Web Hosting News

It was a few hours ago now, but this afternoon we held the draw for the 50″ HDTV that has been brightening our networking lounge since Tuesday morning.

The winner was the lovely Dianne Stayton of Web Your Business, who seemed more than a little excited to have won the prize.

Congratulations to Dianne. We had a lot of fun at the networking lounge this year.

A while later, at the other end of the exhibit hall, most of the exhibitors who had prizes to give away took the stage at the presentation theater to announce the winners (the TV was a little bit big to bring over there).

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At the conclusion of things, Keith Duncan of Ping! Zine took the stage. After a little grandstanding and the obligatory good-natured potshot at the WHIR, Duncan proceeded with the much-anticipated showstopper, giving five lucky winners the chance to sit on a motorcycle for a couple of seconds.

Nobody wins! Goodnight everyone!

I suppose it was understood in advance that there was really a very slim possibility that somebody would actually win the motorcycle (about 2 percent, I believe - five people each drawing a key from a bowl of 250, one of which apparently unlocked the box containing the actual key to the bike). But it was still a big of a lame duck promotion, and it should have been apparent to everyone hyping it up that it would be a bit of a let-down as big end-of-show prize drawings go.

Sure, it would have been fun if, against all probability, somebody had actually won that motorcycle. As it turns out, there was a bit of “how do we know there’s a real key?” and “let everyone take one more key.” Nothing too serious, but it wasn’t much fun. I’d rather have a Nintendo Wii.

Kudos to Keith for making a big to-do out of what basically amounted to nothing. I suppose it was a pretty good promotion at the end of the day.

By the way, you heard it here first: at HostingCon 2009, anyone who can throw a baseball from Navy Pier to the W hotel wins 100 spaceships, courtesy of the Web Host Industry Review (a challenge made all the more difficult by the fact that the event’s going to be in Washington DC).

We ran a bit in the latest issue of the magazine about the new appointments in the marketing department at Verio, and the new marketing strategy ushered in across the company by that move.

The new faces are Ken Giffin, director of marketing, and Wendy Pearson, director of makerting and communications. While Giffin focuses on the Via Verio partner program, Pearson will focus more on the company-wide marketing effort.

Yesterday I met with Wendy Pearson to discuss some of the content of that revamped marketing effort, or the part of it that is complete at this relatively early stage in the redesign.

The new blood in the marketing department starts with Steve Renda, who was made VP of sales and marketing in January of this year. And he brought many of the company’s new faces on board.

But the shift, says Pearson, comes from a mandate at the company to reinvigorate a business that has been not quite stagnant but certainly coasting for a period of a few years.

Verio is one of those hosting companies that deals with the small to medium-sized business market, which can be a pretty broad and vague term when you start to really think about the kind of business that describes. Part of the process at Verio in the last 60 days, says Pearson, has been to really narrow the focus within that realm, partly by trying to characterize those hypothetical customers.

At the very high end of a chart she drew that described the importance of IT to a given customer and their competence with IT, she identified a sophisticated, demanding customer that Verio has acknowledged that it just isn’t the customer it is best suited to serve, or most interested in serving.

At the low end, they’ve identified the basic domain-name-and-one-page-website customer that also isn’t really in the mould of what they’re best suited to, or most interested in, serving.

The customers they’re looking at targeting are the kinds of small businesses that are looking toward growing online, changing positions on that chart to move toward more importance of IT, and in some cases a higher rate of competence.

It’s an interesting discussion, this idea of a host narrowing its focus and, if not getting rid of certain customers than at least admitting that “these aren’t the customers we’re interested in serving.”

For Verio, the next step in this process - now that it has really polished the notion of what it means by “SMB” - is identifying the means by which it will target these better-defined SMB customers.

I’ll keep this one brief. As many of you may already know we’re giving away a really excellent tv this afternoon. It’s pictured below. Just to give you an idea of its scale, I can say without exaggeration that the laptop sitting next to it is ten hundred feet tall.

Yeah. It’s huge.

Anyway, we’re doing the draw at 3pm. So you have about two hours to come over to the networking lounge (booth 627 - it’s really big) and drop your business card in the fishbowl.

That really only takes about one minute. So you definitely have time.

Good luck!

Today’s HostingCon keynote was a fitting capstone to a very good conference.  Although a bit personal at times, it reinforced for me the high emotion that goes into transactions.  For all of the “be objective” talk – deals are emotional.  This is true both for buyers and sellers – though particularly true for sellers.  I don’t see how it is possible not to get emotionally invested in a deal.  From negotiating to money, everything about a deal involves emotional investment.  In my mind, not being emotionally invested in a deal is akin to dating and only looking for friendship – a bit of an oxymoron.

Like dating, however, there are ways to participate in the process without getting completely heartbroken or frustrated.  From my experience the following points may help:

 
·         Don’t put all your eggs in the buy/sell basket.  Keep operating your business and innovating.

·         Know what your hard stops, or non-negotiables are, and realize that the deal will end if these are reached.  Only designate these as non-negotiables if you are willing to walk away.

·         Communicate with your advisors constantly.  Feel free to vent to us about your frustration – but try not to make it personal unless it really, truly, is deserved.

·         Hire people who have participated in deals before.

·         Don’t give yourself artificial deadlines.  If you want to take a day off to go see your kid’s swim meet, do it.  The deal will be there when you get back.

·         If the deal falls through, take time to deconstruct what happened, what you can learn, and try to reuse any documents that were created in the process.

 

Having decided I want my personal web site make money, the question I face is how to best monetize my site. Admittedly, when it comes to making money from a business in general, and from the web in particular, I am a total amateur. I have made plenty of money for my past employers, but, unfortunately, that required a completely different set of skill and qualifications. So, naturaly, I am a little lost.

The most obvious form of making money is direct selling - offering something for sale on the personal/hobby web site. For example, a site about beer making can offer brews, yeast, hops or equipment; A site focused on quilting, can offer quilts or tools; A yoga site can offer leotards or yoga tapes/DVDs. Obviously, this requires a sales mechanism (shopping cart and payment gateway), but many such tools are available that are technically easy to integrate into a web site, and with minimal starting requirements. Since my site (www.words2u.net) is related to GPS and to Costa Rica, I could try and sell GPS devices, GPS maps, travel books, Costa Rican coffee, t-shirts, local arts and crafts, and so on, to my visitors.

Direct selling can be profitable, but does have its drawbacks. Selling is not my favorite pastime. It involves dealing with customers and vendors, with merchandise returns, with managing inventory and shipping orders - the typical headaches of regular business. Unless I dedicated my life to both the site and the selling, I won't get far - sales will be slow, and vendors' attention depends on sales volume. There is definitely a potential in selling goods from the site, but that does not mean I want to spend my spare time in sales, nor do I want to invest in inventory, sales promotion and site marketing, at least not for now. Personally speaking, I find sites similar to mine, that sell stuff on the side, both tacky and unprofessional. Not only do I not buy from these 'hacks', I don't trust their content either, since they have an ax to grind. I prefer storefronts with product information to a personal site selling goods - at least the storefront is honest about its purpose and practices.

So, no direct product sales on my site.

A similar alternative is to sell services. A site about yoga can provide members-only exercise routines, or sell personal yoga training. The services can also come from a third party, such as someone else's online exercise program. Selling services does not require an inventory, and if the service (say a beer making class, a quilting workshop, or a yoga retreat) is offered by the site owner, most of the proceeds will be profit. However, there is still the need to deal with customers, the worry about quality, organization and frequency of service. And earning money from services is a bona-fide, full time business.

Returning to my personal site as an example, I could offer to guide tours of Costa Rica's central valley, to all the trails or locations listed on my site. I could promote Costa Rica vacation packages, hotel rooms, real estate and similar services. Enlightenment Workshop in the Rain Forest, anyone? How about cosmetic surgery to the sound of tropical birds and howler monkeys? Would you like your dental work done near banana plantations and coffee farms?. You get the drift.

Needless to say, I don't sell services for the same reason I won't sell products. I also forgo links to sites that pay referral commissions per view or click.

The easiest monetization option I found is ad placements - text and banner ads from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others, and links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and similar sites. On my site I have Google text ads, and I will add links to Amazon when I get around to it. I have yet to figure out how I can benefit from Google search box, and if/when I do, I will place it somewhere, if my software allows it…

The effort and commitment are minimal, and neither sales volume nor site traffic are an issue. Content is, though, as most vendors set limits on site content. My site is family oriented, so this is not a problem, and with some searching there is an outlet for every niche, kink and interest. The downside of my choice is that the payoff is small, and without substantial traffic, revenues are a pittance. I guess that is the price of laziness, but it fits perfectly with my venue.

 

Pura Vida, Y'all!

We reported a few weeks ago that iNet Interactive, the media company that owns WebhostingTalk, among other things, had acquired HostingCon from Interjuncture.

It hasn’t had much impact on the event. Certainly, there wasn’t time to impact the content of the event. But it was pretty well timed in the sense that it gave iNET the opportunity to attend this year’s event in the context of being the new owners, take in the way things are done now, consider anything they might like to change and answer a few questions.

I spoke to George Roberts today, who said there had been people from iNET sort of shadowing the Interjuncture people as they set up for and conducted the event, so they have been on hand for everything that’s been going on. Learning the ropes, so to speak.

Today, Kevin Gold, the marketing director for iNET gave me a USB key with the press release announcing the details for HostingCon 2009 - another uncommon (but interesting) way to receive information.

HostingCon 2009, says iNET, will be held in Washington DC from August 10 to 12 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. The decision on the location, says the announcement, was based on the need to choose another “world class” city, and Washington DC is easily accessible to domestic and international travelers.

The company also said in the announcement that it has added two veterans of the events business to its staff to handle the planning for HostingCon - Bev Yuellig, who will be responsible for planning and on-site operations for the event, and Stephanie Splete, who will work as event marketing manager, developing the program and growing attendance.

Both women are on hand at HostingCon 2008, and will most likely be available at the booth iNET has set up at the show just for the purpose of answering questions about the new management and its plans for the event. It’s booth 122.

George Roberts says he and Frank Spaulding will be working in a consulting capacity with iNET for at least the next few months, and will be on hand to help out at next year’s event.

There was a press release in the “media” room here announcing a new project from Parallels the company is calling its “SaaS FastTrack” program.

I’ll admit - it was a bit of an unusual experience trying to digest a press release in print. Fortunately I had a chance to sit down with Serguei Beloussov, who explained to me some of the significance around the program.

The basic premise is a system for helping independent software vendors build their applications to function with Parallels’ Open Platform and Application Packaging Standard, both designed by the company to function as an open and ubiquitous standard for communication between the various application and infrastructure pieces of a hosted solution.

It’s really a more focused effort at what the company was already doing - helping ISVs to build solutions that can be easily adopted by hosting providers, which are the bulk of the company’s customers.

The interesting thing about the program, he says, is that there’s no immediate and obvious financial benefit to Parallels from the ISVs that build their solutions to function with the APS. The benefit to Parallels is in the ecosystem it is building - an environment where Parallels software is the simplest way to package hosting solutions. If the hosting providers using that software grow, and deploy more servers, that is where the benefit is for Parallels.

As far as the nuts and bolts of the program, there is a “standard level,” for ISVs with one application, which will provide the partner with assistance packaging the application and making it visible. The “premium” level is for ISVs with one or more apps and want “rapid time-to-market” with promotions and connections to executives in the service provider channel. The “ultimate” level is for ISVs that are new to SaaS, want to learn about the service provider industry and about service provider business models.

These aren’t exactly inexpensive offerings, ranging in price from about $1,000 for the standard to about $10,000 for the ultimate. But it seems to be a very deep engagement. The full, exhaustive description of the FastTrack program is available on the company’s website.

I think the other really interesting thing about the FastTrack program is how strongly it reaffirms Parallels’ vision for the distribution of SaaS applications. Unlike, say, Microsoft with its SaaS Incubator program (which, though a little bit similar, really is a completely different thing), the Parallels program is really based on the belief that the software developer should make its application available to service providers, who will then deliver the service to their customers, rather than the ISV finding a host for itself and then providing the service.

They’re just different areas of expertise. Software developers know how to develop software, while service providers really know how to provide service. It’s right there in their names.