Here's a great business article

Hi,

Great on at least two levels:

* Educational and informative;
* An example of how a press release can be formatted and published as news.

Link is below...

Best,

- Boyd


http://www.webcrimson.com/ourstories...uptivetech.htm

Hi Boyd,

Thanks - great article!

It makes me think of where are some other places blogger could be used?

For example, mostly it's used for "personal" diary type of uses.... However, as the article mentions, there are other possibilities too.

It seems to me that bringing blogger to these other possible uses could create business opportunities.... I haven't thought these through yet, but I do know that taking technology in one area, and helping to apply it in another area (as I wrote about in an earlier post), is often one way of creating new business opportunities....

Any ideas? I'll be thinking about this myself too.... :)

- Dien

Thats very interesting. I liked the way he won the hearts and minds of the reader to his viewpoint, then went for the throat with his own product.

Actually I have a little real world experience with the area Dien mentions.
A lot of car dealers get sold into co-op sites that are pretty pricey monthly fees, that come with training, support etc. We had a couple of clients, one selling boats, one selling aircraft, who wanted the functions, but not the price. I set up a copy of phpwebsite for them as a demo, wrote a tutorial and let them rip. Oh God what a nightmare. They would try to upload photos straight out of the megapixel camera and tell us the software didnt work cos it wouldnt take their photos. They needed to learn simple formatting tags, like (B) for bold, which seemed to create a brain freeze. They would try to upload word docs as text etc etc. The support was a nightmare. In the end it was easier to let them continue emailing mega photos and word docs and do it for them. If they had paid for a system like the car dealers used, it would have been viable. Without extensive training and handholding it is just impossible to get the non net savvy small business person to operate a system like this. Add the human support and your price goes up, regardless of the software you use.

Thank you for pointing out this great article. This leads me to a few questions, if I may.

I am curious, if I were to develop something like this, but in PHP, do you think I would have missed the boat, or there would be a market for it? And would it be best, in your opinion, to market it to web hosts, or individuals who just want to edit/create their own site?

What I wonder is if it is best to use this tool to allow people to sign up and create their site and have the pages emailed to them in a zip? What do you think would be the best way to market such a service? This has my brain buzzing for the future...

dno
> Thats very interesting. I liked the way he
> won the hearts and minds of the reader to
> his viewpoint, then went for the throat with
> his own product.

> Actually I have a little real world
> experience with the area Dien mentions.
> A lot of car dealers get sold into co-op
> sites that are pretty pricey monthly fees,
> that come with training, support etc. We had
> a couple of clients, one selling boats, one
> selling aircraft, who wanted the functions,
> but not the price. I set up a copy of
> phpwebsite for them as a demo, wrote a
> tutorial and let them rip. Oh God what a
> nightmare. They would try to upload photos
> straight out of the megapixel camera and
> tell us the software didnt work cos it
> wouldnt take their photos. They needed to
> learn simple formatting tags, like (B) for
> bold, which seemed to create a brain freeze.
> They would try to upload word docs as text
> etc etc. The support was a nightmare. In the
> end it was easier to let them continue
> emailing mega photos and word docs and do it
> for them. If they had paid for a system like
> the car dealers used, it would have been
> viable. Without extensive training and
> handholding it is just impossible to get the
> non net savvy small business person to
> operate a system like this. Add the human
> support and your price goes up, regardless
> of the software you use.

Hi,

You wrote:
> Any ideas? I'll be thinking about this
> myself too.... :)

I know of one VERY sharp Australian girl who's using a blog as a sophisticated affiliate sales tool.

I'll email you her URL.

Best,

- Boyd

Hi Garry,

Thanks for sharing your experiences in providing content management software to car dealers....

I've recently been re-reading some writings by Paul Zane Pilzer - specifically, his book "Unlimited Wealth".

Anyhow, his view is that there are always business opportunities in the area where there are "Ready-to-Implement Technologies" (R-I-Ts), which haven't been fully implemented yet....

By a "Ready-to-Implement Technology" (R-I-T), he means a technology which has developed to the stage where it's reliable, can be used easily (with the same difficulty or less difficulty as whatever it's replacing), and which will essentially make money (or time) or save money (or time) for whoever is using it....

It's interesting to think about this issue regarding content management software (like phpWebsite).... As you probably know, Bill Myers was selling his own specialized membership content management software, MemberGate, for $30,000 each a couple of years ago, mostly to big businesses.... It seems to combine a whole range of features, such as content management software, membership support software, and discussion forum software....

Thanks for mentioning phpWebsite.... I also found more content management systems here and here.... I bet some are more "user-friendly" than others are....

I'm still thinking through these issues myself, though. Where is the opportunity in new technology? Paul Zane Pilzer believes it's in the area where R-I-Ts have been developed, but haven't yet been widely adopted by people. He applied this theory himself, by starting an educational CD-ROM publishing business in the 1980s when CD-ROMs were still pretty new - I think it was a big success. So I think his theory probably has some merit!

Another thing Paul Zane Pilzer mentions is his theory of consumer behavior.... He says that when people get enough of something for themselves, they don't stop buying.... What they do is, instead of looking for quantity, they start looking for quality, or maybe things which will fit their specialized needs better.

For example, back in the days of the Ford Model-T automobile, you could get a Model-T in any color, as long as it was black! But, when people had a car or two, they didn't stop buying cars - instead, they started buying cars which had different colors. As time went by, people didn't ever stop buying cars, they then buy "specialized" cars like sports cars, 4-wheel-drive vehicles, RVs, and so on. I'm sure you've heard of people like Jay Leno, who owns something like 85 cars!

Given this pattern, even if everyone has content management software, what will they look for? People will probably then gravitate towards more specialized content management software.... Perhaps software optimized for car dealers, or optimized for retail store owners, or optimized for family web sites - that kind of thing. I think that's where the trend will eventually go.... The opportunity (if you are able to develop software) could be to jump on this early.

You can see Bill Myers followed this approach (probably intentionally). His software is specialized - it's for membership web sites specifically. He went for the niche right from the beginning.... I think the general trend with new technology will usually be towards products which are more and more specialized towards a "niche" market....

But where will this go? I'm sure the future trends for membership software will be for more specialized membership software - such as for clubs and organizations specifically (to facilitate communication of the members with each other), or for newsletter/magazine subscribers specifically, or something like that....

Anyhow, it's food for thought.... :)

- Dien Rice

The real hotbed for open source content management is sourceforge.net . While there is plenty to choose from, phpwebsite was the best fit for me.
This is actually an area I have thought about pretty hard, permit me to rave a little, based on experience at the coal face. The type of sites I am talking about are for engineers, manufacturers, agriculture, etc. Lets take a look at why small business websites fall over, fade out or never get built:
1. The perception that HTML is hard to learn.
2. No traffic due to no marketing. Most of these small businesses (1-10 person) do no real offline marketing, so why would they know how to market online.
3. Lousy content. No matter what you tell them as a designer, the content that you get will be "me" oriented. "Our business was established...." Even getting useable content will be like pulling teeth. Many times when asked for a logo I will be handed a business card and told to use that.
4. No updates or new content added.
5. No sales due to 2 3 & 4 above.

In my view web "designers" have done a great disservice to these type of customers. Lets face it, they do not really need "design" as such. Any reasonable template will give a good enough framework to display your content. What they do need is linkage, promotion, visibility and copy that at least attracts leads, better yet, actual sales. Most designers are "hit and run" thinking. Build the site, get it online and move on to the next site. The site gets 10 hits a month, by some fluke, and no sales. The owner quite rightly sees the web as a waste of advertising dollars and pulls the plug.

The next step? From my point of view, the next step is a total management system. I own the site, write the copy and promote it. The business pays only for results; leads or sales. From here you get to the point of creating your own hubs in specialised areas, leading to your sites becoming the natural point of contact for that industry. How does this all tie back to content management? One database can run several sites, all with different content. Combine RSS feeds for industry news. Well, I'm working towards it, but I'm not there yet.