Recession And India

Battling recession could have painful side effects. These are tough times for job seekers and employees across the world. As the corporate world reels under an economic recession, more and more people are losing their jobs in the US.

Now the question is that “Is Indian economy is also in recession?”

Is it affecting Indian economy too? If you put the same question in Google u are going to get numerous answers such as “I don’t believe even for one second that India is into recession.” Some people will say “India is not in recession but slowly moving into it.” Different People… different views…….

But when compared to our western counterparts, we find that Indian companies are not giving out the pink slips in droves. There are various reasons for this…..
Dependency of Indian economy is not similar to the country like Japan, China and European nation. Our stringent investment policy and domestic demand will help us in this time of recession.

We Indians are firm believers in saving money and spending in thrift. So India won’t go into a sub-prime crisis.

And at most important India’s growth story is not due to any external factors.

There are some companies in India which are doing employees cut especially in IT sector. However, On the other hand there are companies such as Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro have denied any job cuts, stating that the recession would not hit the IT industry.

As in other aspects of life, in economics and finance also, the rule still holds water - What goes down should come up. And what comes up should definitely go down”. Be it sensex, economy, happiness, sadness, success, failure, love, hatred..... You can just play the game of the gods...

As one of our great poet quotes “World is a stage…” Good and bad things are the part of the life….Now it depends upon you…. What is good for u and what is bad…I shared my opinion and tried to put facts and my thoughts through this article….And I welcome your suggestions too…………

Contributed by:

Praniti Jha
Internet Marketing Executive

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Analyse Your Competitors for a Successful Internet Marketing Strategy

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management, as defined in Wikipedia, is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context through which to identify opportunities and threats.

Competitor profiling coalesces all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment. Competitor Analysis is an important element of the strategic internet planning process. Like any other successful marketing plan, an internet marketing plan also requires thorough and in-depth analysis of the competitors to be successful to generate the desired online business. It is an essential component of the corporate strategy and thus requires a very systematic approach to prepare a robust internet marketing plan.

As a search marketer, you should be aware of your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and their overall online activities. Very often, competitive intelligence and analysis is taken for granted in the search industry and the search marketers rarely spend any time getting to know the competitors. You can learn a lot of things by studying your competitors and pick up new tricks and techniques from them. A complete competitor analysis would study in detail all aspects of each of your competitor's internet marketing strategy.

Analyzing your competitors will help you to understand their strategy, their tactics, their level of success, etc. which is very crucial to the success of your online marketing strategy. One good method of studying your competitors is by signing up for their emails, read their content and get to know their sites.

Google alerts are good tools to keep a track of your competitors. These alerts notify you when something changes for your competitive keywords as well as when you and your competition are mentioned online.

Why Competitors' Analysis?

Competitor analysis has various important roles in your internet marketing strategy. It helps you to:

• understand your competitive advantages/disadvantages relative to your competitors
• generate understanding of competitors’ past, present (and most importantly) future strategies
• provide an informed basis to develop strategies to achieve competitive advantage in the future

Questions to Be Asked While Analysing the Competitors

The following is a useful list to keep in mind:

• Who are our competitors?
• What threats do they pose?
• What are the online activities of our competitors?
• What are the objectives of our competitors?
• What internet marketing strategies are our competitors pursuing and how successful are these strategies?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors?

Competitors’ analysis is not a one time thing but a regular process that is needed to stay ahead. The industry is always changing and so you need to do constant research and study of your competitors to stay on the top.

Contributed by:

Shilpi
Internet Marketing Manager

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Squidoo

Today, everyone is talking about Squidoo lenses. Although it is not new for the regular web surfers and Internet user, but thought it might be of interest for those who are new to this field or by any chance have not come to know about this site.

Squidoo is a website which was launched in October 2005 by Squidoo.com, LLC based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Squidoo is a platform that is designed to make it easy for anyone, free of cost, to set up a single page on any topic one knows or cares a lot about. In march 2006, Squidoo came out of beta testing.

Squidoo is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlights one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise. These lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, hobbies and sports, people or places, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Squidoo lenses aren't primarily intended to hold content. More emphasis is placed on recommending and then pointing to content that is present on the web. Annotation, organization and personalization deliver context and meaning.

Users who create these lenses are called lens-masters. A lens-master uses the tools available online to provide links, feeds, abstracts, and lists to users who are trying to make sense of a topic. For example, a single lens could point to any blog or Flickr photos, eBay auctions, Google maps, YouTube videos, and or other links. Lens-masters are encouraged to promote personal agendas, products, expertise, causes, and opinions.

Squidoo splits its revenue with its "co-op" of lensmasters. 5% goes straight to charity, first. Then 50% goes to the lensmasters. 45% goes to Squidoo. The site is estimating that nearly half of all the lensmasters on the website are donating their royalties to any of 65 featured charities, ranging from NPR and The American Heart Association to smaller organizations like Chimp Haven and Planet Gumbo.

Squidoo was founded by author, speaker, and notable blogger Seth Godin. On Godin's founding team was his book editor Megan Casey, Fast Company employee Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr. According to Alexa, Squidoo's traffic has grown more than 40% monthly beginning in the spring of 2007. It is now in the top 500 of all websites tracked worldwide.

What's A Lens?

A Squidoo lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to the lens owner or simply lensmaster. A lens is an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to favorite links, RSS feeds, blogs, Flickr photos, Google maps, Amazon books or music etc. That way, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, these lenses get him started and send him off in the right direction.

Building lenses is fast, fun, easy and free. (And you could also earn a royalty from each one--for you or for charity).

Why One Should Build A Lens?

• To share the knowledge: When you know a lot about something, it feels good to share. You can help other people discover what you found out the hard way.
  

• To increase the profile: A popular lens gives credibility to the Lensmaster. A popular lens on Squidoo reinforces your role as an "everyday expert." which makes you the go-to authority for those looking for help.
  

• To increase the traffic: Your lens points (if you want it to) to your blog and to your website. Lenses have huge credibility with search engines, so your lens can help your other sites rise to the top of Google searches.
  

• To earn a royalty: for you, your organization, or your favorite charity.

Who Should Build A Lens?

You should, if you...

• have a Website and want to increase its online presence and want more ways for people to discover it. A lens is another signpost online that can point people your way.

• have a blog, a lens is a great way to highlight your best posts or to feature a commented version of your blogroll. You can also point to the products and services that you write about, read about, enjoy, or want to see succeed. A Squidoo lens will allow you and your blog to have a bigger share of the commentary and influence on your topic of choice.
  

• are a yo-yo expert, your lens could be nothing but links to tricks. You'd rank your favorite 100 tricks and point, one by one, to the best examples of those tricks on the Web. And maybe you'd point to Infinite Illusions, the online yo-yo store.
  

• are a nonprofit or charity (say, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) you could invite all 45,000 of your most important donors to build sites on their favorite topics. The invitation would set the default royalty cash flow to "Donate my royalties to JDRF." If each lens generated as little as $2 a day, that'd be a whole bunch of money earned for the charity. You'd also earn a bounty on every successful lensmaster you brought in.
  

• are a newshound, a lens allows you to highlight important mainstream and non-mainstream stories for your readers. And if you go on vacation, RSS feeds can automatically update your lens with select news stories.
  

• are a podcaster, you should definitely have a lens. It would list the details of your podcasts, point to transcripts that some fan had posted, point to your six most recent podcasts, and include the RSS for subscribing to the podcast. The lens would also have a set of links for getting started with podcasting and getting a podcast reader.

• are a fan, a lens lets you share your personal take on the object of your affections—without the grind of manual updates. Automatic feeds could add current sports scores and headlines, music news and iTune releases and more.

• are an author, your lens could include links to all your books on Amazon. You could include links to other authors you admire. And an RSS feed from a Technorati search, showing surfers the recent blogs that have mentioned you. And links to conferences where you're speaking, and perhaps a top-ten list of the best ways to understand your writing. You could even have a box pointing to your best (and worst?) reviews.

• are an entrepreneur, your lens on a popular topic could generate two or five or twenty dollars a day in clickthrough and affiliate income. Which doesn't sound like much, until you start thinking like an eBay PowerSeller and build twenty or even fifty lenses on a variety of topics. Did you know that 750,000 people make a full- or part-time living on eBay now? The same effect will probably happen with lenses.
  

• are a person (and you are), you should have a lens about...you. A lens that lists your blog and recent posts and your bio and work history and your Amazon wish list and your Flickr account and whatever you want the public to know about you. Would you hire someone if he or she didn't have a lens?
  

What's A Module?

Modules are the building blocks of lenses. A module makes it easy for a lensmaster to point to links, images, blogs or even things to buy. Some modules are curated (you enter all the links and content manually) and others are automatic (you configure the inputs and then the lens draws on RSS feeds to update your lens without any work from you). Similarly, some modules are commerce-oriented and others are just content based.

What's This About Earning Royalties?

It's simple. You make a lens. You recommend great stuff. Sometimes these you'll recommend a product from Amazon or eBay or CafePress or one of our hundreds of other commerce partners.

Since Squidoo is free to use, but have to run a few ads on your lens in order to keep our doors open. So you'll see a few Google ads and SquidOffers on your lens.

Now, since you're the brain behind the lens, you should get a cut! And better than a cut: you get HALF. That's right. Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties.

Some lensmasters are in it for the content and not the money. Maybe they earn $0.50 a month. More often than not, they select one of the 80+ nonprofit partners to donate these royalties to. Other lensmasters make lots of lenses, work hard, and earn thousands of dollars a year. Still other lensmasters are here to fundraise for charity, and group up to send thousands of dollars to their favorite organizations each month.

What's Squidspam?

Squidoo passionately believe that everyone deserves a voice online, and a free service for sharing and spreading recommendations, ideas, products and passions. Not just the gatekeepers. Not just paid editors. Not just A-listers and marketers. They also believe that to be featured in Squidoo search results, and to there community, and to the rest of the world, is a privilege. Authentic pages built by real people with good intentions are the future of the web, and are more focused than ever before on making it easy for you to do that.

The Top 8 Reasons Your Account Could Get Deleted

Here's a quick overview of what is considered as SquidSpam. There's a lot more, but these are the usual cases.

1. Lenses that autoredirect surfers to another site. (No iframes, no other hacks, nada).
   
2. Lenses and accounts that just pump out uncurated, copied and pasted content.
3. Lenses that are egregiously irrelevant to the Squidoo category they're posted in.
4. Anything else that smells spammy to Squidoo official and the Squidoo community.
5. Spamming bloggers with trackbacks, comments, or links to your Squidoo lens.
6. Email spamming people you don't have permission to talk to, pointing them to your lens.
7. Spamming our lensmasters, via the Contact form, or in Guestbooks.
8. Hacking the Squidoo site in any way that outputs spam to people anywhere online.
   

What Will Happen To You If You're A SquidSpammer?

In short, hit the road, Jack. Your account--and all its lenses--will be deleted. If you come back and try it again, they'll just boot you again. And, if you spammed bloggers and other pages outside of the Squidoo network, they'll start booting you too.

So try and focus on creating something you're actually proud of.

Don't Do It!

They don't permit spam (the verb, the act of bothering people with messages they don't want to get, or blog comments they don't want to read). They don't permit misleading labeling or content either. They do permit junk. They don't like it, and they try to help people transcend it, but it happens. You are welcome to build a lousy lens, or a shallow one, or one that people are not crazy about. It will get ranked low, though, and no one will look at it (why should they?). BUT, they don't permit spambait. These are lenses about areas that are almost exclusively in the domain of spam. Don't go there. They have a team of people reading lenses, looking for spambait. They have an automatic filter that blocks spambait lenses. Every lens has a 'report this as spam' button on it. Not so people can flag pages they don't like. No, not that. It's for people to complain about lenses that were the subject of spam activity like email blasts, inappropriate comments, and blatantly misleading marketing.

Play hard, play fair.

How Can You Make More Money?

Every lens carries Google AdSense ads. Those are used to generate royalties for the whole co-op (ie, everyone gets a cut). If you want to increase your direct royalties, though, you should consider adding commercial modules that the visitors to your lenses will appreciate. Their top moneymaker modules include: Amazon, eBay, CafePress, and The SuperStore. Every single one of these modules generates directly attributable revenue for your lens, and they pay a royalty to you or to your chosen charity based on that income. Build good lenses, feature great stuff, share your lenses as much as possible, and earn more royalties.

Bottomline:

Squidoo is an effective method to increase the traffic as well as generate revenue but caution should be taken as it follows very strict anti spam rules.

Contributed by:

Shilpi
Internet Marketing Manager

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Google's Anti net-neutrality

Network neutrality is the principle that is proposed for potentially every network which says that Internet users should be in control about the type of content they view and kind of applications they use on the Internet. Since a very long time, the Internet has been operating according to this neutrality principle. Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. It means no discrimination between web contents based on its ownership or destination. But from our point of view, the carriers of broadband network should not be allowed to use their market power to block Internet applications and content (e.g. websites, services etc) particularly those of competitors. They should not be permitted to control all the activities online. All the phone companies must treat the traffic in the pipeline to be same. It’s not supposed to block or slow down any contents.

Talking of law, there is both legal and political wrangling and conflicts going on in US regarding net neutrality. Also the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claimed jurisdiction on this issue and has passes dome rules which all the telecommunications industry has to follow an obligation of transparency is also proposed which aims to limit network operators' ability to restrict end-users' choice of lawful content and applications.

Many major Internet application companies are advocates of Network neutrality such as Google, Yahoo!, and EBay etc. Software giant Microsoft also, along with many other companies, has also taken a stand in order to support neutrality regulations. But over the time this support is quietly losing its powerful defenders. Till now Google has been the loudest and foremost advocates for equal internet access, but according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal it seems that Google is changing its position on net neutrality and also claimed that supporters of neutrality are hypocritical. The document says that Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content. This clearly means that Google is now negotiating with broadband providers for bringing up an internet fast lane for its own content. This statement shows a conflict between the two views; one is its constant support for net neutrality regulations and second approaching broadband companies for its own fast track on the web.

It’s been reported that Google said it has not backed away from supporting neutrality principles. the company denied the information contained in the Journal story. Google is making efforts to enter into edge caching agreements with broadband providers and at the same time is also consistent to support net neutrality. Google has offered to collocate caching servers within broadband providers' facilities. Edge caching means frequently accessed data are stored temporarily on servers that are located close to the users accessing that data.

Google entering into this collocation agreements with broadband providers doesn’t mean that any other online companies cannot make this agreement. It’s completely nonexclusive and also it does not means that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic.
Not only Google but The Wall Street Journal article also said Microsoft and Yahoo have quietly withdrawn from a net neutrality coalition. But they also denied from this report.

This is the moment for network neutrality to become law as it has great appeal and clear need. Also strong and big supporters like Barack Obama, and the new congress. President of US strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. According to him, users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices. We don't know which way the wind will blow but it’s a mystery that giants like Google and Microsoft are "supporters" or have abandoned from supporting the net neutrality principle.

Contributed by:

Vishal Dwivedi
Internet Marketing Consultant

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