Ravi’s Gadgets

Google sometimes is boring. It always returns the same results over and over again for different combinations of the search terms. I wanted to find out if there are any new websites that are showing up in the blog sphere that would pay you to blog. An idea struck me last night and I thought I would go ahead and look for other search engines that are there in the world. Surely they will not be using the algorithm of Google, so the way they display the results would be greater, and you can find what you are looking for with a bit of ease. Or atleast you could hope for it. So when I set foot to start looking for a new search engine which would give me better, or atleast different results for blog pay I landed upon RankNoodle.com. It is a search engine that would not only give you the search results like google does, but also gives you an article on what you are looking for. So for example lets say you are searching for the term search engine for beginners you get a simple article on what is meant by search engine and why it exists and why people cant do without a search engine.

I have a feeling that this site will redefine the concept of search engines. This even acts like a miniature wikipedia as it gives a small synopsys of what you are searching for. there has already been a debate that wikipedia might in the near future overtake google in the search for information as wikipedia has got almost everything now, and it comes without ads and it doesnt use any stupid algorithms. Lets say you are searching fro a good hosting company. When you search google it will just give you a list of sites in the order in which the sites are optimized. But if the company is good at optimization of websites for the search engines and are not really keen on hosting, then the site might be on the top but the service might be poor, while the people who provide good services might be bottom just because they have not optimized their websites or they have not put up any sponsored advertisments on google’s search page.

A search with an article is at its starting stage, and once developed, people will only go for that. When you search for hosting companies on a search engine like ranknoodle.com, you will possibly get a user edited or a user reviewed list of sites rather than a list that is ordered bust by a company’s stupid algorithm. This technology is going to rule the internet in the very near future.

This is the tough part. Particularly when you would be dealing with several new clients every day, and it is not going to be just 1 payment every month. Several small payments come every month, and with that money you should be keeping your company running.

If you are running an India based Hosting company, several of them being there already serving the whole wide world, paypal should be your first choice. You can register for a business account, get it verified with your credit card, and integrate it with your site. If your site is a basic html site, you could paste payapl buttons on the page with which your clients could get into subscriptions, and terminate it when they want to discontinue. Paypal is a service that is used world wide, and you can withdraw money to your indian bank accounts, and you dont really need an offshore bank account in the US or UK to receive payments which you can wire to India.

Otherwise, you could opt for a USD payment processor which can process credit cards for you. But this will need an offshore bank account into which you could collect the payments. You could always bring any amount of money into India, without any taxes.

When you could be doing a lot, spending time on the internet just chatting with friends is just a big waste of time. And it took me ages to discover that. If I had not spent most of my time chatting with friends and business associates out of subject all the time, I might have done a lot well in business.

Then again, when I was in hosting, and when clients stayed with the company just for me, I had to spend time with them, be close to them, otherwise they would have no reason to be staying with Indyahozting, which is such a samll hosting company, while hostgator, bluehost and dreamhost are booming so high.

Recently I have not been chatting much, but I do get the feeling that I am left alone and that I dont have people to talk to. I can ofcourse go to people and chat with them at any time, and everyone is always open to chat with me, as I am quite good at chatting on the internet r5ather than talking directly. But still, I think chatting is bad, and a pure waste of time, and in that time, you could do something more constructive.

Dont use Orkut or any other social networking communities unless you are a very big company and are sure that a group of your onw clinets cannot mob you off your business.

If you start a forum for your hosting company in the initial stages and leave it unmoderated, naturally you will get links of sites of people posted in their footers, you will get intentional bad reviews from competition or people who dont wish to see you grow, and when a group forms, they might just go ahead and start their own business, every one serving one another.

Dont do that.

Maintain a mailing list, and send out newsletters to everyone once in a while, give them offers, create polls, create offers and stuff.

Or, add them all to various instant messengers that are available online such as Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, AOL, Gtalk and Skype. This way, all clients would need to add you first to chat with you, and it is easy for them to follow you up, and for you to follow them up. And if any one finds the other annoying, the “block” option is always there. Never send bulk messages to entire groups in chat messengers. Use a software such as pidgin that can work with multiple messenger ids at the same time, and this would improve the effeciency of your work.

Always use a helpdesk system to provide support, and never let the support techs to be on chat with the clients. Employ seperate staff for support chats, who can communicate with the techs without annoying them and get the result.

Clinets will not be kind when they have got issues on the server. They will always think that they are on the centre of the world and that nothing else matters to them. So, if they speak with that attitude to the support techs, they might get annoyed and their effeciency might reduce. Also, to handle helpdesk mails, it is advisable to have staff who could do that.

Never let your support techs come into direct communication with your clients, since it could mean disaster. Clients are important for you, and so are the support staff. So give importance to both, and have medeiating staff.