Alright, although a lot sooner than I planned to do this but this book is a very good read and I would like to share it with you. Here goes another one of my Book Review bits. This on is on a book called FREE: the Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson.

The main idea of the book is making profit by giving things away – for FREE. And true to his ideas of giving things away for free, Anderson gave away free downloads of his book while at the same time offers to sell it to those who want hard copy of the book. He showed an example of giving things for FREE and still makes money out of it.

Anderson presented different business models that thrived on giving away their products but at the same time make money in the process. His first example was about the 19th century saloons that offered free lunches to anybody who bought a drink. It became very popular because people enjoyed getting things for free but without realizing that there is no such thing as free lunch as the cost of the drink covered also that of the “free” lunch. Anderson’s idea is for companies to use the right business model to make money by offering consumers many things that sell for less, or even nothing.

The main thrust of Anderson’s thesis is how everything digital have become cheaper and that the incremental advances can combine to make a product too cheap to meter or sell on an individual basis. The question that will arise will deal on who is going to pay when consumers get products for free. Anderson proposed how a business can pass on an item’s cost from the average consumer to other parties such as advertisers of picky consumers who are willing to pay for a premium version. Examples are internet software, such as anti-virus protection, that is given free to users but charge a fee for an advanced version. The fee for the advanced version very well covered the expenses of running the free version.

Anderson believes that the Web is the biggest store in history and everything is 100% off. This strengthens the belief that the price zero, or FREE, in an inevitability on the internet as the marginal cost of anything digital falls by 50% every year, making pricing a race to the bottom. Added to this is the power “Free” has over the consumers’ psyche and you will have a situation where almost everybody will grab anything that is offered for free.

The way to make money is to figure out how to combine free with paid as in the case of the aforementioned free software that offer also a premium version for a fee. Anderson wisely realized that the currency of the web can be summed up into: 1. attention as in the number of traffic to a site, and 2. reputation as in the number of links that point to your site.

By utilizing attention and reputation, any business model can capitalize on giving something for free to make money or profit. At present, a lot of business models are using this strategy. An online e-book seller makes a sale after giving out interesting mini e-books for free. Phone companies give away cell phones and sell minutes of talk time or give away talk time and sell cell phones. Casinos give away the drinks and sell the show or get people’s money through the slot machines. Google gives free search and e-mail but makes money on advertising. It is now very common to see businesses giving away something for free in order to make business profits.

However, not all businesses can work following this model of giving away things for free and making profit on something else. The most glaring example could be Google’s YouTube. YouTube allows anyone to post and watch video for free.  Since there is no quality control on the kind of videos being posted, and no limit imposed because there is an abundance of channel space, they are unable to attract advertisers who are hesitant to put their names in a site where piracy and other materials advertisers do not want to be associated with abound. While the cost of uploading and downloading videos on the part of YouTube is close to nothing, when that close to nothing is multiplied by the expected 75 billion videos for this year alone, the amount could be staggering.

What is evident here is that not all free business models will work as they are subject to different conditions and consumer reactions. There is the wrong-placed assumption that everything will work out just like the business model that was used as a pattern for all other businesses.  Anderson mentioned other products such as electricity and pharmaceuticals that could be produced, and will therefore be distributed, almost free because they will be too cheap to produce. What are forgotten here are the expenses to be incurred by the producers beyond the production stage. Electricity may be produced almost free but the distribution channel, the grid and the networks will remain to be at a steep price. Pharmaceutical production could advance, because of technology, to the point that they are produced almost free but will involve a lot of expensive clinical testing before they are brought to the market.

While the concept of free applies to many products and business models, the concept of paying a very steep price for specialized or high-end products still attracts a large segment of the consumer group. Free may attract a large group of consumers but it does not work fine for the businesses at all time.

FREE is an interesting book, especially its discussion of “Free in a Time of Economic Crisis” and the “Fifty Business Models Built on Free”. Interesting also is its optimistic outlook about the zero prices as a driving force of the digital economy. However, there could be seen flaws in the basic assumptions used in the book. Still, it will make an interesting read.

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A while ago I featured Jannis’ website here for the beautiful, relaxed, paradise design in it’s header. Recently, he redesigned the header and made it even more beautiful with lots more detail and design elements.

Also wanted to mention the navigation bar, it’s pretty simple and yet very nice looking. With the subtle hover effect and nice little icons.

Amazing work Jannis, great job!

Source: Jannis-Gerlinger.de

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This is a new bit I’d like to do to add to my other posts, a book review of some excellent books that I’ve read and think my readers will benefit from. The first one is titled “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss. So here we go.

Published in April 2007 by Random House,  The 4-Hour Workweek, made Timothy famous as it hit number one on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller list. This transformed Ferriss, an unknown Princeton graduate, into a sort of celebrity.  The success of his book is attributed to his heavy marketing through his blogs, a marketing technique that has since been adopted by many in the trade.

The 4-Hour Workweek has attracted a lot of attention, mainly because of the intriguing title, and has received different kinds of reactions ranging from adulation to scorn. While some considers his ideas too outlandish, others regard them as very practical and timely.  Of course, Ferriss wants people to take notice of his book, hence the title, although he does not actually mean to really reduce the workweek to only 4 hours.  The main idea of Ferris is to cut down one’s workweek dramatically to give oneself much time for other life’s activities. As he claimed in his book, Ferriss spent more than 50 hours a week working with software and nutritional supplement business.  Realizing that he might end up forever in front of his computer, he felt that he has to change his life and the way he works, coming up with the ideas for The 4-Hour Workweek.

Ferriss is a believer and ardent follower of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, or the principle of factor sparsity, which states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.  The principle was an offshoot of the idea of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto  who observed at the turn of the 20th century that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the population. In business, it is observed that 80% of the sales come from 20% of the clients.  While 80% – 20% sharing is not absolute, many real systems have percentages somewhere around this region in their imbalance of distribution.

Ferriss’ idea is to apply automation to business so that only a minimal time will be required to produce the maximum result. By investing 20% of time/effort, he hopes to get around 80% of the expected results.  This could be done by using more efficient practices such as hiring virtual assistants from overseas who can do one’s job for a meager $5 or less per hour. While this idea is just an offshoot of the widespread practice of business outsourcing, Ferriss utilized this to benefit not only large businesses but also small and mid-sized businesses or even start-up businessmen who operate business by themselves.  Even an overworked employee can hire overseas assistants to help him do his job and get a lot of free hours for other activities. What Ferriss advocates is actually outsourcing one’s life and to enjoy the freed hours for other activities that are not normally available for someone who is trapped in the 9-5 rat race.

While the idea could sound attractive, especially with the success of business process outsourcing employed by large corporations, it does not sound as feasible as Ferriss wants to put it.  You cannot outsource that much function of business and let it run on autopilot as successful business outsourcing will require a close supervision and strict control.  Doing otherwise could have the business spiral out of control because the outsourced employees can do only as much as they were told to do, bereft of the necessary leeway and freedom of action to make decision on their own. Not every businessman can be as lucky as Ferriss who took a one year hiatus from his business only to find that he made more money while he was gone. He must have stumbled on some geniuses who ran his business while he was away!

Ferriss’ discussion on information overload and his proposed solutions are also suspect.  While it is true that most people are overburden by too much information that they have to digest on a daily basis, we cannot just ignore information that we feel are eating much of our time, leading us to go below our money-earning potential. Ferriss proposed Extreme Selective Ignorance as an answer to the information overload but this is not likely to work with most businesses.  Businesses today are global and are grounded on an intricate web of interrelationship where even a minor incident or event in a remote part of the globe could have repercussions on the economy in general and to a certain type of business in particular. Businessmen therefore must be keenly aware of everything that is going on around them to make them prepare to take actions or make adjustments in their business plans as unfolding events may demand.  While Ferriss speaks of distractions the internet offers, we have to be reminded that his book The 4-Hour Workweek became a best seller because of the internet, specifically the blogs.

The book is also a step-by-step guide to designing a luxury lifestyle. All an individual needs is to sit down and decide what he wants from life.  This is a bold attempt to define life’s philosophy as each person is enjoined to make early decisions and determine a way of finding money necessary to make such decisions work. The assumption is that people can be happy only by working less, traveling more and enjoying a bacchanalian life, while counting all the money he made while his outsourced personnel ran the show. He considers people who enjoy their jobs and the challenges that go with them as rather outmoded.

The success of Ferriss’ book can mainly be attributed to the fact that it caters to what people want to hear, giving hope, with himself as the example, that working less, earning more and living a full and satisfying life is really possible. It gives people ideas on how to cut corners and be successful (whatever it means) right away.  The book is rich in time-saving ideas and resources which can be applied in many instances and is therefore worth reading but it falls short in philosophy and over-all message. This is not a good read for people who find enjoyment in the long hours they work, especially those who touch other people’s lives every single minute they spend in the workplace, regardless of the amount of money they receive. This book is not for the healthcare workers who brave the risks of infectious diseases, not for the firefighters who spend days battling forest fires or members of the armed services who stay in the battlefield for months; they have different philosophies in life.

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While visiting some hosting sites for website design ideas and inspiration, I found this one the had a nice blue and yellow combination with a hint of gray colored backgrounds and pale yellow for the navigation hover effect. These colors work really well together and I think I’ll be using this color scheme for my next project. Notice the glossy effect on the buttons too, looks pretty nice and elegant.

Source: WebHostingGeeks.com

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Photo credit: rudiriet

When designing a website, several factors are taken into consideration. One of the main objectives that designers often are required to satisfy is the usability of the website. It is important to note that if you have specific objectives to promote user friendliness instead of aesthetics that a structure-first approach to designing web sites should be used. A structure first methodology, which can look like an unintuitive way to design web sites for visually oriented designers actually carry several advantages.

Structure-first web design approaches are pedagogical; the designers are required to conceptualize the design as a separate but interrelated step. They are also practical, if you consider the functionality and effectiveness of a site it is measured by the validity of solid HTML code, which requires a separation between structures of the document by using tags and aesthetics by using Cascading Style Sheets.

Taking on a structural perspective in web design ensures that the contents of your web site will maintain readability in cases where the styling rules are disabled in your user’s browser. In situations where the user browses the pages by using a handheld device, like cell phones your visual formatting and assistive technology like screen readers are often ignored. A structural focus leads to the generation of many flexible web pages, which are viewable by users in several ways. These pages are easily reformatted if necessary, and can easily be revised and updated.

Remember that although an aesthetic approach will provide you with more creative freedom; it comes with its own disadvantages. When designing content that needs fast access and is usability centric you must take into consideration that the demographic targeted for the web site’s specific function might not benefit from a visual approach. Projects which require database searches or make use of a web design to post a large quantity of research or analytical data will often need to restrict its visual limitation to providing graphical representation or navigation aids which will help its users find the specific information it is looking for in an accurate and speedy manner.

Taking on a structural approach to web design makes sure that the designer doesn’t fall into the death trap of creating an overly flamboyant page and get lost in his creative impulses. One of your major priorities as a web designer is to ensure the fluidity of your content in any web browsing consideration. If you decided to put a lot of visuals in your programming there is a higher chance that the page will do two things which are not favorable to the user; pages might load slowly and content will not be visible right away depending on their connection speed and several browsing situations will prevent your website from loading properly or from displaying as how you intended for its design.

There are various ways of creating your website, weather you decide to take on a structure-first approach to web design or take a visual approach it is important to consider the type of end users you plan to  market your website to, chose whether to prioritize style or function and create informed decisions based on it.

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