

In the world of the Internet, Jeff Bezos is a giant. A pioneer. In the old days, they might have said a god.

He started Amazon.com when e-commerce was next to nothing and the web was still a whisper. Today, Bezos is a billionaire, Amazon is ubiquitous, and the web, well, it’s the way we live.

It hasn’t all been pretty. A lot of bookstores have been trampled. Amazon’s balance sheet was touch and go along the way.

But Bezos is still thinking big. From the way we read, to “cloud computing,” to humans in space.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

“Bezos says he is “very serious” about the business; he says it is in some ways harder because there are so many participants. It has a glamor element, that attracts people; he says they are working on for-pay streaming service that will be unveiled in a few weeks; will start instantly, a la carte for pay”

“Bezos on the Roku/Netflix movie streaming box: My own guess is that separate boxes are an immediate step, and that streaming capabilities will be built directly into television sets.”

Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : D: Amazon’s Bezos: To Launch For-Pay Movie Streaming Service; Stays Bullish On Kindle; Books Are Like Horses

This is interesting to hear from Mr. Bezos. I knew they’d be offering a streaming service at some point but I thought it would be in association with Netflix. Apparently they will be doing this on their own. Hmm did someone I know call a la carte tv awhile ago? Ahh yes, it was me.

I also agree with his thoughts on the future of IPTV along with the current trend of set top boxes. Devices like the Roku player with Netflix streaming capabilities are an intermediary step (yes, I did order one) to televisions with built in streaming capabilities. I love HP’s tv(s) with a Media Center Extender (HP Media Smart TV) built right as well and see that as a possible avenue as it links the web to the tv with an extendable interface.

Technorati Tags: a la carte tv, netflix, roku, jeff bezos, amazon streaming service

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

A week or so ago on IowaBiz Drew McLellan wrote a post about the need to start your 2008 marketing plan now, so you are ready to hit the ground running in two months (yea, two months).

The web does change how marketing is conducted - now more than ever where all the hot marketing techniques have gone online. As you may know I’ve been working on a long post / ebook on this subject. As a young, small, and yet to be profitable startup I have to stretch an extremely thin budget as far as I can for marketing purposes.

Granted, 75% of any marketing we do is via word-of-mouth but here are a few things to plan for in your 2008 Web Strategy Budget… I also threw in time because that should be included in a good budget - especially for us. At the end of this post are some great consultants/resources that can help you with any items in this list.

1. Hosting

Cost: $3-$50 a month based on your needs / Time: 1 time setup ~ 2 hours
If you are paying more than $5 a month for your blog you are getting ripped off. Get A New Browser costs around $40/year to operate which comes out to around $3.33 a month. The same goes for any relatively simple websites. Altogether we pay approximately $70/mo on our infrastructure costs. This includes all our web applications and their associated databases.

2. Analytics:

Cost: Free / Time: 30 minute setup, 1 hour weekly analysis
Analytics is a MUST HAVE for any business website (or any website for that matter). Knowing who visits your website is the first step towards running a successful one. Would you ever try selling anything to a market you know nothing about? I’d hope not - so you should treat your website with the same due dilligence.

Get Google Analytics and start tracking what your audience is doing on your website. Knowing your potential (and current) customer’s behaviour is a HUGE advantage.

3. SEO

Cost: $200-$1000 based on the size of your website / Time: 1-2 weeks
Once you have your Google Analytics setup you are privy to a wide array of information about your website and its traffic. You know what people search for to arrive at your site. You know what pages on your website are more popular than others. This information along with your brand can be the foundation of a great SEO campaign. None of the items I am listing today will have a better ROI than a good SEO campaign.

A good SEO consultant won’t try to “trick” search engines. Mike noted a distinct feature of a bad SEO consultant:

“Some small businesses still think there are tricks to ranking higher in search results due to placement of hidden keywords, lots of meta tags, or having your site submitted to 80 search directories.” IowaBiz

A good SEO consultant will tell you how to write blog posts in a semantically friendly way. They will show you other ways to enhance your existing content to attract search engines better. This is a key element of a popular blog. You want all those archived posts indexed to increase your residual traffic.

3. New Media (Social Media)

Cost: free-$300-$12000 / Time: however long you want to spend
New media is the next wave of marketing and if you are not present in this medium you will be soon left in the dust. I’m guessing that if you are reading this blog you are full aware of it. The costs are completely variable based on how much you want to do - similar to traditional marketing. Here are the basics.

You should have some video - any video showing off you, your company, or your product. This is a far more intimate interaction to offer potential clients or anyone who is at your website to hear what you have to say. A standard video and some editing will cost around $300.

You should be present on social networks for an effective new media campaign. It will be essential in the coming months and years to know how you can use these mediums as secondary (and often primary) avenues of marketing. Basic consulting for your first month will cost you around $395. You can stop once you get the knack of it and do it yourself or continue letting the experts handle it.

Recognize the potential of different communication mediums like blogging, podcasting, video etc. Learn how to use these mediums as effective ways to extend conversations with your audience - and your potential customers. Again you can do this yourself or outsource it to the experts. Setting all this up can cost you anywhere from $1500 - $12,000 depending on what you want to accomplish.

4. Internet Marketing and Advertising

Cost: $50 - $10,000 / Time: 1 hour to 1 week depending on the size of your campaign
Please note that if you have not done SEO on your website you should do that first before entering into the Internet Advertising/Marketing ballgame. You want organic traffic before you pay for traffic. There are so many options (which will be a whole post or ebook) but the standard practices are Email Marketing, CPC and CPM, Link Ads, RSS Ads, and traffic arbitrage.

The easiest way to get started is a simple AdWords campaign - which if done properly should significantly increase your traffic.

One the other side of the coin is making money with your site. In this sense there are many options as well - from AdSense to Link Ads to Premium advertisements.

If you combine the two together you get a technique called traffic arbitrage where you pay for ads to drive traffic to a website where you are running ads. A good arbitrage campaign will purchase ads at $0.05 and sell ad space at $0.10 a click or impression. The return is obvious.

Both of these scenarios can be as confusing as handling your personal finance and taxes and often times should be left to the professionals. A good internet marketing consultant will often charge 10% of the advertising budget. It is well worth it as the ROI of a good AdWords campaign will have a significant impact on the worth of your website.

5. Legal

Cost: $17.99 - $5,0000 / Time: 1 hour consultation
There are a lot of aspects to think of when regarding legal issues with a website. You can start with $17.99 for Brett’s book Cyberlaw. After reading that you will realize there are a lot of legal issues that you did not know about when doing business on the web. If you want to cover your bases you can spend $500 on basic Terms of Use and Privacy Policies. You can also spend up to $5,000 on custom contracts. Also if you are not a legal corporate entity you should definitely look into that as there are many legal and tax benefits of doing so.

6. Production (Design and Development)

Cost: $500 - $10,000 / Time: 1 week to 2 months
If you are reading this you are obviously interested in doing business on the web. Obviously you need a website to do this - and one that doesn’t look like your teenage child made it in 1997. You may need a design audit to see if you fall in this class of out of date websites. If you do you need a new website. You can do this yourself but if you are not comfortable a basic website will cost you around $500 and is likely much better than you have if you fail the audit.

7. Intranet

Cost: Free - $10,000 / Time: 1 week to 1 month
Let’s start with the definition of an intranet… It’s essentially private web applications secured and accessible by you and maybe your clients. This ranges from good webmail to CRM’s, Wikis, Project Management, Bug Tracking, etc. If you are not using any of these you are definitely missing out an increased efficiency and productivity. If you ask me, these are a must for operating a business on the web.

Well, that was a long post, but hopefully informative as you are creating your web strategy - if you are creating a web strategy. If you do not have a web strategy or some sort of plan you should wake up and realize it’s almost 2008. In this era a web strategy is as important, if not more, than a business plan. It’s a MUST. And here are some people that can help you…

—-

Me: Analytics, SEO, Internet Advertising and Marketing, Production, and Intranet. Yes I am a self-professed web guru with a lot of experience in these areas. Let me know (abrudtkuhl[at]gmail.com) if you are interested in hiring me to help you create your web strategy. I know - shameless self promotion.

Chris Punke at FocalPoint can help you with all your web video needs.

Nathan Wright at LavaRow can help you with your new media marketing efforts.

Mike Sansone at Converstations can help you realize the avenues to take have conversations with your customers via new media channels.

Brett Trout can help you with your legal issues and Rush Nigut can handle your incorporation needs.

As far as anything else - I’m sure you can find someone to help you from the Central Iowa Bloggers. Let me know what you need in the comments and I can help you find the right person. Or just ask Adam or Andy - the networking guys. They know everyone.

Flickr photo from Wendibular

Tags: Web Strategy, Budget, 2008

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 2 Comments

Well we didn’t exactly get what we were looking for.

Today Google announced the Open Handset Alliance and the Android mobile phone software platform - not exactly a GPhone but a big step forward.

More details later as they come in, but here’s a what Andy Rubin (who was in the NYTimes this weekend) said on the Official Google Blog:

“Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile. Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform. We think the result will ultimately be a better and faster pace for innovation that will give mobile customers unforeseen applications and capabilities.” - Andy Rubin, Director of Mobile Platforms, Google

Tags: Open Handset Alliance, Android, Google, GPhone

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 1 Comment

As everyone is clamoring over Google’s OpenSocial initiative and how these social networks are going to war, an intersting point bubbled up from investor and board member of Facebook Jim Breyer.

“No IPO until 2009 at the earliest”

Read Facebook VC: No Rush for More $$, Would Work W/Google

Whaaaat?!? IPO? Are you kidding me? The only thing good that can come of this is Facebook having to open up its books to show everyone that it is not worth anything near $15 billion (or if they make any profit at all). And by that time the bubble will have burst.

IPO… you gotta be kidding me…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 4 Comments