Mykarma.in

People’s group is going to launch a new website in the realty market. It is slated to be launched in this quarter and going to be aptly named 2bhk.com makaan.com. I got to know about this a long time ago… but forgot..

2bhk makaan is a very good name that Indians can connect to… as usually thats the word which is used to say a house in hindi.

I still don’t know what innovation will it bring in its site to capture the market, maybe it will also start a offline channel to reach the offline indian population something just like what shaadi.com
has – Shaadi point…
Maybe it will be called 2bhk point or something …. There is a lot of activity going on in the online realty sites.. Already there are major players like
1. 99acres.com
2. Indiaproperty.com

3. magicbricks.com who already are advertising a lot to capture the growing market. The stats between these 3 biggies given by alexa (which can be broadly used to measure traffic) is as follows

by the chart we can see that magicbricks had a real rough ride for the past 3 months with its highs and lows which maybe linked to its advertising campaign but just check out Indiaproperty its growing every month and 99acres is quite stable.. so whom do you give the award of being the no.1 ?? Check out the rankings for the past 3 months of these 3 sites.. They are fighting for it….

By the way Something is really wrong with 99acres you can see the ranking stats of alexa with equal ups and downs as if someone is deliberately trying to keep 99acres ranking up…. it seems like every week ending the rank goes down and someone comes back on monday to work and gets the rank up…. (you can play with alexa if you want) So does it show some big hand behind it or just traffic from people who can access it from their offices only…. I mean traffic from professionals ( I need to get a survey done)

You cannot decide that a particular site tops indian market just by alexa so If we get a chance to dig into the number of properties listed and the number of registered users on those sites.. we can atleast measure who’s on top…..(by the way I find Indiaproperty pleasing to the eye) So…. 2bhk makaan is going to come and lets see how far it succeeds in the online real estate market and what its alexa ranks are and then we will have a post regarding who’s no 1 with all the stats I promise….. as for other people’s group ventures like fropper, astrolife, mauj.com and shaaditimes are trying to compete with biggies and have worked…. So you can bet big on 2bhk makaan too….

Are you absolutely beside yourself giddy with delight because Web 2.0 has finally arrived to help you sell more, sell faster, make you richer, smarter, sexier, and lower your triglyceride levels?

Whoops, I’m sorry… do you even know what Web 2.0 is?

Web 2.0, in a nut shell, is the latest evolution in the online experience. The World Wide Web is now… ready… here it is: a tad more interactive, technologically speaking.

Where does Web 1.0 end and Web 2.0 begin? Beats the heck out of me! I’m basically your average techno-phobe the proverbial anti-Geek, if you will.

Nevertheless, Web 2.0 typically refers to an assortment of internet-based communication tools and services such as social networking sites, wikis, and “new and improved” chat functionalities.

Writing a book review on Amazon.com is apparently considered Web 1.0 technology.

I know all of this is a big whoop for some of you, but for others it’s equivalent to the coming of the messiah (for either the first or second time, depending on which operating system you’re laboring under).

Is Web 2.0 a Boon or a Bane for Consumers and Countries?

For most marketers, their company’s website has been a rather static billboard of sorts. But now, thanks to Web 2.0, a website can provide visitors, prospects, customers and selected victims, with a certain degree of “give and take”.

You can talk to them, they can talk to you; you can learn more about them, they can learn more about you; they can “experience” you, you can “experience them” in short, the level of communication through a computer screen has been enhanced.

Some though fear that Web 2.0 will enable online marketers to become even more intrusive and annoying… or liberating. China, Saudi Arabia and other fundamentalist and ideologically illogical regimes could be in for a big-time headache.

Nevertheless, Web 2.0 will eventually give way to Web 2.5, then Web 3.0 and 4.0 and so on, until ultimately, long after we’re all dust, a computer screen will become a real not virtual portal into whatever exists on either side of the screen.

Actually, there probably won’t be a screen anymore; it’ll be more like a turnstile. Yes, the veil will have been lifted. And the tag line, “Reach out and touch someone”, will have reached its fullest potential.

Here’s the Problem…

Nothing has really changed. Web 2.0 will not sell your product or service for you. Web 2.0 will not negate the importance of salesmanship in print, in video, in audio, or any permutation or combination not yet assembled.

All the “old” requirements and admonitions about how to sell, and sell well, are still in full force.

The Top 10 Steps to Sell Your product Even When Using Web 2.0

1. You need to identify a qualified market those who are ravenously hungry for your product or service. Throwing mud on the wall and praying it will stick, won’t work never has, never will.

2. You need a hi-quality product or service that will satisfy your market’s hunger, or fix their pain. No snake-oil scams permitted.

3. You need to know how to grab your market’s attention in a stimulating and compelling way, so they know your product or service exists. Waiting for the telephone to ring is not a marketing strategy.

4. You need to prove your product or service’s value, unequivocally detailing at length why and how your product is worth the price asked. Nothing is obvious when it comes to selling.

5. You need to make an irresistible offer. Why must your target market buy your product or service and buy it now. Not to buy and not to believe is everyone’s natural first choice.

6. You need to remove all risk by offering a solid, confidence-building guarantee. “Trust me” is not a guarantee.

7. You need to anticipate all possible objections, and overcome them. And don’t think for a moment there won’t be any. There will always be objections and concerns especially for a first-to-market product or service.
8. You need to ask for the order! Bashfulness and timidity has no place in sales. Ask, and only then shall you receive. Forget this, and you can forget the sale.
9. You need to clearly explain what your prospect must do, step by step, in order to buy, subscribe or inquire. Lead them to your order page.

10. Take nothing for granted.

Web 2.0 is a tool another road to get you to market. It will not replace salesmanship. It can though make online marketing and sales more effective… if you know what it takes to wrap up a sale in the first place.

- Barry A. Densa is one of America’s top freelance direct response copywriters.

I came across this quality article on feed readers…. What are feed readers and what will suit your need ?

It sheds some light on the feed reader business (web applications) out there.

Feed Readers have many forms: most of them are independent applications, others are just plug-ins and, in some cases, reading feeds is just a feature. Feeds are a natural evolution of newsletters and of the “what’s new” section of a site. Instead of writing a changelog for your site as a static page, you could write it in a feed so that people can subscribe to it and get the latest updates.

Feeds are usually associated with blogs and news sites, but they can be used for many other purposes like delivering search results (Yahoo Search, Google Blog Search), software updates or personalized content. Feed readers treat feeds in many ways:

1. Email messages
Mail clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, Opera M2, but also Yahoo Mail Beta, treat feed items like email messages. The association makes sense if you want to replace newsletters with feeds, but if you subscribe to a lot of feeds, you might spend more time reading them than in a separate feed reader. It’s also impractical to treat feeds like emails because you can’t comment by replying to the post.

2. Instant messages
There are applications like Google Desktop, Anothr for Google Talk that notify you when your favorite feeds are updated. The problem with these updates is that they become annoying, especially if they are very frequent. Instant alerts are useful for breaking news or for really interesting events, not for every new post. Particls tries to solve this problem.

3. Bookmarks
When you subscribe to a feed, you also bookmark it so you can find it later. Firefox lets you subscribe to feeds using live bookmarks: instead of going to the site, you see a list of the most recent headlines. A similar concept was introduced in Google Toolbar: custom buttons. “You can add buttons to your Toolbar that will let you visit and search your favorite websites and keep up with interesting feeds.” This concept works for news sites and if you have a small number of subscriptions.

4. Portals / start pages
Most services that offer personalized homepages let you subscribe to feeds: iGoogle, Netvibes, My Yahoo and others. The advantage is that you can easily have an overview of what’s new for the things that are important to you. But you can’t add too many feeds to a start page or it will become cluttered.

5. Newspapers
Sage, a Firefox extension, uses stylesheets to create virtual newspapers. The effect is impressive and, in many cases, the rendering from Sage looks much better than the site itself. GreatNews also has a nice newspaper view.

6. Social filters
Read feeds filtered by experts, friends, your community or recommended by an application. Google Reader lets you share your favorite posts and someone can subscribe to your feed of shared items: you become a filter in your area of expertise. Yoono provides recommendations from other users with similar interests.

7. River (of news)
All the feeds are merged in a big feed sorted chronologically. You’ll read the most recent posts first, you don’t have to switch from a feed to another feed, the news will be diverse. “Instead of having to hunt for new stories by clicking on the titles of feeds, you just view the page of new stuff and scroll through it. It’s like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by. If you miss one, no big deal. You can even make the river flow backward by moving the scollbar up,” explained Dave Winer. Google Reader has a “river of news” view, available if you go to All Items.

8. Clusters
Connect the related posts into a conversation. There’s an experimental widget from Yahoo, Sharpreader that “detects and shows connections between items if they have the same link, if one item links to another, if two items both link to the same external webpage”, but there’s no feed reader that offers real clustering.

9. Multimedia downloads
Subscribe to podcasts in iTunes, Miro and get all the future episodes automatically. Some BitTorrent clients (uTorrent) also support RSS feeds – the concept is called broadcatching.

10. Radars
“A newsradar is a stream of news items covering a very specific topic. A newsradar is usually created by aggregating together news feeds from a multitude of different sources covering the specific topic selected and adding to the resulting mix content items found through the use of so-called search feeds.” Well, you could just use some clever search feeds from Google Blog Search or Technorati.

How do you look at your feeds and how did you choose a feed reader?

Well I wanted to post an article about it long time ago but didnt feel the need to do so… but now is the time.. !! I am now tired of minglebox employees(with the name of Sushma Abburi, Vice President MingleBox.com ofcourse) spamming my orkut profile… Proof ? Check the scrap I received at 1 am on 6th August..

One of the seasoned spammers of minglebox, spamming me the third time to join minglebox on my orkut scrapbook…..

but but but….

There are two things worth considering

The first one

Minglebox is using orkut to its advantage….. So minglebox accepts Orkut to be better than itself (generally speaking) It considers orkut the best hunting ground for new Indian members. So a social networking site is using other social networking site to get members. We have seen a number of websites turning towards Orkut to get new users for their websites… Scrapping them links with a good message has better click throughs than any other type of ad. Which I have tested and seen myself.

Orkut is the most popular social networking website in India. Many online as well as offline tools eg. adderbot were developed to market services and products on Myspace.com and Myspace staff were busy deleting profiles. I am very much sure Orkut doesnt have a dedicated staff for deleting spam ( I receive a number of spam scraps), so marketing on Orkut may be easier.

Nowadays I can see some job boards offering jobs to users to post advt on orkut and getting paid to the tune of 1 $ per 20 scraps. So Not surprisingly, Indian social networking websites seem to be the first to market their websites on Orkut because of cheap literate labour (people get paid to use orkut sorta). Nowadays anyone providing any online service to Indians has to consider marketing through Orkut because of the young online population orkut commands.

Second one

So this type of spamming is fruitful and more personal as it is for individual users. If you can just see I am an Ex-BMS from Lala Lajpatrai College and I am in a group called Lala lajpatrai so they have created a website called LLRIM.net (btw we use LLIM) which redirects you to http://www.Minglebox.com/LLRIM which is basically a campus group on minglebox. So isnt that good… Creating a number of microsites I mean microdomains to redirect users to minglebox campus groups…. Which does give a personal touch and encourages a user to click on the link provided.. I dont know what would be the conversion ratio.. maybe 10-15% of the clicks may get converted. The reason maybe that after seeing other friends(classmates) from the same campus encourages one to join him in that group, Anyways Humans are social animals.

So back to orkut……

Rochit