This one is a long overdue post. I have been meaning to write it since months (may be even years ) but never actually got down to it.
People who know me will tell you the amount of time I spend every day in office. It isn’t just me. Everyone around here has long days.

But ask anyone here about life at Convonix and they’ll say that it is all fun. We’re very serious about our work and our deadlines… but we never forget to party… be it weekly dinners, birthdays, our special biryani parties (a big thanks to the chef at Delhi Darbar for the awesome biryani that he makes) and off course our frequent out of town brain storming weekends.

To the people who want to join us (you can apply here!!!) – Every Convonite will tell you that the Convonix culture, formed through an amalgamation of people from different backgrounds, is special. Team spirit, responsibilities and hard work are a way of life here. But, once you blend in, you will find that the line between work and fun has disappeared.

Below are pictures of some of the fun things that we do every day (Finally…).

Google has always maintained that for a site to appear in “pages from that country” results (i.e. - pages from India or Pages from UK), it needs to be hosted in that country. This meant that for a site to appear in the search results of Google.co.in with the “Pages from India” option selected, it needed to be hosted in India.
A few months back, this criterion was diluted and sites that were either hosted in India or had a country specific domain (.co.in, .in) would both show up in the country specific results.

Since the last few days, we’ve noticed another change. Sites which are neither hosted in India nor have a country specific TLD are now showing up in the Google “pages from India” results if their WHOIS data shows that the registrant is from India. This just shows that Google is not only reviewing but also giving much more importance to the WHOIS data.

So what happens if one uses an identity protector and does not reveal his/her name in the WHOIS? Also what happens to a TLD with a foreign registration address (i.e. - Suppose I own a .co.in domain but my registrant address shows I stay in the US)? There will be a lot of people who must’ve noticed the recent Google changes and must be working out ways to use these factors to improve their site’s search engine placement… The future sure looks interesting!!!

Everyone has heard about “The World Is Flat”. I was recently watching the author of the book, Thomas Friedman, give a keynote address which was being broadcast on CNBC. The program was aptly titled, “The World Is STILL Flat”.
It was an interesting lecture, but there were 2 points that clearly stuck on -
 
1 - He said that the date August 9, 1995 should be etched in History. Why? Because this is the day a small technology company called Netscape went public and triggered the dot com boom. Their simple little point, click and surf browser coupled with the tons of optical fiber laid by companies instantly brought Bangalore, Beijing and America closer. It made us all neighbors!!!

2 - In a flat world anything will be done, either it will be done by u or to you.

We all know about the first point. However, it’s the second point that I feel is so true. Today, the barrier for entry to most business is much lower than it ever was… and if one can dream it… he can do it. And if he doesn’t, someone else surely will!!!

Just read Fortune’s latest story “Is Mark Zuckerberg the next Bill Gates?” Josh Quittner says,

“Let’s say Mister Softie (Microsoft) wins, with a $1.5 billion buy in. Microsoft gets first dibs, not only on the nascent business, but on the nascent businessman: Mark Zuckerberg. Yes! Who better to succeed Bill Gates?

As every school child knows, the similarities are striking. Both men came from upper-middle class families and dropped out of Harvard to pursue their tech visions. Gates built a new platform (actually, two, if you count DOS and Windows) and Zuckerberg aims to create one now.”

Hell! It’s too early to make such a comparison, Josh Quittner! Agreed facebook is all around in the news today. Agreed facebook is massively capturing the ‘young adults drawn to social networking’ crowd. Agreed they JUST launched the Facebook platform and are soon looking to tap the huge advertising potential that their network offers. But hello, there’s no point in making comparisons right away; give Facebook some time to show their true prowess! Having said this, I also will agree that I’m a Facebook fan and tremendously respect Mark and co. for building a really snazzy networking site and attracting all the traffic that they are!

Bill Gates drummed up a “software industry” when there wasn’t one, made the “then only used by large companies” computer “personal” in the true sense (Remember Ken Olsen of digital computers said, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home” We know what happened to Digital next!). Let’s see what revolutionizing can Zuckerberg  do with his Facebook platform!

- Archit

Office was buzzing with activity as usual this evening. When suddenly, phones started ringing and Vishal’s mobile went on an overdrive. And before anyone of us could comprehend what’s happening, a team mate dashed in to the conference room where 3 of us work, and said, ‘We’re on Rediff…1st page!’ 

And then we checked and found Vishal’s interview in an article titled ‘A million dollar company built on failure.’ We knew an article on rediff.com was coming but never expected it to be titled this way! Extremely candid interview with our CEO, who answers the ‘How we started off’ questions with a tremendous zeal The article talks in depth about his journey from a Radio FM site webmaster to being the CEO of a 40 odd employee firm and seeks to motivate budding entrepreneurs, which I think it does, looking at the comments that started flowing in. 

You read interviews of the rich and famous, celebrities and businessmen; and one day you read an interview of this kid who had the passion to defy odds, fulfil his dream and go on to build an organization…and it truly makes you sit back and wonder…”If he could do it, why can’t I?” So let’s hope this article reaches out and inspires many like us who dream to achieve something special!

- Archit

The internet has made it simple for people to copy content… but search engines like Google and sites like copyscape have made it even simpler to find these guys. The question once you find them is whether you want to go through the trouble of getting them off the search engines or the internet.

Personally, like every other person who spends time thinking and coming up with original content, I hate people copying stuff from our site. However, a sentence or 2 here or there is something I tend to ignore. However, there are a quite a few folks out there who have copied entire paragraphs of content. There are a few who have copied our entire pages, including references to our inhouse web analytics tool, Hitstatz. I wonder how they can call themselves genuine business practicing ethical SEO.

While I don’t want to mention all the sites that have copied our stuff here, I have to mention this one guy - http://www.magicinfomedia.com/search-engine-optimization-india.html.

This guy has copied our entire front page, including screenshots of Hitstatz reports and has the audacity to refer to this image as a screenshot of their inhouse analytics application. I would love to meet this guy and ask him to prove that he has developed an inhouse analytics application that produces reports that look like that picture.

I sincerely pray and hope that people, who want to do business, understand that setting up an online business is hard work and you cannot just copy original content written by other people if you want to genuinely grow and survive in the longer term.

There has been a lot of discussion on what determines if your site is displayed in the “pages from a region” result page of Google. i.e. - what determines if a site will show up in the “pages from UK” or “pages from India” Google results?

While we’ve been pretty sure that your site qualifies for listing under this section only if your site pages are hosted in a particular country, we’ve noticed that there is still a lot of discussion going on with people speculating whether other sources determine listing.

Another question that I am frequently asked is whether a .com domain can rank on a regional Google result i.e. - A result page on google.co.in or google.co.uk. There had been an issue about ranking a .com in a regional Google result page, but I believe that that has been sorted out in January this year. A major factor that determines if your site ranks high on Google.co.uk or Google.co.in is your WhoIS data and not the .com or .co.uk or extension of your domain.

Anyways, since there is still a lot of noise out there with a lot of people speculating, we have now decided to go out there and run a comprehensive test to determine the major factors that dictate if your site will appear higher on a regional search result page and if a site will show up in the country specific page results. Stay tuned for more…

Google analytics has informed that there is a temporary reporting delay since Saturday night. Their blog states that “no data will be lost - data will continue to be collected and processed during this time.” 

Further, they expect updates for all accounts to continue through Monday night into tomorrow and will update their blog when reporting is fully restored. 

Yahoo announced the rollout of a new feature that they call quality-based pricing. They claim that this is an ongoing effort to raise the value of their sponsored search and content match products.

So far all traffic for a particular keyword was billed at a certain amount. Now, with the introduction of Quality based pricing the cost per click will differ based on the quality of the websites that are providing traffic to you.

Yahoo claims that “Quality” is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites and discounts will be automatically applied to your account.

They also claim that cost per click should decrease. Its too early to conclude if that is going to happen… Lets wait and watch!

Dealing with clients is never easy - especially those who haven’t had any previous experience or knowledge of Affiliate Marketing. A few things I recommend are non-intuitive, and seem to go against accepted wisdom - but are essential to distinguish a mediocre campaign from a great one. What commission to pay is frequently an area which needs explaining.

Commissions aren’t everything. But when presented with a competitor campaign analysis, a client will point to his biggest competitor and insist on matching or bettering the commission he’s offering his affiliates. Obvious? Things aren’t as simple. Is a program that pays 15% comission necessarily more attractive than one that pays 13%? No.

What you really want for your client is a low cost per conversion - to sell as many items as is possible while paying out as little in commissions as is possible [1]. In that case, what you want to look at is the EPC, or earnings per 100 clicks [2]. The EPC for the affiliate is the cost per conversion (CPC) for the merchant.

We begin with an EPC value equal to or lower than, say, the client’s current EPC for his PPC (Adwords/Overture) program. Now we calculate what commission the client should offer:

EPC = (percentage of clicks that result in a sale) X (average value of a sale) X (commission) X 100

Now we know the EPC, the average value of an online sale (the client can tell you that, based on his past sales records). That leaves only the sales-to-click ratio to be estimated. This is where past experience is invaluable. I rely on past campaigns that I’ve run and use those as estimates (which turn out to be fairly accurate).

Now you know better than to rely on simply matching your competitor’s commissions - your client could be paying a lot more than he needs to for the same sales volume!

Notes:
[1] Note the difference - “as little in commissions” is a dollar term, while “percentage commissions” is a numerical term.

[2] Earnings for the affiliate, not the merchant!

- Rahul.

Rahul Gaitonde is an Affiliate Marketing consultant with Convonix Inc.