Web Business Bootcamp E-Book

Richard Seltzer

• Herausgeber: Seltzer Books
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 428

Beschreibung

First published in 2002. The specific examples are dated, because business on the Internet changes rapidly. But the underlying principles and lessons hold true. "You're in basic training for the battle of your life. Your mission is to keep your company alive and to help it move forward quickly in unfamiliar territory. You must master the tools and techniques needed to serve customers and beat the competition into he strange and potentially hostile online business environment. This no-nonsense, tip-driven guide targets key activities that anyone can perform to truly achieve online business success. Internet marketing pioneer Richard Seltzer gets managers out of the boardroom and into the trenches for crucial hands-on Web experience -- which provides insight into how to win on the e-commerce battlefield. He also helps entrepreneurs develop a viable business model without depending on high-priced design services and consultants, as well as gives technology-oriented professionals a broad business perspective for tackling new online responsibilities."

Leseprobe

WEB BUSINESS BOOTCAMP BY RICHARD SELTZER

HANDS-ON INTERNET LESSONS FOR MANAGERS, ENTREPRENEURS, AND PROFESSIONALS LOOKING FOR ONLINE BUSINESS SUCCESS

Copyright 2002 by Richard Seltzer

Originally published by Wiley. The rights have reverted to the author.

Published by Seltzer Books

established in 1974, as B&R Samizdat Express

offering over 14,000 books

feedback welcome: [email protected]

Books by the Richard Seltzer available from Seltzer Books

The Name of Hero

Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes (translation from the Russian)

The Lizard of Oz

Now and Then and Other Tales from Ome

Saint Smith and Other Stories

The Gentle Inquisitor and Other Stories

Echoes from the Attic (with Ethel Kaiden)

Web Business Bootcamp (2002)

The Social Web (1998)

The Way of the Web (1995)

Heel, Hitler and Other Plays

Dryden's Exemplary Drama and Other Essays

A Glimpse of the Future

Preface

Chapter 1 -- Welcome to the land of the free

Chapter 2 -- The value of anonymity: privacy and masquerade

Chapter 3 -- Make your own Web pages on your PC

Chapter 4 -- Assemble your pages to form a Web site

Chapter 5 -- Let people know that you're there

Chapter 6 -- How to improve your Web site

Chapter 7 -- Building your audience with online interaction

Chapter 8 -- Building relationships with customers: what you can learn from selling at auctions

Chapter 9 -- What to do with an audience and what else to do with your content

Chapter 10 -- Going global

Chapter 11 -- Experimenting with futures

Chapter 12 -- The future of business on the Internet

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A Glimpse of the Future

From Georgia to Palo Alto, from Oslo to Singapore, from the Vatican Library to dinosaurs in Hawaii, from Talk Radio to missing children, from Bio-Informatics to the World Bank, from Wired Magazine to Mother Jones, from current weather maps to the latest supreme court decisions, a vast array of information is being made available in attractive, easy to use form, and for free over the Internet. A global electronic mall is under construction. People congregate here, interact here, find the information they want here. And here, too, they are beginning to conduct business. Here the smallest of companies can search and shop on a global scale for the best resources and products at the best prices. Here those same small companies can market their own abilities and products in a global marketplace. This means a new array of risks and opportunities. In the future, you will be forced to compete with distant companies you never encountered before, and you will be able to expand to new markets at low cost. Here new business models will evolve quickly, with new kinds of partnership and collaboration, new ways of working together and serving customers and making money. -- Richard Seltzer, from the script for videotape "A Glimpse of the Future," January 1994  

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Preface

Why you need hands-on experience and how to use this book

 If you are a manager, entrepreneur, or independent professional, you need to learn how to cope in the post-apocalypse Internet business environment, after banner advertising failed as a business model, dot-com stock prices plummeted, and venture capital became scarce. In this environment even the largest companies cannot afford to squander their resources. Customers and revenue and profit matter. Common-sense business logic prevails. And you need to quickly learn how to do as much as you can for the least cost.

 You need to step out of the board room and get your hands dirty. You need to experience the Internet business environment first-hand to appreciate the challenges and recognize the opportunities, to see new ways to save money and to make money. You need to understand how Web page design affects traffic and marketing. And you need the insight and confidence that can come from hands-on experience so you can tell technical experts what you want and why.

 Also, no matter how good your basic business idea and how great your long-term prospects, you need to be prepared to go into hibernation if venture capital is unavailable or your key customers run out of cash. Could you keep your current Web site or a new scaled-down version going with a skeleton crew or even just yourself? Could you continue to look like a going operation while you wait for the market to turn and investors and customers to come back? Or perhaps until you find a buyer for the entire business? You might be able to use that hibernation time to find your Internet roots and craft a new beginning for your Web-based business.

 And if you are between jobs or getting the entrepreneurial itch for the first time, this same "bootcamp" training can help you get off to a good start, with a viable business model, and practices that take full advantage of the power and flexibility of the Internet environment, freeing you from dependence on high-priced design services and consultants.

 Also, if you are a technical person rather than a manager, and have business ambitions or new business responsibilities, you may need to supplement what you know already with the broad business perspective you can get from this book.

 This book does not attempt to cover the entire field of ecommerce. Rather it focuses on activities that ordinary people can easily do themselves, that are interrelated, that are key to business success, and that entrepreneurs and ecommerce managers typically delegate to experts, without knowing enough to properly set goals, coordinate activities, and monitor progress.

 It does not attempt to give a broad overview of all of the alternatives -- there are books already that go into each specialty in great detail. Rather, it gives you step-by-step instructions to get you started with one or two products or services in each area, enough for you to get the experience you need for insight into important aspects of business on the Internet.

 The activities described in this book require no technical knowledge, and cost little or nothing (so long as you have a computer and can connect to the Internet).

 Each chapter includes one or more "required" assignments -- tasks you need to perform to prepare you for other tasks in later chapters. You'll also see suggestions for "elective activities" to expand your experience and knowledge.

 My own Web site (www.samizdat.com) serves as an example of what can be done on a shoestring, without technical sophistication, and also a source for further related reading.

 You can also join online discussions of these same issues at a Web site I've put together in conjunction with this book -- www.webworkzone.com/bootcamp.  There you can interact with me and with other readers.

 NB -- This book is targeted primarily at users of Windows PCs, as opposed to Apple Macintosh, UNIX, or Linux. Much of what is said here applies equally well for Macintosh users, but some commands would be different for them, and in some cases the software company or Internet service described does not yet support Macintosh. Typically, vendors follow the numbers: developing first for Windows PCs, because they are in the overwhelming majority, and for Macintosh only when pressed by demand from potential customers.

Acknowledgements

 Thanks to Andree Abecassis, my agent, for bringing the opportunity to my attention and doing everything she could to make this book a reality.

 Thanks to Matt Holt at Wiley for believing in the idea.

 Thanks to the participants in my weekly chat sessions about Business on the Web for their insights and advice regarding the world of online shopping and the Internet business environment in general. In particular, thanks to Bob Zwick, John Hibbs, Sudha and Shirish Jamthe, Kathleen Gilroy, Tracy Marks, Kaye Vivian, Tim Horgan, Ron Rothenberg, Bob Fleischer, Jeff Kane, Carol Snyder, Tom Dadakis, Todd Moyer, Reem Yared, Mike Cosgrave, Steve Woit, Terry Maugeri, Nicki Dzugan, Christian Frosch, Ed Jaros, Linda Stillborne, and Marshall Wick.

Thanks to my former colleagues at Digital Equipment, for all their many insights about the direction of computer technology and Internet business. In particular, thanks to: Berthold Langer, Tom Richardson, Bob Powell, Dan Kalikow, Danny Mayer, Jeff Black, Steve Coughlan, Ashu Bhatnagar, Dudley Howe, Kathy Greenler, Louis Monier, Sam Fuller, John Jacobs, Mark Conway, Dave Sciuto, Phil Grove, Joan Blair, Dave Cedrone, Steve Schultz, Ethel Kaiden, Roseann Giordano, Jay Owen, Tom Pisinski, Don Gaubatz, Harris Sussman, Jack Rahaim, Anne Kreidler, Jim Johnson, Steve Fink, Fred Isbell, Seth Itzkan, Phil Grove, Jonathan George, Sheila Goggin, Mike Odom, Bill Keyworth, David Marques, George Pappas, Donna Curtis, Mark Hayes, Mark Collett, Jean Bonney, Mark Fredrickson, Ann Howe, Phil Faulkner, Stan Hayami, Tom Skinner, Russ Jones, Brian Reid, Joella Paquette, Carolyn Unger, Freddy Mini, Dave Buffo, Wendy Caswell, Sharon Henderson, Jeff Harrow, Kathleen Warner, Skip Garvin, Tom Camp, Jef Gibson, Don Harbert, Kate Nelson, Bob Lehmenkuler, Ray Suarez, Alfred Thompson, Kelly O'Ryan, Janice Colombi, Jeff Schriesheim, Larry Kenah, Alan Nemeth, Russ Doane, Alan Kotok, David Probert, Leszek Kotsch, Chuck Malkiel, Mark Hevesh, Deb Buckley, Win Treese, Len Segal, Mike Jamison, Ken Olsen, Gordon Bell, Larry Portner, David Stone, Win Hindle, Bob Glorioso, Cliff Clarke, Roger Heinen, B.J. Johnson, Tom Blinn, and Dallas Kirk.

 Thanks to the many others who have helped me better understand the dynamics of the Internet and how it can and should be used, in particular: Larry Chase, Noreen Webber, Phil Duchastel, Diane Croft, Gordon Joly, Rik Hall, Betsy Campbell, Jeff Rayport, John Sviokla, Wes Kussmaul, Mary Cronin, Jeremy Josephs, Fareed Yasseen, Anwar Diab, Anthony Alvarez, Bill Wendell, Claude Thau, Vaughn Rhodes, Danny Sullivan, Detlev Johnson, Shari Thurow, Ashley Grayson, Alec McDonald, Phil Duchastel, Chris Locke, Dana Blankenthorn, and David Wheeler.

 And special thanks to my wife Barbara who provided feedback on everything and numerous suggestions, and who has put up with me for over 28 years.

Author

For 19 years, Richard Seltzer worked for Digital Equipment, then Compaq, focusing on the Internet for the last five years, most recently as "Internet Evangelist." He was one of the handful of people who helped Digital Equipment to recognize and take advantage of new business opportunities on the Internet. For Digital, he wrote The AltaVista Search Revolution, which is published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill, and is now in its second edition. (Library Journal called it "indispensable.")

 Now as an independent Internet marketing consultant, he frequently writes and speaks on Internet topics, acting as an advocate for more effective use of the Internet for business and education. Since leaving Compaq in December 1998, he has written a consumer book Shop Online the Lazy Way for Macmillan and a business book Take Charge of Your Web Site for Mighty Words.

 In addition, Richard runs his own small publishing business on the Internet (Seltzer Books, formerly B&R Samizdat Express). His acclaimed Web site (seltzerbooks.com formerly samizdat.com) serves as a test ground for his ideas about how to use text content to bring traffic to Web sites. Thanks to useful and well-indexed content, his site gets over 100,000 pages views per month (over 1500 unique users per day) with no advertising.

He graduated from Yale in 1969, with a major in English, and got an MA from the U. of Mass. at Amherst in 1972, in Comparative Literature (French, Russian, and German). His other books include: The Way of the Web, 1995; The Social Web, 1998; The AltaVista Search Revolution 1996, 1998; Shop Online the Lazy Way 1999; Take Charge of Your Web Site 2001; The Name of Hero (historical novel, published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin, 1982); Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes (translation from the Russian, Red Sea/Africa World Press, 2000); The Lizard of Oz (fantasy for all ages, 1974); Now and Then and Other Tales from Ome (children's stories, 1976); Saint Smith and Other Stories, 2011).

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Chapter 1 -- Welcome to the land of the free

 Before you spend a penny on e-commerce, you should become familiar with what's available for free and for very low cost. Take advantage of these offers to experiment and learn how businesses can operate in this environment. And, as soon as possible, begin interacting with your target audience.

You have probably used some of these capabilities (like free email) but are unaware of the range of what's available, and the implications in terms of the business activities you can engage in as an individual, at no cost and without using your company's resources or affecting your company's brand identity.

Keep in mind that change comes quickly on the Internet. The ability to  adapt to new business conditions is very important to the survival and growth of Internet companies, particularly ones offering free services. They'll reorganize their entire site without warning or explanation, take away some services, others, and change their terms.

To take advantage of free service offerings, you need to be flexible and creative. If you find that a site or service does not match what is described here, presume there has been a design change. Check Help, Frequently Asked Questions, or Sitemap to reorient yourself. If the service or even the Web site has gone away, try one of the alternatives mentioned here.

Required assignments for Chapter One: • sign up for a free email account; • sign up for a free Web hosting service; create a business card page and a home page Electives: • experiment with other free services • participate in email discussion, newsgroups, forum, chat, etc.

As you go through these exercises, keep asking how you could use such a service in your business or your personal life. What is the business model behind this service? How does the provider benefit from my participation?

Free email

First sign up for at least one free email account at a service that you have not used before. Here we'll step you through signing up at Hotmail (owned by Microsoft). But you could just as well get free email from Yahoo, AltaVista, NBCi, or dozens of other sites.

Why should you want a new email account?

In this bootcamp, we'll be leading you through a series of exercises to help you become an active player on the Internet. You will be trying things that you've never tried before. Hence, you need set up a safe area for yourself, where you can make mistakes and test ideas without what you are doing interfering with your normal business and family activities. If you use your normal work-related email account, with your company name in the address, what you do might in some way reflect on the company that you work for.

You might, also, at some point want to apply for jobs at other companies. In that case, it helps to have an email address that is not company-related, one that you can, with confidence, include in your resume and in correspondence related to new job opportunities.

Also, you can use different email accounts to help manage your correspondence. For instance, you could use your Hotmail account to sign up for email discussions, and another address for receiving advertising messages about products and services you are really interested in, but that you wouldn't want cluttering your business email account.

Go to hotmail.com. Sign up. Be careful to just sign up for the email service -- not for the many publications they'll ask you to subscribe to. When you arrive at the email Inbox, click on Compose and send a test message to your regular email account. Then log on at your regular account and send a message to your new Hotmail address.

You can read your Hotmail email from anywhere. You don't need to use your own PC or Mac, and you don't have to be connected by way of your regular Internet Service Provider (ISP). All you need is a Web browser connected to the Internet.

Notice that every email you send will have a one-line Microsoft (MSN) ad. And every time you go back to check for messages or to send messages, you'll  see banner ads and links to other MSN services.

To get other email-related capabilities for free, try: • www.hushmail.com for e-mail with encryption and digital signatures • www.whalemail.com to send and receive large email files (up to 50 Mbytes)  

Free Web space

If you have your own personal Internet account, your service provider probably gives you Web space in which to create and publish your own pages. Typically, this space is free if you use the directory name assigned to you, such as http://www.tiac.net/members/rseltzer  They typically chare a monthly fee if you buy and use your own domain name, e.g., http://www.samizdat.com The terms vary widely, but often involve a limit on how much space you can use (e.g., 20 Mbytes), and perhaps on how much traffic can come to your site (e.g., 1 gigabit per month), with surcharges if your pages become popular and hence put more load on their systems.

Eventually, you may wish to use that ISP-provided space. In that case, you should check their help files and call their support people for specific instructions. Procedures vary widely from one company to another.

But, first, both to learn and to gain confidence, you should sign up at one of the free Web hosting services that are not tied to your Internet access. Some of the larger services include: • www.angelfire.com (owned by Terra Lycos) • www.tripod.com (owned by Terra Lycos) • www.geocities.com (owned by Yahoo) • www.nbci.com. (which bought Xoom) • www.homestead.com • www.expage.com

Go to Angelfire and register. They'll give you 50 Mbytes of free Web space. In plain text, that's the equivalent of a hundred copies of Huckleberry Finn.

When registering, use one of the new email addresses that you just created.  You'll be forced to choose one of their pre-set directories, which will become part of your address. Once you've done that, click on "Click here to Start Building".

First, create a simple business-card page. Choose to create a new file and name it businesscard.html. The suffix ".html" tells browsers how to handle the content you provide. Click on "Create". Select Basic (instead of Advanced).

Choose the "My Info Layout". Select "Style Sheet #1", and "Submit". Leave the default settings as they are, and enter as the title "Business card for [your name]". Use the "Add a List" or "Create Links" features, if you like; and change the numbers accordingly. If not, change the number for each of those choices to zero. Then, in the text block, enter the information you would like to include on your business card. Click "Save".

To see what you have created, enter the Web address in your browser, e.g., http://www.angelfire.com/directorycategory/yourdirectoryname/businesscard.html e.g., http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp/businesscard.html

Now anyone, anywhere in the world can see that page by just entering that address in their browser.

Next, use Backup in your browser to go back to the Web Shell (where you select what page to edit or create). You'll see that your business card page is now listed there. To view the page, highlight its name and click "View file". To make changes, highlight its name and click Edit.

Now edit the index page that they have assigned you, which is also known as your "home page". Highlight index.html, and click "Edit". The index is the page you get to when you just type the directory name. In other words, you could get to it by entering either http://www.angelfire.com/directorycategory/yourdirectoryname e.g. http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp or the full address e.g., http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp/index.html

Delete the name that they have for "main image" (or you'll wind up with an Angelfire logo). Edit as you like, and enter the text that you'd like to appear. Under "Create Links", make a link to your business-card page. To do that, under "URL", enter http://www.angelfire.com/directorycategory/yourdirectoryname/businesscard.html And under "Description", enter "My Business Card". Click "Save".

Now view your index page, and click on the link you just created for your business card page.

Next, backup, select your business card page, and click "Edit". Under "Create Links", raise the number by one, click Refresh, then add a link to your home page. e.g. http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp

Save. View the page. Test the link.

If you have pictures saved on your hard drive, scroll down the Web Shell page to "File Upload" and "Browse" to select pictures that you'd like to include on your Web pages. Then use the page creation templates to add those images where you would like (entering the full name of each file, including the extension, which will probably be .jpg or .gif).

You can experiment as much as you like here. Nobody will know that these pages exist unless you tell them. Edit and reedit. See what happens when you make different choices. Add links to your favorite Web pages. Add lists. Create more pages. Check the "Help" and "Tool Center" areas for instructions on how to add fancy effects.

You are now a Web publisher. Yes, every page you create will have Angelfire advertising at the top. And these pages are designed in ways that might make them difficult to find by search engines. But if you are creative, you could do some useful and fun things with this space.

Spread your wings

You could, if you wanted, open Web accounts at several different free services and build a variety of Web sites.

For our purposes, you should open at least one more account. Go to NBCi.com. They offer unlimited Web space (while Angelfire limits you to 50 Mbytes).

You won't see this offer immediately. It's buried among many other free services. The site owners would probably love for you to get lost here, exploring again and again, getting the impression that whatever you might need that's related to the Internet is probably buried here somewhere.

Click the "Join now!" button. Then click on the "Membership Form." Fill out the form. Unless you love to receive junk mail, don't indicate any areas of interest, and remove the check marks indicating that you want to get email from them. Also, when you pick a member name and password, keep in mind that the system is "case sensitive". If you enter any upper case characters, you'll have to remember that they are upper case. (As a rule of thumb, I always enter such information all in lower case -- that makes it easier to remember).

Click to go back to the Home page and then click once again on "Join Now!" The help page you arrive at lists the various free services that you can sign up for.

Under "Web Site Building & Hosting", click on "Free storage space for your Web site." Their current offer of free unlimited space means that "there is no limit on how many files you upload to your account", as long as you do not violate their "Terms of Service Agreement". Click to see the Terms of Service. For related details, click on Frequently Asked Questions.

The pages that you create here will have an address in the form http://members.nbci.com/your_membername/ If your member name is jones5 and you create a page which you call myson.html, after that page is uploaded, you'll be able to see it on the Web at http://members.nbci.com/jones5/myson.html

From the home page, click on My NBCi. Then click on My Web Site. "New users, click here to activate your Web site." You'll be asked to enter your email address (use your new one) and to copy an "activation code" into a form. Be careful to reproduce the letters and numbers exactly. This is case sensitive. The code is probably intended to block automated programs from using this service. (Whenever something useful is offered for free, people find creative ways to abuse it.)

For now, click on My Website and check the wide variety of other free services available at NBCi. You could set up another email account here. In fact, they give you one automatically when you sign up with Web space; you just have to activate it. If you do, you'll have an address of the form [email protected] You can also set up your own chat rooms, personalize your online auction pages, and setup an online store (by way of Bigstep.com).

All the major "portal" sites, like Yahoo, Excite, MSN, AOL, etc. offer you a wide range of free services. Any one of these could become your one-stop place to get everything you need for a great Web experience -- from Web search and directory services, to Web design tools, to discussion areas, to shopping, to content. They strive to earn your loyalty, to get you to come back again and again. But you have many choices for all these services they offer -- all free.  And there is no reason for you to use just one such site. Hence the statistics these sites provide about how many members they have, how many Web sites they host, and how many email accounts they have are misleading. Many people open accounts, create Web pages, etc. and then never return or return rarely, having found other services they like better. Today there are over a billion pages on the Web. But hundreds of millions of those pages may be accounted for in Web sites that have been abandoned by their owners, who have no incentive to delete them since the space they reside on is free.

The price of "free"

Sometimes the price you have to pay for a free service is minimal -- a  minor nuisance -- like the television advertising that you put up with on "free" broadcast TV. The ads that appear at the top of the Web pages you create at these Web hosting services typically have banner ads at the top, for which the hosting service gets paid, and for which you get nothing. In other words, your creative effort in writing and designing pages and in attracting visitors to your pages will help to spread the name of the hosting service, and display its advertising to an expanded audience. If these are personal pages, that's a small price to pay. But such advertising could be an intrusion and an embarrassment if you wanted to use these pages of yours for serious business.

And sometimes "free" is far too expensive. The provider of the free service deliberately makes the experience so annoying that you'll be willing to pay to get rid of the nuisance. That's the case with free Internet access today.

Connect to www.juno.com or www.netzero.com and download their free access software. Even if you already have Internet access from home, in addition to access from work, you might find good use for an account like this. If you travel a lot and take your laptop with you, you'll be able to dial-in to local numbers for free from just about anywhere in the US, to use the Web and send email. (You'll get another email account with this new service).

But the price is high -- very high.  Juno's "guide" and related advertising will litter your screen and get in your way at every turn. With free Juno, when you are connected to the Internet, their banner stays on your screen even when you use other applications on your computer and covers other output. In other words, if you try to open a new application by clicking on Start and then Programs, the Juno banner will cover a large part of your screen, making it difficult for you to see and select the program you want.

Ironically, free Internet access services are primarily used by newbies -- the people who are most easily confused and frustrated by the ads and other "features" these services tack on that make the Internet more difficult to use.

What we see is a variant of the old supply-demand rule. In areas where there are many flourishing services, they compete with one another by reducing the nuisances and making their service easy to use and friendly. But where there are very few services and what they provide is in high demand, the providers can pile on advertising, limitations, and requirements for long-term commitment.

During the period of the dot.com crash (starting in the spring of 2000), many free Internet access services went away, including those once offered by AltaVista, Worldspy, Freewwweb, 1stup, Spinway, Bluelight, and Excite. Only Juno (4 million users) and NetZero (7 million users) remain today. Their approach is rather like that of the airlines: the greater the level of hassle at the basic (economy class) level, the more the incentive to upgrade to premium (first class).

If you are interested in tracking the trends in the free ISP business,  check www.nzlist.org/user/freeisp for links to related news stories

Carpe the free one: it may not be free tomorrow

Over the last year, many services that previously were free either went away or switched to a paid basis.  Such was the case with AuctionManager (at www.gotoauctions.com), a utility that makes it easy for serious online auction sellers to manage all their submissions, sales, and related activity. Yahoo's auction site (auctions.yahoo.com), which previously had differentiated itself as being the only major auction site that didn't charge for listings, added such a charge. And a growing number of search engines now charge Web sites to list their pages, and/or rank search results based on what the listed companies were willing to pay. These paid search engines include: • www.goto.com • www.sprinks.com • www.findwhat.com • www.kanoodle.com • www.7search.com • www.bay9.com • www.espotting.com • www.godado.com • www.win4win.com • www.search123

Meanwhile, free services related to online discussion have been growing, with new capabilities and new entrants.

Online discussion -- linking people to people, rather than people to information or to automated functions -- probably draws more people to the Internet than any other capability, and keeps them coming back.

From the earliest email distribution lists, "usenet newsgroups" grew as a way to link people with common interests and let them have their say in a free-for-all environment. Today, there are tens of thousands of newsgroups, at least one for every imaginable topic. Each of those groups typically has dozens, if not hundreds of postings each day. Some postings are short -- like email messages stuck on a bulletin board for interested people to peruse. Others are articles or lengthy reference documents. Newsgroups are a wild frontier territory where people speak candidly, sharing their insights and experiences.  If you want to know what your customers really think of your product or your competitor's product, that's where you should look.  If your ISP offers newsgroup service as part of its basic package, you can read newsgroup postings through your Web browser or read and post through Outlook Express or special newsreader software. In the past, Deja.com's Web site made it easy for people who didn't have newsgroup service to read any posting, to search through postings, and to post.  But after a long slow decline, Deja.com recently folded. Google bought their service, and is now rebuilding it.

Meanwhile, a handful of little-known Web-based services help keep newsgroups alive: • newsone.net • www.cyberfiber.com • nooz.net • www.news2web.com

 In addition, numerous separate Web-based discussion and collaboration services now thrive: • www.intranets.com provides "a private space on the Web where your group can easily access and share documents" • www.multicity.com includes chat rooms, message boards, web polls, instant messenger, etc., with instant automatic translation for 20 languages • www.quicktopic.com combines email and Web-based discussion • www.quickdot.com offers email-based discussion and collaboration • www.delphi.com lets you create your own forums (bulletin boards) and chats • www.nicenet.org provides free forum-style discussion space for educational purposes • www.topica.com mail hosts email lists to help you manage your email newsletter or discussion group • www.server.com mail provides free community-style applications that you can add to your Web site • groups.yahoo.com/local/news.html (formerly egroups) helps you set up and run your own email discussions • www.webworkzone.com (from SiteScape.com) offers a paid service with secure forums, chat, and collaborative sharing.  Some of these sites as well as major portals, like Yahoo, Tripod, and Excite, provide free chat rooms as well.

Other sites, such as www.yack.com and www.talkcity.com, specialize in chat.

You should try at least one of these discussion sites now, as part of your general orientation. In Chapter Five we'll talk about how to use existing online discussion services to help promote your Web site and your personal expertise. Then in Chapter Seven we'll deal with how to start and run your own discussions in order to build content for your site, to attract traffic, and to better serve your customers.

Yes, it's free, but... Mixed business models

 Today, many Internet companies offer a "basic" version of their software or service for free, and charge for a "registered," "upgraded," or "professional" version. Typically, the free version includes advertising or has limited capabilities. The trick is to give you just enough capability to get a taste (the first potato chip is free), but not enough to satisfy your needs.  That's the case with several of the discussion sites mentioned above, such as intranets.com and multicity. Quicktopic uses a slightly different model -- the basic version is free, and they charge a fee for co-branding and customizing  their services.  Even magazines, like Salon are experimenting with that model -- it's free with advertising; and you can pay a subscription fee to enjoy the same content without the advertising.

Likewise, the basic version of some software is available for free download over the Web or may come preinstalled on your PC. The vendors hope you'll try it, get used to it, and decide that you need it so much that you are willing to pay to get beyond the built-in limitations. MusicJukeBox does that especially well. After you've tried their music playing/management software, you are an easy prospect for their "plus" version with more features and also for a subscription for "lifetime upgrades," even though you don't know if you need them. It's that good, that much fun, that easy and convenient that if they are developing something even better, you are sure that you'd love that too.

Sometimes software is only free for a trial period; and when time runs out, you have to pay or stop using it.

Some companies combine these varieties of "free." For instance, you can try Log Analyzer, an excellent Web traffic tool from WebTrends that we'll look at in Chapter Six, for free for a month. Or you can try their free service WebTrends Live, which provides far less useful information and also requires you to put their advertising on your pages.

Or, as in the case of virus protection software, the software itself is free, but you have to pay for a subscription to get the updates, which are essential for the software to be effective.

Other, very useful software that you can try for free but which also comes in a "professional" version includes HumanClick (www.humanclick.com), which we'll discuss in Chapter Nine; and RealPlayer for playing streaming audio and video (www.real.com), which we'll cover in Chapter Eleven.

Trying to make sense of the Internet business environment

In the early days of the Internet, when everybody was undercutting everyone else on price, it seemed that the best business model was to offer a useful service for free (nobody could undercut you on that price) and build an audience, which would then be the basis for your real business. They saw one example after another of free software and service quickly attracting an audience, like Netscape and Yahoo. They presumed that once they had an audience, they could sell something to that audience and make a profit. But time and again, company B decided to build its audience by giving away what company A was trying to sell.

They were caught in the razor/razor blade bind. What's your razor and what's your razor blade? What should you give away or sell at a low price to build an audience? And what can you sell at a profit to the audience that you have won?

On the Internet, one company's razor is another's razor blade. Chances are good that someone else is giving away or soon will give away the very service that you were counting to profit on. (I first heard this concept discussed at Internet World in San Jose, April 1995).

This trend means that the Internet is a buyer's market, with interesting new capabilities continually being offered to end users for free or at low cost. Hence, new applications get adopted very rapidly, sometimes fundamentally changing how businesses can and should operate on the Web.

Caught in this trap, "successful" Web-based companies, with audiences in the millions, decided to follow the model of television and sell or rent their audiences (through advertising) to generate revenue. But banner advertising on the Web is far different from television advertising. It isn't just an interruption in the programming (a snack or nature break), but rather is a continuous distraction and an invitation to leave the site and go somewhere else. Unless used extremely well (placed on the right pages, including the right kinds of messages, and leading to lots of useful related detail and help), they simply donn't produce the level of sales that advertisers hope for. Banner advertising was not the answer. There is no one simple way to generate revenue from a Web audience.

Don't confuse marketshare and Internet audience. Your Internet audience is the set of people who regularly access your Web pages and/or voluntarily subscribe to your distribution lists. They may or may not ever buy anything from you.  Growth in terms of numbers of users is not necessarily an indication of success -- you could be losing money with every new user, with no payoff in sight.  In emerging markets, companies typically make major investments to capture marketshare. They absorb large losses for a few years, with the idea that as the market grows, they'll "own" a solid and predictable percentage of that market and reap large profits over the long run. That approach assumes that the market will follow predictable patterns of growth and maturity. But on the Internet, some other player may decide to give away the equivalent of your product or service in hopes of making money in some other way. So regardless of how good your product is and how large your audience is, your opportunities for future profit could evaporate. (We'll discuss what you can and should do to turn your audience into profitable business in Chapter Nine.)

Meanwhile, we also see a trend of specialization and multiple flexible partnerships. Web companies typically don't try to do everything themselves, but rather join forces with other companies to quickly and inexpensively offer new services to their audience. For instance, a company that provides free Internet search services might get its search index from one provider, get its directory from another, provide email service to its users through another, have arrangements with one or more companies that sell advertising for it, run its service on the machines of a Web hosting service, and provide online chat (voice or text) through another provider. Almost everything has been "out-sourced" Web-style, through partnering. And, invisible to Web site visitors, many of those arrangements may not involve the exchange of cash, but rather be based on revenue sharing, and contingent on sales eventually being generated. What looks like a huge portal might be run by a handful of people in a garage.

 Keep that model in mind as you build your own company, and also remember it when evaluating and negotiating partnerships. What does your partner bring to the plate directly, and what comes from partners of that partner? And how likely is it that the key players will be able to deliver what they have committed for on the same terms for the long run?

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Chapter 2 -- The value of anonymity: privacy and masquerade

In Chapter One, you signed up for a new email account and free Web space so you could control your online identity -- operating as a private individual (separate from your company), or with an invented  "pen name" if you preferred anonymity. Now let's explore the implications of anonymity for you and your potential customers. How does anonymity affect online behavior -- including social contacts and shopping? And what can you do when you need more than informal anonymity?

Although the technology is quite different, many people associate  privacy (information about who you are and what you do) with advertising (commercial messages you see that you never asked to see). Therefore, we'll also touch on concerns about "cookies" and "banner ads" and how you and your customers can zap both of them.

Required assignments for Chapter Two: • try anonymous Web browsing at anonymizer.com • try banner-free surfing with AdSubtract software from interMute

Electives: • set up an anonymous online surprise party for a friend

Anonymity can be passive (privacy) or active (masquerade). Privacy means preventing others from getting access to information about you. Masquerade means creating a new identity. You may put a high value on privacy, even though you have nothing to hide.  And you may value masquerade as enabling you to do things that otherwise you would never do -- a liberating experience that allows you to explore who you are and who you want to be.  

Part One -- Privacy: build your defenses

Don't underestimate the importance of online privacy for your business

You probably want to have control over what other people and companies know about you and your preferences, habits, financial condition, and behavior.  So do your customers.

Except in special cases (which we'll discuss below), the spread of personal information is likely to be a nuisance, or perhaps an embarrassment, rather than leading to financial loss or calculable damage. But this issue is  emotionally charged. Loyal customers can turn into rapid enemies over privacy concerns. Hence you need hands-on experience to build a personal appreciation for the special importance of privacy on the Internet.

Some people won't use an online service unless they can remain anonymous. They don't want to leave a trail, and they don't want merchants to gather personal information about them and their surfing habits or buying habits, mainly because they don't want to be inundated with unwanted email and other intrusive commercial contacts.

Consequences of insensitivity

Merchants schooled in the world of physical commerce and mass market strategies place a very high value on detailed demographic information and details about the buying habits of individuals and classes of individuals. They are used to collecting and using, buying and selling such information for direct mail (postal) and telemarketing efforts. When they issue coupons or advertise special offers with a number to call or an address to write to, they are interested in making the immediate sale, but also presume that they are buying the right to save, organize, and reuse or sell the information they gather in the process. Naturally, they extend that expectation to the realm of the Internet, and evaluate opportunities and make business plans with the value of the customer-related information included in the equation. But that could be an enormous mistake.

For example, in Nov. 1999, DoubleClick bought Abacus Direct. DoubleClick  sells banner ad space and delivers banner ads to the Web sites of their clients. Abacus Direct kept databases with information about consumer habits. DoubleClick planned to combine the Abacus information with their own information about consumers' online behavior (the sites and pages they visit). The result would be extremely detailed profiles of tens of thousands of users -- information that advertisers would value highly. But news of this plan sparked a firestorm of protest from consumers, leading to an FTC investigation.

DoubleClick dropped the plan, but not before their public image had suffered enormous damage.

In the early days of business on the Web, physical-world marketers thought that email was "free" and that it would be insane not to use email to put their messages in front of the eyeballs of millions of people. Even with ridiculously low rates of response, the benefits would be huge.  They assembled and used and sold enormous, undifferentiated distribution lists. In so doing, they enraged many of the people who received those messages, as well as the Internet service providers whose access lines and systems were slowed by them.

Email does cost, but the cost is not born by the sender, as with postal mail and long-distance phone calls; but rather by the companies that provide service to the recipients and the recipients themselves -- in terms of time and nuisance and inboxes so clogged with unwanted messages that important ones cannot be received.

As a consequence, recipients of unwanted commercial email (known as "spam") often struck back at the perpetrators with pranks and guerrilla tactics.

Spam still persists, clogging all our inboxes -- thanks, in part, to techniques that help mask the spammers from the would-be vigilantes. Just today, I received a spam message, advertising a database CD-ROM with names, contact information, physical address, phone, Fax, domain name, and contact email addresses for over 12 million domain name owners, worldwide. To comply with the letter of the law, they even include an "email remove list" to help you to avoid sending your message to those who don't want to receive it. Price: $999.99, plus $25 shipping.

But, today, spam messages primarily promote casinos, porn sites, and questionable offers, which makes use of spam tactics by legitimate businesses all the more unwise, because the medium becomes the message and the user becomes guilty by association with the sleazy companies that continue to use it regularly.

 Responsible companies have learned that the damage incurred to them by their using spam can be far greater than the benefit. Laws have also been drafted to prevent or at least curb spam, but the PR damage remains a far greater disincentive than the law.

As a side-effect of the proliferation of spam, many Internet users have become very sensitive about how basic information about them -- such as their email address -- is used by online businesses. Their street address and telephone number are public knowledge (unless they pay extra to be unlisted). But they consider their email address to be private information, and don't want to be included on any distribution list, without giving their permission.

What constitutes "permission"? Many Web sites require users to "register" to take full advantage of the "free" services available there, and have "terms of use" that you must agree to as part of the registration process. Typically, you have to click to see the lengthy small-print document that describes all that you are agreeing to. And most people simply check that they agree to the terms, without bothering to read the document. Hence, it might be tempting to include permission for commercial use of user information in those terms. But that's probably not a good idea.

For example, in April 2001, a reporter at The Register noticed some peculiar wording in the "terms of use" agreement that users of Microsoft's Passport service tacitly agreed to. "By posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any feedback or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Passport Web Site... you are granting Microsoft and its affiliated companies permission to: 1. Use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such communication. 2. Sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the foregoing rights granted with respect to the communication. 3. Publish your name in connection with any such communication.... No compensation will be paid with respect to Microsoft's use of the materials contained within such communication."

In this case, the public outrage was fueled by the Big Brother image of Microsoft, as a huge company, with the power to use such information in a wide variety of ways, to further build its strength, and further erode the privacy of its customers. Within a few days, Microsoft apologetically rewrote the terms for its Passport service, which probably had been mistakenly drafted by overzealous lawyers, rather than by nefarious marketers.

The more common approach is to include questions at the bottom of the registration form that explicitly ask for permission to send you commercial email.  Often the default setting is to have the boxes already checked -- so you have to uncheck them if you don't want to receive advertising, newsletters, etc. by email and don't want them reselling your email address and information about you.

Consider your options and the possible consequences very carefully before gathering and using or selling or buying information about online consumers. Think of doing business on the Internet like doing business in a foreign country, where you need to respect cultural sensitivities -- paying attention to factors you never considered important before -- or suffer grave consequences. The privacy of personal, commercial-related information -- including email addresses -- is a very sensitive issue on the Internet.  News of intentional wrong-doing and foolish blunders related to privacy spread very rapidly.

For example, here are excerpts from a well-informed and well-reasoned privacy-related warning that was sent out by email to a small list of friends, who then sent it to their friends, etc., spreading rapidly in typical Internet style, in April 2001:  

To protect yourself from hackers and thieves: 1. Visit Steve Gibson's website at www.grc.com frequently to read up on all the latest security hacks. 2. Subscribe to Fred Langa's newsletters: http://www.langalist.com/newsletters/2001/2001-03-29.htm.  This is a top resource for Windows users. To avoid being spied upon by big companies (or outright crooks) that mine your web activity for their profit: 1.  Don't use AOL Version 6 software or Netscape 6 browser unless you know how to turn off the monitoring.  Purportedly, these packages install software to report to AOL the names and locations of every file you download over the net--even if they aren't running at the time. 2.  Avoid "free" ISP services.  Almost all monitor your activities and sell your profile to unknown parties. 3.  Never respond to an email that invites you to go to a website and register for a contest.  These emails (and the websites that you are sent to) are sent by crackers collecting your email address and other information... Once they know where you are, you can be targeted... until they finally get a credit card number or other useful information...  Legitimate companies frequently send out contest or registration forms to their users, but just because they say it came from Palm Computing, doesn't mean it did. Look at the URLs in the location bar of your browser.  If the website is at www.palm.com, it might be legit.  If the website is a multi digit IP address (like 325.54.99.33 or any other number) it's surely a scam. 4.  Don't let your kid or teen play NeoPets (www.neopets.com).  This is a fun internet game that encourages kids to enter data on their parents financial situation (and other info) to gain points that can be used to play the game.  It's kind of like Dungeons and Dragons but you have to fill out an online form for a second home mortgage in order to raise your player character to level 2.  I'm not kidding!!!!

To avoid paying for someone else's BMW: