Freelance Consultant's Diary

While we continue to believe that affiliate marketing is an effective marketing channel for businesses, we see the model coming under increasing threat from the rising popularity of contextual advertising. Here are a few trends to note that we have identified in our recent analysis: Google continues to aggressively recruit publishers in its AdSense program. With the availability of the program in many languages/countries, we expect that Google will soon dominate the contextual advertising space. Google has recently announced that bloggers who use Blogger.com can sign up for its AdSense program. While this may not bring many new bloggers (the bloggers that wanted to turn their blogs into revenue-generating enterprises already did so, but that required a proper website), it will definitely bring some new publishers who do not want to deal with the hassles of maintaining a website (Blogger.com, a Google company will do so now) and will motivate those that only blogged as a hobby to blog m...

When we highlighted the growth opportunity for your business by targeting Hispanic youths , a common feedback we heard was, "We don't have a Spanish language website." It is understandable why many companies do not have Spanish language websites or have not yet developed advertising programs specifically designed for Hispanic customers. Below we are discussing three different models that you can use to develop your own advertising program targeted specifically at Hispanics: Joint programs with existing marketers to Hispanics While Wal-Mart already is a popular offline destination for many Hispanic consumers, it still does not have a website in Spanish. The company has recently partnered with TodeBebe, a popular website among Hispanic women for information on pregnancy and babies. TodoBebe will organize fairs in Wal-Mart stores and use its website and mailing list to target these mothers/pregnant women. Develop your own website and direct mail Office Depot was an early mov...

Without argument, when it comes to industrial design, most of us who have engineering backgrounds have admired the design capabilities of the Japanese and the Germans, and not just for industrial products, but for consumer products as well. Let me share my thoughts on a small aspect of industrial design that I learned while working in Japan and how important it is for us to improve our design capabilities as we increasingly try to sell our manufactured products not only in Japan but in the rest of the world. Alex Taylor III, writing in Fortune in an article on Toyota, says, "At Toyota there's constant tension between American executives, who want larger engines and more horsepower to appeal to US customers, and Japanese engineers, who focus on small engines that consume less gasoline. The engineers pride themselves on their efficient use of space and have an inherent aversion to anything that appears wasteful and inefficient." In two sentences, he has summed up the great...

Most of our clients and visitors to our website support our generally restrictive recommendations on outsourcing. We have consistently been less in favor of outsourcing customer service (that is typically a call center, and more often than not, considered as a cost center by most businesses) because we believe that customers are your #1 asset and you don't want to hand over your current or potential customers to someone else who will never appreciate their value the way you do. We typically support outsourcing of only non-core functions that have no direct interaction with the customer. Unfortunately, the issue of outsourcing is never so black and white, particularly when all of your competitors have already outsourced their call centers and you have lost your ability to compete effectively. Here is what a vice president of a marketer of antique watches writes, "We have embraced the Internet but most of our customers tend to be folks who don't surf to find what they want....

The legal definition of bankruptcy can get very complex but according to Peter G. Peterson in his new book Running On Empty : How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It , we are really bankrupt because the NPV of our future liabilities is more than our current net worth. Here is what his analysis shows (based mostly on the data compiled by the Federal Government): In 2000-2001, America had a surplus problem (too high!). Most estimates put our surplus at $5.6 trillion but conservative estimates today project a deficit of $5 trillion over next 10 years. If we continue the current growth in spending on defense and homeland security and implementing other new programs, it could be even higher. We have a serious trade situation. We continue to import more than we export. Here is the balance of payments situation for the US and it is not pretty. Almost all economists are convinced that we will need to borrow heavily to pay for defe...