Welcome new things

Always remember, web business is constantly evolving, so keep your eyes open. Learn new things, incorporate them, and follow new trends in the business to keep pace with the clients’ demands. Try new things, slowly you will master it. If you are a website content writer, try blogging or other latest trends. Try for yourself first. A good e-book for yourself could do your publicity and also showcase your skill. In the mean time you will also master the tricks and skills behind it. Don’t be rigid with acquired skills, learn new things.

Keep the marketing process ‘on’

Whatever, be the situation, don’t underestimate the power of marketing. Even a great masterpiece goes unnoticed, in the absence of good marketing efforts. Even if it takes a little share of your income, consider it as the investment, which will keep your name ahead of others and will fetch you continuous work. Make a great image, profile of yourself. Advertise yourself in multiple places on web or promote through social networking sites.

Build network

A good networking works as a silent catalyst behind growth. A good networking could also help you to develop a team of writers and share the total profit, in form of a joint business. It could fetch loads of work and also make your name popular on web.

Make your identity on web

Treat it like a serious business; build your online presence with an arresting identity. Build personal website or blog, logo, business card, portfolio, contact information, testimonials from clients. Make proper business plan, set target. Despite flexibility, make sure there are fixed hours of working every day.

Invest for a better future

If some latest technologies and software like keyword research tools, a smart phone, a fax machine, a virtual assistance service, automatic posting tool, or plug-ins can bring along high hopes for your business – grab them and make best of it. Little investments can bring in huge help.

Keep goals in front

Don’t just go with the wind and work aimlessly for mere bucks. Set a goal, what you wish to achieve in a year or five years time. A pre-determined goal always works as a light at the end of tunnel, towards which one moves with a quest to excel.

And the web is all yours. Go and explore.

Here are tips about how to promote books online.

Use social networking sites

Social networking websites are the best choice for promoting a book. Especially when your target audience is youth, modern, educated Internet savvy bunch of people – social networking sites are ideal. Twitter and Facebook are great platforms. Publicize the book release date on Twitter and Facebook. Publish details of the event in advance including venue, time and send the invitation to all friends in your list or tag them. Who doesn’t wish to buy a book autographed by the author? Enrich your personal page with detail. Publish your day to day thoughts, photographs, achievements, goals, events, experiences. It brings author close to the readers as they come to know the author closely. It will make them even more interested to know you, respect you, admire, and follow you. Also write the thoughts that inspired you. You should include all big news channels, publishers, newspapers, journals, critics in your friend and follower list. Post book inaugural and book cover page photographs. It will hike interest among your prospective readers.

Start blogging

Start blogging. Publish small extracts from your book in your blog. Promote your blog link through social networking sites. While reader reads your blog post, put a link which will land the reader in your website, from where they can directly buy your book. Stir interest, curiosity and leave the rest to be discovered in the book.

Give online purchase offers

Put some attractive offers for online buyers like first 50 online buyers, buying from your website will be entitled to 20% discount. Publicize the same everywhere on social networking sites.

Get into email marketing

Send attractive mailers to prospective buyers, entitling them special discount. Mailers can be sent to those who subscribed for mails and newsletters on your website. Email marketing can be used not only to sell your book, but also to share news about your achievements, critic’s appraisal, launch date of the book etc.

In January 2009, 11.8 million mobile users used their cell phone to access Facebook.com, which increased to become 25.1 million by January 2010. In the same period, Twitter user base grew from 1.05 million to 4.7 million mobile users.

The growth rates of these two social networking sites have exploded, but MySpace’s shrunk. The user base of MySpace fell short by 7% of its previous years mark. (See image).

Key findings

Positive Indicators

• 45% hope to reap rewards (profit) from social media spending in next 12 months
• 57% have built online network using LinkedIn or similar websites.
• 61% uses social media to identify and attract new customers.
• 75% small businesses surveyed had a company profile page on any social networking sites.

Things that make them scowl

• 6% of survey participants said that use of social media has hurt them
• 17% of them said using social media left the companies vulnerable to consumers’ criticism.
• 50% thinks it takes more time than expected.

These findings (See image for complete detail) indicate that to be successful in the new socially-connected economy, the company has to be caring. “Meet deadline and bottom line” oriented company will have a hard time persuading its customers. The concerns that small business owners that participated in the survey talked about had more to do with their business and its operation and less to do with the nature of social media. They will grow and get accepted, if only they accept this fact and make required changes in their businesses.

On an average, the total time spent in December 2009 by the global consumers was five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds, whereas in the same month in 2008, the total time spent was of three hours, three minutes and 54 seconds.

In the same period, the number of unique users to various social networking sites also increased from 242 million to 307.4 million, which is a 27% YoY growth. (See chart below).

What it means for marketer?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are important, but the evidence suggests that social media is even more important. One should take note of it. The rise in time spent suggests increased in engagement, which as we know creates an army of receptive audience. Therefore, marketers should use social media more profusely than they did every before.

By making ourselves so incredibly easily available on the internet, you may not even realize how these things can come back to haunt you in unexpected ways.  Which is exactly why everyone should realize that with every resume, you almost need to prepare a web 2.0 resume alongside.  Of course I’m not referring to an actual document you should write, but instead make sure that the internet smiles kindly upon you to anyone doing a search.

Google yourself and see what comes up, make sure you like what you see, or else strive to change the negative points.  Nothing shows a good reference like going to a completely unbiased source, such as Google, and only seeing positive information.  Plus simple search engine exploration like this is faster and easier than a company trying to track down your references on the phone to get a feel for your personality.

So here are a few tips for shaping up your Web 2.0 resume:

1. Make yourself available online.  If you have a job, such as being a freelance writer, where internet recognition is very important, make sure that you’re easy enough to find.  A company looking to hire a talented blogger isn’t going to turn to you if they can’t find your alias on Google within the first few pages of results.

2. Make sure that information is positive.  You don’t want a new potential company Googling your  name and then finding a post where all you do is bash your former employer.  Nothing would turn off a new company more.

3. Create your own strictly professional web page, to act as an easy to read career resume.  Make sure you’ve got an accurate career portfolio up, and go the extra distance by having a custom email address URL related to your website where they can contact you.  Both factors will make you look informed, and prepared for what’s expected in the web 2.0 environment.

4. Social networking professionally.  Make sure that you have professional alternatives to your social networking, and that you maintain relationships through them effectively.  Keep things strictly business, to show that you are a hardworking potential employee that knows the difference between what is and isn’t appropriate.

Never underestimate the power of a social networking environment that facilitates other peers in your profession.  These types of sites can be incredibly influential for finding out the latest industry news, or important competitive information, like where the best jobs are currently, or which companies tend to care for their employees better.  As you can communicate with others in your professional field you’ll also find yourself making friend easier, and industry friends are always good to have, as that sells who you are to a broader audience.  Never forget, when you’re looking for a new job, you want your name out there as much as possible.

Professional social networking sites are also a great resource for any company looking to hire new talent.  Considering they give you the chance to make friends, meet new people, and really learn about them in an unbiased fashion.  From an individual’s online profile, to also participating in conversations with them, you get a real view of the person and what they could offer your company.  Opposed to the biased attitude anybody looking to get a job has in an interview.

So don’t underestimate the power of a good social networking site.  Probably something a bit more serious than Facebook or Myspace, as these aren’t exactly the best place to have a serious conversation with a stranger most times.  But something more geared towards industry professionals like yourself, or your company.

BuddyPress has all the thrills and frills of its sister WordPress with an added color of social networking. Now having a blog networks is as easy as having a blog. With BuddyPress, you can be the ringmaster of your own blog network while others will play by the rules set by you. You can think of starting a topical blog network or if you wish you can create network blog for a certain age group, let’s say for teens.

BuddyPress is a suit of WordPress plug-ins and themes that allows users to add many social interaction features like activity streams, groups and forums. It can be installed separately or as an add-on to the existing WordPress MU installation. Just like any WordPress installation, plug-ins of the BuddyPress can be themed to match the style of your blog network. All BuddyPress plug-ins are independent identities in their own right, and they can be used in two way. You use it either all the plug-ins to build your own social networking site from scratch or you can use only the selected plug-ins to add the features you want in your social networking website. With its many plug-ins BuddyPress will give you more control, and as with any WordPress installation, BuddyPress is 100 percent customizable. Some of the features that you can enable on your base installation of BuddyPress are:

Extended profiles: This component will give you the power to create specific profile field that user needs to fill in.

Private Messaging: This is akin to internal e-mail system using which a user can send, forward, and reply to messages to people on his or her friend’s list.

Like any other social networking site, social networking websites build using BuddyPress allow you to add friends, create interest-based groups, and gives an opportunity to the users to create their own forums. Other feature includes activity stream, blog tracking, and the wire. BuddyPress will add Photo albums and status updates features by the end of 2009. Status update will be added by mid 2009, whereas photo album will be added by late 2009.

What the Internet means to us depends upon our usage pattern and our behavior. For some people Internet represents freedom, while for others it represents opportunity, another group sees it as an enabler and others think of it as a leveler. With the tools like, blogs, forums, freelance exchanges, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and for some the Internet means a medium where you can buy or sell products. The Internet is not one but all of the above mentioned things.

E-commerce: what it is?

In this article let’s focus only on the buying and selling capability provided by of this medium, which is normally referred to as electronic commerce, e-commerce.

In the layman’s language, e-commerce is any commercial activity conducted over the Internet. E-commerce can either be business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), consumer to business (C2B) or consumer to consumer (C2C), but the central tenet of e-commerce has always been exchange, and by exchange I mean any exchange of financial nature.

Let’s try to explain this with an example, suppose someone goes to the website of HP computers, and after going through the options available, he finalizes one model to purchase, but instead of buying the PC from HP computer’s online store, he goes to an authorized store in his locality to make the purchase. Will this transaction qualify to be called e-commerce transaction? Well, they answer to this question lies between the two extremes of yes and no. It can qualify as an e-commerce transaction as the buyer comes online and does everything except making a payment; instead, he goes offline to finish the process. But in the strictest sense of the term, it will not qualify as e-commerce. It will merely be an information exchange not a financial exchange. To be on the safer side, let’s say, if there is no financial transaction, we cannot call it an e-commerce activity.

E-commerce Life Cycle

The life cycle of e-commerce followed the same curve as did the development of any market. In the beginning it was just one homogeneous market, one e-commerce website selling everything, just like a superstore; but slowly the scene started to change and more and more niche e-commerce websites started cropping up. These web sites are like specialty stores of our locality that deals with just one kind of product.

osCommerce: coming of age

Over the year, the e-commerce scenario started to change and soon more and more niche product sellers were found joining the party, but everyone couldn’t afford to have a full-time programmer and a database designer to make an e-commerce website for him or her, thus a need for a ready to deploy e-commerce solution was building up. This need was addressed by ready-to-deploy open source e-commerce solutions but it was not until the development of osCommerce that this need was completely satisfied.

osCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution and due to its open source nature, there are contributors who work day and night to make this platform more robust and stable. Unlike paid employees of big corporate houses, these geeks are motivated by their passion; hence what comes out is a world calls e-commerce solution.

In its 8 years of existence, osCommerce has built more than 14,100 websites. osCommerce has a strong community of 207,200 store owners and developers who help each other in the time of need. osCommerce has more than 5300 add-ons, these add-ons provides scalability to the platform.

If you wish to start an e-commerce website, use osCommerce, it has the strongest support team (207,200 ready-to-help community forum members), matching which is practically impossible for any one group of developers.