The Making Of An Online Business – The Projects

This is the second article in the series about managing an online business. It will focus on what you actually do in an online business, how can you measure it, the various stages of each project and how you can monetize your work. If you came here directly you can go back to the summary of the whole series or you can start with the first article which deals with starting your own business.

Please keep in mind that this post is rather long, more than 3000 words, so  make sure you are away from interruptions when start reading it. If you can’t read it now, you can bookmark it and come back later.

Online Processes

More than in any other business, in the online universe, a product (i.e. a website) is more like a process and not like an object.

If you are in the furniture business, you’re selling objects. A chair, a table, a couch. Every once in a while you change a little the design, but you are largely selling objects.

In the online field, you sell things which are continuously shaping. An online service is by definition dynamic. Your websites need continuous upgrade, otherwise they will fade as importance and eventually lose their audience.

The online has a high availability, which means your potential audience is huge. But the online has also a high volatility degree, which means that the potential huge audience is very easy to be moved toward your competitors.

Online Projects Metrics

You need a way to quantify the behavior of your websites in order to measure their success. Otherwise you’ll be lost in the jungle of millions of other websites, portals, forums, blogs or online shops. I worked with only three main online project metrics:

- traffic, the total number of users that accessed that website in a given time interval
- money, the total amount of money that website produced in a given time interval
- resource consumption, how many resources (people, money, assets) that website consumed in a given interval.

Although it seems pretty straightforward, the way in which those three metrics can combine is infinite. You can have projects with minimal traffic but with good money flow in. You can have websites with little or no money in, but with huge traffic (I guess the most famous example is YouTube in this area). Or you can have websites with zero resource consumption (auto-pilot websites) with no money in and just a decent traffic. but still consider them as successes. Each combination of those factors can play a role in the bigger picture and you must not overlook any possible outcome.

Now, let’s take each metric and see how you can interpret it. (more…)

New Google AdSense Referral Beta

It seems that Google AdSense is planning to add new features to their referral program. Currently they opened a beta testing session for those who want to take a closer look to the new system. Here’s what the blog entry at adsense blog is telling us:

This is good news for those of you who have wanted to use referrals in the past, but couldn’t find a product to match your site’s content. With the referrals beta, you can search for products that match up directly with your site’s content. And you can customize your referral units to match the look and feel of your site, making it easier than ever to find a referral ad that fits in seamlessly with your site’s design and content.

Also, it also seems that the new model, action based, will have higher paying fees, which generally sounds good:

As with our current Google referrals, you’ll generate earnings when your visitors click through to an advertiser’s site and complete an action defined by your advertisers, such as a sale or sign-up. Because these actions are often more involved than a simple click or impression, advertisers pay more for these referrals, which can translate into higher earnings for your site.

If you haven’t done this already, please try it out using this beta referral site, it might be a good thing.

Thanks to problogger.net for pointing this out.

Blending branding advertising – the sequel

John Chow writes these days about an interesting evolution of the “blending branding” advertising technique he’s used in the last few months. Basically, there is a reply from one of the bloggers he tagged with his ad, that says exactly the same. It’s Darren Rowse from problogger.net, that also publicize the fact that he “is loved” by John Chow. This is becoming very interesting: the technique got now a narrative, story-like behaviour.

Now, not only you express your admiration for a blogger and try to blend with his brand, but the tagged blogger come back, acknowledge the fact that he’s admired and respected, and creates a story. He asks “questions”: Why that guy loves me? Click to find out.

Once again, by promoting a positive message, the ad quickly stand up from the other standard ads, and become a very attracting path for the surfer.

Imagine: you’re on a blog, you know the author, and see some advertising from another bloggers that says: “I love this guy! Keep up the good work!”. This is the first stage, and we talked about it here. But now, after a while, you see on the first guy blog a very interesting ad, that just says: “Wow, remember? That guys loves me? You know why? Click to find out!”. It’s simple and pwerful. And it works.

At the end of the 4 advantages that we outlined in the first post describing this blending branding advertising technique, we can now add another one, very strong:

5. Tell a story. If a guy tries to blend with your brand, and you agree with his principles and overall activities, take advantage of that by telling a story: why this guy loves me? Click to see. Stories will always work. It’s our own nature to tell and hear stories, and if you want to take the challenge and start to write a story by using just your and not your posts in your blog, then you will create a parallel, extremely interesting, content area for your website. It will drive traffic to your site and to the blender’s site. Which is absolutely right. But most of all, it will bring you respect. It will grow your branding value even further. And, of course, this is good .

“Blending branding” advertising in the blogosphere

I don’t know if the term was used before in this context, chances are that it already was, and I only imagine that I just coined it yesterday. If so, apologies to the savviest blogger here. If not, well, here’s my 2 cents about what “blending branding” advertising in the blogosphere should be. Or, to be more precise, what already is.

“Blending branding” advertising is basically promoting your image using another, friendly, brand that you use. You make a banner in which you say: “I just love this guy! His blog, his work”. And you sign yourself on that banner: “This is me at http://www.mysite.com”. And then you make your banner public on the site that you just appreciated. Of course, the link will go to your site. Simple, isn’t it?

So simple that we may start to ask what are the advantages here.

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