Archive for December, 2004

Happy Holidays and best wishes to all!

Thursday, December 23rd, 2004

Wrapping up the year would lead most people to think things have been slowing down. With the amount of work on my plate unfortunately this hasn't even been close to the case for me. I've been so busy with work and shopping and generally getting ready for a couple of weeks off of work that I havn't had much time to even blog.

I haven't even finished the holiday shopping yet. Todays agenda includes trudgeing through the snowfall to the malls for an evening of fighting over half decent gifts for the family and in-laws. Hopefully it won't be as messy as my first attempt last weekend since most sane people usually complete their shopping more than two days before Chrismas unlike myself.

Prefessionaly this has been an amazing year for Blogware. The early adopter stage of this new industry is finally starting to enter the mainstream. We have recently finished inking some deals with some major players which has led to all of this work so it's not necessarily a bad thing at all. Of course I can't mention any names yet, but you may see a press release or two early in the New Year if you're paying attention.

Either way, it looks like Blogware is in a good shape to become one of the most successful new services Tucows offers in 2005. I will obviously do my best to contine to evangelize the Blogware word, and so far things look absolutely exciting.

I wanted to make sure that I thanked all of the great people that have helped make Blogware as successfull as it has been in 2004 and will be in 2005. This includes, Ross, Kim, Tanja, Tom, Rahat, Jessica and all of the other amazing sales, support, development and management level staff that have supported the service since day one.

Stay tuned for my two week break since I'm going to start playing with a few new toys I have been wanting to incorporate into the blog for quite a while.

A Merry Holiday and best wishes to all!

Posted in What's a Blog?, General Stuff | No Comments »

New York Times Praises Blogging in their Year in Ideas Piece

Tuesday, December 14th, 2004

A great article that covers the A-Z's of the best Ideas in 2004. Under the letter B, Business Blogging dominates where they mention the launch of both the Nike and General Motors Blogs in both of these company's marketing attempts at taking advantage of this new medium to connect with their clients.

From a marketing perspective, blogs make perfect sense. They are cheap to produce, immersive and interactive. It's easy to measure their readership and response rates. For small companies, blogs are a quick and dirty promotional tool that cuts out the middleman; for big companies, blogs are a tool of humanization — an informal, chatty, down-to-earth voice amid the din of bland corporate-speak.

''It's a dream come true,'' says Bob Cargill, senior creative director for Yellowfin Direct Marketing. ''You can embed yourself smack-dab in the middle of your customers, form an ongoing relationship with them and hear exactly what they think of your brand.''

Posted in What's a Blog? | No Comments »

Competitive Differentiation in the Broadband Market

Friday, December 10th, 2004

One
of the topics I have wanted to expand on for a while is how customers
choose their broadband supplier and how the free hosting feature plays
into their decision mix. Based on a number of reasons I will expand on
I feel that Blogware will come to play in a large way for some of these
suppliers to differentiate their offerings in this highly competitive
market, and how this decision proves that they are thought leaders in
their space.

With most broadband
packages there are all sorts of free tools and features, and next to email the largest
and most common is some free hosting space. When you look at
the customer segment for broadband you see allot of Internet surfers,
and although the free hosting is eye candy and one of the reasons why a
customer chooses a certain supplier over another, it's rarely used. If
any broadband supplier ever checked the #'s, they would more than
likely see that less than 2-5% of their customers use this space, and
from the supplier’s standpoint that is a good thing. Why? It's a cost center for them on a few fronts.

1) Hardware / Personnel: They have to
maintain a separate architecture or contract out to wholesale hosting providers creating an
overhead from both an equipment and personnel standpoint, or from a
per-account basis for outsourcers. This is usually outside of their
core focus and offers little upside on the potential for further
revenue.

2) Support:
They have to deal with the
lowest common denominator of web participant, the Internet Surfer. When
someone decides to “try” this hosting, they have to learn highly
technical information and structures such as DNS, FTP'ing, Web Pages,
Links,
Scripts, etc… They obviously feel their provider should educate them
on this, which results in significantly increased support costs for a
feature that generates no revenue. It's not just about fixing a
problem, it becomes about fixing and educating why the problem came up
or how to take advantage of the feature in the first place.

Now, how does Blogware fit into all of this? It lowers the bar to web
publishing, but how? Well there is no need for FTPing, understanding
HTML or web pages, no software to install, they can upload and share
their photos in an easy to use intuitive interface, and overall they derive a
hell of a lot more value than 5-50 megs of free hosting space alone.
Can they still host their web pages off of a Blogware account? Yes!
With the robust file manager they have the ability to serve web pages
and HTML for those more advanced applications. They still have FTP
access so a broadband supplier will not alienate their existing 2-5% of
users from what they were doing already.

Now, what are the benefits other than the fact that a higher percentage
of users will acquire utility out of the feature? Well first of all the
biggest benefit is lower attrition rates. It has been shown that
globally we are seeing attrition rates less than 3% for the service.
That is almost 2/3 of standard hosting, and much lower than broadband.
A blog publisher becomes personally attached to their presence. They
are uploading pictures of their loved ones, tracking special moments
whether that be the holidays or travel, using the tool as a podium for
their beliefs, profession, or hobbies. It provides immediate gratification that addresses the
common surfers 3-second attention span that I explored in a previous
article. Overall it provides an experience that a customer has a hard
time to let go of.

Another benefit? This service creates the excellent potential for
further revenue opportunities. Creating a “mini-blog” that is limited
on storage, bandwidth, and certain features allows a reseller to have a
compelling proposition to upgrade to a pay-for package. Uploading a
dozen or so mega pixel photos or a couple of videos would have any user
hitting their limits based on the smallest package type and
this could add dollars per account per month average in upgrades
further increasing
the benefits to the supplier.

Thirdly, they enter the world of being a thought leader in showing
their differentiation in providing a tool their customers can actually
use. This is not just about having a personal journal; this is
empowering your customers with their own easy to use Content Management
tool that only requires the most basic of experience with a computer
operating system and a word based document tool. They offer a freebie
that their customers will actually use.

Posted in What's a Blog? | No Comments »

MSN Spaces: To Censor or not to Censor, that is the question!

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

MSN has finally released their new tool last week, and in all honesty it has some features I like. Although it doesn't support more than 10 megs of storage, the ability for custom URLs, any of the neat bubbling and Category controls our tool has nor even close to the amount of intuitiveness or traffic generation… it's not bad for a freebie service. Except for the censorship thing, they seem to have done it a bit better than Blogger did especially when it comes to managing photos.

They do have to work on the clunkiness of the navigation and the slowness, but if you can get over these pains then it can be a good “sandbox” blog for those who don't really understand what they are and how powerful they can become. With a tool that has the right features for both personal and business communications though, the opportunities are endless.

Some people have said this is good and bad for the blogosphere. Good since the Microsoft brand and marketing engine behind a service like this will create even more awareness and buzz in the market. Bad because this brings the highly contested topic of corporate censorship, which blogs have been mostly able to dodge so far, right to the forefront of industry headlights. The Chinese version of MSN spaces actually censors political figures names so this is leading to a place that's not just about profanity, and ends up being just a little scary.

Although we do have a TOS that is extended through our resellers to prevent any laws being broken or pornographic material being posted publicly, we do not force this TOS to language unless our resellers choose to do this on their own. 

Personally, I do not believe that censorship of this nature should be extended to language in titles nor text that people create to exercise their inherent right of free speech (If they have it) to communicate, unless again, it is breaking a law in some way which I am totally against. In the end I would choose Blogger if I was forced to use a freebie, but that's just my 2 liberal cents for what it's worth

Either way, MSN can do what they want, our resellers will do what they want, and I think the blogosphere is a better place for it all in the end run.

Posted in What's a Blog? | No Comments »

Entrepreneurial Mistakes to avoid

Wednesday, December 1st, 2004

An amazing article on Entrepreneur.com, and definitely a good read. John Osher who founded and sold a couple of businesses to large corporations jotted down all the mistakes he made and he saw other entrepreneurs make along their paths to success.

As a former and eventually future badge holder, I have to agree with every single point. There are 17 of them that he initially jotted down on the back of a napkin when he sold one of his first businesses to Hasbro, and then used as a guideline in his amazing success of the “SpinBrush” toothbrush that was America's #1 selling toothbrush less than 15 months after launch, and which he eventually sold to Procter & Gamble for a cool $475 million.

Here are the mistakes with some brief descriptions as provided by the article.

Mistake 1: Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it's viable.

“This is really the most important mistake of all. They say 9 [out] of 10 entrepreneurs fail because they're undercapitalized or have the wrong people. I say 9 [out] of 10 people fail because their original concept is not viable. They want to be in business so much that they often don't do the work they need to do ahead of time, so everything they do is doomed. They can be very talented, do everything else right, and fail because they have ideas that are flawed.”

Mistake 2: Miscalculating market size, timing, ease of entry and potential market share.

“Most new entrepreneurs get very excited over an idea and don't look for the truth about how many people will want to buy it. They put together financial projections as part of a presentation to pump up their investors. They say, 'The market size is 50 million people that could use this product, and if I could only sell to 2 percent of them, I'd be selling a million pieces.' But 2 percent of a market is a lot. Most products sell way less than 1 percent.”

Mistake 3: Underestimating financial requirements and timing.

“They set their financial requirements based on Mistake 1, and they go ahead and make a commitment to this much office space and this many computers, and hire a vice president of sales, and so on. Before they know it, based on sales projections that were wrong to start with, they have created costs that require those projections to be met. So they run out of money.”

Mistake 4: Overprojecting sales volume and timing.

“They have already miscalculated the size of the market. Now they overproject their portion of it. They often say 'There are 200 million homes, and I need to sell [to] x number of them.' When you break it down, though, a much smaller number of those are really sales prospects. That makes it impossible to make their sales projections.”

Mistake 5: Making cost projections that are too low.

“Their cost projections are always too low. Part of the reason is that they project much higher sales. There are also unknown reasons that always come out that usually make costs higher than planned. So on top of everything, their margins are now lower.”

Mistake 6: Hiring too many people and spending too much on offices and facilities.

“Now you have lower sales, higher costs and too much overhead. These are the things that you see every day in companies that fail. And they all grow out of that first mistake: failing to research the size and viability of the opportunity.”

Mistake 7: Lacking a contingency plan for a shortfall in expectations.

“Even if you're realistic in your estimates to start, there are things that happen when you start a new business. Your sales ideas may be no good; bank rates may go up; there may be a shipping strike. These aren't the result of poor planning, but they happen. More often than not, entrepreneurs just feel that something will come along when they need it. They don't have contingency plans for it not working out at the size and time they want.”

Mistake 8: Bringing in unnecessary partners.

“There are certain partners you need. For instance, you often need money, so you're going to need money partners. But too many times, the guy with the idea takes on all his friends as partners. Many people don't provide strategic advantages and don't warrant ownership. But they're all going to get 25 percent of the company. It's totally unnecessary, and it's a mistake. Before people are made partners, they have to earn it.”

Mistake 9: Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements.

“In my first business or two, I hired relatives. It was easy to do, but in many cases, they were the wrong people [for the job]. And it's hard to fire people, especially if they're relatives or friends. More time needs to be spent handpicking people based on skill requirements. You really need super-skilled people who can wear more than one hat. It just bogs you down when you hire people who can't do the job.”

Mistake 10: Neglecting to manage the entire company as a whole.

“You see this happen all the time. They'll spend half their time doing something that represents 5 percent of their business. You have to have a view of your whole company. But too often, the person running it loses that view. They get involved in a part, and they don't manage the whole. Whether I do this product or that product, whether I hire somebody, [I consider] how they [will] fit long term and short term in the big picture. Constantly try to see your big picture.”

Mistake 11: Accepting that it's “not possible” too easily rather than finding a way.

“I had an engineer who was a very good engineer, but with every toy we developed, he would say, 'You can't do it that way.' I had to be careful not to accept this too easily. I had to look further. If you're an entrepreneur, you're going to break new ground. A lot of people are going to say it's not possible. You can't accept that too easily. A good entrepreneur is going to find a way.”

Mistake 12: Focusing too much on sales volume and company size rather than profit.

“Too much of your management is often based on volume and size. So many entrepreneurs want to say 'I have a company that's this big, with this many people, this many square feet of space, and this much sales.' It's too much [emphasis] on how fast and big you can build a business rather than how much profit it can make. Bankers and investors don't like this. Entrepreneurs are so into creating and building, but they also have to learn to become good [businesspeople].”

Mistake 13: Seeking confirmation of your actions rather than seeking the truth.

“This often happens: You want to do something, so you talk about it with people who work for you. You talk to [your] family and friends. But you're only looking for confirmation; you're not looking for the truth. You're looking for somebody to tell you you're right. But the truth always comes out. So we [test] our products, and we listen to what [the testers] say. We give much more value to the truth than to people saying what we're doing is great.”

Mistake 14: Lacking simplicity in your vision.

“Many entrepreneurs go in too many directions at once and do not execute anything well. Rather than focusing on doing everything right to sell to their biggest markets, they divide the attention of their people and their time, trying to do too many things at [one time]. Then their main product isn't done properly because they're doing so many different things. They have an idea and say they're going to sell it to Wal-Mart. Then they say they're going to sell to [the] Home Shopping Network. And then the gift market looks good. And so on.”

Mistake 15: Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose.

“You should have an idea of what your long-term aim is. It doesn't mean that won't change, but when you aim an arrow, you have to be aiming at a target. This [concept will] often come up when people ask 'How do I pick a product?' The answer depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to [create] a billion-dollar company with this product, it may not have a chance. But if you're trying to make a $5 million company, it can work. Or if you're trying to create a company [in which] family members can be employed, it can work. Clarity of your business purpose is very important [but] is often not really part of the thought process.”

Mistake 16: Lacking focus and identity.

“This was written from the viewpoint of building the company as a valuable entity. The company itself is also a product. Too many companies try to go after too many targets at once and end up with a potpourri rather than a focused business entity with an identity. When you try to make a business, it's very important to maintain a focus and an identity. Don't let it become a potpourri, or it loses its power. For instance, you say, 'We're already selling to Kmart, so we might as well make a toy because Kmart buys toys.' If you do that, the company becomes weaker. A company needs to be focused on what it is. Then its power builds from that.”

Mistake 17: Lacking an exit strategy.

“Have an exit plan, and create your business to satisfy that plan. For instance, I am thinking I might run my new business for two years and then get out of it. I think it's an opportunity to make a tremendous amount of money for two years, but I'm not sure [whether] it's proprietary enough to stop the competition from getting in. So I'm in with an exit strategy of doing it for two years and then winding down. I won't commit to long-term leases, and after the first year, we'll start watching the marketplace very closely and start watching inventories.

Simultaneously, I will keep the option open to sell it in case I can't get something more proprietary. That means I won't sign international agreements that would kill any opportunity to sell it to a multinational. I will make sure that the patent work is done properly. And I'll try to make sure manufacturing is up to the standards of any multinational company that I might try to sell it to.

Another exit strategy can be to hand the company to [your] kids someday. The most important thing to do is to build a company with value and profits so you have all the options: Keep the company, sell the company, go public, raise private money [and so on]. A business can be a product, too.”

Posted in Sales Mindset | No Comments »