Useful Information

Creating really useful and accurate content takes a lot of  time and money.  If the content creators don’t make much money, they will not be able to continue for a long time.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/24/is-the-murdock-bing-deal-really-just-about-the-wall-street-journal

If  one party is at an unfair advantage,  the other party will search and move away as soon as they find a better deal.

There is a big gap in the salaries in urban and rural areas.  In small towns and villages, even today  a salary of  Rs 3000 per month (less than US$60)  is considered adequate for a white collar job.  The cost of living is also lower.

BPO salaries in rural India

If  leads and affiliate sales are a major source of  revenue,  it is important to find reliable businesses/ websites to work with.  Very often, your affiliate commission gets stolen,  if the minimum payout is $25,  you do not have a single conversion for months once you reach $24.  And when you remove the affiliate link from your website, the affiliate manager starts frantically emailing you.

Lead generation is better, you can atleast forward the same lead to another company / competitor and also warn the buyer about the supplier who has cheated you.   An example of what people do when promises are not kept.

http://www.david-carter.com/wp/2009/11/the-real-power-of-domain-development/

A post on the failure of  Indian media companies online.   For any business  to be profitable, the cost of producing content should be less than the revenues.   Unfortunately there are very few reliable means of monetizing  quality content written for the Indian market today.

The other factor is that most internet companies follow the latest trends  in USA and do not do enough market research of the local market.   Verisign is advertising .com extensively to increase the marketshare, but India remains a very low tech country. I continue to be amazed that many of the tech gurus and internet “experts” (some of whom have newspaper columns), continue to use a wordpress or blogspot subdomain, which can be deleted any time.    From fairly reliable sources, approximately  twenty percent or less SMEs with a website and domain name registration, actually pay for the domain name online, others prefer offline methods.  If  you do not understand your customer and his or her needs well, how  will you make money online?