I was discussing trade and community, and our approach to this and Internet cities, on a discussion list and was asked the questions below. I will take out names and references from the email as I was not able to get in touch with the the other member for to release this publicly. I think you will find though that it is worth reading as it illustrates the possible blindness to common Offline trade and Online trade similarities.
Email from the discussion group member:
Hi Alec
I have just recently taken the step from working in a big international telecommunications firm in the IT department on a collection of applications, into the world of Media. I read your comments in the Yahoo! ONLINE-ADS digest today and decided to have a look at what www.glopro.com was... I was interested to see you talk about "trade" and "community" as two separate ideals. You furthermore mentioned that GloPro aims at strengthening "community and trade around the world".
What about "community trade" as a combined phrase?
Do you know much about Switzerland and the systems used there?
Do you know much about the trends going on here as far as "community trade", or "community" and/or "trade" is concerned?
What do you personally feel about the future of "online advertising"?
The reason why I am asking you these questions, is because the most logical step for me in my career is to combine the IT and the Media to get something along the lines of "online advertising". Since the USA and UK seem to be setting the trends in many ways as far as these electronic enterprises are concerned, I would be interested to know your point of view on this matter and how it would affect a country like Switzerland!
Thanks for your reply.
S. R.
Email reply from me:
Dear S.R.,
I am flattered that you have asked my opinion, and thank you very much.
One thing you may have read on our sites and not quite picked up on is that GloPro was made up from the words 'global' 'products' three and a half years ago, by myself and my colleague and business partner. Hence... we are always loathed to talk about one location at a time, the Internet MUST be accepted as Global... before you can go on to use it at its best.
Online advertising is obviously the goal for many people... unfortunately with the Internet as it is today, a very plastic and false economy, basing all its growth and prospects of growth on promises by a few "conmen", very few have this chance to monopolize on it.
What I mean is, the people who got in at the beginning, offering promises of million dollar rewards to every Net investor, are still there, and are still being seen as the gurus, knowing all... and will continue to be followed by the 50,000 new users per day.
Hence, you have to be able to beat these people at their game and find a way to grab those 50,000 newbies. My philosophy is solid products, real companies and hard work, will get results that will stay.
If you can understand that "without trade there is no community, and without community there is no trade". I'll try to be brief. In the 'OLD West'... of the United States of America, pioneers would go West with a bit of gear but a big idea; they might find a river and a good bit of land, this was enough to live. Then came another pioneer, camping and settling down10 miles up the river, and another 10 miles down the river, etc.
After a while there were maybe 20 in this COMMUNITY (in the local vicinity), enough for a general store, small yes... but TRADE; because of this more people came as there was now a store for the less hardy, OR the "further away". The community grows. This leads to the existence of another store owner, a barber, a saloon, a church, a school, ladies shops, a livery, a railway station, the Community now grows.... I don't have to go on! There you have it... the USA can understand 'pioneering'.. as they have done it before.
Glopro can strengthen this by analysing what people want and need and, as it has done since it started, provide a solution. We have built contact, promotion and research software; a search engine for the average persons site; a Review site; Chat facility free in three lines of code for the site owner; started partnerships, found sponsors, traded with products NOT money, spun off waste products that our web host clients call 'services' (like Microsoft did); we have even designed and built a website for MSoft in Washington, after meeting them by chance, they took out a web hosting account with us.... Microsoft!!
This is called "facilitating Trade", our simple philosophy. It works!
What about "community trade" as a combined phrase?
What IS community trade? Trade in the community.... TRADE! Simplistic approach.
Do you know much about Switzerland and the systems used there?
Don't have to... there are no countries on the Internet, as we have found with our exploits into India, and Asia, UK, US, Brazil, Middle East, Israel, Europe, Russia, Turkey..... its endless. We have a real estate site that acquired 13.8 billion dollars worth of properties in three months... unfortunately no commission... BUT that was never our intent.... we built and promoted a COMMUNITY for REAL ESTATE, realtors, property owners, service providers, etc.... ONLY real estate related; a Gold Club, Realtor List, Merchant Services List, Properties, a Search facility able to be copied and transferred to YOUR own site... hence BRANDING for us... brought people back to our database!!
Do you know much about the trends going on here as far as "community trade", or "community" and/or "trade" is concerned?
YOU are there... just walk down the road to the supermarket... they have done this all before... take a GOOD look at what they are doing. Give you three examples: ONE, a shop front (Net website front page, with the facility to design it yourself direct from the BROWSER...no software); TWO, backend (Offline accounts, delivery regimes, contacts, diaries, calendars, staff BBS, client feedback, etc... all these are done via the browser too); THREE, Staff/client interaction, ("can I take your order please?", can I help you, can I order it in for you, would you like me to put you on my mailing list??? All done by BBS, and instant Messager chat). Now...you tell me?
BTW: this is our latest venture - "net cities" - the new face of the Net, "community" and "trade" side by side.... we are ahead by two years, don't ask me how that is... I have to keep SOME secrets. Look through stats sites! We will be releasing this this month - Feb 2001.
What do you personally feel about the future of "online advertising"?
It will keep on changing, and the only way to keep up is by having an ear among the users. This we have done, we are heavy into Ezine writing, articles... we have 4 writers whose job it is to WRITE about anything and everything... look at the discussions lists, comment on opinions and THAT is a possible article.... THIS is an article of which I will tidy up, later and post to all the Ezines and directories and article submission sites and even make into a web page and submit it to all the search engines and links pages..... ONLINE advertising is now fast becoming a dirty word... because Media has done it again... no self control, used every bit of net real estate to splash it on.... hence people are becoming de-sensitized at the least, and overloaded at the worst....
Bringing us right back to the original starters of the Internet craze, they are so worried about the losses in advertising income that their answer is to saturate it more.... where as... less advertising (like weeds) would give the chance for the garden to grow back to its glory again. (Sounds like that Peter Sellers movie!).
What I would suggest is to get a free software called Copernic it is a search engine user.... at www.copernic.com Use this to look up 'Internet Stats' or 'web stats', it is a great software to keep on hand for other projects.. as it retains search results. Get this and search out stats... you will be horrified to know that ONLY 6.1% of the worlds population have web access, and only 4.1% use it to browse, and only 0.16 of the worlds population understand what WE are talking about!! SO... conclusions... why advertise online when they generally know it all already, it costs too much offline to advertise the Net...as Yahoo and AOL have found....
There is 2% of the worlds pop. that are connected but not browsing...emails etc....
And 5.84% of the worlds pop. that are on line and know enough to use discussions lists, newsgroups, Ezines, NOT technical!!, looking to possibly make the net their new social home.
Conclusion: the WRITTEN word is the best form of ONLINE advertising today. Get the word out... JUST text... leave the ads at home... or incorporate them into the articles cleverly.... look at our Ezine: AllnetPromotion News - http://www.gblast.com/mnews/mnews7.htm simple... but HIGHLY effective...our stats have increased 4 to 5 times..... nothing special.... built HONEST, USEFUL information...not the kind ANY big newspaper hammers out that matches all the other papers.
To pinpoint Switzerland.... find out who they are... what they have done in their past... what type of people are they? Then build something THEY want...not what YOU think they want.... Is trade ONLY "time pieces" or are there other things that they do, what is the community based on? How and where do they shop and why? You don't have to have the world best website... nor worlds most interactive... remember ONLY 0.16% of the WORLD has the patience to USE Internet Technical wizardry. So keep it simple and local.
Hope this has helped... long winded I know... but it is a passionate subject for us at GloPro and trying to condense the Net in a few statements is not possible.
Keep in touch.
Alec Ellis
GloPro - http://www.glopro.com
AllnetCities News - http://www.allnetcities.com
AllnetPromotion News - http://www.gblast.com/mnews/mnews7.htm
About the Author
M6.net
http://www.m6.net
M6.net is your No.1 provider of multiple website web hosting for Windows
2000. The lowest priced web hosting accounts with multiple websites and
multiple SQL Server databases per web account makes M6.net unbeatable value for your web hosting needs - save $100's of per month. Unbeatable prices, fantastic service and powerful features make M6.net first in web
hosting.