Web Business Bootcamp: Hands-on Internet Lessons for Manager, Entrepreneurs, and Professionals

By Richard Seltzer

First published in 2002.The specific examples are dated, because business on the Internet changes rapidly.But the underlying principles and lessons hold true."You're in basic training for the battle of your life. Your mission is to keep your company alive and to help it move forward quickly in unfamiliar territory.You must master the tools and techniques needed to serve customers and beat the competition into he strange and potentially hostile online business environment. This no-nonsense, tip-driven guide targets key activities that anyone can perform to truly achieve online business success.Internet marketing pioneer Richard Seltzer gets managers out of the boardroom and into the trenches for crucial hands-on Web experience -- which provides insight into how to win on the e-commerce battlefield.He also helps entrepreneurs develop a viable business model without depending on high-priced design services and consultants, as well as gives technology-oriented professionals a broad business perspective for tackling new online responsibilities."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455396122

Book preview

WEB BUSINESS BOOTCAMP BY RICHARD SELTZER

HANDS-ON INTERNET LESSONS FOR MANAGERS, ENTREPRENEURS, AND PROFESSIONALS LOOKING FOR ONLINE BUSINESS SUCCESS

Copyright 2002 by Richard Seltzer

Originally published by Wiley. The rights have reverted to the author.

Published by Seltzer Books

established in 1974, as B&R Samizdat Express

offering over 14,000 books

feedback welcome: [e-mail]

Books by the Richard Seltzer available from Seltzer Books

The Name of Hero

Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes (translation from the Russian)

The Lizard of Oz

Now and Then and Other Tales from Ome

Saint Smith and Other Stories

The Gentle Inquisitor and Other Stories

Echoes from the Attic (with Ethel Kaiden)

Web Business Bootcamp (2002)

The Social Web (1998)

The Way of the Web (1995)

Heel, Hitler and Other Plays

Dryden's Exemplary Drama and Other Essays

A Glimpse of the Future

Preface

Chapter 1 -- Welcome to the land of the free

Chapter 2 -- The value of anonymity: privacy and masquerade

Chapter 3 -- Make your own Web pages on your PC

Chapter 4 -- Assemble your pages to form a Web site

Chapter 5 -- Let people know that you're there

Chapter 6 -- How to improve your Web site

Chapter 7 -- Building your audience with online interaction

Chapter 8 -- Building relationships with customers: what you can learn from selling at auctions

Chapter 9 -- What to do with an audience and what else to do with your content

Chapter 10 -- Going global

Chapter 11 -- Experimenting with futures

Chapter 12 -- The future of business on the Internet

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A Glimpse of the Future

From Georgia to Palo Alto,

from Oslo to Singapore,

from the Vatican Library to dinosaurs in Hawaii,

from Talk Radio to missing children,

from Bio-Informatics to the World Bank,

from Wired Magazine to Mother Jones,

from current weather maps to the latest supreme court decisions,

a vast array of information is being made available in attractive,

easy to use form, and for free over the Internet.

A global electronic mall is under construction.

People congregate here, interact here, find the information they want here.

And here, too, they are beginning to conduct business.

Here the smallest of companies can search and shop on a global scale

for the best resources and products at the best prices.

Here those same small companies can market their own abilities and

products in a global marketplace.

This means a new array of risks and opportunities.

In the future, you will be forced to compete with distant companies you never encountered before,

and you will be able to expand to new markets at low cost.

Here new business models will evolve quickly, with new kinds of partnership and collaboration,

new ways of working together and serving customers

and making money.

-- Richard Seltzer, from the script for videotape A Glimpse of the Future, January 1994

___________________________

Preface

Why you need hands-on experience and how to use this book

 If you are a manager, entrepreneur, or independent professional, you need to learn how to cope in the post-apocalypse Internet business environment, after banner advertising failed as a business model, dot-com stock prices plummeted, and venture capital became scarce. In this environment even the largest companies cannot afford to squander their resources. Customers and revenue and profit matter. Common-sense business logic prevails. And you need to quickly learn how to do as much as you can for the least cost.

 You need to step out of the board room and get your hands dirty. You need to experience the Internet business environment first-hand to appreciate the challenges and recognize the opportunities, to see new ways to save money and to make money. You need to understand how Web page design affects traffic and marketing. And you need the insight and confidence that can come from hands-on experience so you can tell technical experts what you want and why.

 Also, no matter how good your basic business idea and how great your long-term prospects, you need to be prepared to go into hibernation if venture capital is unavailable or your key customers run out of cash. Could you keep your current Web site or a new scaled-down version going with a skeleton crew or even just yourself? Could you continue to look like a going operation while you wait for the market to turn and investors and customers to come back? Or perhaps until you find a buyer for the entire business? You might be able to use that hibernation time to find your Internet roots and craft a new beginning for your Web-based business.

 And if you are between jobs or getting the entrepreneurial itch for the first time, this same bootcamp training can help you get off to a good start, with a viable business model, and practices that take full advantage of the power and flexibility of the Internet environment, freeing you from dependence on high-priced design services and consultants.

 Also, if you are a technical person rather than a manager, and have business ambitions or new business responsibilities, you may need to supplement what you know already with the broad business perspective you can get from this book.

 This book does not attempt to cover the entire field of ecommerce. Rather it focuses on activities that ordinary people can easily do themselves, that are interrelated, that are key to business success, and that entrepreneurs and ecommerce managers typically delegate to experts, without knowing enough to properly set goals, coordinate activities, and monitor progress.

 It does not attempt to give a broad overview of all of the alternatives -- there are books already that go into each specialty in great detail. Rather, it gives you step-by-step instructions to get you started with one or two products or services in each area, enough for you to get the experience you need for insight into important aspects of business on the Internet.

 The activities described in this book require no technical knowledge, and cost little or nothing (so long as you have a computer and can connect to the Internet).

 Each chapter includes one or more required assignments -- tasks you need to perform to prepare you for other tasks in later chapters. You'll also see suggestions for elective activities to expand your experience and knowledge.

 My own Web site (www.samizdat.com) serves as an example of what can be done on a shoestring, without technical sophistication, and also a source for further related reading.

 You can also join online discussions of these same issues at a Web site I've put together in conjunction with this book -- www.webworkzone.com/bootcamp.  There you can interact with me and with other readers.

 NB -- This book is targeted primarily at users of Windows PCs, as opposed to Apple Macintosh, UNIX, or Linux. Much of what is said here applies equally well for Macintosh users, but some commands would be different for them, and in some cases the software company or Internet service described does not yet support Macintosh. Typically, vendors follow the numbers: developing first for Windows PCs, because they are in the overwhelming majority, and for Macintosh only when pressed by demand from potential customers.

Acknowledgements

 Thanks to Andree Abecassis, my agent, for bringing the opportunity to my attention and doing everything she could to make this book a reality.

 Thanks to Matt Holt at Wiley for believing in the idea.

 Thanks to the participants in my weekly chat sessions about Business on the Web for their insights and advice regarding the world of online shopping and the Internet business environment in general. In particular, thanks to Bob Zwick, John Hibbs, Sudha and Shirish Jamthe, Kathleen Gilroy, Tracy Marks, Kaye Vivian, Tim Horgan, Ron Rothenberg, Bob Fleischer, Jeff Kane, Carol Snyder, Tom Dadakis, Todd Moyer, Reem Yared, Mike Cosgrave, Steve Woit, Terry Maugeri, Nicki Dzugan, Christian Frosch, Ed Jaros, Linda Stillborne, and Marshall Wick.

Thanks to my former colleagues at Digital Equipment, for all their many insights about the direction of computer technology and Internet business. In particular, thanks to: Berthold Langer, Tom Richardson, Bob Powell, Dan Kalikow, Danny Mayer, Jeff Black, Steve Coughlan, Ashu Bhatnagar, Dudley Howe, Kathy Greenler, Louis Monier, Sam Fuller, John Jacobs, Mark Conway, Dave Sciuto, Phil Grove, Joan Blair, Dave Cedrone, Steve Schultz, Ethel Kaiden, Roseann Giordano, Jay Owen, Tom Pisinski, Don Gaubatz, Harris Sussman, Jack Rahaim, Anne Kreidler, Jim Johnson, Steve Fink, Fred Isbell, Seth Itzkan, Phil Grove, Jonathan George, Sheila Goggin, Mike Odom, Bill Keyworth, David Marques, George Pappas, Donna Curtis, Mark Hayes, Mark Collett, Jean Bonney, Mark Fredrickson, Ann Howe, Phil Faulkner, Stan Hayami, Tom Skinner, Russ Jones, Brian Reid, Joella Paquette, Carolyn Unger, Freddy Mini, Dave Buffo, Wendy Caswell, Sharon Henderson, Jeff Harrow, Kathleen Warner, Skip Garvin, Tom Camp, Jef Gibson, Don Harbert, Kate Nelson, Bob Lehmenkuler, Ray Suarez, Alfred Thompson, Kelly O'Ryan, Janice Colombi, Jeff Schriesheim, Larry Kenah, Alan Nemeth, Russ Doane, Alan Kotok, David Probert, Leszek Kotsch, Chuck Malkiel, Mark Hevesh, Deb Buckley, Win Treese, Len Segal, Mike Jamison, Ken Olsen, Gordon Bell, Larry Portner, David Stone, Win Hindle, Bob Glorioso, Cliff Clarke, Roger Heinen, B.J. Johnson, Tom Blinn, and Dallas Kirk.

 Thanks to the many others who have helped me better understand the dynamics of the Internet and how it can and should be used, in particular: Larry Chase, Noreen Webber, Phil Duchastel, Diane Croft, Gordon Joly, Rik Hall, Betsy Campbell, Jeff Rayport, John Sviokla, Wes Kussmaul, Mary Cronin, Jeremy Josephs, Fareed Yasseen, Anwar Diab, Anthony Alvarez, Bill Wendell, Claude Thau, Vaughn Rhodes, Danny Sullivan, Detlev Johnson, Shari Thurow, Ashley Grayson, Alec McDonald, Phil Duchastel, Chris Locke, Dana Blankenthorn, and David Wheeler.

 And special thanks to my wife Barbara who provided feedback on everything and numerous suggestions, and who has put up with me for over 28 years.

Author

For 19 years, Richard Seltzer worked for Digital Equipment, then Compaq, focusing on the Internet for the last five years, most recently as Internet Evangelist. He was one of the handful of people who helped Digital Equipment to recognize and take advantage of new business opportunities on the Internet. For Digital, he wrote The AltaVista Search Revolution, which is published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill, and is now in its second edition. (Library Journal called it indispensable.)

 Now as an independent Internet marketing consultant, he frequently writes and speaks on Internet topics, acting as an advocate for more effective use of the Internet for business and education. Since leaving Compaq in December 1998, he has written a consumer book Shop Online the Lazy Way for Macmillan and a business book Take Charge of Your Web Site for Mighty Words.

 In addition, Richard runs his own small publishing business on the Internet (Seltzer Books, formerly B&R Samizdat Express). His acclaimed Web site (seltzerbooks.com formerly samizdat.com) serves as a test ground for his ideas about how to use text content to bring traffic to Web sites. Thanks to useful and well-indexed content, his site gets over 100,000 pages views per month (over 1500 unique users per day) with no advertising.

He graduated from Yale in 1969, with a major in English, and got an MA from the U. of Mass. at Amherst in 1972, in Comparative Literature (French, Russian, and German). His other books include: The Way of the Web, 1995; The Social Web, 1998; The AltaVista Search Revolution 1996, 1998; Shop Online the Lazy Way 1999; Take Charge of Your Web Site 2001; The Name of Hero (historical novel, published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin, 1982); Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes (translation from the Russian, Red Sea/Africa World Press, 2000); The Lizard of Oz (fantasy for all ages, 1974); Now and Then and Other Tales from Ome (children's stories, 1976); Saint Smith and Other Stories, 2011).

______________

Chapter 1 -- Welcome to the land of the free

 Before you spend a penny on e-commerce, you should become familiar with what's available for free and for very low cost. Take advantage of these offers to experiment and learn how businesses can operate in this environment. And, as soon as possible, begin interacting with your target audience.

You have probably used some of these capabilities (like free email) but are unaware of the range of what's available, and the implications in terms of the business activities you can engage in as an individual, at no cost and without using your company's resources or affecting your company's brand identity.

Keep in mind that change comes quickly on the Internet. The ability to  adapt to new business conditions is very important to the survival and growth of Internet companies, particularly ones offering free services. They'll reorganize their entire site without warning or explanation, take away some services, others, and change their terms.

To take advantage of free service offerings, you need to be flexible and creative. If you find that a site or service does not match what is described here, presume there has been a design change. Check Help, Frequently Asked Questions, or Sitemap to reorient yourself. If the service or even the Web site has gone away, try one of the alternatives mentioned here.

Required assignments for Chapter One:

• sign up for a free email account;

• sign up for a free Web hosting service; create a business card page and a home page

Electives:

• experiment with other free services

• participate in email discussion, newsgroups, forum, chat, etc.

As you go through these exercises, keep asking how you could use such a service in your business or your personal life. What is the business model behind this service? How does the provider benefit from my participation?

Free email

First sign up for at least one free email account at a service that you have not used before. Here we'll step you through signing up at Hotmail (owned by Microsoft). But you could just as well get free email from Yahoo, AltaVista, NBCi, or dozens of other sites.

Why should you want a new email account?

In this bootcamp, we'll be leading you through a series of exercises to help you become an active player on the Internet. You will be trying things that you've never tried before. Hence, you need set up a safe area for yourself, where you can make mistakes and test ideas without what you are doing interfering with your normal business and family activities. If you use your normal work-related email account, with your company name in the address, what you do might in some way reflect on the company that you work for.

You might, also, at some point want to apply for jobs at other companies. In that case, it helps to have an email address that is not company-related, one that you can, with confidence, include in your resume and in correspondence related to new job opportunities.

Also, you can use different email accounts to help manage your correspondence. For instance, you could use your Hotmail account to sign up for email discussions, and another address for receiving advertising messages about products and services you are really interested in, but that you wouldn't want cluttering your business email account.

Go to hotmail.com. Sign up. Be careful to just sign up for the email service -- not for the many publications they'll ask you to subscribe to. When you arrive at the email Inbox, click on Compose and send a test message to your regular email account. Then log on at your regular account and send a message to your new Hotmail address.

You can read your Hotmail email from anywhere. You don't need to use your own PC or Mac, and you don't have to be connected by way of your regular Internet Service Provider (ISP). All you need is a Web browser connected to the Internet.

Notice that every email you send will have a one-line Microsoft (MSN) ad. And every time you go back to check for messages or to send messages, you'll  see banner ads and links to other MSN services.

To get other email-related capabilities for free, try:

• www.hushmail.com for e-mail with encryption and digital signatures

• www.whalemail.com to send and receive large email files (up to 50 Mbytes)

Free Web space

If you have your own personal Internet account, your service provider probably gives you Web space in which to create and publish your own pages. Typically, this space is free if you use the directory name assigned to you, such as http://www.tiac.net/members/rseltzer  They typically chare a monthly fee if you buy and use your own domain name, e.g., http://www.samizdat.com The terms vary widely, but often involve a limit on how much space you can use (e.g., 20 Mbytes), and perhaps on how much traffic can come to your site (e.g., 1 gigabit per month), with surcharges if your pages become popular and hence put more load on their systems.

Eventually, you may wish to use that ISP-provided space. In that case, you should check their help files and call their support people for specific instructions. Procedures vary widely from one company to another.

But, first, both to learn and to gain confidence, you should sign up at one of the free Web hosting services that are not tied to your Internet access. Some of the larger services include:

• www.angelfire.com (owned by Terra Lycos)

• www.tripod.com (owned by Terra Lycos)

• www.geocities.com (owned by Yahoo)

• www.nbci.com. (which bought Xoom)

• www.homestead.com

• www.expage.com

Go to Angelfire and register. They'll give you 50 Mbytes of free Web space. In plain text, that's the equivalent of a hundred copies of Huckleberry Finn.

When registering, use one of the new email addresses that you just created.  You'll be forced to choose one of their pre-set directories, which will become part of your address. Once you've done that, click on Click here to Start Building.

First, create a simple business-card page. Choose to create a new file and name it businesscard.html. The suffix .html tells browsers how to handle the content you provide. Click on Create. Select Basic (instead of Advanced).

Choose the My Info Layout. Select Style Sheet #1, and Submit. Leave the default settings as they are, and enter as the title Business card for [your name]. Use the Add a List or Create Links features, if you like; and change the numbers accordingly. If not, change the number for each of those choices to zero. Then, in the text block, enter the information you would like to include on your business card. Click Save.

To see what you have created, enter the Web address in your browser, e.g.,

http://www.angelfire.com/directorycategory/yourdirectoryname/businesscard.html

e.g., http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp/businesscard.html

Now anyone, anywhere in the world can see that page by just entering that address in their browser.

Next, use Backup in your browser to go back to the Web Shell (where you select what page to edit or create). You'll see that your business card page is now listed there. To view the page, highlight its name and click View file. To make changes, highlight its name and click Edit.

Now edit the index page that they have assigned you, which is also known as your home page. Highlight index.html, and click Edit. The index is the page you get to when you just type the directory name. In other words, you could get to it by entering either

http://www.angelfire.com/directorycategory/yourdirectoryname

e.g.

http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp

or the full address

e.g., http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp/index.html

Delete the name that they have for main image (or you'll wind up with an Angelfire logo). Edit as you like, and enter the text that you'd like to appear. Under Create Links, make a link to your business-card page. To do that, under URL, enter http://www.angelfire.com/directorycategory/yourdirectoryname/businesscard.html

And under Description, enter My Business Card. Click Save.

Now view your index page, and click on the link you just created for your business card page.

Next, backup, select your business card page, and click Edit. Under Create Links, raise the number by one, click Refresh, then add a link to your home page.

e.g. http://www.angelfire.com/biz6/bootcamp

Save. View the page. Test the link.

If you have pictures saved on your hard drive, scroll down the Web Shell page to File Upload and Browse to select pictures that you'd like to include on your Web pages. Then use the page creation templates to add those images where you would like (entering the full name of each file, including the extension, which will probably be .jpg or .gif).

You can experiment as much as you like here. Nobody will know that these pages exist unless you tell them. Edit and reedit. See what happens when you make different choices. Add links to your favorite Web pages. Add lists. Create more pages. Check the Help and Tool Center areas for instructions on how to add fancy effects.

You are now a Web publisher. Yes, every page you create will have Angelfire advertising at the top. And these pages are designed in ways that might make them difficult to find by search engines. But if you are creative, you could do some useful and fun things with this space.

Spread your wings

You could, if you wanted, open Web accounts at several different free services and build a variety of Web sites.

For our purposes, you should open at least one more account. Go to NBCi.com. They offer unlimited Web space (while Angelfire limits you to 50 Mbytes).

You won't see this offer immediately. It's buried among many other free services. The site owners would probably love for you to get lost here, exploring again and again, getting the impression that whatever you might need that's related to the Internet is probably buried here somewhere.

Click the Join now! button. Then click on the Membership Form. Fill out the form. Unless you love to receive junk mail, don't indicate any areas of interest, and remove the check marks indicating that you want to get email from them. Also, when you pick a member name and password, keep in mind that the system is case sensitive. If you enter any upper case characters, you'll have to remember that they are upper case. (As a rule of thumb, I always enter such information all in lower case -- that makes it easier to remember).

Click to go back to the Home page and then click once again on Join Now! The help page you arrive at lists the various free services that you can sign up for.

Under Web Site Building & Hosting, click on Free storage space for your Web site. Their current offer of free unlimited space means that there is no limit on how many files you upload to your account, as long as you do not violate their Terms of Service Agreement. Click to see the Terms of Service. For related details, click on Frequently Asked Questions.

The pages that you create here will have an address in the form

http://members.nbci.com/your_membername/

If your member name is jones5 and you create a page which you call myson.html, after that page is uploaded, you'll be able to see it on the Web at

http://members.nbci.com/jones5/myson.html

From the home page, click on My NBCi. Then click on My Web Site. New users, click here to activate your Web site. You'll be asked to enter your email address (use your new one) and to copy an activation code into a form. Be careful to reproduce the letters and numbers exactly. This is case sensitive. The code is probably intended to block automated programs from using this service. (Whenever something useful is offered for free, people find creative ways to abuse it.)

NBCi (AKA Xoom) used to offer free template-based tools for building Web pages, but have discontinued that service. In Chapter Three, you'll learn how to create pages on your own PC (rather than using Web-based templates) and how to then upload those pages to the Web with a standard utility (FTP = file transfer protocol). Then we'll start to build a real site in your NBCi space.

For now, click on My Website and check the wide variety of other free services available at NBCi. You could set up another email account here. In fact, they give you one automatically when you sign up with Web space; you just have to activate it. If you do, you'll have an address of the form [e-mail] You can also set up your own chat rooms, personalize your online auction pages, and setup an online store (by way of Bigstep.com).

All the major portal sites, like Yahoo, Excite, MSN, AOL, etc. offer you a wide range of free services. Any one of these could become your one-stop place to get everything you need for a great Web experience -- from Web search and directory services, to Web design tools, to discussion areas, to shopping, to content. They strive to earn your loyalty, to get you to come back again and again. But you have many choices for all these services they offer -- all free.  And there is no reason for you to use just one such site. Hence the statistics these sites provide about how many members they have, how many Web sites they host, and how many email accounts they have are misleading. Many people open accounts, create Web pages, etc. and then never return or return rarely, having found other services they like better. Today there are over a billion pages on the Web. But hundreds of millions of those pages may be accounted for in Web sites that have been abandoned by their owners, who have no incentive to delete them since the space they reside on is free.

The price of free

Sometimes the price you have to