Growing Your Online Business

Moscow, Russia19-20 March 2012

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Topic Presenter

New Online Business Trends Ross

Search Engine Optimization – Yandex & Google Ross

Social Media Marketing – FaceBook & Twitter Ross

Measuring Success – Google Analytics Syed

Planning & Financing Your Business Ross

MDLF’s Digital Developments Syed- New Venture Fund- Knowledge Bridge Discussion

Agenda

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New Online Business TrendsLooking for trends and examples in other markets is one of the best ways to identify new online business opportunities.

Today we are going to look at five trends that you should keep an eye on.

1.Focus: Develop a very focused product that you can expand

2.Organize: Use online to organize previously unorganized information

3.Localize: Create very local online sites

4.Multimedia: Create and distribute content that’s not limited to text

5.Mobile: Create new value for citizens or advertisers using unique mobile capabilities

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Focus: The Knot (US/China/Australia)

Founded in 1996 as a directory and discussion forum for brides

Expanded to include registry, online shopping, photo sharing, local advertising, ...

Expanded into other verticals and countries (China, Australia, Canada)

2011 Total Revenue US $124 MM

Traded on NYSE, Market Capitalization = US $266 MM

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Focus: Mamabkoo/AskJane (China) Founded in 2008 as a blog by

a Jane Tan, a new mother in Shanghai

Expanded to a discussion board about parenting and first children

Now a shopping site for children’s nutrition and learning

2012 Q1 reportedly cash flow positive – profitable.

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Organize: SalingSilang (Indonesia)

Founded in 2010

Indexes and aggregates all Indonesian blogs and social media.

Social media information used to create multiple new sites: - Opojal.com (Semerang City)- Indonesia Berkebun (Gardening)

Revenue from specialty advertising and services.

Privately held, no estimate on turnover or current value.

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Localize: CrowdMap (Kenya)

Founded in 2008 by Kenyan development group UshaHidi.

Open Source (free) platform for community mapping

Community comments accepted in multiple forms, including:- Web (form)- SMS Text- Phone- Twitter

Broadly used in multiple languages, including Russian.

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Localize: CrowdMap Example Uses

Sailau – Tracking the Kazakh Parliamentary Elections

http://www.crisisby.net/

Crisisby.Net – Tracking Civil Action in Belarus

http://sailau.crowdmap.com/

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Mulitmedia: Soundcloud (Germany/US)

Founded in 2008.

Rapid adoption and community promotion to independent music and radio community

Privately held, raised venture capital to date US $83 MM

Multiple social features, - In stream commenting- Groups, sharing

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Mulitmedia: SoundCloud Online

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Mobile: CG Swara (India) Founded in 2010 to serve

communities with literacy or radio support issues.

Audience dials a number and “tells” a story, a tip or piece of information.

Editors review, validate and produce an audio news item.

Audience receives a text notifying them of new “stories to hear”.

Audience dials a number and plays the story.

Website for demonstration

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Mobile: Kush Kabar (Kyrgyzstan) Founded in 2011 to provide news and

information to Kyrgyzstan

Reaches populations in multiple local languages – Russian, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek

Generates a supporting website.

Plus “broadcasts” news items using local mobile numbers.- Russian (8208)- Kyrgyz (8208/8209)- Uzbek (8209)

Site Joomla 1.5

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New Product DirectionsThese are just five new product themes, but there are many others to follow, including: Sharing: Creating extra value for consumers or businesses by building opportunities for people to share assets, like homes, cars, jobs, …- 1kg.org – Chinese student trekking and school support site

Social Networks: specialty social networks with unique uses, including:- Simple multimedia blogging – Tumblr, Posterous, Pinterest- Life blogging/Timelines – Path- Shopping/Wish Lists – Svpply

Business Services: Online tools, services and platform to support the needs of particular small and medium sized businesses. - Merchant Circle- Alibaba

The challenge is to stay updated on the changes that can benefit your business.

Question and Answer

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Topic Presenter

New Online Business Trends Ross

Search Engine Optimization – Yandex & Google Ross

Social Media Marketing – FaceBook & Twitter Ross

Measuring Success – Google Analytics Syed

Planning & Financing Your Business Ross

MDLF’s Digital Developments Syed- New Venture Fund- Knowledge Bridge Discussion

Agenda

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IntroductionWhy are search engines important?

Audience Development: Search engines account for between 20% and 50% of any websites traffic.

Advertising Revenue: Search engines support major advertising networks:- Yandex Direct- Google AdSense

The better you do in search engines, the better ad networks can send your site an ad that generates revenue.

New Product Development: Search engines help you manage your audience, including:- Introducing new features- Creating new multi-media sections- Serving audiences in multiple languages

We will focus on Audience Development – Traffic – for today’s discussion.

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Audience Development: SourcesWhere do users come from?

1. Direct: User knows your brand and its online address. User types address into the address bar or bookmarks the address. User Characteristics: Brand loyal, regular visitor, “older users”

1. Search: User is looking for a specific item of information on the web such as “What was the score of the Moscow Dynamo game last night?”User Characteristics: - New user, occasional users, lazy users (can’t remember your web address)- Users more interested in the information than the source!

2. Referrals: User receives a recommendation from another user or website. Increasingly from social media like FaceBook, Twitter & Vkontakte.User Characteristics: Referrer a “loyal follower” of your site.

3. Advertising: Users who follow an ad online to find your site. User Characteristics: User fits market’s target description.

Just like managing a newspaper’s circulation sources, you will have to actively manage your online audience sources?

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Audience Development: Managing Sources

• Subscription• News Agents• Street Crews/”Hawkers”• Institutional Sales

• Search

SEO• Referrals

Social Media• Direct

Branding/Ads• Advertising

Branding/Ads

Newspaper Circulation Online Audience

=

Do you know what your website’s traffic mix is today?

Google Analytics will give you a summary of your traffic by source.

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Audience Development: The Mix

Simple

Real Time(test)

Search

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Audience Development: SEO Yandex vs GoogleThe conversation will focus on Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine and Google, second largest.

Search Market Share Yandex GoogleJanuary 2011 64.4% 21.9%January 2012 59.6% 25.9%Change -4.8 pts +4.0 pts

Source:LiveInternet.ru

Yandex leads Google in understanding complex search phrases involving Russian noun and verb forms.

Yandex’ strength in Russian also extends to the search market in Ukraine, and Belarus; but the level of competition is much closer outside of Russia.

Especially for local searches, Yandex provides much greater reach in Russia than Google.com/Google.ru.

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Audience Development: Searches Three Step Process

To understand Search Engine Optimization, it is best to understand the three work steps for any search engine – Yandex, Google, …

1.Crawl – Find the site

2.Index – Understand the site

3.Rank – Deliver the results

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Audience Development: Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 1: Crawl

•Each web page is made up of multiple files:- HTML, JPG, MP3, ....

•When a page is ‘called’, the files automatically fill out a frame according to the ‘coded’ instructions.

•Each set of files is (usually) held in a separate database:- Content Database- Media Database- Advertising Databases.

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Audience Development: Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 1: Crawl

•A “robot” moves across the webpages downloading these web files.

•Often called a “spider”, because it moves on a “web”.

•For a typical daily news site, the crawler may download 5 to 10 thousand pages a day.

•The crawler may “visit” a daily news website multiple times during the day.

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Audience Development: Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 2: Index

•Search engines analyze each downloaded file for subject.

•The search engine tries to answer the question:

“What is this file about?”

•Search engines can only see TEXT:- Not photos- Not video- Not sound

Search Engines See This Page

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Audience Development: Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 3: Rank

•Search engines then rank each file base on a formula – “the algorithm”.

•Files with high ranks are at the top of a search return; low rankings at the bottom.

•Yandex and Google’s ranking algorithms are similar, but have some differences which we will highlight later.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

High Rank

Low Rank

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Audience Development: Search Engine OptimizationFor each step SEO helps you maximize your site’s traffic from the search engines.

SEO Elements

1.Crawl: Site Registration

1.Index: Site/WebPageDetails

2.Rank: Managing PageRank

Element Why it is important.• 350 – 400 million active websites today.

- US adds 150 – 200 thousand sites a day!Register to help the search engines find you

• Helps the search engines understand whatcontent is available on your site

• Helps move you up in the search engine rankings

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Audience Development: Site RegistrationTo help the search engines find your site, set-up accounts with both Yandex and Google Webmaster services.

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For both Yandex and Google, site registration will require you to “verify” your site with the search engine.

Verification requires you to prove the “control” of the site by adding a short code line to the header of the site. For example:

Audience Development: Site Registration

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After you have created webmaster accounts and verified your sites, you can work directly with the search engines.

Most important functions to start are:Submit Site Map: Submitting a site map informs the search engines how content is organized and when there is new content on your site.

Identify Languages: Each search engine uses different indexes based on different languages.

If you create a section of your site in English, the engines will index the site in Russian, unless you tell them otherwise.

Manage Crawlers: Webmaster tools manages the crawler:- Crawlrate: How frequently the crawler downloads pages from your site.- Broken links: Identifies where the crawler has encountered an obstacle.

Both Yandex and Google offer these services.

Audience Development: Site Registration

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Audience Development: Webmaster Tools

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Audience Development: Page and File ElementsAfter telling the search engines who you are with webmaster tools, you have to make sure each page is well labeled.

A few things to remember.1.Text: Search engines “read” text, not photos, or videos.

Do: Use text to label photos and videos – title, caption, alt-tags.

Don’t: Assume that just because the story is about Putin, that the search engine will know that the photo is of Putin.

2. Files: More files on the page with supporting text labels, the more likely the search engines will know what the page is about. Do: Add photo, video and other related files.

Do: Label each file clearly, including file name, captions and in any “alt-tags” that are hidden in the page code.

3. Clarity: Be clear, avoid pronouns.

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Audience Development: Page and File ElementsThere are some specifics to pay attention to:

Page Titles: For Yandex and Google the most important label on a webpage is the Page Title. It may be visible in the URL, or it may be captured in the “hidden text” in the header.

This is then “read” by the search engines as

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Audience Development: Page and File ElementsThere are some specifics to pay attention to:

Page Description and Meta Tags: This “hidden text” is an important clue for Yandex.

Google does not generally use this in its index.

-Yandex index is site based, so each site is given a rank, but pages not. This reflects Yandex emphasis on verifiable “brands”-Google ranks each page and disregards meta information that is site related.

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Audience Development: Page and File ElementsAlt-tags, file names and captions: All multimedia files have three ways to include a text clue for the search engines. Yandex & Google look for these clues for their photo/video/audio search.

File names – often attached by the equipment - cameras or sound recorders. Not good 186668.jpg

Good voting_booth_samara.jpg

Captions – the photo/video description used online. Always try to use a caption.

Alt-Tags – These are “hidden descriptions that pop-up when your mouse touches the photo.

Audience Development: Page and File ElementsAlt-Tags – These are “hidden descriptions that pop-up when your mouse touches the photo.

Rick Santorum

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/03/the_definition_of_a_winner_has_become_elusive_in_this_year_s_republican_primary_.html

File Name = 120302_POL_santorum.jpg.CROP.jpeg

Caption

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Audience Development: Search Engine RankSearch engines rank your blog based on how engaged your blog is with other sites.

It’s all about links! The more links to your blog and from your blog to relevant information, the higher your blog’s importance will be.

Do: Develop as many relevant links and embeds to your blog as possibleA. Blogrolls: Create a list of blogs that you follow about your topics or location.B. Link Exchanges: Encourage “related bloggers or sites” to exchange links with you.

Do: Use links in a text post to your blog.A. Places or Organizations: Add a link to their websitesB. People: Add a link to their blog, resume page, or social media page (is they have one).

Do: Use social media to encourage reviews and ratings. All sharing is links.

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Search Engine SummarySearch engines play an important role in helping new and returning users find your site.

A couple of simple steps will begin the process of developing search engine traffic.

1.Register your site with Yandex and Google Webmaster Tools

2.Manage your web site and web pages to clearly use text and “hidden text” markers to tell the search engines what each page is about.

3.Manage the links to and from your site to be the most relevant possible.

The more relevant links the higher your page/site will be ranked which will contribute to position in the Search Engine Return Page.

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Topic Presenter

New Online Business Trends Ross

Search Engine Optimization – Yandex & Google Ross

Social Media Marketing – FaceBook & Twitter Ross

Measuring Success – Google Analytics Syed

Planning & Financing Your Business Ross

MDLF’s Digital Developments Syed- New Venture Fund- Knowledge Bridge Discussion

Agenda

Social Media provides important but different benefits, especially news websites.

All social networks allow you to build trusted relationships with your best customers, similar in earlier years to email lists and list-servs.

Social networks create strong and relevant links to your content helping your site’s rank in the search engines.

Social networks, especially Twitter, create a real-time mobile ticker of breaking news.

All social networks have the potential to act like a huge amplifier of traffic to your site and influence to your brand.

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Social Media: Overview

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Social Media: Russian MarketThe Russian social media market is dominated by vKontakte.

We will review Facebook and Twitter marketing and then discuss as a group your experience with vKontakte.

Social Media Market Share vKontakte Facebook TwitterFeb 2011 70.0% 2.5% 2.8%Feb 2012 61.1% 4.2% 4.0%Change -8.9 pts +1.7 pts +1.2 pts

Source:LiveInternet.ru

Facebook and Twitter have tended to take share from the #2 social network Odnoklassniki.

vKontakte also leads in Ukraine, Belarus but the difference in share is much smaller.

This review will focus on establishing a foundation for future development, including:

Setting up accounts

Establishing “automated content feeds” to populate your FaceBook and Twitter accounts.

Building “friends”

Initial trusted interactions with your friends

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Social Media: Overview

Twitter’s very simple characteristics drive usage.

1.Twitter is short – 140 letters OR spaces.- Designed for use on SMS- Can contain weblinks

2.Twitter is public. The default twitter message is public to all; indexable by the search engines.- Requires a specific action to make a tweet private- DM (Direct Mail) an individual- Set your tweets to “private” in your profile. Only followers can read.

3.Twitter is mobile.- Originally developed as a group SMS project.- If you use a Beeline mobile phone, you can tweet by texting <8080>

4.Twitter is open.- Many aspects of twitter are provided by outside companies. - Many aspects of twitter were created through group consensus.

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Twitter: Overview

Opening a twitter account is very simple.

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Social Media: Twitter Account

A few things to watch:1.Use a company email like twitter@company.ru to establish account2.Chose a short username. Twitter posts are 140 letters or less!3.Don’t become hostage to a single person.

Writing a tweet has some basic rules.

1.Remember short – leave room for followers to re-share (re-tweet) and comment. Leave room for your Twitter name @XXX.

2.Do include links back to your site. - Use “link shortening” sites to shorten long url’s- Example bit.ly/Akkxpl points to

http://echo.msk.ru/blog/victorovich/867891-echo/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter (~90 letters)

- Examples of Link Shortening sites are: bit.ly, tinyurl.com,

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Social Media: Twitter Composition

Twitter Name

Link shortening

In addition to tweeting, what else can you do with a tweet.

1.Use hashtags # to link tweets from different people into groups, themes.

- Use Hashtags to create themes that other people can follow.- Community Hashtags, Meeting Hashtags, …

- Use hashtags.org to track hashtags popularity and follow the discussion.

2.Most common actions on a tweet. - Reply: Sends a public message to the author, like a comment. - Retweet: Forwards a tweet to your followers- Favorite: Allows you to find past tweets.

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Social Media: Twitter Actions

For many things, Twitter is the foundation but outside websites provide the tools to create a tweet.

1.Pictures: - Included in Twitter in 2010.- Largest Twitter picture tool – www.twitpic.com

2.Video: Twitvid.com

3.Automatic Posting: RSS Feed Integration - Twitfeed.com

4.Twitter Directories- Twitaholic.com- Twellow.com

5.Polling: Twtpoll.com

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Social Media: Twitter Tools

Building followers in Twitter is simple, but requires regular posting and can take time.

1.Posting: - Post regularly, ideally a couple of time during the day.- Post during or just before peak tweeting times- Treat your followers like your “brand’s best friends”Examples:- Offer polls- Create special offers, only to those following your Twitter stream- Post photos and solicit photos, even have photo contests

2.Follow Other Tweeters!- Target tweeters who are relevant to your content

– Politicians, other media, local citizens, sports teams- Think of your tweet stream as a tipline to potential news stories.

3.Create a specialized Twitter directory and join other directories.- For example: wefollow.com/twitter/russia

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Social Media: Growing Twitter Followers

So in summary, there are a few simple steps to get started on Twitter.

1.Create a Company account.- Make it short and memorable- Make sure it belongs to the Company

2.Create a regular posting schedule:- Choose a few stories from your website to re-post with a link OR- Use Twitfeed to set up an automatic re-posting of links to your website

3.Ask everyone in your Company who is currently using to Twitter to follow your account!

4.Add your account to local directories

5.Find at least 100 twitter accounts that your company should find interesting and follow them.

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Social Media: Twitter Summary

Now the hard part – Facebook.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing websites in history and currently has over 800 million users worldwide.

Excluding the US Facebook’s top five countries are India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey. - In all of these markets mobile usage dominates.- Usage patterns in each country are unique.

Fastest growing major markets in the last three months- Brazil (+ 7.0 million)- Japan (+2.4 million) - South Korea (+1.9 million)- Sweden (+1.7million)- Russia (+1.1 million)

Facebook has many features and opportunities to build audience and revenue. But the extra features make it more complex to use.

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Social Media: Facebook

Social Media: FaceBook PresenceCreating a Facebook page is more complicated and requires you to join Facebook as an individual!

When you have a personal profile, you can choose between three types of Facebook “pages”:1.Profile: Specifically for people- No limit to “friends”- Cannot advertise their profile

2.Group: used for specific groups of people- Can be either public or private- Limited to 5,000 members- Cannot advertise to promote group membership

3.Page: Used for organizations- Can add specific “apps” to create customized functionality

+ RSS Graffiti, publishes directly to Page from a site’s RSS Feed.- No limit in the number of people who can “like’ the page- Can advertise the Page to promote and create audience- Can analyze with internal “Insights” analytics

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Best Choice

Manage Permissions

1. Important to Set the Landing Page Recommend Setting to the Wall

2. Can restrict what audience can post to the wall

The more people can post, the more they will bring their friends to your Page.

Recommend allowing all types of posts. Check all boxes.

Basic Information – Part 1

3. Best to choose Companies & Organizations > Media/News/Publishing

4. Complete basic info

Helps audience find your page in FaceBook Search

Basic Information – Part 2

5. More information.

Always best to complete,if you have the information.

Basic Information – Part 2

6. Upload a logo.

Best to choose a logo or image that is SQUARE

Managing Admins

7. Managing Admins:

Whoever creates the page is the first admin.

The first admin can invite additional admins to help post content and manage the audience on the page.

New Admins must have “liked” the page, first.

Use the email the new admin used to register with FaceBook to add them.

Managing “Apps”

8. Adding “Apps” allows the admin to create special services on the page.

For example:

RSS Grafitti allows the admin to automatically post to the page using RSS feeds.

Groups allows the admin to create a discussion group on the page.

Questions allows the admin to create a poll.

The Admin must first add the app to their account, then they can add to the page.

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Topic Presenter

New Online Business Trends Ross

Search Engine Optimization – Yandex & Google Ross

Social Media Marketing – FaceBook & Twitter Ross

Measuring Success – Google Analytics Syed

Planning & Financing Your Business Ross

MDLF’s Digital Developments Syed- New Venture Fund- Knowledge Bridge Discussion

Agenda

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Strategy - Laying the Ground WorkStrategy answers key questions about the market and how you will be successful in the market.

1. Who is the audience? Who will the product serve?For example:- Young people- Couples/Women Engaged to be Married- Housewives- People who drive motor scooters- Music lovers

2. What problem are you solving for them? - How will you create value for the customer? - How will they know it is a great product?- What will get the audience to use the product again?

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The CompetitionLook for other companies with the same goals, trying to solve the same problem.

3. What other companies are targeting your customer? What can you learn from them?- Are they successful? Growing?- Why are they successful? What do they do well?- Where are they un-successful? Why?- What can you learn from them? Pricing? Marketing?

Remember!- Very rarely are there completely new problems to solve or products to solve them- Most new products are really new solutions to old problems

So, you can always learn from others in the market!

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Strengths and AssetsThe next step identifies a plan for how to use your company’s strengths to develop a better solution to the customer’s problem.

4. What are the unique strengths of my company?- Brand awareness?- Large pool of active traffic?- Strong advertiser support?- Technology platform?- Ability to offer existing products at a cheaper price?

5. How do I apply these to the customer’s needs?- Unique marketing solution? Build traffic and trial cheaper or faster?- Unique benefits to offer from advertisers?

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Estimating the ToplineOnce you have defined your new online product, you will need to create an initial business model.

Estimate audience and traffic – There are several methods.- Use an existing site as a standard, this is often called a “comparable”

For example:- Current local directory website that receives 10,000 daily visits- New business site is similar, use this site’s traffic as a goal.

- If you have no “comparable site”, then begin with the promotional plan.+ How much marketing investment do you plan? + Do you have an estimate of the reach for the marketing?+ Estimated traffic = audience reached x (action %) x (close %)º Audience reached = number of people who see the advertisingº Action % = the % who notice or click on the adº Close % = the % who buy take the appropriate action.

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Estimating the ToplineEstimating revenue is one of the most difficult aspects of the business model, because ideally it must reflect the new business.

1. Define the revenue models- How in general will the site make money?- Who is paying the money?º The audience = subscriptions? E-Commerce?º Advertisers?º Some one else? A donor or grantor?

2. Estimate the price- There are three parameters for pricing.A) What is the product or service worth to the customer?B) What is the customer’s current ability to pay? What can customer tolerate in price?C) What is your cost to deliver the product and what margin do you need?

3. Estimate the volume- Volume may be audience usually measured in thousand pages viewed or - Volume may be number of advertisers

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Estimating the ToplineRevenue per thousand (RPM) is an easy way to estimate revenue for a site, but requires a “comparable site”.

Revenue per thousand is the total net revenue (net of cost of sales) divided by the number of pages viewed in thousands.

Use a site that is comparable to the site you are building, media sites with media sites, classified sites, with classifieds.

Use the total audience estimate (or other volume) and multiple by the RPM.

Be conservative, assume it takes your business some period – six months or a year – to reach the same RPM as the comparable website.

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Estimating Expenses and the Bottom-lineFinally, when estimating expenses be sure to only attribute incremental expenses to the new business.

If you need to rent more space to accommodate the new business, then that is an incremental expense.

For example, if you are hosting the new business in your existing space, then there is zero “incremental” rent.

Why?

The reason for incremental budgeting is to maximize the potential return calculation for the business.