Searching for Answers

Shuklendu

Shivanand visited my office yesterday when he showed me the Blogging site
I have suggested some minor changes which he will carry out and show us once again
During his visit ( when Kailas was present ) , we also discussed the B2B site – including U/I of some new pages which I have couriered to you yesterday
In turn , he will discuss these with B2B team today
He also expects to meet / finalize the B2C team today
There are however a few issues that I have been thinking about for some time now – but unable to come up with satisfactory answers
I list these below , hoping that you may have some answers , in light of your vast experience at designing / developing , a variety of web sites

Q 1

Ø Is there a possibility of a Denial of Service ( DoS ) attack on B2B / B2C ? If yes , how can we stop this ?

Background :

Ø Existing sites such as JustDial / Getit / Yellowpages.co.in etc are essentially C2B sites , enabling individual consumers to search businesses and be able to send them emails ( although one at a time ) or phone them. These sites earn their revenue from “ Premium Services “ to these small businesses ( with basic listing remaining FREE )

           As such neither B2B , nor B2C will directly compete / threaten them
          But you never know how they might look upon us !
         If they look at us as “ Threat “ , they could get a few persons to register ( as Self Employed ? ) and start blasting thousands of fake marketing messages      
        Everyday !

       And then there could also be absolutely Genuine / un-intentional blasts as well ! Since we have thrown this open to Self Employed ( running into millions ) , thousands of them would be very eager to promote their services thru our UNIQUE service which is also FREE !
One answer could be to restrict the total number of blasts from any given Subscriber to , say , 3 per month

Q 2

Ø Surely , some day in future ( after getting 10,000 Subscribers ? ) , we must introduce some Revenue Model

What could this be , without slowing down the “ Rate of New Registrations “ ?

Background :

Ø People – and Companies too – don’t appreciate what is FREE. They think it must be poor quality . Or it gets abused

     Of course , there are exceptions ( Google is an outstanding example but then it has succeeded in making money from Advts )

Here are some possibilities :

·        Keep our service free for Self Employed / Proprietary Companies but charge all others some annual Subscription Fee ( with specific restrictions on No of blasts / mailing lists etc )

·        Charge everybody , 5 % of what they save ( thru use of our service ) by way of normal Advertising Costs which they would have otherwise incurred

Q 3

Ø Even if there is no DoS attack on our server , there is a distinct possibility that our server gets overloaded due to thousands of blasts lined up in waiting Queue

           What can we do to cope up with such heavy load ?
           Of course , one way would be to add more servers / more broadband pipes. But this is very expensive !
          Can we find some clever way where we use the Subscriber’s own server and broadband connection to push out the emails ?
         Once a subscriber sees a long list ( of pending campaigns ) in page, “ Who is Blasting ? “ , he may realize that his message may not go out for the next 10 days !
On this page , we may provide an option , “ I would like to blast this message using my own server. Pl load my Marketing Message and the corresponding Mailing List onto my server as follows :…………………. “
With such an authorization to connect-up with his server , we will transfer the Mailing List and the Marketing Message onto his server and start the blast !
Of course , our Standard Email will go out
We must also capture all downstream data to fill in the subsequent pages / tables on our site as also all the statistical counters
Many Medium / Big companies already have in place , necessary H/W and S/W for sending out promo emails. They have no problem in this regard. They even have their own Mailing Lists ( of Potential Customer’s Email Ids ) on their servers to whom , they regularly send out such promo mails
Their primary interest would be our systematically organized ( Industry wise / City wise ) and large – and ever growing - database of companies
Plus our proposed , Feedback Mechanism
If such a method can be found , two purpose will be served, viz:

Ø Load on our own server will go down and the waiting list on “ Who is Blasting ? “ page will get short

Ø Many more Big / Medium companies will come forward to register and become our Subscribers

Q 4

Ø When the first  Subscriber company blasts the very first message ( to say , 2000 Recipient Companies from our database of 4 lakh ) , how do we motivate those recipient companies to register at our web site ? How can we get them to promote our service ?

           Our email gives them two incentives , viz:

·        If you register , you too can promote your own business for free ( Emotion of “ HOPE “ )

·        You can solicit business without a guilt feeling of spamming unsuspecting recipients ( Emotion of “ EMPATHY “ )

           I don’t think these two emotions are powerful enough to start a rush for registrations !
          The only emotions that can do this trick ( compulsion to register ) are ,

Ø Greed   ,  and

Ø Fear

Fear of what ? Fear of competitors overtaking and taking away market-share
But this can work only with large / organized companies who are acutely conscious of,
#   Who  are my competitors ?
#   What is my market share vis-à-vis their market share ?
For most of the SME ( Small / Medium Enterprises ) , it is only GREED that can work
Eg:

“ If you register , we send you an order worth Rs 5,000 / - for your products / services “
OR,
“ If you register , we give you FREE service for the first 6 months – worth Rs 10,000 / - “
That would be VERY POWERFUL incentive !
But , our services are already free and we cannot place an order for Rs 5,000 / - !
Any suggestions ?

Regards

hcp