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Table of Contents
Building businesses on top of businesses -- the AuctionRover example by Richard Seltzer
Sales channels and the Web by Richard Seltzer
Internet lessons from London by Richard Seltzer
Thoughts about 3D on the Web by Richard Seltzer
Letters to the editor: Using the Internet to dialog with voters by Alfred Thompson
New electronic texts: from Gutenberg
I have fun and make some money selling junk from my attic at eBay and other auction sites. In the past, it was a bit difficult to run more than a couple dozen such auctions at once -- both because the recordkeeping became very time-consuming for these low-priced items, and also because of weaknesses in the ways auction sites were set up.
In particular, at eBay, you have no real control over the time of day that your auction will end. Yes, you can have your auction last 3 days or 5 days or 7 days, but whatever the time of day when you post your auction is the time of day when it will end. So if you only find the time to do this kind of thing in the wee hours of the morning, that's when your auction will end -- even though you'd love it to end on Sunday afternoon or a weekday at about 8 or 9 PM -- at a time when many people who might be interested in your item would be likely to be online and might want to dive in and get caught up in the last minute frenzy and make wonderful, irrationally high bids. And even if you can free yourself up to post auctions at the right hour of the day, doing so takes a finite time, so while you may have posted the first one at a good hour, by the time you get around to posting number 24, prime time may have past.
So I was delighted to discover that there's an auction support site, named AuctionRover.com, that has a free service known as Auction Manager that allows me to go through all the steps of creating auctions for any of the three main sites -- eBay, Amazon.com, or Yahoo -- and then schedule the day and the exact time of day when I'd like any or all of these auctions to actually be posted.
This same Auction Manager also makes it easier for me to set up my auctions, using a function that they call "inventory" which basically saves the description and settings for categories of auctions that I do often (like comic books or Davy Crockett cards), so I can create a new specific one with just a few edits. They also host my photos in a way that is easy for me to upload and easy for me to keep track of, and that serves up these photos far faster than Xoom, which is where I used to post them.
Auction Manager lets me see a display of all my auctions at all three major auction sites -- with the latest bid, the number of bids, even the number of hits (based on counters that I can add to any or all of my auctions with a single click), as well as how long is left until each of these auctions ends. And when auctions close, I get a display that helps guide me through all the followup steps of contacting the winner and receiving payment and sending the goods. I can even submit feedback on the winners with a simple click. I can set up standard emails to be sent to winners automatically. And when I am done, I can archive my closed auctions for future reference.
Thanks to this service, I can now handle about two or three times as many simultaneous auctions as before, reducing the time I spend on tedious tasks.
A few years ago, it looked like there was a gold rush on the Web -- with companies scrambling to lay claim to what seemed to be a limited number of niche markets. There would only be room for one or two or three players in each niche, and the ones who got there first would have an enormous advantage.
But the business environment of the Web keeps surprising us, with the creation of ever new opportunities. Here we have AuctionRover building a very useful and successful business on top of another set of successful businesses. Yes, eBay got there first with online auctions and became a mammoth success, which many other companies tried to imitate, without ever displacing them. But along comes an AuctionRover and builds a service that instead of competing with eBay, rides on top of it and its competitors -- a meta-auction site.
Similarly we saw meta-search engines come along to aggregate information from many different search engines. And we saw shopping bots or price comparison services rising to help make sense of the immense number of online stores. Success attracts enormous numbers of users and also many competitors with incremental improvements, which adds new complexity and creates problems which open opportunities for new meta businesses.
So rather than all the viable Internet niches being taken, and the gold rush ending; we see wave after wave of opportunity, as creative people keep come up with entirely new business models, over and over again. Don't you just love the Web?
(The following article is based on a chat session held March 30, 2000. For the edited transcript of that and other sessions, see www.samizdat.com/chat.html)
The Web is a new way of connecting people to people. It fundamentally changes relationships between companies and their customers and between companies and the indirect channels they use to work with their customers.
Indirect channels include distributors and sales reps and brokers and value-added resellers, as well as physical stores and even Web-based affiliate programs. The problem arises in computer manufacturing and also in the automotive business and insurance and stock sales -- many very diverse industries.
Even before the Web, the relationship between companies and their sales channels was often adversarial. Companies were reluctant to "give" their distributors and reps their margin, and the channels often distrusted the manufacturers, always expecting to be cut out of the loop. On the one hand, the Web adds to that distrust, by making it far easier to sell direct and eliminate the channel.
But the Web also makes it possible to deal with customers and partners in flexible and creative ways, setting up new processes and making changes quickly based on feedback.
The Web makes it far easier and less expensive to communicate and to provide detailed information and to personalize it for particular visitors or classes of visitors, to connect people who have questions with experts who have answers and to allow knowledgeable customers to interact with one another -- all of which can help build relationships with customers.
The main challenge seems to be deciding what your goal is.
Should companies be looking for ways to sell directly? Or should they steer clear of that to avoid alienating the channel?
Should companies be trying to come up with creative ways to better know and build relationships with customers? Or once again, would that risk alienating the channel?
So many people have stakes in the old ways of doing things, is it possible to consider this question from the point of view of what would work best now for all parties?
What should be the role of the distributor?
Who should own the customer relationship?
Can resellers overcome their reluctance to share customer information with manufacturers?
Can a manufacturer share the information it gains from end users with its channels in ways that speed the sales cycle?
My personal bias is to see the Web not as a way to reduce selling costs, but rather as an opportunity to build relationships with customers. I'd be inclined to set up operations that were people-intensive rather than automated, encouraging more, not less dialogue with end users and bringing partners/channels into that dialogue whenever appropriate.
In the past, if you sold through channels, that meant that you abandoned the customer relationship. Often you didnt even know who the customer was, except by roundabout tricks, like warrantee registration. It feels like the Internet makes it possible to both sell through channels and build relationships with the end user customers.
Bob Zwick asked, "Do companies really want to build a relationship with end users or do they want to outsouce "hand holding" to the channels?"
Jay Owen replied, "I think what companies need and what they think they want are different. They really need to understand their end users and have an informed relationship and the channel needs to provide individualized service appropriate to the offering.
My own take is that in the past the handholding has been outsourced to channels/brokers. But that entails enormous risks. Your reseller is also (often) your competitor's reseller, and the customer's loyalty tends to be with the reseller, not with you. I believe that the Web opens opportunities for companies, in all industries, to once again build direct relationships with end users, which can become an important and enduring asset.
Mark Gaydos countered that partners provide true value. They enable people to differentiate their solution offerings. The key with the Internet is to allow everyone to provide "their" distinctive value, instead of trying to cut them out. Direct interaction is not going to take over. Otherwise, you will find yourself in huge netmarketplace competing only on price.
But I contend that the manufacturer making direct contact with customers does not necessarily cut partners out and can in fact add value for partners. Imagine setting up an environment where a customer is automatically recognized as "belonging" to a particular reseller whenever he connects to your site. Hence the look and feel of the pages and the information presented directly relates to that reseller's offerings/services/pricing.
Everything helps promote the partner's business, but you are getting great info about what the customers are really interested in; and the customer is getting used to going to your site as the source of great information and answers.
Neal Lightfeldt objected that distributors and reps will resist any attempts to gain access to customer information. It is really the main asset they hold in their relationship with suppliers.
I contend that you need to provide value to your resellers through your Web site. That can be by way of customer referrals, by way of providing good and fast answers to questions that it would be difficult or time-consuming for the reseller to answer. Don't cut the channel out. But clearly focus on building direct relationships with customers as your number one goal. If you don't, your competitor will, and your former customers will be asking "your" resellers for that competitors' products instead of yours.
But Mark Gaydos contended that most companies don't want a relationship with the customer. They developed parnterships because they couldn't handle one-to-one issues. This still remains true on the Internet.
As Bob Zwick put it, the channel is actually an extension of the company and the one-on-one is transfered to them. That's why there are cerifications and quotas required to maintain channel status. Large companies have to concentrate their resources on producing high quality products. Smaller companies would benefit fron close relationships only until their sales greww too large to justify the expense of one-on-one.
But I believe that one-to-one relationships with customers are where the future lies. I believe that quick, effective, inexpensive Internet-based communication, and taking full advantage of partners and knowledgeable customers as your allies in this endeavor makes such relationship building possible today.
This week I flew to London and back just to talk for 15 minutes. AltaVista wanted me to represent them in a panel discussion at an Internet Librarian conference. I flew in on Tuesday night, spoke on Wednesday, and flew out on Thursday morning.
So what, if anything did I learn from this?
The last time I had been in London was two and a half years ago. Back then, one of the frustrating challenges of doing global business over the Internet was the slowness of connections across the oceans. We might be able to get reasonably good performance within a country or within a continent, but because of a combination of capacity and demand, connections across the Atlantic and the Pacific tended to be frustratingly slow. Yes, dialing the right numbers with my laptop from the hotel, I was able to telnet to my ISP (Acunet) in Marlboro, Mass., and read my email. But it was like trying to talk by radio to someone on Mars. And when I tried to connect to Web pages live for business presentations, there was always an uncomfortable delay, and sometimes the connection would time out. Soon after that, when someone from Lovely.net offered to set up a free mirror of my site in London, I jumped at the chance. That meant that people in Europe would be able to access my Web pages far more easily than in the past.
This time around, the Internet was everywhere and trans-atlantic connections were ridiculously fast. From public systems at the conference, I could telnet to Acunet with excellent response time -- it actually seemed faster than when I do it from home in Boston over DSL. And when doing my little 15-minute presentation, the live connection to Web sites in the US provided performance comparable to getting cached pages from my hard drive. Now I really wonder why I have that mirror site in London -- except as backup in case of disaster.
A couple years ago, Europe was lagging far behind the US in adoption of the Internet, due in large part to pricing. People in Europe typically pay by the minute for ordinary local phone calls, which could make connecting by modem quite expensive, even if the Internet service provider charged a low flat rate. But today, public systems were available everywhere for everyone, not just at the conference, but also at the hotel where I was staying and at cybercafes. The hotel had numerous email kiosks -- both free with awkward touch screen and for a fee with keyboard. The cybercafes typically charged a pound for access, with the length of time you bought for that varying depending on how busy they happened to be. And it looked like they were very busy often. The URLs on billboards, signs, and television advertising indicated that Internet use is common and pervasive.
Also, the conference itself was for Internet Librarians. That's a job category that didn't exist a few years ago, and now hundreds of these people not just from the UK and western Europe, but also from places like Russia and Nigeria, flock to such an event to keep up on technology and techniques that will help them in their profession. These are research specialists, some serving public audiences and some serving corporations with large intranets. Their customers tend to be Internet savvy, and able to find lots of information on their own, but need assistance with more complex searches.
In other words, the attendees were all Internet experts, as were the speakers and the exhibitors. But the entire event was face-to-face, entailing significant travel costs. (I wasn't the only one who dashed across the Atlantic just to deliver one short presentation.)
So while much has changed, and Europe -- at least London -- is now very well connected to the Internet, people haven't changed. Regardless of how well equipped and connected and Internet knowledgeable they may be, people still don't seem inclined to use the Internet itself for meetings -- despite the obvious benefits of cost and time savings.
Ironically, newbies might be more inclined to try live video and audio because of its novelty. But, for now at least, among Internet pros, face-to-face still wins for meetings, and it's hard to imagine what might change that in the near future.
I'm a text bigot. I love text on the Web and tend to downplay the role of graphics and fancy effects. But that is largely due to the limitations of bandwidth and processing speed. It is a practical consideration, trying to focus on what matters most to the visitor.
But when high bandwidth and high processing speed become commonplace (and that's coming quickly now), the equation changes. I'm curious about new business models that could take advantage not just of canned or streaming video, but of 3D effects, providing a very different Web browsing experience.
Where do we stand today? Is anyone making good effective business use of 3D graphics on the Web? Or is it still a curiosity? Is the virtual world experience significantly different than the typical flat view, and if so, what are the implications? Beyond the obvious 3D views of products like houses and cars, can avatars play a business role? And has anyone succeeded in making avatars interact with one another, in real time, in ways that might be useful for business?
Since the Web started there have been a number of experimental virtual world sites. But they all seem to have been just curiosities, with no real interactivity, and no clear business purpose. It seems that with high bandwidth and high processing speed some very interesting things may now be possible.
It was a posting of Mark Neely (from Sidney Australia) in the I-Sales Digest that started me down this path.
Mark, in his posting, was dreaming of an online experience that is very close to the face-to-face shopping experience. While I'm very curious about and interested in the possibilities of 3D, that wouldn't be my objective. Rather I'd be looking for creative ways to use 3D that move away from and are more entertaining/useful/fulfilling than the real world experience. Actually, if I were starting a company to work in that area, I would first hire blind programmers. I would want their input, their perspective, their unique ways of conveying experience -- I would want to create a multi-dimensional experience that wasn't just spatial.
The most common 3D-like experiences on the Web today are in real estate for virtual tours of buildings. As Ron Rothenberg noted, they aren't terribly useful yet, but "they are very showy."
He pointed out that one service bureau conquered the Canadian market by linking up with a homewatchers service -- a nationwide network of people who walk you dog and watch your house when you're not there, etc. For 99 Canadian dollars, they will film any house, and have a 3d virtual tour online in 3 days. As Ron says, "3d has a wow factor that 2d lacks." But even at that price, it's not exactly a booming success.
I wonder -- what's the quality? what's the experience? and what's the objective? Is it just "wow"? Is it just an attempt to replicate a walk through? Or can you perhaps show more/show better than a typical walk through?
I could imagine a 3D presentation that allows the potential buyer to change the color of the paint or the wall paper or to move furniture around, or see what other furniture would look like there -- to experiment with the kinds of modifications that they are interested in making. I'd think that could be much more valuable than a physical walk through.
The business model of a security company creating the 3D videos that are then used for selling real estate is intriguing. I can imagine some interesting twists on that. For instance, consider high-priced luxury cars. Insurance companies might well want a complete 3D view of the vehicle as a reference point for future claims. And that same 3D view could be used in trying to resell the car.
One chat participant speculated about whether 3D might be useful for auctions, perhaps attracting more buyers.
But Bob Zwick noted, "Before I'd use 3D there would have to be a reason that 2D wouldn't work. Can anyone give an example where a product or service could not be sold in 2D? Repair services is one area where a 3D model of a mechanical assembly might be required. Medical procedures also might require 3D imaging. Why would a shopping mall or store need to be 3D?"
What is your take on 3D for business? What sites seem to be good examples of what is possible? Do you know of any interesting sites or projects-in-the-works that combine interactive 3D effects and real business objectives?
Take a look at www.campbell.org/ especially www.campbell.org/townhall/index.cfm
Tom Campbell is a republican running for Senate from California. He has a "town meeting" page when people ask questions. A random process picks 5 a day that he answers by himself. I saw this on TV and checked it out. It looks like what we talked about some weeks ago. (www.samizdat.com/news35.html#alfred and www.samizdat.com/news33.html#litmus)
I think that maybe this can work if you have a computer savvy candidate who is willing to go out and actually talk to people online. I am not sure how it will scale though. It looks like as "just" a congressman he was able to answer all the questions but as a Senate candidate there are just too many. But if lots of congresscritters did this things would get passed on to Senators and nationally elected officials.
Regards, Alfred, www.ACThompson.net/
Adding dozens of new titles every month, Gutenberg has already made about 2500 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those recently added, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Many of these are also available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html or send your email request to seltzer@samizdat.com)
Alfred Russel Wallace -- The Malay Archipelago (1malay10.txt)
Bertrand Russell -- The Analysis of Mind (anlmd10.txt)
Amelia Gere Mason -- The Women of the French Salons (frsal10.txt)
J.W. Goethe -- The Sorrows of Young Werther (English trans.) (sywer10.txt)
Charles Johnston -- The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (patan10.txt)
Jerome K. Jerome -- John Ingerfield etc (jhnng10.txt)
Elizabeth Gaskell --
Bram Stoker -- The Man (thman10.txt)
David Livingstone -- Zambesi Expedition (zambs10.txt)
Ross -- History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (impjn10.txt)
Alexander McClure -- Lincoln's Yarns and Stories (lioys10.txt)
Sir Walter Scott -- Redgauntlet (redg10.txt)
Mrs. E. Prentiss -- Stepping Heavenward (stphw10.txt)
Samuel Butler -- God the Known and God the Unknown (godku10.txt)
Jack London -- The Cruise of the Snark (crsnk10.txt)
Thackeray -- The History of Henry Esmond (hnrye10.txt)
B.H. Chamberlain -- The Invention of a New Religion (invnr10.txt)
J.F. Bone -- The Lani People (lani10.txt)
Bret Harte --
Charlotte M. Younge -- The Heir of Redclyffe (redcl10.txt)
H.H. Bancroft -- Some Cities & San Fran. & Resurgam (sfres10.txt)
Myths and Legends of Calif. and the Old Southwest (mlcal10.txt)
Rabindranath Tagore -- Chitra, a Play in One Act (chitr10.txt)
E.P. Roe -- A Face Illumined (aface10.txt)
Henry Drummond -- Addresses (addre10.txt)
Charles Reade -- Put Yourself in His Place (phyip10.txt)
Mary Russell Mitford -- Our Village (vllg10.txt)
W.T. Kane -- The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka (stani10.txt)
Thornton W. Burgess -- Adventures of Paddy the Beaver (paddy10.txt)
Maurice Baring -- Orpheus in Mayfair & Other Stories (orphe10.txt)
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick -- Love or Fame; et. al. (lvrfm10.txt)
Henry James -- Eugene Pickering (eugpk10.txt)
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