E-COMMERCE STATION

Outsource or Keep It Home? Have It Your Way: Q&A With Alpine Access CEO Chris Carrington

2009-06-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

Outsourcing has its fans and its detractors. Many companies would like to take advantage of promised cost-savings, but they're reluctant to entrust such critical activities as customer service to third parties. Now, a home-based call center pioneer, Alpine Access, is offering to show them how to get the best of both worlds by setting up their own distributed agent networks.

Not that long ago, the outsourcing of customer service to home-based agents was a small niche category, viewed as not quite on par with a bricks-and-mortar call center operation. For a number of reasons, that perception is changing -- starting with the lower costs involved in using a home-based agent network, and ending with the growing number of quality providers that have highly qualified staffs on hand.

With several years of operations under its belt, Alpine Access could arguably be the poster child for that movement. Now, the company is pushing the model even further: It has just begun to provide consulting services, as well as employee training, for companies that want to set up their own agent networks.

Alpine Access CEO Christopher Carrington spoke with CRM Buyer about his company's plans along these lines, as well as how the recession has affected its operations.

Chris Carrington: The best evidence I can offer is our top line. I'm happy to report 17 percent higher growth in Q1 compared to 2008 Q1.

CRM Buyer: What are some of the cost-cutting measures you've taken?

Carrington: Interestingly, we are seeing a lot of our customers and prospects taking cost-cutting measures -- but we have not had to. We had a strong Q1, and we are predicting a strong 2009.

In fact, we are investing more heavily -- putting more money in our sales area, and to developing new products and services. We just launched our consulting service division and invested more heavily in Alpine Access University.

CRM Buyer: How can your products help your customers' bottom lines in the near term?

Carrington: In tough economic times, the companies are looking to save costs. The reason we grew so strongly in Q1 is the fact that a home-based solution saves customers money. Companies using a [home-based] solution in the U.S. are [spending 15 percent to 25 percent less] than they would with a bricks-and-mortar provider.

CRM Buyer: What are some of the bright spots for your company right now?

Carrington: One of the most exciting is the launch last month of Alpine Access Consulting. For the first 10 years of our existence, we were purely an outsourcer of a home-based model -- and losing out on opportunities [with] companies that didn't want to outsource. Now, we can target those companies that want to set up their own home-based service network.

CRM Buyer: How will your company look a year from now?

Carrington: Based on growth projections, we will be 30 percent to 50 percent larger for the full year. We will continue to become a mainstream player in the U.S. for call center services.

CRM Buyer: Tell me more about the consulting service. Why would a company want to set up its own home-based network? Why not just outsource to a call center or to you? Also, have you gotten many inquiries for the service yet?

Carrington: A lot of companies still don't want to outsource customer care for whatever reason -- some figures say it is 65 percent of the market. So they want to do it themselves, but they also want to take advantage of the cost efficiencies of the home-based model. We just launched it, and already we have our first two engagements under way -- so, yes, there is a lot of interest.

CRM Buyer: Are you providing the infrastructure as well, or just consulting services?

Carrington: We are not there yet with the infrastructure, although we are looking at it. What we are doing is helping companies do virtual recruiting, training and management of a workforce that is completely distributed.

CRM Buyer: Tell me more about Alpine Access University. I am assuming it ties in with your consulting service?

Carrington: Yes, that is correct. Before, we were only training our own employees. Basically, we became expert in adult distance-learning. We've commercialized it, so we can sell it to companies that want to do at home themselves. They hire their own employees and then train on the AAU platform. It's another opportunity to put the brand in the market.

Also, in the second half of this year, we will begin recruiting for our consulting clients. What we have been doing is asking applicants who apply for jobs with us whether they are interested in being placed with another company in a similar job. We receive about 100,000 applications a year, so we have a lot of qualified people waiting. We can do all the interviewing and hiring for these companies.

The Mainframe Bridge to the Cloud

2009-06-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

How do developments in mainframe technology and automation relate to cloud computing? Cloud computing is in a very basic sense virtualizing resources within the data center. As enterprises seek to gain data center efficiency, they're looking at bringing in a measure of virtualization, optimizing operations in ways similar to what mainframes have done for years.

How can mainframes can help enterprises reach cloud-computing benefits faster? Let's look at what defines cloud computing, with an emphasis on private clouds or those computing models that enterprises can control on-premises, but that also favor and provide cloud-like efficiency with lower-end costs and a heightened ability to deliver services that support agile business processes.

We'll examine how new developments in mainframe automation and supporting the use of mainframes allow for cloud-computing advantages and the ability to solve some of the more contemporary computing challenges.

To help us understand how mainframe is the cloud, we're joined by Chris O'Malley, executive vice president and general manager for CA's mainframe business unit. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Gardner: Chris, we've heard a tremendous amount about cloud computing and there's a buzz around this whole topic. From your perspective, what makes cloud so appealing and feasible right now?

O'Malley: Cloud as a concept is, in its most basic sense, virtualizing resources within the data center to gain that scale of efficiency and optimization you just discussed. It's a big topic of discussion right now, especially given the recession we're sitting in.

It's very visible physically that there are many, many servers that support the ongoing operations of the business. CFOs and CEOs are starting to ask simple but insightful questions about why we need all these servers and to what degree are these servers being utilized.

When they get answers back and it's something like 15, 10 or 5 percent utilization, it begs for a solution to the problem to start bringing a scale of virtualization to optimize the overall data center to what has been done on the mainframe for years and years.

We're now seeing the availability of the technology -- VMware (NYSE: VMW) is an example -- to start to create almost mainframe-like environments on the distributed side. So, it's both the need from a business standpoint of trying to respond to reduced cost of computing and increased efficiency at a time when the technologies are becoming increasingly available to customers to manage distributed environments or open systems in a way similar to the mainframe.

Gardner: I suppose there's also an issue around integration. When people talk about cloud computing, we hear them refer to it as an application-development or Platform as a Service (PaaS) affair. We also hear Software as a Service (SaaS) or just great delivery of the applications. Then, there's this notion of infrastructure fabric or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

But to relate and manage all of those things is something we haven't yet seen in this whole cloud market. I imagine that at a private level, if you were to use mainframe and associated technologies, you might start to see some of those integration points among these different levels or aspects of cloud computing.

O'Malley: You're right. It's a maturity curve that we're going through, and it's very likely that larger customers are using their mainframe in a highly virtualized way. They've been doing it for 30 years. It was the genesis of the platform. It's a fixed asset that was very expensive way back, or at least relatively expensive, that they try to get as much out of it as they possibly can. So, from its beginning, it was virtualized.

You see the same big customers, though, having application needs outside of what they've done themselves. What customer relationship management (CRM) and Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) have done creates a duality of the mainframe acting as a cloud and using SaaS to support how they work their markets. It's very important that those things start to become integrated. CRM obviously fits into things like order entry, and tying those efforts together.

As you go through this maturity cycle, there is always a level of effort to integrate these things. The viability of things like Salesforce.com, CRM, and the need to coordinate that data with what for most customers is 80 percent of their mission-critical information residing on the mainframe is making people figure out how to fix those problems. It's making this cloud slowly, but pragmatically, come true and become a reality in helping to better support their businesses.

Gardner: So, that would lead, at some point, to a cloud of clouds and hybrid models. We've been worried about integration vertically and now horizontally. I suppose we'll have to start worrying about it across organizational boundaries as well.

O'Malley: Absolutely. There are other barriers that exist as well. The distributed environment and the open system environment, in terms of its genesis, was the reverse of what I described in the mainframe. The mainframe, at some point, I think in the early '90s, was considered to be too slow to evolve to meet the needs of business. You heard things like mounting backlog and that innovation wasn't coming to play.

In that frustration, departments wanted their server with their application to serve their needs. It created a significant base of islands, if you will, within the enterprise that led to these scenarios where people are running servers at 15, 10 or 5 percent utilization. That genesis has been the basic fiber of the way people think in most of these organizations.

It's not just the technical barriers and the complexity of it. It's a cultural shift of an acceptance by players across the business. They all start to use a shared commodity in fulfilling their needs, and the recession helps that. Good CEOs and good CFOs never let a recession go to waste. They explain to their executive management, "We need a greater level of efficiency. We need to transform our thinking, so that we can start to take advantage of these technologies, decrease our overall cost, and increase our ability to serve our market."

They are not just technical issues. There is also people's disposition on the way IT should be run. That has to change as well.

Gardner: I suppose we've gone along with the pendulum swing, from centralized, to decentralized, and now we're coming back. I've spoken to a number of people that say the shortcomings of distributed computing are, in fact, the set of requirements for cloud computing. Do you agree with that?

O'Malley: I absolutely do. This 15 or 10 percent utilization is what we consistently see, customer after customer after customer. Recently, I was with an international customer. They took me on a data center tour, and one of the first things I see is an air conditioning unit the size of a school bus. I see walls that are three-and-a-half feet thick, poured concrete. I see cabling that looks like it weighs tons and football fields of floor space. In the midst of the tour, somebody tells me, "Here is a blade server that cost us next to nothing."

The difficulty in bringing and using these things in an efficient fashion, the cost of all those moving parts, and everything that has to be managed as a single thing, rather than in a virtualized form, has caused a scale of waste that you cannot hide.

Time and time, I hear there is not a CEO or a CFO interested in adding yet another square foot of data-center floor space or adding people to manage the environment at a scale equal to the increasing capacity. They should be getting economies of scale and are just not seeing it.

You're seeing the pendulum come back. This is just getting too expensive, too complex, and too hard to keep up with business demands, which sounds a lot like what people's objections were about the mainframe 20 years ago. We're now seeing that maybe a centralized model is a better way to serve our needs.

Gardner: A lot of what attracts people to the cloud model -- because it is still rather amorphous, and not well-defined -- is this notion of elasticity. That's both, as you say, to help on utilization when it's low, but also to allow for the spikes to be managed externally or to take workloads and apply them across multiple machines in the case of a private cloud.

Amazon's Bezos Entertains; No Color Kindle Near

2009-06-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

The e-tailer's ebullient CEO highlights the company's latest trove of successes, from the Kindle to cloud computing.

When you're the CEO of Amazon.com, you get to have fun at the shareholder's meeting.

While many tech execs these days are sweating their way through the yearly ritual -- facing grim forecasts and unhappy shareholders -- Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) chief Jeff Bezos gave every indication of enjoying his day in front of the e-tail juggernaut's investors.

During today's shareholder meeting, Bezos shared wacky tales of live elephant births relayed using cloud computing, directed an on-stage contest to show off a new packaging feature, waxed poetic about his vision of a paperless society using Kindle DX and got nostalgic when talking about the days before the online giant sold thousands of windshield wiper blades.

But joking and storytelling weren't the only highlights of the meeting: The company gave some tantalizing hints on where it might be heading next -- and where it won't be.

For instance, Amazon won't have color displays for Kindles for at least several years (much to the chagrin, no doubt, of gadget gossip-mongers.) The company is pilot-testing food sales and delivery in Seattle, however, and it's aiming to cash in on e-commerce in China through a partnership there.

Bezos and Amazon are afforded this kind of relative calm thanks to the company's strong continued performance in one of the worst economic downturns in recent memory.

While competitors such as eBay struggle to maintain market share in the midst of significant restructuring, Amazon continues to fine-tune its core customer experience strategy, expand services for third-party online sellers and roll out successful new product lines, such as the Kindle series.

Bezos attributed Amazon's success to a laser-focus on customer experience, and went on to tout the many offerings of the e-commerce giant -- from the Kindle e-reader to its elastic cloud Web services.

"If you identify the key needs of customers, those are unlikely to change over a 10-year period, so if you base your strategy on those durable components, that energy pays off in dividends way into the future," Bezos said.

Focus on customer service

To demonstrate his point, he held a contest between two staff members charged with unwrapping a toy pirate ship. The idea was to show off Amazon's newly introduced "Frustration-Free packaging," in which customers can choose to have select items, such as toys and consumer electronics, delivered without all the wire ties, plastic clamshell casings and other trappings found in traditional retail packaging.

"We introduced Frustration-Free Packaging last year, and it surprised us how much it delighted our customer base. Many holiday mornings were ruined by wire ties -- there's 36 inches of it on this [toy]," he said, joking that to even get the packaging open, "you need a small nuclear device."

Amazon also has said it works with manufacturers to deliver products direct to its warehouse without any of the unnecessary packaging.

"It's more environmentally friendly, it saves the manufacturer money, it saves the customer time -- everyone wins," Bezos said.

Focusing on such minute details of customer satisfaction indeed seems to be paying off, as Amazon continues to buck the recessionary trend with first-quarter profits and revenues well above analysts' expectations -- a 24-percent increase from the same period last year.

Part of that success is coming from Amazon's core offerings of special shipping promotions and efforts such as Amazon Prime -- a program that enables members to pay a yearly fee to get free two-day delivery on items, as well as other discounted shipping options.

Windshield wipers to Web services

Bezos also attributed the company's growth to its effort to continue adding new categories of product to its vast inventory. He added that the company saw an 18-percent jump in third-party sellers compared to last year.

Presenting a slide of a windshield wiper blade, he told the audience it had sentimental value for special reasons.

"More than 10 years ago, when I would be asked what I envision Amazon selling, I would say it could even be windshield wiper blades," Bezos said. "And two weeks ago, I saw a day when we sold more than 10,000 of these."

But recent years have seen Amazon's reach extending well beyond its core e-commerce business -- efforts like Amazon Web Services (AWS) that Bezos also said have proven successful.

The Amazon chief touted the growth of AWS's Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) cloud computing offering, which allows companies to pay for server time in the cloud on a metered basis, instead of buying and maintaining their own.

"Using the Elastic Computer Cloud is not just a cost savings, it's a whole new way to consume computational business resources," he said.

The Kindle e-book reader also represents a relatively new area for Amazon -- one that's likewise paying off, it said.

Mutter's Cure for Newspapers: Online Ad Co-op

2009-06-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Silicon Valley entrepreneur and veteran newspaper editor details his pitch to save newspapers through an industry-wide ad consortium.

Amid all the hand wringing over the future of newspapers, industry executives held a semi-secret meeting last week in Chicago to discuss how to better monetize their content on the Web.

A tricky question, to be sure. One of the favorite taglines of the escalating debate is that the Internet has turned newspapers' print ad dollars into digital dimes.

Veteran newspaper editor and serial tech entrepreneur Alan Mutter has an answer: an industry-owned cooperative that would drive up the rates that newspapers could charge advertisers through detailed behavioral targeting and the bargaining leverage of the collective industry.

Mutter, perhaps best known for his Newsosaur blog, pitched the idea of ViewPass to newspaper executives at the Chicago meeting, describing it in a blog post as a "single, ubiquitous brand to enable consumers to access valuable content on the Web sites and mobile platforms of all participating publishers."

ViewPass would facilitate a payment system where publishers could charge for access to content, either through subscriptions, bundled content packages or micropayments -- an a la carte model that would charge a small fee for access to a single article.

"It would be deployed as a widely recognized and widely accepted brand in a manner similar to the way Visa cards were established by the banking industry as a ready substitute for cash," Mutter said.

But the real value of the system wouldn't be in trying to start charging for the content that consumers have come to expect to be free.

Rather, as an industry-owned collective, ViewPass would allow newspapers to assemble detailed profiles about their readers, information that could then be supplied to advertisers to serve more targeted ads at steeper rates.

"ViewPass would consist of a simple, one-time registration system that would remember users as they moved among participating Web sites," Mutter said. "It would build a profile of individual users from demographic information supplied by them, as well as by tracking the content they viewed as they moved from site to site."

In a nod toward the inevitable privacy concerns that arise when people started talking about detailed profiles, Mutter noted that ViewPass wouldn't pass along any personal identifiable information to advertisers.

Privacy advocates have become increasingly concerned in recent years with the personal profiles large Web companies have been amassing in their efforts to serve more relevant, targeted ads, and there a fresh effort is underway in Congress to draft a privacy bill that would set some parameters.

But advertisers are willing to pay more for better targeted ads. In the case of newspapers, Mutter believes ViewPass could enable publishers to more than double their CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rates, partially righting the dollars-to-digital-dimes imbalance.

Further, by setting it up as an industry-owned partnership, ViewPass would bypass some of the third-party vendors helping newspapers sell ads online. Mutter said that revenue consolidation, coupled with the higher CPMs and the market clout of an industry-wide consortium, could enable publishers to "rapidly triple their online margins."

Some online firms, most successfully Yahoo, have developed advertising platforms to drive up online revenues for newspapers. But while Yahoo's APT platform drives up ad rates with better targeting technology, Yahoo keeps half of the revenue, Mutter noted.

Is the Domain Name Biz Recession Proof?

2009-06-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

As the total number of domain names reaches 183 million, can China's .cn surpass .com?

The domain name business is still adding new registrations even in the midst of the worst recession in at least 50 years.

According to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN), at the end of the first quarter of 2009 there was a total 183 million domain names registered across all Top Level Domain (TLD) names, representing a 12 percent increase on a year-over-year basis.

That said, new domain growth is actually slowing, according to a different metric in the VeriSign report.

The VeriSign report stated that 11.8 million new domain names were registered in the first quarter of 2009. According to the report, "this reflects a 17 percent growth in new registrations over fourth quarter 2008, but a 17 percent decline from the same quarter in the previous year."

Not all TLDs are growing at the same rate. Specifically, for .com and .net domains, VeriSign reported that the total number of domains grew by 9 percent on a year-over-year basis to 92.4 million domain names.

"We were pleased to see better than expected growth in the quarter and believe it is due to a number of factors including seasonality, as the first quarter is typically the strongest quarter for this business," Jill McNabb, VP of Naming Services at VeriSign, told InternetNews.com.

McNabb added that new .com and .net registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.4 million per month in the first quarter of 2009, for a total of 7.3 million new registrations in the quarter. This 17 percent increase from the previous quarter also marked the first positive growth rate in new registrations since the first quarter of 2008.

"While throughout most of 2008, the rate of growth of new .com and .net registrations was not as high as it once was, VeriSign still saw new registrations each quarter, which added to the overall base of .com and .net domain names," McNabb said.

While .com and .net are growing, so too is the .cn China Country Code TLD (ccTLD). On a year-over-year basis, the .cn ccTLD grew by 27 percent. The .cn ccTLD has been the second largest domain space (behind .com) in the world since December, when it surprised Germany's .de. VeriSign's report does not provide specific figures for the actual size of the .cn domain space, but they're not worried that it will surpass .com anytime soon.

"While .cn continues to grow as Internet use becomes more widespread in a country with a massive population, .com still has the largest base and we do not anticipate that this will change in the near future," McNabb said.

The growth of the domain business is good business for VeriSign, which recently reported revenue growth for its own first fiscal quarter of 2009.

Could the increase in domain registrations be a sign the economy is turning?

"We are cautiously optimistic that the increased growth in domain name registrations signals that the worst is over and may be a sign that the economic environment has a glimmer of stabilization," McNabb said. "While there are quarterly ups and downs in the domain industry -– and the larger economy expands and contracts -– the Internet continues to show sustainable growth year over year."

UK Court Clears eBay in L'Oreal Fakes Case

2009-05-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

A high court in the United Kingdom has ruled that eBay cannot be held accountable for the sale of counterfeit L'Oreal perfumes and face creams.

The cosmetics maker had argued that knockoffs were rampant across eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY) marketplace, and sought to bar the sale of its products on the site to cut off the counterfeit trade.

Richard Ambrose, eBay's head of trust and safety, heralded the decision as "a victory for consumers and the thousands of entrepreneurs who sell legitimate goods on eBay every day."

L'Oreal said it was satisfied with the court's ruling, noting that the judge said that eBay could do more to police its site for counterfeit goods.

The judge suggested 10 measures eBay could take, including filtering listings before they appear on the site and establish tougher penalties for people caught selling knockoff goods. The judge also advised capping the volume of merchandise that sellers can list in categories prone to counterfeit, such as fragrances and cosmetics.

Counterfeit experts say that people selling knockoffs on sites like eBay commonly sell them in batches. Instead of posting a listing for a single diamond bracelet from Tiffany's, for instance, a counterfeiter's site might have a dozen of them for sale.

eBay, no stranger to trademark infringement battles, maintains that for the volume of business it handles, the site remains remarkably free from counterfeits. The company said that of the 2.7 billion listings that appeared on eBay's global site in 2008, 0.15 percent of them were flagged as potentially counterfeit.

Earlier this week, eBay launched an anti-counterfeiting campaign, appealing to members of the consumer electronics industry to join forces to help it fight fakes.

Any time questions about counterfeits arise, eBay points to its Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO), an automated system it launched in 1998 to allow trademark and copyright owners to report knockoffs. In court battles, eBay generally asserts that its role is only to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, and that it cannot be held responsible for individual sellers hawking counterfeit goods.

But that hasn't deterred rights owners from plowing ahead with cases and accusations against eBay. Typically, they claim that eBay's anti-counterfeit mechanisms are too weak and that it shirks its responsibility for policing its site.

In July, a New York judge cleared eBay in a high-profile infringement case brought by Tiffany. That ruling came just a week after a French court held the online auctioneer responsible for $63.2 million in damages for its role in facilitating the sale of counterfeit Louis Vuitton goods.

Meantime, the software industry has a longstanding gripe with eBay for abetting piracy on its site. The Software and Information Industry Association has an eBay certification program to guard against pirated software, and has sued numerous sellers on eBay and even threatened to sue the site directly.

Today's ruling in the U.K. court follows similar decisions in Belgium and France, resolving three of the five cases L'Oreal brought against eBay in 2007 in the favor of the e-commerce giant.

Last year a court in Germany ruled against eBay, and L'Oreal's case in the United States is still pending.

Sun Gets Into the Java App Store Biz

2009-05-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

Sun's planning to birth its own "billion user baby" - launching an app store June 1.

Sun Microsystems is the latest company to jump on the app store bandwagon with Project Vector, likely to be renamed Java Store, to launch June 1 at its annual conference, and CEO Jonathan Schwartz is already making bold predictions of 1 billion users.

Schwartz wrote in a blog post that an app store would capitalize on the distribution of Java and JavaFX.

Here's how Schwartz sees it working: "Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple Web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism. Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won't be exclusive (as they have been for search).

"As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution -- but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That's clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world's largest audience."

The news from Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA), which was acquired by rival Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) in April for $7.4 billion, comes at a time when app stores are in vogue, with everyone from mobile network operators, to software developers to handset makers and even eBay is trying to cash in on the nascent yet lucrative market.

The phenomenon took off after the success of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) App Store for the iPhone, which now has about 35,000 applications and more than a billion downloads.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) answered by opening its own app store in April. Google has one for the mobile open source platform Android and eBay announced plans for one as well.

No love lost

Meanwhile, it's no secret that Apple and Sun haven't bonded over the years, as Java largely remains a pariah in terms of iPhone app development.

An example of the discontent: In January 2007, CEO Steve Jobs told the New York Times that "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

Indeed, the move by Sun may be a way for the company to try and get some traction in the mobile market. "Sun wants to be a big player in the mobile market, and with the alienation with Apple, this may be their way of trying to do that," Jack Gold, analyst with J. Gold Associates, told InternetNews.com.

He adds that he thinks Sun's entry into the app market will not have much impact on the Java market. "I wonder how serious they are or if it's just for good P.R. It may get them some headlines, and they'll put a stake in the ground, but frankly, I don't think it will generate much revenue for them."

And it could cause headaches. "They've had directories and sites for Java apps forever, but if Sun's going to become the merchant and sell them, how do they police it all and make sure none are malicious? Are they going to test every single one? All of that is part of the equation. Even Apple learned never say never when it comes to issues like that," said Gold.

But differences between Sun and Apple aside, Schwartz is optimistic about Sun's venture into app storefronts. "This creates opportunity for everyone in the developer community -- and specifically, for any developer (even those not using Java/JavaFX) seeking to reach beyond the browser to create a durable relationship with their customers," he wrote.

"Remember, when apps are distributed through the Java Store, they're distributed directly to the desktop -- JavaFX enables developers, businesses and content owners to bypass potentially hostile browsers."

At press time, Apple had not responded to requests to comment.

Mobile Commerce, Twitter to Save E-Comm Sales?

2009-05-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

comScore says mobile commerce and social marketing may be the savior of the future for online sales.

While e-commerce growth was flat for the first quarter, the sector likely bottomed out, with online sales increases likely to hover around 5 percent for the second half of the year, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said during a Webinar going over the research firm's Q1 findings.

Though e-commerce had seen double-digit growth for the past several years, Fulgoni said the worst may be over, as he cited mobile commerce and social network and video site marketing at sites such as Twitter and Hulu as opportunities for bolstering sales in the near future.

"The good news here is that I think it's bottomed out, in the second quarter we saw 13 percent growth, that dropped to six in the third quarter of 08, in Q4 it was minus three, now flat in the first quarter, so we're not seeing a continued downward trend," said the comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) chief.

He was less optimistic, however, on future growth for this year, saying it's not likely online sales will see the double-digit increases the sector enjoyed over the past few years, and reluctantly predicted about five percent spikes.

The recession, naturally, is having a negative impact on consumers' purchasing power, and Fulgoni said this is reason for concern as it prompts older shoppers to save instead of spend.

There was no growth he said in the percentage change in online spending for the quarter compared to a year ago for the segment age 45 and older making more than $100,000. For those age 45 and over making between $50,000 and $99,000 it dropped by 11 percent.

Online sprendthrifts

"This is what is most troubling to me, perhaps in the entire (presentation). There is a distinct lack of spending in the segment of people 45 and over. These people have some extra money, but they're not spending it," he said.

Overall the e-commerce sector fared better than traditional retail sales -- online sales for the quarter were flat but retail dropped by 8 percent.

In terms of how the Internet is affecting shopping behavior, comScore data shows three-quarters of people are likely to collect information online before buying offline. "That says it all right there. You need to move marketing dollars to build your brand online," said Fulgoni.

He also reported that the 72 percent said search engines were "very important" in influencing buying behavior, 54 percent cited online coupon sites as very important, followed by comparison shopping sites at 46 percent, auction sites at 44 percent and online classifieds at 36 percent.

Unique visitors to online coupon sites is hovering around 35 million per month. That's up 7 percent more than last year, for those saying they use coupons from brand sites. Overall online coupon use is up 2 percent to 31 percent.

In terms of what consumers want to see at online stores, 64 percent say product details are important, 60 percent said incentives were an important feature, followed by easy site navigation with 46 percent and product reviews with 42 percent.

Microsoft Mobile Apps Store Registration Begins

2009-05-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

Users may still be waiting to get their hands on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones but apps vendors are already gearing up to offer them their wares.

Microsoft this week quietly began laying more groundwork for its upcoming competitor to the Apple iPhone App Store, opened the doors for developers to register Windows Mobile applications they plan to sell through the new marketplace.

The news came during Microsoft's TechEd 2009 technical developers conference in Los Angeles this week.

"Developers can now register to participate in Windows Marketplace for Mobile," the company's Windows Mobile team said in a blog post earlier this week.

It's a market that's Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) views as, if not ripe for exploitation, at least de rigueur for any wireless vendor to have on the heels of the wild popularity of Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) App Store, which just surpassed its billionth download from a catalog of more than 35,000 applications on offer.

Many of the apps are free or very low cost, so it's unclear how much Apple has made from the service. But even so, mobile apps are seen as a key differentiator in the increasingly competitive smartphone market.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is still waiting for handset makers to begin shipping phones based on its new Windows Mobile 6.5 -- many of them are slated to arrive later this year. Access to Microsoft, Marketplace for Mobile is a key new feature of 6.5.

While they wait for a platform to run their apps on, though, developers can get all the paperwork filed in advance at least.

Some mobile players have already committed to sell their applications via Microsoft's store. Among them are AccuWeather.com, the Associated Press, CNBC, Developer One Mobile Software, EA Mobile, Facebook, Gameloft, MySpace, Netflix, Pandora, Sling Media, and Zagat Survey, according to Microsoft.

"This marks another milestone in providing Windows Mobile developers a clear path to develop, test, certify and distribute their Windows Mobile applications via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile," the Windows Mobile team said in a blog post this week.

Vendors interested in selling their wireless apps via Microsoft's upcoming Marketplace for Mobile can sign up on the Windows Mobile site.

Google Relaxes AdWords Trademark Policy

2009-05-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

From the blogs: It's an important change for the legions of online marketers pushing their wares through Google search ads.

Google has loosened its trademark policy for AdWords, the auction-based program where advertisers bid on keywords to place text ads alongside search results. Under the new policy, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will allow advertisers to include trademarked names in their text ads, even if the trademark belongs to someone else.

In a blog post detailing the change, Google likens the old policy limiting trademarks to a supermarket only being able to advertise with generic terms like "discount cola" or "snacks for sale."

So this means that an online clothing retailer could include trademarked brand names like "Hugo Boss" or "Perry Ellis" in its text ad.

There are limitations, which Google spells out in its trademark policy. Retailers, for instance, must sell the product corresponding to the trademark, or the component parts relating to it.

The policy change brings Google in line with online competitors Yahoo and Microsoft, who have already adopted what is a standard practice in the offline world.

Google seems confident that it is well within the bounds of the law on this one, but advertisers have raised questions about other, murkier areas of its handling of trademarks...

Focus on SEO, Open Source to Boost Online Sales

2009-05-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Online retailers looking to cut costs during a recession while still improving the online customer experience are advised to switch their e-commerce software to non-customized platforms and funnel the savings into functions such as search engine optimization (SEO), according to research released today by Gartner.

E-commerce firms should consider commercial, off-the-shelf, or open source software as a replacement for current custom Web development initiatives to save up to 35 per cent of their ongoing maintenance and license costs, according to the report "Cost Cutting in E-Commerce, 2009" by Gartner.

These savings can then be used to direct custom development efforts toward functions likely to have an impact on differentiating customers' online experience, such as SEO," says Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner.

“Except for market leaders, such as Amazon and eBay, custom development is likely to be a waste of effort and money because it supports functions that do not enable a differentiated online customer experience. For example, a developer who supports a commodity function, such as shopping cart management, would be better to develop rich Internet shopping capabilities or improve site design for search engine optimization so that the site can rank higher in a Google-based search,” Alvarez said in a statement.

The report comes out at a time when other research groups are showing e-commerce sales are leveling off while e-tailers struggle with smaller budgets as they try to retain customers and improve the online shopping experience.

IT organizations responsible for e-commerce are challenged in 2009 to improve online customer experiences to make up for closed locations and lost sales personnel, while cutting IT expenditures by five to 25 percent, according to Gartner.

To that end, Gartner identified five tips for meeting that challenge for IT leaders in charge of e-commerce operations in the current souring economy. The report also outlines associated savings estimates for large enterprises with e-commerce budgets of more than $1 million for software and services, and for small enterprises with budgets of less than $1 million.

First on the list of suggestions is to use off-the-shelf products that are not custom developed for commodity functions, such as shopping cart management, search, product merchandising and management and to replace these with commercial or open-source e-commerce applications. Gartner estimates that large enterprises can save 35 percent of ongoing maintenance and license costs, and small enterprises can save 25 percent of these costs in 2009, and 20 percent in the future. The one-time cost to implement this strategy is $250,000 to $350,000 in software, on average, with a one-time cost for implementation services, according to Garnter.

Sybase Befriends Samsung, Symbian, Amazon EC2

2009-05-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK -- The mobile enterprise industry isn't just about one company anymore. "It used to be that if you asked a CIO about their mobile strategy, they'd say it was RIM," said Sybase CEO John Chen at the New York Stock Exchange today. "Today, with the iPhone and other devices, things have changed."

That change has been driven by consumer adoption of the latest mobile devices. "They are now consumer-owned, not enterprise-owned," Terry Stepien, president of Sybase's iAnywhere subsidiary, told InternetNews.com.

Sybase (NYSE: SY) today announced that its Sybase Unwired Platform is being used to deliver the new Samsung SDS Enterprise Mobile Service. Samsung's service provides all the expected enterprise apps, such as ERP, CRM, and SCM and the Sybase-Samsung SDS partnership includes co-marketing, sales, and joint service deployment, Sybase said in a statement.

Delivering enterprise applications to mobile devices is no simple matter, he said. "You need to take into account the operating system, carrier, and form factor," he said.

Device options only continue to grow, with new releases from Amazon and others not normally associated with the mobility market reaching such a pitch that some commentators are saying that there are too many mobile devices on the market.

Samsung said that Sybase was capable of handling the mobility challenge. "Sybase's comprehensive mobility platform and overall enterprise mobility expertise together with our extensive mobile infrastructure is a winning combination for customers," said Seung An Park, executive vice president of research and business development for Samsung SDS in a statement.

Seeking all channels

Sybase aims to work with all mobile devices, not just with device vendors that have proprietary software. On Wednesday the company announced that the latest version of its most popular iAnyware app, Afaria, which handles mobile device management and security, now supports the Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA DM) standards for device management in version 6.0 of Afaria, available now.

With the adoption of this open source client, Sybase iAnywhere said it added support fo over a billion phones including numerous Nokia devices and Symbian phones.

"Sybase's platform-agnostic approach and wide spectrum of management capabilities is unique within the mobile middleware space," said Marit Ursin, CEO of SmartPhones Telecom AS (sted Datanat).

Sybase's open approach has received plaudits from research firms Forrester and IDC. A new Forrester report, "The Forrester WaveT: Mobile Device Management Solutions, Q2 2009," named the company co-leader (along with RIM) in the mobile device management software space.

Sybase said in a statement that Sybase iAnyware was again recognized as the leader in mobile device management in last year's IDC report "Worldwide Mobile Device Management Enterprise 2008-2012 Forecast and 2007 Vendor Shares," making this year the seventh consecutive year that it has been so recognized.

Sybase is also tracking software trends and announced yesterday that it is working with hardware and software industry leaders on virtualization and cloud computing initiatives.

For example, the company is working with Amazon's Amazon Web Services (AWS) subsidiary to deliver test environments and guides for free for use in Amazon's EC2 public cloud.

As for private clouds, Sybase is working with Symantec Veritas to deliver enterprise-class server and storage virtualization and will discuss the project in detail in a webcast on June 4, 2009.

But executives sounded cautious about the hype surrounding these buzzwords. Stepien noted that virtualization is a technology that was developed for repetitive batch processes and is not applicable to all applications, and added that although cloud computing can deliver clear benefits, adoption in many areas remains slow.

Marty Beard, president of Sybase 365, the company's mobile services subsidiary, told InternetNews.com that the company's global SMS system that can deliver messages to 800 telcos worldwide could be seen as a "messaging cloud" but noted that it's not what most people mean when they use the "cloud" buzzword except in the sense that the company is constantly improving the telecommunications software it uses internally instead of issuing upgrades in bulk in new releases. "Samsung further validates our Sybase Anywhere platform as an approach to providing enterprise mobility," said Stepien.

72% of hedge fund investors have reduced their exposure to leverage

2009-03-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Deutsche Bank today announced the results of the seventh annual Alternative Investment Survey, which was conducted during February 2009 by the Bank's Hedge Fund Capital Group. Approximately 1000 investors responded to this year's survey, including funds of hedge funds, family offices, banks, wealth management companies, consultants, pensions, insurance companies, foundations, and corporations.

"Despite the unprecedented challenges faced in 2008, the survey indicates resiliency in the hedge fund industry", said Barry Bausano, Co-Head of Global Prime Finance at Deutsche Bank.

"Transparency, risk management, and liquidity are now top priorities for investors as they select their hedge fund managers", said Jonathan Hitchon, Co-Head of Global Prime Finance. "As a result, we have seen managers of various strategies adjust their structures accordingly."

"Hedge funds remain attractive to investors due to their outperformance of major equity indices in 2008, and their ability to serve as a diversifier to other asset classes," said Scott Carter, Head of the Hedge Fund Capital Group in North America. "Additionally, the survey indicates that a majority of investors expect their own hedge fund portfolios to generate returns of 5-10% this year."

Highlights of Deutsche Bank's Seventh Annual Alternative Investment Survey

• The US is predicted to be best performing region this year. Eastern and Central Europe and Russia are predicted to perform the worst.
• Transparency and Risk Management are now among the top 5 manager selection criteria. Historically, investors indicated the "3Ps Performance, Philosophy and Pedigree to be the most important characteristics when selecting a manager.
• 72% of hedge fund investors have reduced their exposure to leverage and 63% are not interested in applying leverage to their own portfolios this year.
• 43% of investors said they would be more likely to make a proportion of their investments through managed accounts in the future, citing liquidity, transparency and risk management benefits.
• Hedge fund investors are sitting on $294bn of cash and collectively expect to reduce this over the next 6 months to $212bn, if the markets remain stable.
• The larger funds continue to grow and a premier league of hedge funds is emerging: 50% of respondents said they plan to invest in hedge funds with an average AUM of $800mn - $4bn this year.
• Macro, CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor), and Equity Long/Short are predicted to be the best performing strategies. Merger arbitrage, event driven and asset-backed securities are predicted to be the worst performing strategies with investors going into 2009.

Source: Deutsche Bank

More About What CMOs Are Thinking

2009-03-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

In an article in Advertising Age, “Why CMOs Are Gaining Ground in the Recession,” John Quelch, Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, listed the four main marketing challenges chief marketing officers (CMOs) currently face:

Shifting consumer behavior
Price positioning
Stretching marketing dollars
Embracing digital

The economy is putting the squeeze on every marketing decision, and so, as Mr. Quelch said, financial accountability of marketing is here to stay.

Following last week’s article, What Are CMOs Thinking?, here are the results of yet another report documenting the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of CMOs in tough economic conditions.

Fielded late last year, “Isolating the Marketing DNA: The Essential Skills and Qualities of the New CMO,” from SpencerStuart, delved into CMOs’ operational concerns.

When asked what attributes were needed to make a CMO successful, 65% replied the ability to impact bottom-line results.

But when asked what a CMO must “own” to be successful, 92% of the executives answered the brand.

The disconnect between the leading answers to the two questions is somewhat surprising, because often branding and bottom-line results are considered if not antithetical, at least rarely allied.

Unsurprisingly, when it came to what a CMO’s effectiveness should be measured against, following alignment with business strategy were profitability and revenues.

It is a complex job, with many pressures, but in the current economic environment CMOs have to be concerned with making money for their organizations.

Yet, as the SpencerStuart report cautioned, “Marketing can help by encouraging the organization to be counterintuitive in a time of financial crisis; rather than scaling back, companies can invest in the areas that will benefit customers.”

And that can mean…spending money.

Agencies and brands from all vertical industries rely on eMarketer for analysis and data. See what they know about digital marketing—that you don’t. Learn more about a Total Access subscription today.

emarketer.com

RIM's App World Store Ready to Rock

2009-03-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

RIM executive confirms the company's BlackBerry App World store is on track to go live this month.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Research in Motion plans to go live with its BlackBerry App World store this month as scheduled.appworld

He said he isn't sure how many applications have already been built for BlackBerry phones, but said some estimates put the number as high as 80,000. "Certainly there are tens of thousands," he said.

Brenner also took pains to explain that RIM has expanded well beyond its initial business and enterprise focus, noting that RIM's roughly 25 million active users are about equally divided between enterprise and consumers.

"The enterprise (only) focus of BlackBerry may be a little out of date image," he said.

But he also noted that consumer/business lines often blur when it comes to mobile devices like the BlackBerry because they are used for both business and personal use. Brenner himself said Facebook and MySpace are among his favorite applications on the BlackBerry along with Slacker, an online music radio station.

is the mobile device maker's answer to Apple's phenomenally successful App Store for the iPhone, which already offers over 25,000 applications following its release last year.

"We're excited, very soon it'll be out there," said Alan Brenner, senior vice president of BlackBerry Platforms at RIM. "There's a huge pent up interest in simpler discovery and acquisition of applications for the BlackBerry."

Brenner was interviewed as part of a keynote luncheon presentation at the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations conference here. He declined to get into much detail on what applications will be available at launch, but did note they cover a broad range of categories from business and productivity to entertainment.

"The market expects volume and quality," he said. "We have a history of solutions that are very sticky; applications that people spend a lot of time with."

When the BlackBerry App World store launches, Brenner said will serve both as a distributor and repository for user's applications. "You'll be able to store your applications in the cloud and retrieve them as needed off the network," he said.

Until the store goes live, it's not clear how quickly or efficiently an application might be retrieved, but having that option means BlackBerry users won't be limited to how many applications they can store directly on the device.

Wrapping up, Brenner hit on a few more hot button topics in response to questions from the audience. He said Netbooks are "interesting," but not an area RIM plans to expand to. "We're in the BlackBerry business and we're going to stay focused on mobile smartphones," he said.

And he didn't take the bait when asked to comment on what might be missing from Apple's forthcoming iPhone 3.0 OS, announced Tuesday. Apple said it plans to include so-called push services for real-time alerts and other real-time content. RIM has been a pioneer in providing push e-mail services on the BlackBerry line.

"We really like push," he said. "We think we have a great solution that's widely adopted and we're going to keep going with it."

Brenner said using a mobile device as a projector for presentations sounds like a great application. "If the technology is a fit, we'll give it a serious look," he said.

As for what advances he might be highlighting a year from now, Brenner pointed to the continuous advances in unified communications. "The technology that allows you to send and receive mobile calls through the PBX system is probably going to get more attention over the next year," he said.

Google-WPP Alliance Funds Ad Research

2009-03-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

The two titans team up to bestow millions in grant money aimed at figuring out how to maximize ad performance in the digital world.

Google and media-buying heavyweight WPP are jointly funding research to better understand how online media influences advertising. The two companies announced Wednesday that they will award $4.6 million in 11 grants to academic stalwarts such as M.I.T. and the Harvard Business School.

When the "Google and WPP Marketing Research Awards Program," formed last year, the partners said they expected to support up to 12 awards in the range from $50,000 to $70,000.

The supported projects represent the first round of awards in the three-year program that will see WPP and Google commit up to $4.6 million to support research into how online media influences consumer behavior, attitudes and decision making. Funding for the supported projects will be released in this month.

"The winning academic research projects all study the critical relationship between online and offline advertising by analyzing comprehensive data sets. Bringing academic research into the discussion around online advertising will help marketers better understand how to build the most measurable, effective campaigns--which is even more crucial in this economy," Erin Clift, Google's Director of Agency Relations, told InternetNews.com.

Mark Read, director of strategy at WPP, said the companies decided to team up because of their complementary areas of expertise.

"We have a powerful combination of data sets," he said, referring to Google's search, trend and analytics information and proprietary data from WWP companies including BrandZ, Market Norms, TGI as well as media data and research generated at GroupM and The Kantar Group.

Read also said the deal shouldn't be seen in terms of WWP as the un-plugged party joining the digital behemoth. "It would be a mistake to characterize WWP as an offline entity," he told InternetNews.com, "because of our $15 billion in annual revenue roughly a quarter comes from digital marketing."

What makes the WPP-Google award program notable is that both companies are still eager to invest money in R & D during the recession, which proves that they are serious about discovering a way to quantify ad research and revenues in an increasingly complex digital world.

To that end, Read said the future of the award program beyond its initial three-year run "depends on the results we get out of it."

And, while most of today's winners are U.S.-based, Read said, "In the future we hope to have a broader geographic representation in terms of the academic perspective."

Overview of E-Business and E-Commerce

2008-05-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Electronic commerce (EC or E-commerce) describes the process of buying , selling

Transferring ,serving ,or changing product , services , or information via computer

Networks , including the internet . Some people view the term commerce as describing only transaction conducted between business partners. When this definition is used

Some people find the term electronic commerce to be fairly narrow.

Thus , many use the term e-business instead. E-Business refers to broader definition

Of EC , not just the buying and selling of goods and services , but also servicing customers collaboration with business partners , conducting e-learning and conducting electronic transaction within an organization . Other view e-business

As the "other than buying and selling " activities on the internet , such as collaboration and intrabusiness activities.

( Information Technology for Management, Turban 6^th Edition 2008)

AdWords Ads Now Free?

2008-04-13T02:12:00.000-07:00

A new breakthrough secret is all you now need in order to get your Google AdWords pay-per-clicks FREE!A gentleman from New York discovered what he calls an “oversight” on the part of 99.9% of all marketers that allows him to get otherwise paid-for advertising at Google as well as all other search engines that allow sponsored ads.And no, nothing about his “secret” is illegal – nor does it require that you know someone on the “inside” at Google, Yahoo, MSN, Overture and others.Instead, the New Yorker boasts proudly “…this is something that I caught onto just before 2000 when there was so much search engine craze running around, and started doing small just to test things at first … but which I later expanded on after getting the hang of it.”This same fellow went on to start and operate sixteen separate online companies selling everything from pet food, DVDs, children’s toys & games, books, software, and sold not only his own manufactured products but became an affiliate for other web businesses – all the while applying his mastermind secret.Over the course of nearly eight years the New Englander confesses “I’ve actually gotten over $87 million in advertising that using my secret I never had to pay for … and the largest share of which was more recently in Google pay-per-clicks as well as other forms of pad advertising at search engines … all of which I got for free …”So powerful is his secret that he’s able to monopolize any niche online, and can always secure the top premium spots just above the usual organic results featured at most search engines.He still has to set up an account with the search engines – but after applying his secret he is removed from having to pay for all the costs otherwise involved.Again, nothing about his secret is either illegal or robs from the search engines.One spokesperson from one of the most popular search engines said chuckling after being made privy to this amazing secret “Wow! Ha! This is really unique … and in my expert opinion it would only serve to enhance and bring more business to us at [name of search engine withheld for legal & confidentiality reasons] and not cause us to lose business in the slightest. Amazing!”The northerner revealed that in this nearly eight years’ period of time since applying his secret he’s done well over $300 million in sales revenue with a most diverse line of products, and most recently in the last two years netted nearly $166 million after really “buckling down and pressing my secret to its fullest potential.”Now to everyone else’s fortune, the city slicker is releasing his secret for getting an unlimited amount of pay-per-click ads to the general public. But he’s not promising any of us for how long.A bit of an eccentric, the gentleman says “We’ll see just how long I can make it available before it saturates things.”One famous public web guru pointed out that although this man may gain economically more so as a result of the publication of his secret “he’s already so amazingly rich that whether he continues or discontinues its sale will neither make nor break the man, but not grabbing it for yourself while it’s still available could prove disastrous for you as you may only have one chance, and a very limited one at that, to get this.”It is currently available here: Check it out.…so you may want to head on over there now and get it.It’s in a very easily readable format and is quickly and readily understood and mastered by anyone with even a 4th grade reading level.While you’re there, why not scroll down and review for yourself the huge successes others are now having with this incredible breakthrough in targeted advertising now made freely available to the rest of us?To your success,

Beware of Scams and Scammers!

2008-04-13T02:11:00.000-07:00

As you know there are many websites on the Internet which are basically built to promote money making programs. Not all of them are true programs. Most of them, as I experienced are fake. Of course many factors involved to spot a true and honest business from the fake ones. If you are new to such a niche and plan to join a home based making money program, try first to consult with someone who is familiar with online business or do some research on the Internet about the program otherwise you may lose money.
A good source to get information about scams and scammers is http://www.scambusters.org which helps people protect themselves from clever Internet scams, identity theft and urban legends since 1994.
So as you see I am so serious in this regard, that is the cost of most Internet home business ideas and you may be about to give your hard-earned dollars to some Internet scammers because he might have convinced you that he could tell you how to make a lot of money starting a new kind of home business on the Internet.
This is a very bad phenomenon taking place these days on the Internet as it spoils morality and confidence among people. It also prevents, or at least makes it so difficult, for honest people to do business on the Internet. Therefore, it would be a nice thing to reveal their inhumane tips and tricks to make some restriction for them and fight against them in any way.
Anyway, you must beware! Here is the deal. Almost most of making money online schemes are scams. If you want to join such a program, you will encounter with them. I have seen many of them. They show you scanned check photos, account reports, and daily revenues and promise you a lot of desirable things including but not limited to mansions, fast cars, pools, and leer jets claiming that you would get them in a very short time so easily!
Of course there are some programs which may lead you to get a good life but not in a short time and easily. In case of joining such programs, you need to work hard and take endeavors, i.e. No Pain, No Gain.
Anyway, they will tell you "Send me just the low one-time fee of $39, $49 (less or more), and I'll show you how you can make $100s every day working only 2 hours a day!"
However, you needn't be discouraged. You really can learn how to make money on the Internet but not with fake ones. My primary goal to build this website is to help you to find honest and effective home business ideas.
In this regard, the first step is to find an answer to this question: "Which online home business opportunities are scams and which ones are not?"
If you are like some people who are new to this business, you may not know and the reason is certainly because these webmasters are so slick with their sales pitches.
On the other hand, you may also know that people are making money and some great living every day from home with online businesses. You may probably even know some of these people personally. Being careful and doing some research, there is no reason why you can't create a profitable Internet business yourself and that is what you are searching for right now.
Maybe you have considered the main problem if you have been looking for an online home-based business that the scammers out there mess everything up for you. You might probably suspect that. And you are absolutely right about that. According to my experience more than 85% of them are basically designed to take your money and leave you with nothing.
The reason that 85% of them are scams is because online business scamming is terribly successful. All over the world, over 500,000 people who are just like you and me search the Internet every day for a way to make more money online. And there are hundreds of greedy or fraudulent webmasters out there ready to catch us with flashy websites and fool us to buy their fake or scam home-based business.
Being deceived many times by them during my endeavors to find a right way to earn some extra cash to afford necessary things in my life, I have been trying to do something about it since the last time I was ripped off.
For this reason I decided to help those who are in a situation as I was several years ago and who are about to start an online business hoping to find what they are looking for. I just help people to join such programs that I have already joined myself and tested them.
I have been doing researches since several years ago to find some applied methods to spot scam businesses. I have now the ability to spot them. I love God and I love what He created. Hence, I also love humanity. I am fully aware of the morals and the intelligence behind creation of the universe. I know the value of helping others. Anyway, I have helped literally many people to find just the right work at home solution for themselves. I know, if not completely but relatively, which business models work on the Internet and which ones do not.
By the way, I have been testing, trying, and evaluating online home business models for several years. I am telling you with total honesty, that at least 85% of get rich schemes are scams. At least! But you do not have to fall into their traps. Before you buy an online business opportunity, you owe it to yourself to find out the truth.
And the last point is crucial. It is obvious you don't have the time to waste. You could spend your money, for instance, $39 on that home business eBook, but you will never get back the time it took you to read it and figure out that it wasn't going to work. That is the time, for example, you could have spent with your family or doing a useful task or you could have invested in getting a program that would work. You don't have that time to waste.
Good Luck

Reality-Networkers: a club, not an MLM system

2008-04-13T02:10:00.000-07:00

Do you like networks and networking? Are you looking for a good place to find nice friends and online colleagues? Of course you do or you are if you are doing online business.Reality-Networkers.com is an online community where internet networkers come to build an active team for the purpose of venturing into any program together to profit. If you have been jumping from programs to programs, marketing from scratch to refer new people to join those programs every single time, then perhaps it's time to start building a team that'll last forever to enter into any future programs with you. Reality-Networkers.com has been online for over 3 years, has a membership base of 1.39 million networkers world-wide and is still growing strong everyday for one simple reason - the concept.Thousands of active promoters are gathering at Reality-Networkers so the entire team of active promoters can contribute their experience, their talents, their skills, and their knowledge to help each other's referrals to also become an active promoter.Reality-Networkers is a club, not a MLM system. They offer marketing tools and resources to help their members to build a team of active networkers. All members will be given a free 14 day trial period to try out the program. Once the trial period has ended, there will be a one time administration fee of $25 to become an active member of Reality-Networkers. All active members can receive all the benefits for life. Benefactor option is also available for those who do not have the budget to start.There will be a one time level commission for each level completed. This level commission serves as a bonus to reward the members for a job well done. Once the first matrix has been completed, the member will then be eligible to take their entire team out to join other online ventures.They have helped many members since July.2004 and many of their members are already making a nice monthly income in various programs from the active team they've built within their group.Join Now to take the advantages.To learn more about my money making programs, check out my new website at http://HonestBiz4U.Ws or more tips on extra income opportunities. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.

Best Site For Starting an Online Business

2008-04-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in starting an online business or want to take your current business to new heights but don't want to spend a fortune, there is a new site you should check out called Ebiz Launchpad.Com. It is designed for people who either want to start online businesses or want to grow the businesses they have. It is also good for webmasters or bloggers who have something to offer free in exchange of fresh leads to develop their business.You can download over $19,188 worth of internet marketing tools (ebooks, guides, software, memberships) to get you started in any area you need help.PLUS, Ebiz Launchpad will even build an optin subscriber list FOR YOU (you have heard the saying, "The money's in the list, right??)Anyway, the best part is it's FREE. Go check it out...http://ebiz-launchpad.com/ebizGood Luck.To learn more about my money making programs, check out my new website at www.HonestBiz4U.Ws or more tips on extra income opportunities. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.

Now Anyone Can Get Free Advertising

2008-04-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

As you know some of the best ways to get traffic to your site is through the search engines. And as you know search engines love blogs.If you know how to use blogs you can easily get more traffic to your website just by posting your keywords in the title and having your blogs indexed.Other ways to get traffic to your site is to use popular free traffic exchanges. They come in many forms such as start (homepage) exchanges, safelists (opt in email ads), toolbar ads such as instantbuzz.com and forums such as the free advertising forum.If you are looking to kill 2 birds with one stone, you can advertise for free on a new BLOG that actually allows you to place your ads for free on their site.The reason this is good because you get all the benefits of placing your ads on a BLOG and you all get to advertise for free.Most people would look at this as a no brainer. Although most webmaster do not like people to advertise on the blogs, this site was made just for that.It is free to join and thousands are flocking to this service to drive huge traffic to their sites in ju8st days by simply posting one little ad on their home page.Anyone looking to increase their profits should look in to

http://www.free-advertising-blog.com

Super Promoter is back!

2008-04-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

If you have been marketing online for a while, then you have probably come across "Super Promoter".
If you haven't, it's a BIG phenomenon that rocked the world of internet marketing for years.
And now it's come back bigger, better and more powerful than ever before:
http://successpub.com
If you've been looking for a source of targeted leads for your marketing opportunities, then this is the program that will deliver results for you.
When all is said and done, it all boils down to your promotion needs:
Can You Handle A Traffic Surge?E-book reveals revolutionary new money making system - Get your copy for FREE!
http://www.income4beginners.com