I have friends who are asking me to do internet marketing together. Their initial thought is good. But their thinking is to ask me to be in charge of designing the website. My first answer is that i will have no time to do any websites. We can only outsource to experts to help us.

They don’t understand that website itself is a business. And to setup a website, it’s better to get someone to help us than to do ourselves. It’s especially true when we have our existing things to work on.

And till now, most of them don’t believe that doing a website should cost anything more than $1k. I should say that you can either spend more time, or more money on the website completion. And a cheap website doesn’t really mean it’s not good. It only means u r using certain templates, or maybe there’s some similarity to other websites. So long as your contents is good, it should not matter.

Many of them still think that once the website is done, it’s there to wait for money to drop from the sky. Such a silly thought.

Some even think of setting up a portal like amazon which can cost them a fortune, and they don’t know how to market the website.

Engaging an internet marketeer to work together doesn’t mean he or she is going to help u with website setup for free. We still need vendors to help us while we think of web strategy.. We don’t do things technically. We work from the business point of view..

Anyway, it’s a friday! Enjoy your weekends, folks!

All they need to do, is to pump in sufficient money to keep the campaign running.  And when they stop, the campaign just ends abruptly.  And that’s why we don’t really see a lot of campaigns surviving very long.

It is a very different story in the Internet.

On the Internet, we get to see companies setting up Google Groups and Facebook Groups, and they are going stronger and stronger.  It is built there to keep the community strong because it provides a great platform.  It is economical because it is supported by online companies.

The interesting thing is that we can continue to market to this community again and again.  It is self-sustaining.  We don’t need to spend additional money to sustain them.

One very interesting thing is that setting up such websites can be very costly.  Hence, it is kind of chicken and egg story right at the beginning.  Investment can be huge.  Well, if only more companies are embracing the open-source… And I am actually seeing more companies adopting to open-source!

Open-source programs should be on their rise in the coming bad economy.  Internet is the best alternative tool for companies to leverage on for their marketing communications.  There’s no need for additional money to buy expensive television commercials… Well, I am seeing TV companies are moving into the internet platform themselves anyway.

Bad economy may mean that the internet software companies must be preparing to lower down their expenses.  Potential companies must be on their way to look at open source programs.  Even if they are not looking at it today, it should happen anyway.

Well, it is obvious to you that internet is an important tool today.  If not, you will not be looking at this article on the Internet right now…

When the corporates want to be part of the social network, they must be super high in their brand awareness for sure. Or else, it’ll be hard to keep someone interested in a strange and unknown company. Many companies adopted that personal touch by allowing their employees to communicate with the world with the use of blogs and other Web 2.0 applications. But most of the companies are reluctant to allow their employees to blog as all of them are inexperienced with internet marketing. Hence, it can cost really good money to educate the companies on such areas.

The employees themselves might have their own blogs which are not associated with their companies, but it’s too early to sync their internet familiarity to their executive work in the companies.

Every action that a big corporate takes, it has to be considered throughout the team, their own department, the other departments, or even across other regions! To be really quick in internet, the whole company must be quite educated on it.

We get to see people who are skeptical about web 2.0 for their corporates. We also get to see people who are more receptive about it. But it looks to me that the more receptive ones tend to be the majority of the minority. The top management tends to be uneducated and not receptive about internet.

However, several pointers have given the corporates some encouragement to start something on the internet. First of all, the economy seems to be getting from bad to worse. I heard from my friend that it might be even worse than the great depression back in 1927. This sounds a good deal to get into internet where we can continue our marketing at an even more affordable cost. Secondly, we get to have more exposure of better reception from the media and marketing gurus such as Seth Godins. Books, tv, radio, and even internet itself are now spreading about the goodness of internet.. We even get to hear internet millionaires born every now and then.

Corporates all know about it. But they cannot respond as nimble to the internet as the individuals. In fact, there are many individuals making money like a big multi-national company.

However, the good news is that once they are ready, they will have several attacks on the internet! I know of other companies doing lots of different marketing campaigns on the internet. I just hope that they can understand the growth of the campaigns is huge and continuous! It’s unlike tv or radio where there’s a timeline to it…

I noticed that whenever i type in HTML comments, it’ll disappear when i switch to preview or design. This is bad because i am trying to make use of Adsense which is using HTML comments.

What i like most about the new version of wavelog is that i can now choose my blog accordingly. I don’t have to key in the settings of my other blogs whenever i’m blogging on other domains. It allows me to add different providers to choose from.

I’m glad that i can now choose my post categories as well. Previously, i am not allowed to choose a category and that really sucks when all my postings are defaulted to a certain category.

Yes, we can now even edit our posts! Our previous posts can now be seen and edit if necessary. That gives us the necessary tools to check back and do any amendments if there’s any mistake.

Also, our post title was previously only allow us to see once. This leaves me with no choice to change previously. Now, i can change to suit the contents and to see my post title is correct.

Tagging is also another new feature which is important to us to use. It’s now in as well.

Adding of our own image, audio and video is also easy. We can even embed our YouTube video easily today.

Ok, that’s all for my initial review with Wavelog. We’ll see how this program is faring over the period again.

As those of us who are very much into the internet world, especially into blogging, we will embrace blogs for as much as we could. That’s because we have gone through a lot in our days of blogging and it can have enormous effects in either good or bad which depends on our returning traffics.

As we can see a lot of new web businesses being setup, they do have a blog shown clearly up there. They know why they must set up a blog. And they know they can’t do without it..

Most corporate companies have never really made a lot of money directly from the websites. They mainly get their business from retail marketing. Things that you can see, touch, and feel directly. Most importantly, you can buy immediately. I can really understand their situation when they can spend as little as 1 day in every month to work on updating the websites. That’s a wasteful thing to do.

In 2003, I can vividly remember about Google having to set up their pagerank around the websites where they count every link as a vote to their webpage. That sounds really cool when i start hearing comments saying that blogs have ruined Google’s big plan. That’s because a lot of people don’t really take blog seriously, and hence all the cross-linking has caused Google’s ranking system all messed up.

But since 2007, Google has proved everybody wrong as more and more people are looking at the information in whichever format. Blogs included. So what is right? And what is wrong?

While many websites are still not using blogs, they did it passively by having blogs at the back. For example, i don’t see HP’S main website linking directly to their many HP blogs!

We’ll keep on observing about it…

Last few weeks ago, i was asking one of the twitters i have followed. He is actually quitting his full time corporate job that he has just started after studying so hard for it. He has a wonderful full time job, a beautiful fiancee, with a very big degree in his education. And what he’s doing? To work on his websites! Would you do that?

The same situation, two different choices. Many of us are having a full time job out there, while having successful websites outside as part of their hobbies. It’s really fun to play with websites and to keep growing with it. My friends are thinking i must be too crazy over internet when i spent so much time on it.

Why would you want to give up your websites when it’s a hobby? You can do so much more things out of it. You make friends, you play games with friends, you share information with friends, you buy food and many other things.

I do know of a friend who has set up over 40 websites in order to make a decent living. You can comment him to be lucky, but most of his success comes from paid traffic. He has used Google Adwords mainly so as to create a buzz. And the good news is that he has been able to achieve a good landing page optimization for his websites so that his traffic conversion rate optimized to be pretty high. But come to think of it, his sites are pretty good now that the search engines may like to give him free targeted traffic.

And the interesting part is that he is just an affiliate. That’s to say that he is able to make his product creator making good money out of it.

A lot of people may only like to create products to sell. They are simply leaving most of the money on the table because they are not maximizing their exposure in the internet which he may not have foreseen.

And as for the affiliates, they may argue that they don’t have an exclusive right to sell. First of all, they have to ask themselves if they have enough traffic to communicate and to convert into sales. Secondly, it’s much more recommended to be affiliated with products with worldwide presence. That’s because the visitors will feel much assured of buying a recognized product.

And for resellers, having so many websites selling competitively with you, the potential customer will be focusing more on your website’s credibility and not to suspect about the product’s ability. That’s where our websites need to be optimized properly on the sales conversion and also to establish a better online reputation.

Having said so much, i do hope this helps in your online endeavours and let me know if it helps in your online career.

Well, the truth is that there is always someone out there who might comment on you or me. It all depends on how famous or infamous you are. The idea is to embrace and change for the better. And this is something which many MNC companies cannot accept as it’s to do with their online reputation. And so, we have new companies setting up to become online reputation managers for you and me.

Online reputation managers’ job is not a one time thing. Once they are able to solve your current issues, it doesn’t mean they will end there. Instead, it will keep on happening and it looks to stay for more of such managers around.

Everybody, including you, me, business entities, community groups, and just any individuals or groups, have been utilizing the Internet Web 2.0 tools for their social network use. Whether you start your own dot com, or you leverage on Google Groups or Facebook Groups, it’s going to help you to build a presence.

Search engines are going to like you as they can provide more targeted traffic as their business. Social media websites are going to help you to get more traffic. Bloggers are going to link one another for information relevance.

Who really cares so much about their look and feel? So what if we get grammatical errors? Big companies are very careful about their every communication channel. It makes the focus to be on what is “right”, instead of what is your contents for the website.

Everybody are coming in. And because of its convenience, i believe the baby boomers will catch on pretty soon.

It took me quite a while to convince myself to get mobile broadband internet access when my phone can access wireless access points which are readily available in many places in Singapore.

As such, i’ve been thinking what i can do with my mobile phone and unlimited internet access before i signed up a two year plan with Singtel promotion on their Broadband on Mobile Plan 2000 which costs me SG$24.40 per month.

1. I used Nokia Sports Tracker which utilises GPS to track my running route, and Navteq Maps which uses the mobile broadband to download the relevant maps. It’s so useful as i can track my speed of jogging and whether i can pace myself better in my next run at Mount Faber.

2. I used Google Maps which tells me where i can go with GPS and 3G. It shows me the map and i can plan my route better when i drive around.
3. I used Wavelog to blog here and everywhere. It’s my portable blogging program which i can use to blog wherever i go. It’s so useful as i will be able to be more efficient as a blogger.

4. I used Widsets to check my RSS feeds regularly. They are so useful as i wouldn’t be bored with my connected phone with me.

5. I used Gmail program on my Nokia N95 to check my mails and it’s a really terrific program!

6. I used Twibble to access my twitter to update my followers of where i am, and what i am doing. It’s really useful and i can keep in touch with them.

7. I used Fring to chit chat on my N95 which allows me to avoid making too much phone calls locally and in overseas. It’s great for me to keep in touch with all of them.

8. I used Qik from time to time to let the world see what i’m doing right now and then. It’s a good program not to be missed!

9. I used Internet Radio to listen to Webmaster Radio dot Fm and many others. It’s a great tool to relax and to listen to radio from all over the world.

10. I used Joikuspot premium to allow my internet devices to connect to internet. It’s so much faster than the bluetooth which only allow up to 1mb. My laptop can now access internet without restrictions. Who needs a Hua Wei device? These people are missing a lot of things here.

How does it feel when you are talking to google as a company? How does it feel when we can talk to Matt Cutts directly via twitter and his blog? I should say the internet has become personal again. And it’s so much more personal than ever before.

The tools such as blogs, wikis, twitter, 12 seconds, qik, digg, flickr, facebook and more. We no longer deal with search engine optimization as the only way of generating traffic. We deal with social media marketing to bring in the traffic. There’s no such thing as starting a beautiful website and you do nothing to attract traffic. In blogging, we learn about link baiting articles.

However, the corporates have problem understanding about such things. First of all, they have not made a lot of money from the web. So they don’t really focus a lot on it. Secondly, the employees inside have problem understanding web 2.0 marketing because they have never seated in the internet marketing’s point of view before.

I am not suprised to see many corporates are having difficulties with the internet when they know there’s something potential about it. Many of them pour money into the agencies to help them fulfill just like how they did with the PR agencies. Internet is actually something very personal to the individual companies. Marketing should not be outsourced. In fact, it may be a better idea to send your PR articles in PRWeb.com when they have the internet exposure.

Will the corporates be able to come out of the offline world? It’s just about time. And the time is now.