Think twice before you develop a new website just for Rs. 450

I can’t believe this. Someone (perhaps an individual – definitely not a company) is offering a website just for Rs. 450 ($10) and it includes the domain name (.co.in), 10 MB hosting, 3 page design and 10 email ids. What the hack!!! Is he/she doing a charity?

Now, do I really have a problem if someone is offering things at such a price? Not at all. However, you (the prospective website owner) may have a big problem in future.

What happens when you are going for such a low budget website development?

1. Who owns the domain? People who go for such websites are often novice in the web world. They do not understand the difference between .com and .cc TLDs. They have no idea about domain ownership or whois details. Thus the company often holds the right of the domain name and next year when you want to renew it, they will charge more – may be even Rs. 5000 / year. Poor fellow! Thinking about starting 10 new website at that price? What about all the marketing efforts that you have invested so long?
2. Common template: You should not even dream of getting a custom made template for your website unless the developer is your girlfriend / boyfriend. They will just pick up a common template (somewhere from the internet) and replace your details. A typical website worth Rs. 450 contains a home page, about page and contact page. Who cares about the web standards!!!
3. Website is not available: We do not need to point out that the website is using a cheap shared hosting solution if not free. And the result is almost negligible uptime. Since the client does not know much about these things, there is hardly any problem for the company.
4. Pay for each update: This one is unique. Beyond 3 pages stipulated in the initial web development offer, you will need to pay for every new page or existing page update (starting at Rs. 300 / page). The client is just trapped. They will simply not tell you how you can do it yourself. And believe me, if you can connect to the internet, you can make minor updates yourself. (I am not talking about the aesthetics.) Helping you is nowhere in the business model.
5. A website will help you to grow your business: Most of the people are said that, if you start a website you will get more business opportunities. People searching in Google will come to your website and order whatever they want. Those of us working in the web industry for sometime know very well, how much effort it takes to generate real business from a website. I will not think twice before saying that these people are being cheated. Nothing comes for free my friend.

Does it mean that, you should consider well established companies to develop your website? You must be careful there too. A well established company has charged RS. 5,700 for a .in domain whereas, it was available in godaddy just for $12 (RS. 550). There is another highly reputed media company who charges Rs 15,000 for the same package.

So, what to do? Wait for my next article.

------------------------------------------------
Stumble It! || Bookmark this on Delicious || I Tweet

JU Campus Interview

February so far had been very exciting for me. The best thing that has happened is that I organized and coordinated a campus interview at Jadavpur University to recruit content writers and PHP coders for my company. The experience had been simply awesome. Another reason for the awesomeness is because I am also from the same university.

We did not have any prior experience of conducting a campus interview and thought that everything will end within 5 to 6 hours. But it took us more than 12 hours to complete the day’s job. We were just overwhelmed by the amount of response we got at the students.

Mr. Siddhartha Bhattacharya (the placement officer at JU) helped us a lot. I don’t think it would have been so successful if he had not been there. But I must say that the Arts Department is not very active in looking for placement opportunities.

And here is the design :)

Hope you like it :)
------------------------------------------------
Stumble It! || Bookmark this on Delicious || I Tweet

Twitter - Connected for a Reason

Everybody understands the reason for Twitter marketing. There is a fear that if you are not in twitter, you may loose a huge segment of people. Come on, before buying any statement like that, find out if your target market is using twitter or not!

But yes, if you want to develop a people centric business, you must use social networks like Twitter or FaceBook. These are actually a way to deploy the human face of your business. In one word, identify the reason to network.

By the way, I am Doubts at Twitter

In this post, I will talk about social media marketing via twitter. An overused topic – I know – let’s finds out if I can add some insights or not.

The most common way of twitter marketing is following as many people as possible and waiting them to follow you. You will often see that YourFriend1245 (with 1 follower and 5231 following and 0 tweets) is following you.

Do you even care to visit the profile of that person! Leave alone following…!

So what is the value of following in bulk??

Bees attract bees – once the number of followers take over the number of following, there are high chances of more people following you. Some people like to put it on auto pilot and follow as many people as they can.

And as, now you can group people in different lists, I will definitely see that more people are following more people and keeping a locked list of people they want to follow by heart. These people have a reason to stay connected.

If you are into relationship marketing, play according to the rule... Here are some real people trying to communicate in real words... (80% task of Kolkata Blogger’s Meet was done via Twitter – including getting sponsor).

Things you should not do in Twitter:

• Do not spam. Though you have 1000 followers, is there anyone really reading or acting on your updates? If the answer is no, what is the actual value of having 1000 followers?
• Keeping connected to the right people is the key – if necessary, create a list of people you must follow regularly and follow them.
• Find a way to add value – yapp; this is the only way to get some value out of the social networks. For example, think about @GuyKawasaki channel (yapp, a channel). What he does is he follows everyone who follows him. And how does it add value? That channel constantly tweets interesting links (often retweets them after 12 hrs). Is he doing a voluntary promotional job? Some people may not notice that the target page routes via his blog or Alltop. If you do not get enough information everyday, register to services like Smart Brief - they will keep sending story updates on your industry to tweet and pretend to be an expert. (nice business – making people pretend expert)
• Blog update announcer: Think about @smashingmag. They do not use Twitter as a blog update announcer alone. They promote many other good blogs too.
• Promote others to get promoted: Self explanatory but do not get that identity of a mindless follower.
• People ignore clusters so there are high chances that they will start ignoring you too. Identify the connectors and treat them well – develop a relationship. These people will eventually create the buzz for you.

What are your suggestions?
------------------------------------------------
Stumble It! || Bookmark this on Delicious || I Tweet

Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 was rocking

How do I share my experiences at Kolkata blogger’s meet 2009… thrilled, excited, overwhelmed…!!! Falling short of words… I have no words to express my gratitude to Kolkata Bloggers for making it successful (am I right to call it successful?)… Kolkata rocks… You rock … Please add some more words to it… I am really falling short of words… Please help me to connect the dots… … … … … …

I was exhausted but could not sleep last night… I was feeling somewhat empty (hey moms, do you feel the same when you give birth to a baby?)… Shimul said we have lots more to do… And last night I was sure that Kolkata is jamming, living and breathing – online and offline… And we can do whatever we wish. (Who the hell wants to be politically correct!!! we can do whatever we wish)

I was sure that all the half day leaves from office, all the meetings and all the closed doors and cold calls, >3 hrs/day sleep, empty moneybags were worth it. I wish I could do more.

Whom do I thank? I am simply indebted to everyone (I mean - everyone) – those who came and also those who could not make it but helped us to create the buzz in Kolkata. I felt like saying – I could see a new religion in Kolkata, a new community – blog and bloggers.

Whom do I thank? Aji Issac Mathew, Abhishek Rungta, Saptarshi (he met his childhood friend in the meet), Arun Agrawal, Vikas Kedia? And how do I dare to thank them for adding such great content in the meet?

How do I dare to thank Soham Pal (was not well but made it and still waited patiently for his turn) or Arijit (could not make it to the meet and mailed me) – the two youngest bloggers in the block. I asked myself – are we ready to give them proper support? Are we ready to welcome our next generation? Are we doing enough to make web a better place for them?

How do I dare to thank Fusion Charts or Mitesh Ashar?

How do I dare to thank Anirban, Yogesh, Rahul Bharadwaj, Bijay Rungta, Rajesh Rana, Shirsendu Sengupta, Pallavi Banerjee, Anand Kedia, Manoj Jain, Arjun Ghosh, Ekta Khetan, leon, Debleena (Our Twitter agent), Ranjan Upadhdhay, Amit Kejriwal, Shyama Kant Suruchi Gupta and soooooo many other people…

How do I dare to thank Navin (CCD) and all the people working there for their GREAT support? How do I thank Tata Photon for providing free internet connection? And how can I even imagine of thanking Mr. Abhishek Rungta for his great support?

The list will go on and on and on… There is no stopping… I wish I could interact with more people but had been very busy in anchoring and other stuff... Next time, I will be there with you guys only with you… By the way, how was my performance as an anchor?

We learnt a lot of things and next time we (you are included) will come up with a bigger and better show in Kolkata – Lets map Kolkata In the web. And NOW I believe we can do that...

I am proud to be Kolkatan – proud to be a blogger – proud to have soooooo many friends – online and offline. Thanks guys – we have lots of works to do.

Image by Anirban Saha
--------------------------------------------------
Stumble It! || Bookmark this on Delicious || I Tweet

Ideas to take WebReps Forward

Kolkata Blogger's Meet '09 8th August Sector V Saltlake

WebReps is an open platform. And we are taking every possible measure to keep this open – in every possible way. The only thing that we may request is - do not take the meet as a gathering alone. We can do a lot and get much more than links or coffee.

Just to start the conversation, here are 2 ideas from my side on how to move forward with the meet.

1. Helping Non-profit organization in web setup as a Non-profit: We can create a group of web helpers. The group will meet once in every month (may be first Sunday) at a distinct place (???) and will work with NGOs in their web ventures for FREE (if interested, NGOs may sponsor tea or coffee – nothing more :). This will help Indian Web Industries to gather more web ventures as NGOs are very active in their own field and we can connect to a lot of people from different sectors. The group must decide the terms and conditions...
2. Web Speakers or Webby: This group will act like spokespersons of Indian web industry and may be a privileged group. They will be open to invitations from different seminars, meets, schools, colleges etc. to speak about web and web developments. They must work together to create such opportunities in Kolkata and different other parts of India. Their first task may be to spread the idea virus.

These are my personal ideas and do not represent ideas from WebReps. We can follow any or both the ideas if you support them…

And, there is a request from WebReps: Come up with your ideas: write a blog post or send an email... Do not forget that there is a "Best Idea Award" awaiting you at the Blogger’s Meet.
--------------------------------------------------
Stumble It! || Bookmark this on Delicious || I Tweet