Business: February 2006 Archives

Although consumers may have been following the pricing of domains that they pay ie. the retail rates they should be aware of what is going on behind the scenes. A lot of the bloggers who are involved in the domain industry have been commenting in recent months about the new contracts that Verisign is getting from ICANN.

I was contacted earlier this evening by a prominent Irish podcaster who was interested in my thoughts on podcast hosting. While I would normally have replied to them directly via email I thought it worthwhile to share some of my (random) thoughts in public. When a number of the Irish podcasters got together late last year to discuss setting up a podcasting body I signed up also. Why? Well it's the kind of thing I am interested in. I don't podcast and I may never do so, but I do like to keep abreast of technologies and especially those that are in my "circle" I've looked at podcast hosting and it could be a growth area in the future if you "do it right". Like so many other niches in hosting there is a demand out there for it, but it also comes with certain caveats. Apart from a small group of business podcasters the bulk of podcasts are run by hobbyists, so you cannot apply the same pricing models as you would to say music streams for commercial music groups. Under current Irish legislation it would be all too easy for a podcast host to run afoul of IRMA if a podcaster were to abuse (knowingly or otherwise) an artist's copyright. Of course that's a risk you run with "normal" hosting, but it might be worse with podcasts. I have been mulling over the idea of podcast hosting, but trying to come up with a workable business model for the Irish market is not an easy feat. Hosting, like many businesses, is a numbers game. If you have enough subscribers to a service you can oversell happily as only a small percentage of the userbase is going to use their allocation. Combine that with cheap and plentiful bandwidth and it can be viable. Some people have issues with the concept of overselling, but it's the cornerstone of so many business models. Airlines oversell, hotels oversell - they just call it by a different name. It's only an issue when you oversubscribe If you oversubscribe a number of things can happen. First off, as a provider, you could end up with your costs exceeding your income by a factor in excess of what you may consider acceptable. If that happens then continuing to provide the service may no longer be financially viable. From a technical point of view this may lead to capping, which would, obviously have a tangible effect on your subscribers (unlimited bandwidth is a figment of a marketer's imagination) Either of these would lead to unhappy clients. Unhappy clients lead to not only a loss of existing business, but can also hit both your recurring revenue and new business. For example, many Irish users would have subscribed to a "no limits" service some years ago. Many of us actually used the service to its fulll extent, but then found that the provider had labelled us as "abusers". The resulting uproar led to the formation of a pressure group for Irish broadband / internet users, but I digress. The point being that any such service if badly served would have a very negative impact on the provider. Is that the case in the Irish market? Hard to say, but from what I've seen the number of active Irish podcasters is quite small compared to that of "traditional" bloggers. At present we're treating it all on a very ad-hoc basis. Tom Raftery, for example, has been podcasting for several months, so we offered him space and bandwidth on one of our servers. He can podcast to his heart's content and not have to worry about bandwidth costs. It's probably an area that will have to be investigated further and I am, as always, open to suggestions and feedback from podcasters.

While talking to a friend last night the conversation swung round to that of analogies and how best to explain "our" world to the non-technical. Using an analogy can help, as for some people the concept of websites, hosting and domains is far too intangible and abstract for them to comprehend. Hosting companies sell or rent online real estate (space). They can help mark out your plots of land (domains) before you bring in architects (designers?) and engineers (developers?) to build your house or office Now how far can I take the analogy? :)

Some books worth reading if you want to learn about marketing methods: The Guerilla Marketing Handbook Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers Unleashing the Ideavirus

I wonder if someone screwed up or was emmyawards.com simply never held by them ?

In common with my peers I buy quite a bit online. Yesterday, for example, I bought two cds, while the day before I bought a book for a work related matter. Living in a provincial Irish town means that I have to buy certain items online, while other items are either more convenient or appeal to the "click to buy" mentality (impulse buying tied to my credit card) Rymus made me think about online vs offline transactions a bit this morning when talking about delivery times:

€150 locally with a 2/3 day wait or around €100 from the other side of the world with a guaranteed 3 day delivery.

We recently bought something from a vendor in Hong Kong that made its way half way round the globe in 3 days. A local vendor would have taken more than a week to get the item in. In some areas online vendors, such as Amazon, can run rings around your local offline vendor. However you should evaluate all the factors before dismissing the local shop. Most online vendors cannot match the personal service / expertise.

Over the last few months there has been a certain degree of debate in some circles with regard to the IEDR's pricing and other policies. Some people called for a reduction in pricing, although they did little to pass on any saving to the public. In other quarters there were mutterings about the future of the IE namespace with both the advent of EU looming on the horizon coupled with the likelihood of greater government involvement in the day to day running of the registry. What has the IEDR done about this? On the pricing front there was a significant reduction on both the wholesale and retail rate from 1st January this year. While some people are displeased with this, their displeasure would appear to be tainted by their previous complaints about the high pricing. Prior to January the pricing structure for IE resellers was anything but simple. There were pricing tiers based on the number of domains "held" by a billing contact. Once you got past a particular threshold you qualified for a rebate - not a price reduction - which was given to you quarterly. This obviously benefited some of the larger resellers who were billing for several thousand domains, but even for them this "pay now get moneyback later" scheme must have been quite cumbersome. The new pricing scheme is much simpler for all parties concerned. Instead of tiers you have a nice and simple uniform price, which per unit means that even the larger players do not pay more per unit than they did previously. However, as is so common in Irish business, there are those who are not happy with this pricing structure and would wish to cast doubts on the integrity of companies who have passed on savings to their clients. What ever happened to free market economics? Surely it is up to each company to chose their own business model? Why should taking a gutsy approach be greeted with an attack on a company's integrity or viability? However it is not for me, as a business owner, to make these decisions. Ultimately competitors are free to choose how they wish to react to our marketing tactics as in reality we do not market or sell to them, so their views of us do not really matter. Having said that the IEDR's own policies and procedures should be reviewed, or at least discussed. There are certain apparent inconsistencies between what they claim on the one hand and what they do on the other. What exactly do they mean by a "managed registry"? Which facets of the IE namespace, apart form the zonefiles, are they actually managing? Is it merely a matter of them applying rote to the processes and procedures that have been in place since the IE namespace was moved under the management of the IEDR, or should they be doing more to promote it and defend it from squatters and spammers? While it is possible for an individual to discuss these matters directly with IEDR management surely a more proactive approach is needed? Other registries, such as Nominet, actively encourage feedback from members. While the case of Nominet is hardly a good example to choose, due to the very size of the operation etc., it is also a good role model to follow in some cases.

As part of my preparation for the IIA seminar on blogging next month I would like to put together a couple of examples of Irish business blogs. If you or your company has had any experiences with blogging - both positive and negative - I would love to hear from you. Either post a comment or email me: michele@mneylon.com

I really like FeedBurner. I think it's a really cool service and have been delighted with each and every new feature that they've added. I have no idea how many users they currently have, but the vast majority of blogs that I read on a regular basis seem to be using the service. Of course they may feel that they need to increase market share, but there are good ways to do that and there are bad ways to do that. Spamming is not the way to do it. Spam, UBE, UCE - call it what you like, is a serious issue. If the likes of Yahoo and AOL are considering taking action that would potentially block "free" access to their users and in so doing change the very nature of email, you may begin to get an idea of how serious spam is. If I take a quick look at some of our email statistics, for one part of our network only, the level of spam hitting the network can be quite worrying... We rejected over 1.5 million emails last month alone !! (these would have been primarily dictionary attacks with no valid recipient) So let's look at what seems to have happened with FeedBurner... The Blog Herald reports that they received an email from Feedburner as follows:

To Whom It May Concern: I noticed that you are currently running some RSS feeds on your site. I am writing to suggest that you run those feeds through FeedBurner.com. We currently manage over 190,000 feeds for over 120,000 publishers; through FeedBurner, publishers get invaluable insight into their feed usage: how many subscribers they have, which items their subscribers are reading, and which items generate the most click-throughs. Our core service is free, though we do have some premium services if you’re interested in more detailed analytics. If you decide to run your feeds through us you will not only gain a more friendly “subscribe” page (see my feed at feeds.feedburner.com/thewannabevc) but you will also gain access to many other helpful additions that will add functionality to your feed and make your feed more accessible. In addition to feed management services, we also offer feed monetization – which gives publishers the ability to advertise in their feeds. With our growing list of publishers across a broad range of advertising channels, we have a number of very interesting ad campaigns running that might be appropriate for your feeds. If you need any help setting up your feeds at feedburner.com or if you have any questions please feel free to ping me. Take care and I look forward to working with you in the future. —— Eric Olson Associate - Business Development FeedBurner - http://www.feedburner.com xxxx@feedburner.com AIM/Skype: xxxx

Problems this raises:

• It was unsolicited
• It's obviously bulk
• There's no indication of where they got the email address from
• There's no way of unsubcribing
• It's pushing a commercial service

It's a clear case of spam. Or is it? Others would like to argue that it is merely a case of "direct marketing" and that spam can simply be summed up as:

Spam is the rubbish about unwanted pharmaceuticals, knock-off software and disgusting websites. An unsolicited email about a service in my sphere of interest is legitimate direct marketing.

The first sentence would echo most people's perception of spam ie. that is only about certain topics, but even there the author is being extremely subjective, as he refers to "disgusting" websites. Disgusting according to whom? Some people actually enjoy them, so it's all a matter of personal taste and views, or, to put it more succintly, it's subjective. The second sentence is highly subjective and even contradictory. If it's unsolicited and sent in bulk, then it is, by definition, UBE (unsolicited bulk email), which is another name for spam. Some of his other points are amusing:

Lots of bloggers and every day people wouldn't call it email spam. They would think it interesting.

Yes, they might call one email interesting, but when you are getting hundreds of them per day and your network resources are being eaten up by this junk I'm fairly sure the "interest" swiftly wanes. The scary thing is that Feedburner executives can't see anything wrong with what they've done. Sure, they're vaguely apologetic about it, but what makes me think that they thought they'd simply get away with it? Have a look at some of their comments here, here and here Of course they should be more worried about their registrar taking action against them. In recent weeks the number of ICANN registrars who have decided to implement strict anti-spam terms of service has grown and spammers do run the risk of finding their domains deactivated.

Every few weeks the topic of adult content in Ireland raises its head. In some cases people are looking at domain names, whereas in others they are interested in the content itself. I've gone over a number of these topics in the past, as they were topical due to the release and subsequent shelving of the .xxx TLD. So where do people think the line should be drawn? Should a line be drawn? If you draw a line with regard to what occupies Irish web space (and the IE namespace) should you also restrict access to adult content from Irish ISPs? What is "adult" anyway? Where does erotica end and pornography begin? Is there any difference between the two? As a consenting adult should you have the right to view whatever content you wish in the privacy of your home? If an Irish company were to openly host pornographic content would they be able to survive in the marketplace? Why is the opening of a nightclub in Dublin cause of such furore? I wish I had the answers.. I do have my own thoughts and opinions, but most of those are already in the public domain, so little would be served in rehashing them.

I had heard of Nooked a few times over the last year, but it was only today that I finally got round to signing up for a test account.

If you are an online marketer you may feel offended by the title of this post. I would apologise, but it wouldn't be very honest for me to do so. The problem doesn't lie with the online marketer, be they a small operation or even a multinational. The problem lies with website owners or vendors of adspace, who think that it is still 1995. This maybe an Irish problem, as I've never come across the same level of idiocy when dealing with non-Irish publishers... Let me explain... Say you want to run an advertising campaign to sell widgets. One of the more obvious places to run adverts would be on a site read by widget lovers, as they would be a part of your target market. So you contact a few of these widget fan sites and request their rates. They're more than happy to give you their pricing either in CPM or by period. The numbers are quite high, but the site owner's media pack assures you that their visitors are very discerning widget lovers who like to spend money on widgets. (You may be suffering from widget overload at this point) So you signup without asking any questions. You are an idiot! Ask the siteowner more probing questions about the statistics. Find out if the numbers they quoted were page views, hits or visitors. There's a very big difference. Over the last couple of years I've spoken to a number of these sales types and they really are amusing, in a painful and annoying kind of way. Unless they can provide you with reasonably detailed information then walk away.

We're continuing the offer for the month of February. Maybe it's because it's my birthday on Friday and I was feeling generous! We're having a pretty generous 2006 so far, with free asp.net 2.0 hosting plans up for grabs and a lot more :)