Category Archives: money

business, Consultancy, E-Commerce, money, Relationship

Value of Social Networking in Dollars

Just recently somebody tried to sell there twitter profile on Ebay. Strange as it may seem and almost laughable. He did manage to get $1,125 plus for his profile

Is this real value of his network? It may not be so far wrong. Moving into the 21st century more and more people will be conducting there sales research, people research etc online. If you do not have profile you may well be drawing a blank. People will expect to be able to reference you or check you out online. In the pursuit of sales I imagine that all these companies are going to be using these tools.

 

Would I employ somebody who is well networked? Sure I would.

The real value in social networking may be only just be starting to be unraveled, while I am not suggesting that we all start selling our profiles. I do think that individuals with well managed net works will be setting themselves up for whole lot more business at sometime in the future. As posted here by Owen, we may be related to every one much closer than we think. By networks in this blog post I am referring to social media sites, whether that is Linkedin, Facebook, community sites or a blog. To name but a few.

 

What do you think?

E-Commerce, money

Net Profit Campaign

For a while now I have been thinking about Company profits, and how that is relayed in the media, and in particular on the TV/Radio. When company profits are announced it is always the gross amount.

Why it that? And can we do any thing with it

What is the Gross Profit? This Wikipedia entry explains it nicely

 

Gross profit is found by deducting the cost of goods sold:

Gross profit = Net sales – Cost of goods sold

 

What I find confusing is that when these figures are quoted in the news it tells us nothing about the company. For example if it brought or sold parts of it business, this would not give an accurate view of sales or what its operating costs are? If these are high it could end up making no money. Gross profit tell us nothing at all. In fact I think it is more misleading and used by some companies as a sort voodoo explanation for its accounts.

What I would like to see it Net income used more by media as a more accurate way to gauge a companies performance. What is Net profit?

 

Net profit or other wise know as net income is:

Net income = Gross profit – Total operating expenses

The amount this calculation show us tell us much more about the company.
For example an internet company may only have Gross profit of 1 million, if it operation expenses are 100,000 than it profit base line is very healthy.

Alternatively Cement Company Y may have a profit of 1,5 million, but it operation expenses and margin is very high. Let say 60 percent. Meaning that it’s net income (profit) is 600,000. This company is then less profitable than the internet company although is has a higher profit.

Net income is what we need to focus on and concerned about. Gross profit it just voodoo business. It enough people support this idea by commenting below than I would like to take it further.

Let me know you thoughts?

business, E-Commerce, Finance, money

Novel Ideas for Saving Money

Vegas or BustI was just listening to radio four where the conversation was focusing on loan sharks. Loan sharking has increased significantly in the last six months due to the current economic crisis, as it usual does. I do have a lot sympathy for people who find themselves in difficult times. I was rather impressed by some of the ideas talked about to help people handle their finances better. In fact I think the model can be use by anyone entrepreneurs included.

The ideas that was talked about on the program was that you can loan as much as you can borrow. So if you save 6 pounds a week from now until Christmas you will have saved £150 pounds. This bank/corporation will than lend the some amount to the person over the Christmas period enabling them to cover some of the extra cost Christmas brings.

The theory is if you can encourage responsible saving you can than encouraged responsible lending. Will the Labour goverment do the same with our current debt or go over the 60/40 rule. What do you think?

business, E-Commerce, money

Expected (ROI) Return on every Marketing Dollar Spent

1 Comment

Yesterday some one asked what would be the expected return on every dollar I spend on marketing. It made me think. I know that when one looks at sales you are looking at about a conversion ratio of about 15 percent. That is quite different when you are talking about sales leads. A lot of marketing is more indefinable and more about feel than any metrics one can apply to it. Still one has to make a decision. According to Derek Lowe at Courant he talks about 24 percent of medical cost is spent on Marketing. Which seems to be quite high considering that I can only tell you the name of about 4 or 5 pharmaceutical companies. Obviously this industry is doing highly expensive targeted marketing. There are some exceptions most notable Viagra.

So what should you be looking to spend on Marketing? 25 percent of your future income should it be enough?

The next question is how do you spend it?

Do you spend it on printed media, internet media, video media, corporate entertainment, or the new kid on the block social media.

What do you think?

business, Consultancy, E-Commerce, money

Domain Names What are They Worth?

2 Comments

I have recently been caught in the domain name game. I wanted to buy some small domain names, ones that are easy to write like wcx.com or delight.biz. In this process I discovered a number of things about where the market is for domain names. It appears there are a number of companies and individuals who have come with the questionable idea of buying all the domain names they can within certain category. So for example Ron Jackson has brought as many as he can 3 letter and four letter domain names with .org .biz .com. So if I wanted to buy a domain name www.40c.com which is Owned by his company Internet Edge, Inc. I would have to email him and make him an offer. Which I did.

I wanted to buy delight.biz I got a very nice email back from Ron informing me that I should make an offer. So I did I offered him $100 he than replied that he would only be interested in a sum around $1500. Which made me think. What’s in a name? Some say that names can be fortuitus. I wonder for example what did ebay mean or Amazon before the dot.com era. The first is made up and the second a jungle in South America. Was it the name that made these companies successful or the product. I will leave you to decide.

Having the perfect domain does not guarantee you success or an income. If the domain name you are searching is lucky enough to have a holding page it still has a value of nil in terms of traffic or internet relevance. Google will not be directing any traffic to this domain. To gain any relevance in the search engine fields you will need to make it special create something unique and wonderful and that takes TIME and MONEY.

A couple of my clients have chosen very long domain names. On the internet I do not think it really matters. So long as you engage you visitors. If you succeed at that they will bookmark or RSS you and more importantly return. Believe me if somebody is interested by something they will insure they get it.

Web business is not about getting 200, 000 visitors who and came go. It is about achieving your goals. If your goal for example is to sell 10 web design projects than all you need is hundred of the correct visitors looking for a design company.

Post script: 1

It also interesting to note that if you have a brand and some body has taken your domain name. You can apply to www.internic.com who will send them packing if they think they are cyber squatting.

Post script: 2

With new domain names coming out all the time one should be able to find there desired name in one of the new veriants. mx.com, me, etc at 123-reg which I use.

E-Commerce, Management, money, Traffic

How Much more does your Youngest Employee Know about the Internet than You ?

What does it mean having a presence on the internet, can you buy a office and move your staff in. Well the answer to the question is yes. For internetholics it has been well known that you can buy virtual love to real estate on line. This can take several forms, Second life for example allows you to interact with an array of potential customers, build a virtual office, hire staff. You might well be thinking now this is great, this is just what I need, low overheads, no sloppy staff, work from wherever I choose. But there is a problem. While there are virtual millionaires on second life. Their virtual business supports a real life business and vice-a-versa.

So what does this mean, well there will be any number of businesses out there who have dipped there toe in the internet water to see what is on offer. If you really want to make that website pay for itself along with your internet connection and computers there are a number of things you will have to do.

First it is about getting as many links as possible pointing to your website. This is done by interacting and commenting in communities. Web 2.0 now offers users the chance to do traditional business but with new technology. The problem with this is that is not very well understood in general by people over 35. So the boss of your local taxi company, accountant etc does not really know what a blog is, or a virtual business etc. Now if they do not know, how can anyone expect it to be taken seriously in the company ranks. Of course you will have your office junior who will have a virtual girlfriend, do virtual sports, already spend a large percentage of his money on the internet and related hardware etc. While the rest of the your staff will struggle with an email attachment that the virus scanner has disallowed because it was told that it is possible for a photo to have a virus in it. Yes it is possible but in the whole of my 12 year IT career I have never come across it. Given that almost 50+ percent of photos on the internet are JPEGS. It is a threat but a low threat and one that we can live with. One cannot really compare it to the risk of not getting your work done for the client and the time it would involve to check every photo.

So a balanced sensible approached is needed for work and business security so it can work at an optimum. No longer can staff say “Oh I do not understand” when a web page fails to load and the message on the screen reads your internet connection is on available at this time due to maintenance work. Involving your company on the internet is fundamentally about involving your employees. We do seminars about web 2.0 but it has to come from the top down. I suggest that smaller companies get the youngest employees to tell them what they know about the internet. This will serve two purposes one you see just what the internet can do, and two you will have a starting point to building an online presence for your company.

Consultancy, money, Traffic, Uncategorized, work connexions

The Joys Of Linking

Links make the internet, without a doubt the Internet consist of millions and millions of links. These links form the backbone of the internet and also provide a way for the major search engines to monitor which sites are more important than other ones.

How does this work?

If the main objective of your website/blog is to insure a steady stream of visitors then you are going to have to do some linking.

What are links?

Links are URLs or web addresses like this one www.workconnexions.com That can link a word to a website or the reverse.

How do you get them?

1. A visitor to your website may like what she is reading if they like it enough they may decide to put a link on their website or in a blog post to your website.

2. If you have friends that blog you can ask them to link to your website if they blog in the same topic sphere or consider it to be interesting enough?

3. Another way to generate links it to link to other peoples content they will then be able to see that you have linked and may decide to link back.

What are the best links to have?

The best links to have our from high ranking websites. Google ranks all websites from 1 to 10 with Ten being the highest. The higher the page the more valuable the link is.

Is Commenting on a blog/website Linking?

Yes if you leave a comment on a blog or on a news/web site. What you may have not be aware of is that some sites while allowing commenting, do not allow Google to follow the links. So your comment/link may well have no effect on your site. This is known as no follow. There are a number of applications that can monitor this in your browser.

After a couple months of you will be able to monitor how successful you have been by using this tool. http://www.analyzebacklinks.com/ Happy linking…. check some of my links in the link love section.