The main difference I saw was in the approach, Entrepreneur would jump into action with little analysis, and make the market carve out a roadmap, there is not a huge timelag or investment that is put in before entering the market, whereas an MBA typically spends a lot of time and effort into market research, competition analysis and logically designs the best possible product.

The difference is the cost of failure. Entrepreneurial thinking reduces the cost of failure and at the same time tries to create blue oceans. Blue oceans, cannot help but be a result of entrepreneurial thinking.

Of course for the success of a venture, experience and technical knowledge is a must, be an entrepreneur or a MBA!

Check out this paper on “What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial?” by Dr.Saras D. Sarasvathy.

Every industry has four types of customers:

1. Loyal Customers
2. Soon-to-be Non-Customers
3. “Refusing” Non-Customers
4. “Unexplored” Non-Customers

You can gain a lot from each type of customer, if used properly. If one adds to your revenue stream, the other helps improve your product and strategy. You will need to concentrate different activities on each type of customer. This saves your effort from getting diluted, at the same time helps gets maximum out of every effort you put in.

Loyal Customers are the ones who are happy with your product/service and whom you can safely assume to stick on to your product in the future. Little effort is needed to retain them, but needed never the less. These customers can easily be encouraged to be your ambassadors and are the the ones who play crucial role in viral marketing.

“Soon-to-be” Non-Customers are the ones who are sticking on to you just because they haven’t found a an alternative yet. They will jump out once they spot an alternative. You will need to put effort to satisfy and retain these customers. As these customers are usually unhappy with certain features of your product/services, getting their feedback about your product/service will prove to be very valuable.

“Refusing” Non-Customers are the ones who refuse to buy your product. Eg: People refusing to buy mobile phones are refusing non-customer of the Mobile phone industry. Knowing why these set of people are refusing to buy your product/services can give key inputs to improve your product/services. Eg: People maybe refusing to buy mobile phones due to bad network. Solving the problem (improving the network) will help convert these “Refusing” non-customers into Loyal customers.

“Unexplored” Non-Customers are the ones, whom your have neglected or conciously not targetted. Eg: IBM thinking common man as a non-customer and not targetting them at all (in late 1979). By tweaking your product, and changing the brand image, sometimes you will be able to target this BIG market of “Unexplored” Non-Customers.

For a Business plan to be successful in real world, there are a few areas that you need to concentrate on irrespective of the sector of operation. In a bplan competition you will judged on the very same criteria. I will be talking on these few key areas in this post.

Say, you go to a investor asking him to invest in your company. What are the things he will see before investing in your company?

He would evaluate:

• your knowledge of the market and competition
• demand and need for a product such as yours in the market
• how you distinguish yourself from competitors
• strength of the core team
• how feasible your plan is
• how much investment is needed
• what is the ROI(return on investment)
• how much time will it take to break even.

Hence, you need to focus on the areas which will answer the above questions. Below are few key area that are a must to have in your bplan:

• Market Research
• Competition analysis
• Problem that your product will solve
• Need for your product in the market
• USP
• Team
• Finance

Market Research

Have already blogged about how important market research is. Market Research must, at the minimum, contain:

• market size
• projections on market growth
• competitors and their market share

Competition Analysis

You should not only know who your competitors are, but also their strength and weakness. Make a thorough analysis of all your competitors. Know why customers are choosing a particular competitor over others. Drawbacks of each of them. And compare your product with these. This will not only help you decide if you need to proceed further with the venture or go back to the drawing room, but also helps make projections.

Problem that your product will solve

Every product in the market tries to solve some problem or the other, so should yours. Be clear on what problem you are trying to solve. It can be something which the customers are already facing, or something they will face in the near future. If yours is a value add company i.e your product is not a must for them to have, but help cut costs, improves performance etc.

Need for your product in the market

Find out if there is already a demand for a product such as yours. Sometimes, there might not be any existing demand for your product. In that case, you will have to create the demand. Knowing the demand for your product also helps you to price your product appropriately.

USP (Unique Selling Proposal)

Its good to have something unique about your product, which your competitors cannot easily mimic. Of course this “unique thing” should add value to the product from customers point of view. It can be anything: getting a patent for your product, building a network that helps provide better service, getting exclusive deals etc

Team

This is one of the most important, at the same time, the most ignored section in a Bplan. You might have an ordinary idea, but if the team is good, the chances of it working is more. You might have identified the right market, right product and even got investment, but if the team is not competent, all the effort you have put in goes waste. Have already blogged about choosing the right partner for your venture.

Finance

Finance section of your Bplan must give an idea of

• how much investment is needed
• when you’ll break even

Always put cost on the higher side and sales projection on the lower side. Try to give capital flow(projection) for 2-3 yrs.

You might have to touch upon other things like market acceptance, legalities etc depending on the type of sector you are in.

You can download the presentation here : kick-starting-a-venture.ppt

Hubert Chang claims that as an NYU Ph.D student in 1997 he was introduced to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin by Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani. He claims that he came up with the pagerank concept, developed a part of Business Plan and even the company name - Google!

When asked why he wasnt mentioned on the original Pagerank paper? He says, he chose to pursue his Ph.D instead (Note: Larry and Sergey decided dropped out of college to start Google)

When Google was asked about this, they did not deny nor call him fake. Instead they replied -Though many people were involved with Google in its early days, it has been well-documented over the past decade that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in September 1998.

Google truth, the truth of Google’s birth from googletruth

When starting a company, we take help from numerous people, but cannot call them all as co-founders. Even here, it may be the same case. But here(after seeing google’s reply) looks like Hubert Chang was involved.

Is something fishy here? We may never know. Having seen people who wont acknowledge their co-founders for stupid reasons like “inconvenience to mention”, I wont be surprised if what Hubert Chang says is true and Page/Sergy outright deny it!

Update: Techcrunch followed up on this, click here see the updates

When we hire people, we need to choose those who have the right skills and attitude. Any business, especially a startup, cannot afford to hire someone who does not fit in. It is the team that matters more than the brilliant B-Plan you have. I can go on and on about how important it is to get the right people in, and build the right team.

With resources running low and lot of things to do, it is the belief in the idea/product that can push anyone to give their best. It is very important to see that, the one you hire initially (at-least) understands what you are doing and believe that it can work.

Some of the qualities you must look into when hiring for your startup:

• Required Skill-set
  This is obviously the first thing you need to check - Does he have the required skill-set to do what he is being hired for.
• Proactive
  With resources being scanty, you can’t afford to have someone monitoring each and every employee. They must be proactive and resposible.
• Jack of all
  They must be able flexible and be ready to do whatever is required. As you wont be able to have different people for each and every task, the people on board must be ready to multi-task whenever required.
• Believe in the Product/Idea
  To give 100%, to get those creative juices flowing, to be able to do what it takes, he must believe that your product/idea can work. Without this, he can just be another employee; Not, the employee, you were looking for.

Hire a guy who has a balance of above qualities.

One problem you will face is - You may not be able to afford this guy! There are many ways you can get him on board without spending every last of your penny. Will post on that shortly.

A wrong choice here might prove is fatal. You choose a wrong partner and certainly you are on your way to the doom-land.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is he trust worthy?
• Is he valuable to the company?
• Is he as hardworking as you?
• Is he worthy enough(contribute enough) to own a part of your company?

If the answer to all the above questions is “YES“, then you may proceed. If answer is “NO” to any of the above questions, then it is a strict “NO” for making him/her your partner.

If he is bring in money, contacts and other resources which have value to the company and help it grow. You may consider him after a check on his attitude.

It is better to choose someone who compliments your skill set, than someone who is exactly like you, even though we might be choose the latter. Complimentary skill set goes a long way in helping you concentrate more on your core and directly results in the quality of the output.

One of the common mistake we do when choosing a partner is to choose someone who we think will listen to us and assist us rather than someone who is equal or better than us, maybe because of insecurity. Do not do this.

Think twice before you choose your Boy Friend/ Girl Friend as your partner, unless they have a degree from Standford or Harvard.

Having a backup plan helps you to come out of the situation without hurting yourself too much. Backup plan helps you to be up and running before you loose it all.

First of all, we need to avoid getting into these kind of situations. A proper market research will go a long way. I had stressed how crucial research is in one of my previous posts - “Starting a Business: Research before jumping in“.

Even if you did research thoroughly, sometimes things do go wrong due to various uncertainties.

Always keep a check on activities. If things are not working as expected, make adjustments to the plan and try it out, before thinking of making a radical change. Most of the time this should work.

Many a times we face situation where we have to choose between, high risk-high paying or not so high risk-paying. Have tracking points with the minimum return you expect by that time, evaluate yourself and if things are not working as expected by that time, then think over of making adjustments to your initial plan.

One more advantage of having a backup plan is the thought process that goes to create it itself. It prepares you well for the times ahead.

We tend to get our priorities wrong and spend too much money and time on things like, Big Office space, logo, fancy web template, going for a costly web server, luxury to mention a few. Instead of which, you need to be spending your resources on product development, market research, sales.

Drive your resources on activities/infrastructure which will help your company to go to the next level.

Below is the list of things you can save cash/resources on atleast in the early stage of your startup

• No to costly Logo : Do not spend a zillion dollars and time on choosing your logo, you can always change it when you have resources. An awesome logo with a mediocre product won’t do good in any way
• No to Fancy website design : A simple website will do, don’t spend too much on a web designer.
• No to Big Office space : Even a garage will do for a startup, do not spend on big office space at posh locations. This is totally unnecessary
• No to Hiring accountants/lawyers : Try to outsource your work. Hiring will eat up into your time as well.
• Rent instead of buying : Rent equipment where ever you can. As today’s need might not be of tomorrow’s, spending money on some equipment might turn out to be a total wastage of investment.

Always remember, your product must be your USP, not the website/ office where you sell them.
It is very important to concentrate on product than anything else.

Some of the common expenditures are:

• Man Power
• Equipment/Infrastructure
• Softwares, Hosting
• Marketing and Sales expenditure
• Misc - Stationary, Food/Snacks etc

Above is just the list common expenditures. Depending on your type of business and how you operate you may have to add/remove to the above list.

Even if you think you have taken all expenditures into account, I must stress, there will be some unforeseen expenditure coming your way. It is always a better idea to add buffer money to your budget, so that you won’t have to panic later on.

One mistake, we passionate entrepreneurs do, is to add small expenditures to our personal budget. “Why not? Its our company anyway!” - you might think. This is a very bad attitude and will eat up your savings before you even realise as most of the small expenditures are recurring.

Try to avoid projected sales revenue into the current budget. This is a very dangerous mistake and will prove fatal if the sales doesn’t happen. Do not do this ever, unless you have drained all your other sources and have no other way to go.

Having an idea of how much you need, to get your company up and running must be an integral part of the decision making process. It makes you concious of the monetary condition and prepares you for the times ahead.

By doing ground work you get a clearer picture of the market. You will get to know about:

• Demand in market for your product
• Competitive products in the market
• Market Size
• Helps you know more about your potential customers

Most importantly, you will know if there is a need for your product in the market.

Knowing the above parameters helps you minimize the risk and must be a part of your “Should I, Should I not” decision making process.

So next time you get an idea, instead of straight away jumping into forming a team, company, taking the next BIG step, do market research, and know more about what you are getting into.

One area which requires atmost attention is finance. To keep track of expenditure, payroll etc. Unforeseen expenditure is a common thing in a startup. You will need to keep track of where the money is going and from where the money is coming in a systematic way.

But the money being tight, its difficult for any startup to hire an accountant or buy costly accounting software such as tally.

Most of us resort to excel to maintain cash-flow balance. But this is tedious, and most of time mess it up.

GNU Cash, an open source free accounting software answers all these problems.It has necessary features to solve day to day accounting. Moreover, it is free, easy to learn, easy to use and available for almost all the platforms.

You can download this free accounting software from their website http://www.gnucash.org.

It is pretty well documented and takes an hour or two to learn to use it. And an hour to configure it, based on your usage. It has ready made templates which can be quiet helpful. That is it! You can start using the software to maintain daily expenditure, sales, payroll and other financial details and retrieve the required information with ease.

I am no expert in finance, so don’t know if GNU Cash is enough to maintain records as the company grows, but can definitely be used in a startup and small business organisations.

Some of its features/usage are:-

• Checkbook-Style Register
• Double-Entry bookkeeping
• Scheduled Transactions
• Mortgage & Loan Repayment Druid
• Small Business Accounting Features
• OFX, QIF Import
• HBCI Support (disabled in pre-compiled binaries due to licensing conflicts)[2]
• Transaction-Import Matching Support
• (Limited) Multi-User SQL Support
• Multi-Currency Transaction Handling
• Stock/Mutual Fund Portfolios
• Online Stock & Mutual Fund Quotes

Was the tip helpful? You know/use any other accounting software? Please leave a comment about it.

We tend to get over protective about our ideas and never talk about it. This gives way for ideas to rot and die.

Even logic supports this, we want to discuss the idea with someone who knows more than us, but, as he knows more than us, we think he may copy the idea and execute it faster than us. Correct right? WRONG!

It is very difficult to identify good ideas. Can also go to an extent of saying, “An idea becomes good only after it has tasted success“.

IBM laughed at Wozniak’s computer - The result, Apple was formed and became a household name and a multi billion dollar company

Yahoo and Microsoft laughed at the idea of search engine - The result, Google was formed giving them a run for their money

Do not let your ideas die. If you think that people may laugh at your idea, then it is almost a sure sign of it being a good idea. So don’t hesitate to think further about it, all the more, to talk about it with relevant people.

An idea is just a thought. It no way determines success or a heavy bank account. If your idea is so easy to copy, then probably, it is not worth pursuing or just not yet ready. Say, even if you launch a product, and it is so easy to copy and there a market there for the product, then anyone with more cash than you can easily steal the market away from you in no time. If this is your case, then you will have to consider spending more time on the product, developing the IP and taking the time lead.

Even during this process, continue to talk to a closed group of friends and potential customers about your idea. This not only keeps you going but also gives you valuable feedback and forms a good base of beta testers.

Once you are confident about your position, have built an IP, or have a time lead, then you can more openly discuss the idea with others.

It is important to discuss your idea, and what is as important is with whom you discuss it with. The main factor being trust. Just see to it that you trust the person with whom you are discussing the idea.

Google launched “Google Knol” in an attempt to take on media companies. Wikipedia might be the most hit. In this post, I compare Wikipedia and Google Knol, in more in terms of features than concepts.

1) Wikipedia has one page per topic, whereas knol may have many pages with the same topic

Wikipedia tries to create a one stop destination, trying to showcase the best content on the topic’s page, whereas Google knol there can be many pages with the same topic.

Maybe google heard me when I posted about “everybody reading the same content, which may in turn lead to idiocracy”

2) Wikipedia is neutral, Google Knol is not

Wikipedia takes measures to maintain neutrality of the articles, whereas google knol allows people to promote their business.

Their content policy clearly says - “You may use Knol to create articles for your business or to promote your lawful products or services.”

3) In Wikipedia, world controls, in knol, you control

In Wikipedia, anybody can edit the content. Even though this has its own disadvantages, it takes care that no body controls the information.

In Google Knol, you have an option to invite people to edit your pages, giving you the control. The content can be twisted according to the will of the owner. If say, a page on some medical condition got popular, the owner can change the content to satisfy his sponsors.

4) Google Knol pages can be rated

You can rate the articles on google knol. This feature is more of a necessity than for keeping the visitors active. With Knol allowing pages on the same topic to be published, this feature helps in saving time.

5) Knol gets you pocket money

You have the option to put adsense ads on your Knol pages, which might earn you a few dollars.

6) Wikipedia is open, Knol is not

Wikipedia uses GNU Free Documentation License, whereas Google Knol users can use any of the Creative Commons License.
So next time, you plan to copy the content from Knol for your website, project work etc, you will have to check out their license terms

Found more differences? Please post it in the comments.

Soft Butter - Butter so soft, can cut with paper knife

Western Union

Sugar Free Lollipop

Sunsilk Shampoo - For stronger hair

Save Trees, Trees Save

Have good ads? Post it in the comments

When choosing a web host, you may have to spend some time researching them before putting your foot in there. At the very least you must

• Read reviews about them
• Try to contact someone who knows more about them

The parameters that we need to consider will basically boil down to

• Support
• Performance of the server
• Ease of use

Support

This is one of the most important factor you need to consider. Never neglect this. With server outrage and other all sorts of problems that are quite common, you may have to contact your support for one thing or the other. If they take too much time or uncooperative, there is no point continuing with their service.

To check on support

• Contact the customer support and see how much time they take to respond, typically it should take a few hours for them to reply, and at most 24 hours, if they are taking too much time, you might have to rethink about them.
• Check the quality of reply. Did you get what you want?Was there clarity in their answer? etc

Performance

You don’t want your visitors to close the browser because your website is taking too much time to load. Especially in shared hosting, time outs are pretty common. You need to confirm that your site wont face a similar fate.

To check on performance

• Use services to check the up-time using services like www.site24×7.com. Anything around 97-98% is acceptable depending on the type of website you are hosting, if the server has too much downtime, then it is a strict NO.
• If they give free trial, use it to test the performance. Upload your blog, CMS etc and check the execution time, compare this with standard values and decide on if this is satisfactory
• Find sites which are hosted there and check their performance.

Ease of use

You do not want to spend half the time searching for a button or figuring out how to do.

To check ease of use

• Almost all web hosts have a demo control panel and see if it is easy to use. The standard control panels currently in the market are Cpanel for linux and Plesk for windows environment
• Check If they allow ssh access, there is a bit of learning to do, but once you are familiar, there is no easier and powerful way of controlling your account

In this post, I’ll be talking about how to go about choosing the perfect web hosting for your website/blog.

There are basically two things we need to decide on:

1. What type of web hosting do I choose?
2. Where do I host?

What type of web hosting do I choose?

I have already talked about the different types of web hosting services currently available in the market. If you have already read that post you must have a fairly good idea about what to go for.
Its a common mistake to get overwhelmed by the overselling plans. We prefer going for 5000GB web space at $8/month than 500GB at $7/month(which is still a oversell). Why not you may ask, We are getting an additional 4500GB for just $1 extra. In reality, You may rarely(read never) use at max a few GBs of hosting. In most cases, more content will equate to more traffic and shared hosting CANNOT sustain that much amount of traffic without making your website incredibly slow, resulting in you loosing your audience.

To decide on what type of web hosting to go for, go by what you need than what is being offered

Firstly know your requirement
What you need - the softwares and other tools required
How much you need - the amount of bandwidth, the hard disk requirement, amount of RAM etc

Below is a list of questions which will help you in deciding the features you need to look out for

To decide on Bandwidth Requirement

1. What is the amount of traffic you are getting?
2. How fast is the website growing?
3. Are the web pages heavy?(lots of images, videos and other bandwidth consuming stuff)

Answering the above questions will give you a better idea about your bandwidth requirement. Use the current traffic and page weight data to calculate the current bandwidth requirement. You may have to consider the traffic growth, to ensure that few months down the line your user don’t see a BANDWIDTH EXCEEDED page.

To decide on Hard disk space requirement

1. How much space is the current data occupying?
2. Can users upload data onto the site? If so, maximum how much can they upload? Will the uploaded files be deleted after a certain time period? Are

You can ask yourself questions like these before deciding on each feature.

After making a list of the necessary features you are looking for, you can decide on the type of hosting to go for. The list below briefs about different type of hosting, to know more check part 2

You can choose Shared Hosting
If you are a starter, this is the plan to choose. It is cheap and has enough features to get you going.
If your website is a blog/CMS which doesn’t require any special software, or if doesn’t have heavy traffic

You can choose VPS
If shared hosting is not giving the desired performance
Your website needs special softwares to be installed

You can choose Dedicated Hosting
When even VPS is not giving desired performance, you are in need of more power.

Above gives a very general opinion, each and every case has its own needs and bottle necks. So when deciding on the type of host I suggest you to just refer this post but not come to a decision solely based on this. Doing the activity I have talked about above will give a much better picture about what you need.

As this post turned out to be long, will be blogging about “How to choose a web host?” in my next post

Pepperjam network is the next generation affiliate marketing network that allow Web site/Blog owners to monetize their Web traffic. Pepperjam has advanced tools and helps us choose the type of programs we promote/advertise on our blogs. It has probably the widest range of partners, and you can promote anything from lipsticks to computers.

To get the $10 signup bonus you just need to

• Sign up for the program
• get approved as a new publisher to their network.

After signing up, its even more easy to make cash on.

• We can blog about the favorite feature or about the affiliates that we like and get $10 per post. We can write upto 5 posts per month that makes about $50/month, for just blogging about them.
• You get paid $7 for each referral

Sounds unbelievable right? check out the screen-shot in this post, that shows my $10

One of the best things I liked about this referral program is, the new publisher (you) get $10 only if you go through one of the already existing members(like me). This is a win win referral program. Will blog about different types referral programs shortly. This definitly is in the top.

What are you waiting for? If you have a website or a blog, sign up for pepperjam now! If you don’t have, tell your friends about this and help them make some cash ( don’t forget to make a deal before you tell )

If you blog and is an NITKian, then you can add your blog to NITK Feed. If any of your friends blog, ask them to add their blog to NITK Feed and also let fellow NITKians know about this (google groups, mail, status message etc), even better blog about this and help spread the word and most of all don’t forget to bookmark the site.

.

In this post, I’ll be talking about different types of web hosting available in the market. We will evaluate each of them as we go along. By the end of this post, you will have a fairly better idea on the type of hosting you should choose for your website.

There are different types of web hosting available in the market, which mainly vary on cost, performance and flexibilty. Below is the list of different types of web hosting:

1. Shared Hosting
2. Virtual Private Server(VPS) Hosting
3. Dedicated Hosting
4. Co-location Hosting

Shared Hosting

Shared Hosting is the most economical form of hosting and is the place you should start off with. Here lots of websites share(are hosted on) a single server. There is no allocation of resources done here, so if there is a busy website hosted on the same server as yours, then your site too will be slow. Usually there is no performance guaranteed in this form of hosting, other than up-time, so sometimes, the site may be slow. Shared Hosting packages already comes with a number of features, so you need not worry about installing the server etc, but most of the time(almost all the time), you will have to settle for these features. You wont be able install any specific software on the server. You can host your websites for less than $10/month here.

Advantage
Low cost
Has the basic and necessary softwares already installed
Easy to use, as they come with web interface control panel

Disadvantage
Less Flexible, cannot install additional softwares
Performance not guaranteed

Virtual Private Server(VPS) Hosting

This comes between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, in terms of power, flexibility and cost. When shared hosting is not working out for you, and dedicated host too costly, then VPS is for you. VPS is like dedicated hosting, but on a smaller scale.
In VPS, a server will be hosting a fixed number of websites, and there will be proper allocation of resources for each of them. You will be allotted a fixed amount of RAM for you website, so you are guaranteed of resources and hence performance. You will have a root account using which you will be able to install any software you want. VPS costs varies anything between $20-$100/month

Advantage
Relatively cheaper cost compared to dedicated hosting
Flexible, can install softwares
Performance is better

Disadvantage
Might have to spend time on maintaining the account unlike shared
Technical knowledge required to effectively use VPS
Should take care of security(installing firewalls etc) by ourself
Resources might not be enough

Dedicated Hosting

This is the ultimate form of hosting, where the whole server is hosting your website, and only your website. You have all the 100% resources of the server dedicated to you. You have all the flexibility to install whatever software you need on the server. You can choose the power of the hardware you want for your server. Prices vary between $100-$300/month or might be even more.

Advantage
Same as that of VPS + more power

Disadvantage
Need to spend time on maintaining the account
Need to have technical knowledge to use a dedicated server
Should take care of security(installing firewalls etc) by ourself

Co-location Hosting

Here you can have your server kept at a data center in security cages. They provide for the necessary bandwidth, power and space. You can have your custom built server hosted, without you bothering about the hosting infrastructure.

In my next Post we will evaluate criteria on which you should choose the type of hosting and also, how to choose a ISP to host your site.

I remember the first time I was to host a website, spent hours and hours reading reviews, and scanning through hosting sites and was still confused on which to go for.

In this post, I’ll be introducing you to web hosting, and to better understand web hosting, little theory on it.

What is web hosting?
Web hosting is basically storing your data on computers(read servers), which can be accessed through Internet. The websites you access(Yes, including this), the videos you watch on youtube are all hosted on servers which are connected to the Internet. These servers are capable of running for months together, some, even years, without the need to reboot(the ones that need, use windows, just kidding!). All these servers use a special software called ’server’, which enables us to access them using protocols like HTTP(http://), FTP(ftp://) etc.

If you are planning to have your own website, you will need upload your website into such servers.

How can I host my website?
There are many ways of doing this. You can either rent hosting space from zillions of Internet Service Providers(ISPs) or host it yourself.

If you, yourself plan to host your website, then you will need a server equipped with all these tools, and of course good Internet Connection. It is not often, not worth hosting websites yourself, as it requires too much maintenance, Power backup, data backup, Temperature maintenance etc, hence most of us go in for renting web space. Renting web space is not at all costly, it is very much affordable.

I will be covering this in detail in my next post.

Little theory on how Internet works
The website address that we use, like www.google.com, www.yahoo.com etc are called URL(Universal Resource Locator), and they exist only to facilitate us in remembering their actually address, the IP. When we type a website address(called URL, Uniform Resource Locator) such as www.google.com, this is sent to Domain Name Service Providers to decode it, and retrieve the IP address of the google servers. IP address, is the address given of the computer, which can be used to access it.

Once IP address is retrieved, by our computer, it sends request for the page that we want to access. The server on receiving the request processes it and delivers the appropriate webpage. For the server to process the clients data and deliver the results, it will be equipped with relevant softwares - server, Interpreter/Compiler to process the request etc

Didn’t get it? Don’t worry, you’ll understand once you start hosting your site.

In this 3-part series, I would be sharing information regarding web hosting, which you need to consider when planning your own website. I would be covering

Part 1 - Introduction to web hosting

• Talk about basics of web hosting
• Intro on hosting our own websites
• Little theory on what goes on when we request for a web page, for better understanding of web hosting

Part 2 - Different types of web hosting

• Intro to different types of web hosting
• In depth analysis of each type
• Advantage and disadvantages of each of them

Part 3 - How to choose a web host for your website

• Answers What type of web hosting to go for, and
• Criteria to be considered when choosing a host for your website.

Hope this will be helpful in choosing a web host for your website.

PS: Will be updating the links as and when the articles are posted

We decide on the domain name and when we look for the availability of the domain, to our disappointment, most of the time they are taken,we give up and opt for a ordinary, me too domain name of which, we ourselves might not be happy about. Here are a few tips on how to go about choosing a domain name and avoid mistakes :


1. Brainstorm
Before you start know exactly why you want the domain name for, might be personal blog, business, selling page etc. This gives you a direction on how to proceed.
Make of list of

• Synonyms and Related Words : look for synonyms and related words of the keyword. If say you have a ipod accessories store, you can add ‘Ipod’, ‘Apple’, ‘MP3 Player’ etc to the list
• Phrases : Look for phrases which sends out the meaning, your customers need know of your busniess, of what you are doing. Example: paypal.com, greguide.com. You may also want to choose a phrase which represents your values, quality of service you offer, example, oneminutehowto.com
• Equivalent word in other Languages : Look for equivalent words in other languages, if you are lucky domain name will be available for that word and might also sound good.
• Choose a Nickname : If the website is for personal purpose, choose your nickname as the domain name, even companies like infosys use infy.com
• Choose Short-forms : choose an abbreviated or short form of your company name, example imdb.com(for Internet Movie Database)
• Add something : Sometimes adding a word or two to your keyword, and even repeating the same word can land you a good domain name, example, allmovie.com , boingboing.net
• Add personal touch : As domain name will be invariably associated with your business, especially if yours is C2C or C2B, adding personal touch can play wonders and keep your visitors coming back to your site, example, treehugger.com

2. Things to avoid

• Do not to have numbers, hyphens, as it is difficult to remember and market.
• Check for its meaning in other languages, at least the ones where you plan to do business in the near future and make sure it is not misleading
• Check if it can be misspelled : Check if the domain name can be pronounced in a different way or mispelled, this may lead to hilarious domain names, example: whorepresents.com
• Avoid Descriptive Names: Try to avoid long desciptive domain names, they are usually too long to remember and too long to type. Avoid names like thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com
• Use standard TLDs like .com, .org and you might also want to use .net , avoid TLDs like .info, .org.in etc as they are easy to forgot or get confused.

3. Check for availability

This is something which you need to be careful about. Use a trustworthy whois to check for domain name availabilty as there have been reports saying that even websites like networksolutions.com have defrauded. I would recommend whois.net and betterwhois.com based on my experience to check domain name availability.

Finally, see to it that the domain name has majority, if not all of the following qualities

• short
• memorable
• not easily confused
• hard to misspell
• related to your business

All the best for your domain name purchase!

2 days later I got a mail from a party, they told they were interested in the domain name, and asked me to quote my price.

I was surprised and happy at first, but when I searched for the company name they told they were representing, it was no where to be found! Domain name business company without a domain name! what are the odds?

I continued my conversation, the next mail made everything clear. I was witnessing a Domain name scam! In their mail, they were stressing too much on Domain Name appraisal(domain name company without knowing how to do this?) and that too from a particular company - http://www.easynamesale.com and sent me a link to encourage me to go for appraisal.

Did a bit of research and found this - http://www.google.com/search?q=%22If%2C+for+example%2C+the+valua….

Below are the mails exchanged between myself and the “interested party”

I have censored my email address to prevent spam and the domain name.

From: T N G <tngtech@phreaker.net>
Subject: mydomain.com
To: XXXXX@yahoo.co.in
Date: Friday, 13 June, 2008, 1:56 PM

Greetings!

mydomain.com has been found via online auctions.
Please let us know the your price and we will consider it.
Our company is investing in High Tech and IT projects. Now the domain market is very attractive for us, since every business in the Internet requires a domain.

Looking forward to do business with you.

Regards,
Craig Huffman
Chief Executive Officer
TNG (The Next Generation) Services

—————————————-
From: Prashanth
To: T N G
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 7:47 PM
Subject: Re: mydomain.com

Sir,

Glad to know you are interested in the domain name. I am willing to sell this domain for mid $x,xxx (4 digit).

Please send me your quote.

Thank You

-Prashanth

——————————-
From: T N G <tngtech@phreaker.net>
Subject: Re: mydomain.com
To: “Prashanth” <XXXXX@yahoo.co.in>
Date: Saturday, 14 June, 2008, 11:14 PM



Can you accept 9,000 USD?

Do you sell domain with a web site or just the name?

Domain without content is ok with me. Web site is not necessary.

Have you had your domain names evaluated in the past? I mean domain appraisals.

Without valuation we cannot be sure in the sale price. It’s very important for me in terms of reselling too.

But we must engage a valuation company with REAL manual service. So I will only accept valuations from independent sources I trust.

To avoid mistakes I asked domain experts about reputable appraisal companies.

Please check this posting from archive:
http://domainmarket.007sites.com/Archive/418360.htm (have uploaded a copy here)

If, for example, the valuation comes higher you can adjust your asking price accordingly. It will be fair. I also hope you can give me 12% - 15% discount.

After you send me the valuation via email (usually it takes 1-2 days to obtain it) we’ll continue our negotiations.

What is your preferred payment method: Escrow.com, International wire transfer, PayPal.com or something else?

Hope we can come to an agreement fast.

Looking forward to your reply.

—————————-
From: Prashanth
To: T N G
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: mydomain.com

Yes I can accept 9000 USD, if thats the offer.

I am selling domain name only.

No, I havent had any domain appraisal experience.
The already quoted mid $x,xxx is something what I am comfortable selling it at, If the value is more, well, you are lucky! if you feel its low please let me know your bid.

I am just testing out this selling of domain thingi, if it doesnt work out, planning to use it host my personal blog. So I am not going in for any appraisal.

I would prefer paypal for payment.

Hope we can come to an agreement fast.

Looking forward to your reply.
-Prashanth

——————————-
From: T N G <tngtech@phreaker.net>
Subject: Re: mydomain.com
To: “Prashanth” <XXXXX@yahoo.co.in>
Date: Sunday, 15 June, 2008, 5:46 PM


It’s a standard practice to show independent valuation to buyers/resellers.
Nobody will do business without it. I’m a businessman and have no intention
of changing rules which help both parties to avoid additional risks.

Of course, investors never take into account auto-generated vlauations. So
manual valuation is a “must” too.

I read the following information about appraisals at:
http://domainmarket.007sites.com/Archive/418360.htm (have uploaded a copy here)

Thank you for understanding. I’m looking forward to do business with you.
————————————-
From: Prashanth
To: T N G
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 6:26 PM
Subject: Re: mydomain.com

I am under no pressure to sell the domain, and also if you are serious about buying domains, I guess you would have your own appraisals that you would be referring to. I can offer a $20-$50 discount(the appraisal fees is about $20-$50) if the sale happens. So go ahead, if you were thinking that I would mind you appraising my domain, there is nothing like that, and you have full rights to appraise my domain

Being an entrepreneur, I know a thing or two about business.

Looking forward to your bid.
-Prashanth
————————————

From: “T N G” <tngtech@phreaker.net>
To: “Prashanth” <XXXXX@yahoo.co.in>
Sent: Sunday, 15 June, 2008 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: mydomain.com

Without manual valuation nobody will buy. You’ll sit on your domain for
years in this case, paying renewal fees to your registrar. Just think about
it. So sooner or later, you’ll have to obtain an appraisal. Why waste time
now?

As a seller, you can use a valuation certificate to sell names to other
buyers. I cannot do the same because I don’t keep control over your domain.

I’m still interested in your domain. Hope you’ll change your position. I
simply don’t want to take additional risks.

Thank you for understanding. I’m looking forward to do business with you.

——
I stopped replying (I know, should have continued)

Few tips to the “interested party” :

• Atleast invest on one domain, for the “company” you are representing. It hardly costs anything, atmost $7-10.
• When you point to a forum, see to it that its a forum software, you can use PHPBB, its 100% free. If not, atleast put date and time of the posts on the html file, even the dumbest guy knows that forum posts have dates.
• even if not the above two, atleast have a decent domain appraisal scam website - you get a lot of free web templates now a days.

Found a couple of people who had faced a similar experience (from the same “interested party” maybe)

• http://whall.org/blog/2007/08/29/domain-purchasing-scam-argh/
• http://travisisaacs.com/2007/08/08/on-domain-name-scammers/

Even though we are free of spam, our inbox is almost always flooded with personal mails, subscribed mails - important, not important, academic, entertainment etc. And often we find the inbox filled with a big number of unread mails. Oh ya, we can use filters, but come on, we can’t keep creating filters for each and every website we subscribe to.

And this is where we can use this gmail feature, which I discovered recently.

Say, your address is bill@gmail.com , then bill+anything@gmail.com is an alias of bill@gmail.com , it means that mails sent to bill+gates@gmail.com , bill+clinton@gmail.com, bill+xyz@gmail.com are all delivered to bill@gmail.com.

Combining this feature with Gmail’s filter helps us in organising our mails more effectively, saves time and keeps our inbox clean. Here is how you can do it:

1. Say you are looking for information about blogging. Create a filter beforehand directing mails addressed to username+blogging@gmail.com to skip inbox and add a label - “blogging”
2. Now you can use this mail address - username+blogging@gmail.com to create accounts, subscribe to newsletters etc
3. Similarly, for any other activity, for entertainment, use username+timepass@gmail.com , for academic work, use username+acads@gmail.com etc

By doing so we can subscribe to as many sites we want, without having to create a separate filter for each one of them and still keep the inbox clean. And we need not be afraid to subscribe to services fearing spam.

Oh ya, the only risk is you wont be able to give an excuse that your mail was lost amidst others!