（笑话—超级笑话）强力搞笑
1：一天蚊子跟螳螂去偷看一女的洗澡，蚊子很自豪的说：看，十年前我在她胸前叮了两口，现在肿的这么大了；螳螂不服气的说，那有什么，我十年前在她两腿间劈了一刀，至今还每个月都在流血……
2：在医院里，一家喜得贵子，孩子刚生下来就回说话，孩子说：“爷爷。”爷爷啊的一声就死了。孩子又说：“奶奶。”奶奶啊的一声死了。孩子又说：“爸爸。”他爸爸啊的一声，一看自己没死，这个时候，孩子的老叔啊的一声死了。
3：袋鼠和青蛙去嫖鸡，袋鼠三下两下完事，只听隔壁的青蛙整夜一二三嘿！一二三嘿！袋sd鼠好羡慕，次日，袋鼠说：“哇！~~蛙兄，你好棒哦！。”青蛙说：“操，老子一夜都没跳上床！~~”
4：一只大象问骆驼：“你的咪咪怎么长在背上？”骆驼说：“死远点，我不和鸡鸡长在脸上的东西讲话！”蛇在旁边听了大象和骆驼的对话后一阵狂笑。大象扭头对蛇说：“笑屁！你个脸长在鸡鸡上的，没资格！”
5、有位穷书生发奋读书，就在自己的房门前写下对联以自励，上联是：‘睡草屋闭户演字’，下联是：‘卧脚塌弄笛声腾’，横批：‘甘从天命’。有一天，一个河南人路过此地，见到这副对联就心生好奇，用他的家乡话大声地念了起来：‘谁操我屁股眼子’，‘我叫他弄得生疼’……呦，还有横批！不过这次他给念反了：‘明天重干！’”
6：幼儿园女教师领学生游泳,不慎露出一根X毛,一学生问老师,那是什么啊女教师一狠心将其拔掉,说线头！
7：小女孩总是向小男孩炫耀自己的新玩具.小男孩没办法,只好脱掉裤子说这个你永远没有!女孩也脱掉裤子说我妈说只要有这个,你那玩意儿要多少有多少！
8 有个女孩向神父告解她所犯的罪…女孩：神父，我有罪。神父：孩子，你犯了什麽罪呢？女孩：昨天，我骂了某个男人一句：「你这个狗娘养的！」神父：为什麽？他对你做了什麽吗？女孩：他…他摸我的胸部。 神父：你是说像这样子吗？（神父伸手摸女孩的胸部）女孩：嗯…是的。神父：只是这样子的话你没有理由骂他啊。女孩：但是…又把我的衣服脱掉…神父：你是说像这样子吗？（神父动手脱掉女孩的衣服） 女孩：是的，是这样子没错。神父：可是这样子你还是没有理由骂他啊。女孩：然後……他关掉灯把我抱到了床上，就…神父：（奸笑貌）你是说像这样子吗？（神父也关掉灯把女孩抱到了床上…女孩：（数分钟後）是的…就是这样子神父：我亲爱的孩子，就算是这样你还是没有理由骂他「你这个…」女孩：但是他有爱滋病呀!!神父：那个狗娘养的!!!
9：司机送领导参加文艺晚会,领导进了会场,司机被保安拦住,司机说我跟领导是一个系统的,保安说：鸡X跟蛋也是一个系统的,鸡X进去了,蛋能进去吗？
10;有个人，来到本地一家健身馆想减肥，好使自己苗条些，健身馆里备有各种健身计划，看来挺复杂，于是，这家伙选了一种最便宜的，就是在一小时内减掉一磅。他被带到一间房子里，里面站着一个赤裸的女孩子，手里拿着个牌子，上面写道：“如果你能抓住我，就允许你干我！”这家伙立即接受了挑战，开始追逐女孩，但每次都是快要抓住女孩时，又给她跑掉，一个小时过去了，他仍没有抓住那个女孩，健身教练带他去称了一下体重，刚好少了一磅。“这挺不错嘛，”这家伙心想，“我既能减肥，又能开心耶。”这次，他选了一个稍贵些的减肥方案，可以在一小时内减去两磅。他被带到一间房里，里面站着两位全裸的女孩，手里都拿着牌子，上面也写道：“如果你能抓住我，就允许你干我！”这家伙十分兴奋，拼命地追赶这两个女孩子，最后还是一个也没追到，一小时后，教练又给他称了下体重，刚好掉了两磅肉。 这时，这家伙被激怒了，他告诉经理，他要选用最贵的减肥方案，经理向他保证他一定能够在一小时内减去十磅，但是又补充说，这个方案十分危险，这家伙心想，不就是再多几个女孩吗，越多就越有机会，至少能够抓住一个吧。他催经理赶快把他送到那个最贵的房间去，尽管经理不断向他声明危险。于是，这人被带到一个稍远些的一间房子里，他们让他进去后，在外面锁上了门，房间里灯光昏暗，等待他的是一只黑猩猩，只见它手里拿着一个牌子，上面写道：“如果我抓住你，我就干你”
11:有个裸体的女郎跑进一辆出租车上,司机全身上下大量着她,这女郎骂了一声"看啥,没见过光着身子的女人吗?”，这司机说“我是看看你的钱是从那儿掏出来”。
12:老石和老林每一次见面，总会相互调侃对方。一日，老林突然抚摸老石的光头，然后说：“你这个光头，摸起来可真像我太太的屁股。”老石笑笑地摸摸自已的光头，然后颇有同感地说：“嗯！的确
是一模一样。”
13:女佣A：「我真可怜，每天都要一直说"是，太太；是，太太"。」
女佣B：「我更歹命，每天都要不停地说"不，先生；不，先生"。」
14:西班牙人喜欢牛丸，
每当斗牛结束后，
都把斗拜的牛的“睾丸”割下来吃，
有一天，
有个西班牙人到餐厅订购牛丸，
餐厅服务生说，
你付定金，
明天给你。
第二天，
这个人来取牛丸，
结果发现“丸”很小，
就问为什么，
服务员回答：“先生，不是每次都是牛斗输的～今天是斗牛士输了～”
15:有一司机，因常在外奔波，遂养鹦鹉一只，聊以解除旅途疲惫
鹦鹉也不辜负主人厚望，学舌甚快
一日长途途中，车厢中载有母鸡，将鹦鹉置于群鸡之间。
时值深夜，甚觉无聊，突然眼前一亮
一美女招手搭车，大喜，遂载之
且行且瞅，甚是高兴，不免生了邪念。
想想荒郊野外，美女岂敢不从，大胆开口：“美女，亲一下行不行”
女甚刚烈，曰“不行”。司机又道：“摸一下行不行”，女亦曰“不行”
司机一怒，道，：“不行，下去”
于是将美女撵将下去。继续前行，不久，良心和色心尚存，悔之不已
倒转回来，再邀美女，美女应之。
司机窃喜，心道：念及我的一片好心，我事可成也！
行不久，心痒痒不已，停车问美女：“美女，亲一下行不行”
女拒之，曰：“不行”又问：“摸一下行不行”，女奋而答之“不行”
司机甚怒，道：“不行，下去”又撵将下去
如此反反复复，司机终未得逞
眼看终点将至，司机想，再不行，就没有机会了
又问美女，“美女，亲一下行不行”，女依然：“不行”
“那摸一下行不行”，女还是“不行”，司机甚怒，说道“不行，下去”撵之，不复管之。
及至终点，oh，my god，一车的鸡怎么都不见了
正纳闷时，突见鹦鹉抓着最后一只母鸡，问道：“美女，亲一下行不行”
母鸡摇头。鹦鹉又道：“那摸一下行不行？”，母鸡亦摇头
鹦鹉回道：“不行，下去”，将母鸡扔将下车。
司机无奈，将鹦鹉也撵将下去。
16:某日公车上来了一位小姐，手上提了一瓶鲜奶。当公车驶到了一个大站，眼看人越来越多，挤得连喘气都有困难……不一会小姐拿的鲜乳竟然被人潮挤破了鲜乳沾满了她的丝袜。小姐气极败坏的说：讨厌！！不要挤啦！人家的奶都给你挤出来了。
17;高雄爱河边的"神女"一日来到市议会要求给他们一个
正式的职业名称...
议员::你们打算用什麽称号勒??神女不好吗??
妓女::不是不好啦..我们是要更正式的name...
议员::那你们要用 ??
妓女::我们要用新的名称----> > 妓者..
此时原本在旁的记者们勃然大怒...
记者::怎麽可以勒...这样不是混淆视听????
此时妓女们大声说道.....
怎麽不可以勒??你们记者是"服务业"..我们也是..
你们是"欢迎来稿"...我们也是欢迎来”搞”呀！！
18:一位妙龄女郎与一潇洒小生，约会于公园。忽然，小生有些局促不安。女郎问：“你怎么了？”
小生不好意思地说：“我要方便方便。”女郎不解，只见小生向公共厕所走去，方知“方便”就是上厕所。
过了一会儿，女郎问小生：“你什么时候到我那里去玩？”
小生答道：“我想在你方便的时候去。”……
19:有一老者，因儿媳临产，借宿老友家。
友问何故？
回答：别提了！儿媳妇生孩子把我挤出来了。
20:黄教授在某女校课堂上大发雷霆：「我在上面累得半死，而你们却在下面一动也不动。我前後已经付出这麽多了，你们到底有没有吸收到什麽东西啊？」
女学生们..............
21:一对夫妻想做爱的时候，都会以『洗衣服』做暗号。某日，两夫妻斗嘴吵架後，因为太太正在气头上，而丈夫又有性爱上的需要，不方便开囗向太太求爱，只好请儿子代为传话：（妈妈，爸爸说他的衣服脏了要洗衣服。）妈妈很生气说：（跟你爸爸说洗衣机坏了，今天不洗。）又过了几日，这次轮到太太忍不住，於是便叫儿子代为传话：（去跟你爸爸说洗衣机修好了，可以洗衣服了。）儿子便立即说：（妈妈，爸爸交代说，不用了他自己已经用手洗好了。）
22:潮湿的午後，安静的图书馆中，阿德K了一上午的书，觉得有点累了，不由得伸了伸懒腰，不小心碰到隔座的女孩，女孩吓了一跳！碰翻了桌上的饮料，把衣服弄湿了一大片。阿德很不好意思，马上对女孩道歉：「小姐！对不起！害你受惊了！我会负责的。」女孩转过头来，正色对阿德说：「同学！有点常识好不好！你只是碰了我一下，我不可能『受精』的，不过你把我弄得湿湿的，最好赶快拿卫生纸帮我擦一下吧！」
23:有一个酒鬼上街买酒喝，忽然他瞥见街角一家酒店贴着一张：［只要完成三个难题，就可免费喝一年的酒］的告示！！酒鬼见机不可失，便进去向酒保询问，并先喝了几杯酒。酒保道：“你要向三个难题挑战啊？”酒鬼醉道：“好吧。”“首先．你必须一囗气喝掉这杯加满胡椒的龙舌兰。”“第二．我们後院有一只河马牙齿痛很久了，你必须帮它拔牙。”“第三．看到对面的公寓了吗？那里住着一个女人很久都没满足了，你要让她满足。”酒鬼一听马上跃跃欲试，於是他便一囗气灌完了那杯龙舌兰，突然他感到整个人都要烧起来了，就一鼓作气冲到後院，後院立刻传出河马的尖叫声，过了不久酒鬼冲出来了，他大声地问酒保：“快！你说那个［牙痛］的女人在哪？”
24:有一个外国人来台湾直学中文.但他一直搞不清楚"铁"跟"钢"的差别.有一天他很晚才回到家.结果楼下的门打不开. 他只好大声往楼上喊""房东太太.你的钢门打不开耶""....
25:老黄倒霉时曾被遣送回乡。“三八”节县长要到某区妇女会上讲演，知老黄能写，就逼他写个讲演稿。老黄特烦这混蛋，就凑了一篇，县长还一字不差地念了：“…我是搞妇女的，很有经验。最近我到你们下面摸了一下，搞到了第一手资料。我是个大老粗，到底有多粗，你们妇女主任最清楚。昨晚我跟她整扯了一宿。开始她不知我的长短，我不知她的深浅，躲躲闪闪就是搞不到一块。经过多次交锋，将心比心，情况终于摆到了桌面上。伪装既然剥去，下面就好干了。我们针对焦点，摆正姿势，一鼓作气，深入浅出，坚持不懈，直到积压许久的问题得到彻底解决。真是一泄如注，痛快淋漓啊。最后她高兴，我满意，这有多好！……全体妇女同志站起来”在场的女同志因惧怕县长的淫威，都站了起来等待指示。县长舔了一下指头翻了一页接着念：“了！”
26:一个教堂门前草坪上立着一块牌子，上面大书：“如果你对罪恶厌倦了，请进来。”下边用红唇膏写着另一行字：“如果不厌倦，请打电话到阿曼扎区XXX号。”
27:医生、妓女、小偷三人死后，同时来见阎王。阎王问他们生前各干什么营生，医生说：“小人行医，别人有了病，我能医治，起死回生。”阎王大怒说：“我每次差鬼卒勾取罪人，你总与我抗衡捣乱，要打发你下油锅受罪！”
第二个问到妓女，妓女说：“我接那些没有妻室的客人。”阎王说：‘你方便独身的人，可以延长寿命十二年。”再问小偷，小偷说：“我做贼。别人晾晒的衣服、散放的银钱，我去收拾些。”阎王说：‘这是帮人代劳，增加寿命十年，发转回阳世！”
医生听了这话，急急哀求道：“大王如果这样判决，只求放我也还阳。我家里还有一儿一女，儿就让他做贼，女就让她接客算了！”
28:某日深夜，在一栋女生宿舍里，一位女生正在洗澡，突然一阵冷风，一个女鬼从浴室的另一方向飘了过来....飘到那个女生的背後......女鬼拍拍她的肩膀说著。女鬼：『小姐，你看！我没有脸耶！』
女生：『那有什么了不起？』
女鬼：『你这话什么意思！』
女生很镇定的回头跟那个女鬼说：『你看，我没有胸耶！』
29:话说有日，某警察在巡视时经过某巷子忽然听得一对话
甲：“这个要如何处理?” 乙：“我们先把她杀了，再奸了她…”
这时这位警察先生二话不说拔起了枪夺门而入，只见两个男人站在厨房手抓着一条鱼，………
2008年8月23日星期六
（成人笑话）比强奸更为过分的事!!!!!!
某甲晚上走在路上，忽然听到路旁阴暗处传来阵阵哭声，
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
他赶忙靠近一看，原来是一个衣衫不整的女子在哭泣。
甲先生：“小姐你怎么了？”
小姐回答：“我刚刚被色狼侵犯了！”
甲先生：“你……你不要紧吧？”
小姐回答：“他……他突然从背后抓住我的胸部……然后就把我放了……”
甲先生：“你既然没事，那还哭什么呢？”
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
小姐回答：“因为……因为那色狼居然说：‘真倒霉，竟然抱到个男的’……”
说着说着，她哭的更大声了。
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
他赶忙靠近一看，原来是一个衣衫不整的女子在哭泣。
甲先生：“小姐你怎么了？”
小姐回答：“我刚刚被色狼侵犯了！”
甲先生：“你……你不要紧吧？”
小姐回答：“他……他突然从背后抓住我的胸部……然后就把我放了……”
甲先生：“你既然没事，那还哭什么呢？”
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
小姐回答：“因为……因为那色狼居然说：‘真倒霉，竟然抱到个男的’……”
说着说着，她哭的更大声了。
（成人笑话）比强奸更为过分的事!!!!!!
某甲晚上走在路上，忽然听到路旁阴暗处传来阵阵哭声，
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
他赶忙靠近一看，原来是一个衣衫不整的女子在哭泣。
甲先生：“小姐你怎么了？”
小姐回答：“我刚刚被色狼侵犯了！”
甲先生：“你……你不要紧吧？”
小姐回答：“他……他突然从背后抓住我的胸部……然后就把我放了……”
甲先生：“你既然没事，那还哭什么呢？”
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
小姐回答：“因为……因为那色狼居然说：‘真倒霉，竟然抱到个男的’……”
说着说着，她哭的更大声了。
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
他赶忙靠近一看，原来是一个衣衫不整的女子在哭泣。
甲先生：“小姐你怎么了？”
小姐回答：“我刚刚被色狼侵犯了！”
甲先生：“你……你不要紧吧？”
小姐回答：“他……他突然从背后抓住我的胸部……然后就把我放了……”
甲先生：“你既然没事，那还哭什么呢？”
[ 转自铁血社区 http://bbs.tiexue.net/ ]
小姐回答：“因为……因为那色狼居然说：‘真倒霉，竟然抱到个男的’……”
说着说着，她哭的更大声了。
吸引力--小影院放映片子
一天一家小影院放映一片子。广告写到：一美女莫名晕倒，七男人强行拖入森林,等待美女的……众人都觉很有吸引力逐买票入场，等到电影放映时，大屏幕出现： 《白雪公主》 众人气急败坏的走了 。
隔天众人再次路过小影院，见广告有所变化。 广告写到：一如花美女与七男人的数天惊涛骇浪般的销魂（绝非《白雪公主》）。 众人这次觉得比上次更有吸引力，而且说明不是白雪公主，逐又买票入场。 结果大屏幕出现： 《八仙过海》众人全晕在场内了。
第三天 当所有人都决定再也不进入这家影院的时候，却看到广告上写道：本院为真情回报 广大支持国产大作的朋友，特别吐血大放送！《七个可爱男孩和一对年轻夫妻曲折的故事》。附言写道： 七个可爱的男孩趁年轻夫妻无防备的时候一个一个的进入他们的家，却反被年轻的夫妻所治服，但最后却出现大逆转情况，丈夫被杀，年轻美丽的妻子落入七个男孩的魔掌……本片情节曲折精彩感人，为广大有婚夫妇培养下一代所必看之佳作！！！大家听说情节曲折精彩感人，而且还是可爱的男孩和年轻夫妻的故事，于是又都禁不住诱惑买票进场了。 经过漫长的等待之后，屏幕上终于出现画面了—— 只见上面清晰的打出了3个大字：《***》，众人当时就全都吐血了--真不愧是吐血大放送！
---------------
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这部电影就是......《葫芦娃》
隔天众人再次路过小影院，见广告有所变化。 广告写到：一如花美女与七男人的数天惊涛骇浪般的销魂（绝非《白雪公主》）。 众人这次觉得比上次更有吸引力，而且说明不是白雪公主，逐又买票入场。 结果大屏幕出现： 《八仙过海》众人全晕在场内了。
第三天 当所有人都决定再也不进入这家影院的时候，却看到广告上写道：本院为真情回报 广大支持国产大作的朋友，特别吐血大放送！《七个可爱男孩和一对年轻夫妻曲折的故事》。附言写道： 七个可爱的男孩趁年轻夫妻无防备的时候一个一个的进入他们的家，却反被年轻的夫妻所治服，但最后却出现大逆转情况，丈夫被杀，年轻美丽的妻子落入七个男孩的魔掌……本片情节曲折精彩感人，为广大有婚夫妇培养下一代所必看之佳作！！！大家听说情节曲折精彩感人，而且还是可爱的男孩和年轻夫妻的故事，于是又都禁不住诱惑买票进场了。 经过漫长的等待之后，屏幕上终于出现画面了—— 只见上面清晰的打出了3个大字：《***》，众人当时就全都吐血了--真不愧是吐血大放送！
---------------
-------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
这部电影就是......《葫芦娃》
世界上最长，最大，最高，最矮的（图文）
世界上最长，最大，最高，最矮的是什么啊，自己看吧
1.世界上最长的阴茎 在俄罗斯历史上，具有传奇色彩的修道士格雷戈里-埃菲莫维茨-拉斯普京据说可以让女性神魂颠倒，他有一双迷人的眼睛可以“杀伤”无数女子。但是，俄罗斯圣彼得堡一家性器官博物馆展示了格雷戈里的性器官，原来，他之所以吸引诸多女子，甚至是皇家贵族也被他迷惑，并不单凭他迷人的眼睛，令女性发狂的而是他的生殖器官。该博物馆展示出的这个生殖器官长达28.5厘米，浸泡在一个装有防腐溶液的高玻璃器皿中，这件展示品成为该博物馆的一个最大亮点，许多参观者都争相目睹这件出奇的性器官，他们认为看看这样“雄壮”的生殖器官，将有助于增强自信心，提高自己生殖能力。
2.世界上最大的阴茎
一条蓝鲸每次射精会产生400加仑精液
但注入蓝鲸MM体内的实际上只有区区10％
蓝鲸哥哥每“卸载”一次，有360加仑精液是“渗漏”到海里去的
人类一直在纳闷海水它咋就那么咸吧
不错，没事儿可别喝海水玩！
图中长为190CM
如果按膨胀度50%来算
勃起时接近三米~
比大象牛多了~
博物馆里的标本，怕是有1人多高。
3.世界上最大的摩托车 这辆高达15英尺、长达25英尺的巨型摩托车由Greg Dunham打造，足足花了三年时间。这辆摩托重达6500磅，造价为30万美元。你可以从上图看到它和普通摩托在体积方面的区别。这辆摩托被吉尼斯世界纪录评为世界上最高的可驾驶的摩托车
4.世界上最高的人和最矮的人
我国内蒙古的鲍喜顺。236.2CM，是目前世界上在世的身体各器官均无任何异常，没有患“巨人症”的世界第一高，已获得吉尼斯世界纪录。
世界自然生长第一高人：中国牧民鲍喜顺与最矮的人：肯尼亚的Kiran Shah
5.世界上最高的狗和最矮的狗
世界上最高的狗，Meet Gibson，它用后腿站立起来 2.05 米高，77.1 公斤。
6.世界上最大的蚊子
不过不知道是真的还是假的。
2008年8月6日星期三
How to Make Money on the Internet
Welcome to the first DaveNet piece from Amsterdam! It's only the second from Europe, and if you were counting you'd care. Anyway, I'm between stops on my trip. Davos finished, sadly, on Tuesday, and I've been in Amsterdam resting, experiencing another European culture, gathering my thoughts, being a tourist, and preparing to talk to the publishing industry at the Seybold conference in Boston on Monday and Tuesday.
The title of this piece is an answer to the most frequently asked question I heard at Davos, both in the hallways and in the sessions. Yes, the Internet is cool, but how do you make money? This is the question that the Have-Nots ask those that Have, or another way, that the Get-Nots ask those who claim to Get. I am so smug in the belief that I can answer the question that I'll ramble my way there, knowing that it's so pregnant that you'll read all the way to the end to hear what I learned and experienced at Davos just to get an answer to this question that has so many people wondering.
But first, several stories from Davos.
Klaus Schwab, the Swiss professor who is the host of Davos, is a medium-height man, fit, always well-dressed, bald, formal in his mannerisms. Dr. Schwab is the head of the World Economic Forum and is the moderator of the most important sessions at Davos.
He has an interesting way of introducing speakers, one which I've never seen before, that I will try the next time I moderate a panel. He addresses the speaker not the audience. For example he would say "Tony Blair, you are the Prime Minister of Great Britain. In your six years in office you have had many successes in bringing your country into the new global economy. You were a Global Leader of Tomorrow, inducted in 1989. We are very proud of our association with you."
The speaker is beaming by the time he or she takes the microphone. The audience feels as if they are party to a private conversation. It may be an old-fashioned way of doing intros, I have a feeling that Mr. Schwab is old-fashioned in all his mannerisms, even if his ideas were and continue to be revolutionary.
An aside, Dr. Schwab reminds me how to speak with a German accent, a skill I learned from my grandmother Lucy Kiesler, who was as German as they come. I learned a phrase and tried it out on many of my fellow Davosers. "My name ist Klaus Schvab and I shpeak Englisch mit de Cherman agzend." When people hear me say that they say "You'll get in trouble!" (It vouldn't be ze firszt dime.) But it makes me laugh. I can totally visualize Schwab as I say it. I like phrases that reach deep into my memory in a clear way. This one touches my funny bone. Everyone else laughs too because I do it so well. I mean no disrespect to him, and if he reads this (I hope he does) this is the way we do things in America, perhaps with less outward reverence than the Swiss, but with no less respect.
US President Bill Clinton gave a great speech at Davos on Saturday at noon. The multiple tracks of Davos merged into one. Clinton, who had little sleep in the previous three days looked tired, with big bags under his eyes. He spoke softly, but his message was powerful.
Longtime DaveNet readers will know that I am not a big fan of Mr. Clinton. I called for his resignation several times. Have I been turned around on Clinton? Perhaps.
Recall that in my last piece, Two Days at Davos, I concluded that the message of Davos, globalization, was exactly equivalent to the message of the Web. Mutual respect, inclusion, digging up the old wires and replacing them with bigger ones that go different places.
I wasn't sure that Clinton and I were talking about the same thing until Schwab asked him a question after his speech. "Mr. President," Schwab said, "do you have a message for the business leaders here at Davos?"
After a long pause he said "Find a shared vision." He expounded, telling the story of trade negotiations and economic imbalances between developed and developing nations. I felt he was stating the problems of the Internet industry using terms that made sense to him. My interpretation: Without a shared vision, something we agree on, growth can never really happen. As soon as a layer of progress is complete, the wars begin, and years of stagnation follow. This is the cycle of the software-slash-Internet industry, and it looks (thanks to patents, more on that later) as if we might be about to loop around once again.
So, a shared vision? I thought about this for a few hours. I tried to imagine the leaders of the Internet industry sitting in a room and arriving at a shared vision. Is it possible? I thought about Steve Case and Bill Gates. Case is clearly trying to steer the users into the proprietary AOL world, instead of pushing them to the Web. Gates wants to emphasize the power of desktop computers, with all their RAM and disk space, and of course Microsoft's 20+ year investment in operating system software for desktop software.
Could Gates and Case get on a stage and share a joint vision that's anything more than lip service? Not now. Maybe in a few years, but certainly not in time to make a difference in the battle to keep the Internet open and free. Add the other personalities of the industry, Andy Grove, John Chambers, Scott McNealy, Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, John Doerr, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on, and it seems clear that nothing less than an external redefinition of the purpose of technology could get these men into agreement.
Then I realized that such an externally defined vision had already been forced on the technology industry. The standards of the Internet, HTTP, HTML and URLs; and perhaps XML, which is a simple formalization of HTML. To go to the next step the leaders of technology merely have to agree to stop struggling against these standards, and to share the knowledge they have developed around them. The web is ready-made for a shared vision. All that remains is for two or more of the leaders of the Internet industry to get what Clinton, Schwab and Davos are asking them to do.
(Shimon Peres, a longtime Cabinet minister and former Prime Minister of Israel would expound on this idea later, in a very eloquent way, at the end of the Davos 2000 annual meeting. "Peace is hard work," he said.)
After the Clinton speech, on Saturday afternoon, I walked to the Hotel Rinaldi for the first meeting of the Club of Media Leaders. Everything in Davos has an official upper-case kind of name. The members of the Club are CEOs, publishers and chief editorialists at media companies from around the world. I was the only web guy at the lunch.
We went around the room, each person says what their main challenge was in 1999 and says what their main challenge is for 2000. The most popular answers were The Internet and The Internet.
When I spoke, I said my main challenge for 1999 was ease of use and my main challenge for 2000 is to start 1 million websites. I encouraged my fellow media leaders to embrace the web fully and not look back. Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet. Follow this simple rule and you can't go wrong.
Of course the "How do I make money?" question dominated, as I expect it will at Seybold, and I have an answer for the media leaders that works, as I expect it will work in non-media operations. But that will come at the *end* of this piece. ;->
Now flip back to the Saturday Media Leaders lunch at the Hotel Rinaldi. We finished going around the room. Klaus Schwab appears briefly to give us a peptalk. Barbara Erskine, the leader of the Media Leaders takes the mike and says that the President of Argentina won't be able to join us because his hotel is surrounded by demonstrators. Wow! "Where?" I ask. She says the Seehof. I'm out of here, now.
I walk out the front door of the Rinaldi and immediately to the left is a police barricade with several thousand banner-waving demonstrators throwing snowballs mit firecrackers and charging the barricades. I climb on a snowbank to get a better look. Several polizei grab me, stick hard things in my ribs and push me back. The Clinton press entourage is there in force. A scene from Forrest Gump, all the publishing CEOs, editors in chiefs, CNN film crews, demonstrators crashing barriers, and it starts snowing hard, big wet flakes. On one side the haves, the people allowed inside Davos; on the other side unknowns, the ones who want to be heard. What are they demonstrating for? I never found out.
But I did document it, with the best pictures I've ever taken, which isn't saying a lot because I just started using a digital camera a few weeks ago. I think it's like writing. The first step is to have something interesting to say. The second step is to have good supporting technology. In this case a rich story of puzzles, color and contrasts appeared before my lens. All I did was click the shutter.
The next day, Sunday, was Sports Day at Davos, but it was also Blizzard Day. The demonstrators were gone, thanks to the polizei, and the departure of the Clinton entourage, so there was nothing else to do but attend the media leaders lunch with former Microsoft CEO, now chief software architect, Bill Gates. He gives a brief speech, followed by questions and answers from the cream of the journalism world.
Gates echoes many of the ideas you've heard in this column, the power of the personal computer must not be overlooked in the rush to the Internet. He debunks the "myth" of Network Computing as promoted by Sun and Oracle, he says we should check with their customers to find out if their vision had materialized. Gates is confident that it hasn't. I am too, but Bill, don't be so quick to write off Network Computing. It's the engine behind the growth of Yahoo. And while the web browser is a very limited user interface environment, it's not so limited that you can't build a powerful easy to use publishing system around it, as we have. It's good, perhaps, to promote your own company's products, but not at the expense of what's real. Network Computing is great because I can update my site from an Internet cafe in Amsterdam as easily as I can from my office. However, to write an essay like this one, I want great editing tools on my laptop. The Yin and Yang. Of course there's room for Microsoft and other software makers in the world of the Internet. It's not an either-or thing. Hey Bill I'm using your browser right now.
Before the meeting I prepared a couple of questions for Gates and was lucky to have the final word, my question came last, and believe it or not (Forrest Gump again) I had a conversation with Bill in front of all those editorialists. It can be hard to remember all that we said because I was in the middle of it, thinking a step ahead as I engaged with Gates before all those powerful people, but I'm going to try.
I referred to the previous day's challenge from Clinton to business leaders. Bill, can we find a shared vision? His eyes lit up. A well-rehearsed story. Our consistent vision for 25 years has been to bring the power of the personal computer to millions of people. "That's the past," I said, "What about the future?" With fist-pounding enthusiasm, he said that was their vision for the future too. I wasn't satisfied. "What about a *shared* vision Bill?" I kept hoping that he would say The Web, The Web that's the vision we share! In my wildest dreams he would say Ask not what the Internet can do for you. But he didn't.
He talked about SOAP, and said that the audience wouldn't understand it, and they shouldn't have to. I said it can and should be explained. He tried, I think half-heartedly and asked if that was OK. I said no. The audience laughed. He offered me the chance to do it, I did a quick mental calculation, it would take at least two minutes to explain, and this was not my forum, it was his, so I declined.
Gates closed by recommending that everyone in attendance read my column, which is one of things I find very dear about Bill, it's so hard to be critical when he's so enthusiastic about DaveNet. Anyway, before I move on, Bill I'd like to visit you in Redmond to talk about the shared vision thing. You've done something revolutionary in opening up your network to the standards of the Internet. But like the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove, it does no good if people don't know about it.
I'd also like to visit with Bill Clinton to talk about the same thing. But he doesn't read DaveNet. Yet!
Later in the Annual Meeting, Steve Case, Bill Gates, Sumer Redstone and MIT professor Michael Dertouzous would talk about the future of the Internet. Dertouzous asks us to focus on all the new people who will show up on the Web in the coming years. An A-plus for the professor. This is where the action is, in the million websites that will start in 2000, and in the millions, if not billions of websites that will come in the next decade. That my friends is what globalization is about. A voice for anyone with something to say. immunization
In the Plenary Hall on Monday, Bill Gates is on stage with the head of UNICEF, the chairman of Merck, the President of Mozambique, the top people from the World Bank and the WHO, announcing that the Gates Foundation, funded with $21 billion of his money, is making an investment in worldwide child immunization. This is laudable, but weird. I felt sad that we, in the software business, might lose the spark of Bill Gates. It's rare for the sponsor of such a fund to be alive while it's being disseminated. It's also a wonderful thing. Gates, the richest man on earth, is the ultimate trial and error guy. His first ventures into philanthropy will be toe-dips, as this $750 million grant is, for sure, but this is just version 1. When Gates finds a killer app, it's nothing until you get to version 3. Stay tuned.
As you know I am very interested in Internet patents, most people aren't yet, so I was the only real dissenting voice at a lunch on Monday to discuss the subject. They had an earnest but friendly dissenter scheduled to speak, representing people from indigenous cultures whose herbal medicines are being patented by opportunistic scientists, but I was not friendly, I was horrified by the absolute, irrational, smug, unsupportable, open greed present in the room.
I learned a lot in that session, so my position against Internet patents is even stronger now. First, you should know that there are organizations whose sole purpose is to define and patent new business processes that build on the Internet. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.Com, has 60 full-time people working in teams to do nothing more than generate patents. No engineering, no scaling issues, no customer satisfaction requirements (although Walker's company appears to be good at this too), they just a file a claim at various patent offices, and wait for the engineering of the Internet to catch up. A land-grab business. In normal times this might not be such a big deal, but the magic of the Internet, which Walker is exploiting, comes from being free and open, as Joel Klein says, a public space.
How will the patent economy effect open source projects? I was the only member of the open source world in that room. And I was shattered by the greed. After all, isn't there enough money for people who create successful Internet startups like Priceline.Com? Why do we have patents anyway? Is this system, designed for industrial processes, still applicable given the instant gratification reward system for Internet entreprenuers? When your company has a market cap in the billions, is it anything other than unmitigated greed to ask for even more money, for filing a piece of paper with a government?
It might be possible to negotiate with them, but we're going to have to gather some power. I want to be clear on this, I'm outside, I want to charge the barricades, but I don't want to do it alone. If patent madness is allowed to continue without restrictions, the Internet could die, open source or not.
If you want to read more on this subject, check out this article on the situation in wireless web access:
http://www.feedmag.com/daily/dy020300_master.html
"WAP offers a chance to rebuild the Web, without all that annoying freedom, and without all that annoying competition." It's just one example, and is so true.
King Abdullah of Jordan
Back to politics and the Middle East.
When I went to see King Abdullah of Jordan on Sunday, I was prepared to see an immature shadow of his father, the distinguished if short King Hussein, who died last year.
Instead I heard a beautiful speech about peace and friendship. He called the Israelis and Palestinians his brothers. Then he said something that gives me goosebumps to remember. "It's not enough to strive for peace for our children and grandchildren, we must have peace for ourselves." Ahhh the perfect contribution from a young man with most of his life ahead of him. There is nothing wrong with selfishness in the cause of peace. It's beautiful.
Fast-forward to Tuesday evening, the closing session of Davos 2000. Shimon Peres, the distinguished Israeli cabinet officer in charge of the peace process says "Peace is hard work."
No doubt! He recalls with affection many late night sessions at Davos with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "That man just won't accept a night cap," he says with a big grandfatherly twinkle in his eye. We all laugh. I can't tell you what a relief it is to me, an American Jew, to see peace in the Middle East. The wisdom of the Peres' years contrasts the youth of Abdullah. This is what a shared vision looks like. This is something the high-tech industry has yet to get. I hope I live to see that day too.
Softbank's Masayoshi Son is one of the least-known and most powerful people in the high tech world.
An early investor in Yahoo and the largest shareholder in E-Trade, Son also owns one of the richest VC firms in the world, and Comdex and so much else, including the Seybold Conference that I'm going to keynote on Monday.
I had never seen or heard Son until Davos. He's got the biggest damned grin I've ever seen. What's behind the smile? He's winning the game he plays, he's the perfect foil for the fear at Davos and Seybold, on stage is the man who Gets It in a 36-point font.
He asks the audience a question. How many of you believe there is an Internet Bubble? 70 percent say yes. Now, how many believe the Internet industry will be worth more than the PC industry? Every hand goes up. Now he points out the contradiction. All the dot-com companies represent $1 trillion in value. The PC companies are worth $6 trillion. So if you believe your own logic, the bubble won't happen at least until stock values go up six-fold. Of course the trick is to pick the winners, but it's sure that Son-San will win. Not only is he long on E-Trade, he's also starting his own all-electronic stock market! No trading floor. He doesn't pause to catch his breath. Right on.
(An aside, I attended an excellent panel on electronic stock markets, including Arthur Levitt, the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He said there's no time to waste in building the all-electronic trading floor. Developers in Europe and Asia are moving quickly. I also had drinks with the chairman of the Warsaw stock exchange. He asked for advice on firewalls and NT versus Unix, which I gladly gave.)
One of the last sessions at Davos, A Values-Added Century, was a totally inspiring and heart-grabbing set of stories told by people who are not rich or very famous, who have made a contribution to the world by helping children and refugees, or providing inspiration to women or entrepreneurialism in the developing world. A distinguished heart surgeon and the chairman of the Special Olympics were there too.
The stories were so incredible, the thoughts so deep. We learned about the aspirations of refugees, they want choice, freedom, hope. These were recurring themes throughout my Davos experience. I had lunch with media leaders from Russia, received a bear hug from a man who came in third in the Russian presidential election. They want free speech to remain in Russia, but they're not too sure about it.
I ate dinner with two women journalists from Poland who lived through the transition to freedom. I heard a stirring talk by Abdurrahman Wahid, the new Prime Minister of Indonesia, one of the largest countries on earth. He says it's not all about money; and he says it in a folksy way. "I am a poor man, but look, I'm president of my country!" Another deep laugh and sigh of relief. Indonesia, a country that needs a leader, has one.
The message of Davos is the message of love mixed with fear, which is to say it's a real message. The Internet provokes fear, I think largely because the message of the Internet comes to them from people who are scared. I heard concerns on the stage at the Values-Added session, fear of the Internet, and I asked for the floor and gave one of the best, most impassioned speeches of my life.
"I have something important to say," I said, and all the faces in the room turned to me. "The Internet is not about money. I've been inspired as you have by what I've learned from people on the Internet, from their creativity, humanity, hopes and frailty. Don't give up on the Internet, it is for you."
I said a lot more, but I honestly don't remember what I said. It was probably fairly typical DaveNet stuff, but they hadn't heard it before. I hadn't heard it in this context either. There is an Internet that wants to enable all the voices in the world, to empower people *and* help them create new businesses. I believe that the Web is not only the vision that's shared by technology leaders, it's the vision that we can share with political and economic leaders too. Just think about the Middle East. There are a few bumps, we can all make money on the Internet, and yes I do believe the soppy stuff about the Internet being the next step in the path of evolution of our species.
But now, finally, the part you've been waiting for, how you will make money on the Internet, so you can stop wasting time asking the question and get busy getting rich.
How to Make Money in the Internet
Suppose you run a newspaper in Singapore. This defines a community. Open a new server that allows people in your community to create their own Web sites. No editorial policy on these sites, except some obvious ones, don't support illegal activity as long as it doesn't relate to free speech. (I have no idea how the web can work without absolute freedom of expression, but we don't accept pornography or illegal trade on UserLand servers, and don't recommend that others do.)
Make it easy for your community members to sell goods and services on your servers. Provide a service bureau for accepting major credit cards. Of course, as a faciliator of this commerce you're entitled to a commission on each sale. But that's just half of the value equation, and I'd argue it's the less interesting half.
Encourage your community members to gather facts, draw conclusions, state opinions and organize others into action. Read the sites yourself. Require that every editorial person in your workforce read the sites. Have internal meetings where you only talk about what's happening in your community of websites. Have face-to-face meetings where you invite the leading webmasters in your community. Learn from each other. Get down in the trenches, in a sense, and listen, and then write about what you learn. Listen listen listen.
As you get to know your community, stars will emerge. Give them space on your home page and run ads on their sites. Be clever in choosing the ads. Link together problems with solutions, some commercial, others just for the good of your community. What's good for your community? You decide.
What just happened? You grew by an order of magnitude. And you grew into the Web, a business that pays a premium market cap, unlike the paper-based publishing system, and the emulation of paper publishing that most publishing websites employ in 2000. The people who run your home page are free to link to stories produced by the print publication, or not. My bet is that within several months, the community web sites will be producing content that's as interesting to your community as the copy produced by your current editorial staff.
Meet with the chairman of your local stock market, if he or she isn't already beating your door down. Issue a tracking stock, or, even better, spin out your new web operation. Collect several hundred million dollars, possibly more, to capitalize your new venture. With that money, buy infrastructure.
Wire up your best new editorialists with broadband connections. Buy them the latest digital cameras. Build a warehouse to stock goods that people can buy from your server. Lease a fleet of delivery trucks to make fulfillment virtually instantanous. Grant stock options to the best editorial people, including ones that come from your old print pub, and also give them stock that they must pass on to people whose sites they support.
Further, think in terms of a global audience. How many people want to know about Singapore? How many people in your city might want to host visitors from far away? Find a sister city in a land far away and find out what makes your communities similar and what makes them different.
Spread the new wealth around. And never ask what the Internet can do for you, always do things that just do one thing, grow the Internet, help it reach into the community you define. If you follow this formula, you can't lose, in my humble opinion, unless there is an Internet bubble that bursts before you get the money, but as Son-San says, there are good reasons to believe that there is no such bubble.
Again, in my humble opinion, no one has to lose, but no one gets to keep doing the same job they were doing before the transition to the Web. If you define success in terms of continuing to do the same old thing, you will lose. This is the message that causes so much dissonance at Davos and at Seybold. The people who had a good thing going before the Internet are angry. If they draw a line in the sand, as Sumner Redstone of Viacom did so insistently, sorry it's off to glue factory. But if you're willing to risk it all on your intelligence, experience *and* your enthusiasm for the Internet, you will win. But you have to be willing to change.
How this effects publishing
In the publishing environment, columnists and reporters will share their space with the people. The pros have to become ordinary people again, and let their writing and ideas compete with the expressions of amateurs. The old publishing standard "Everyone needs an editor," will soften in the age of universal publishing. "Editing can sometimes improve the effectiveness of writing" is more accurate. People who can self-edit, or have less formal editing processes, will not be held back. Judge the process by the end result. Some people can write without filtering.
We may sacrifice a little quality, both in terms of writing style and factual accuracy. This column is a good example. When I wrote for Wired the copy may have been cleaner, but the ideas were sanitized. It's inevitable when you prepare copy that must pass tests of political correctness. Let's say I was writing for a big publication whose CEO wanted to go back to Davos next year. Out goes the stuff about Speaking English mit de Cherman agzend. Now you might not miss that, but what else would you miss? Would my publisher let me reveal to all our competitors the blueprint for our growth? If I'm untethered, as I am, I am free of those kinds of concerns. If my host doesn't point to my column because of it's limited political correctness, perhaps his or her competitor will? And since I have my own community, I know in advance that this article will get flow. Even so, I don't go out of my way to insult people I like, and I will generally reveal my business model at a moment's notice because I practice the Ask Not What the Internet Can Do For You philosophy.
If the market places a high value on the cherished attributes so prized by print-era editorialists, then they will be proven right. But you must have the courage to put your ideals to the test. This isn't a choice you have. Your principles *will* be put to the test, your only choice is whether or not you want to bet against the Internet here. I recommend at least a bet-hedge. and if you really jump in, I think you'll see that the web has its own mechanism for quality. If you want people to return, you have to take the high road, the main person whose reputation you tarnish with weak opinion and incorrect fact is your own.
If you want to see this idea in action, compare Scripting News and Davos Newbies with the Davos site that Newsweek produced. This is a fair A-B comparison since we were covering the same story. We all had limited resources. Newseek had a group of writers and photographers and production people (today they're webmasters and HTML coders) -- a traditional publishing organization that dates back to the 1940s at least, perhaps earlier. Scripting News and Davos Newbies were written by sole practitioners, one the ultimate insider, Lance Knobel, and the other by an outsider who had been invited to have a look at what goes on at Davos, me. Judge for yourself. To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done before.
I think you'll find that Lance and I captured a personal view of the conference that goes into some depth, but there's room for improvement. While Newsweek had more resources, the result was more traditional, human interest color pieces, the kind of stuff you could get from watching CNN and reading Reuters.
I envision a Davos, maybe not in 2001, but certainly in 2002 or 2003, where every participant can have their own site, and many do. I imagine that out of 3000 possible sites, there will be 30 excellent ones and 100 very good ones. People outside Davos will be able to experience Davos real-time, from a dozen perspectives (no one person can read 130 different quickly updating sites). And the Davos process will continue year-round, as the community defined by EditThisPage.Com is 24-by-7 and roams the landscape of the web, morphs and grows, and never runs out of ideas for connecting different cultures with each other. As I understand the Davos philosophy, this is totally consistent with it.
This is at the heart of what I want to show at Seybold. We can all grow together, but first there has to be respect. At the heart of each print publication is a brand and a team that can lead a community into the web. It's completely human to not want to jump into the unknown, so being scared is OK, it's rational. But inevitably change comes, and you can't take it with you. So take off the parachute, forget what you know, and go ahead and jump. That's where fun comes. That's what we're all doing. None of us get out of this alive. It's later than you think.
Live session in Boston
As I write this it's 8PM in Amsterdam, and I'll be on a plane for London at 8AM tomorrow. There will be very little time to edit this piece. I will try to update Scripting News from Boston, and will post the outline of my Seybold keynote which is on Monday morning 9AM Eastern time. If there's a webcast I'll point to it as well.
I will also host a live session at the Hynes Auditorium, Tuesday, February 8th from 6 to 7:30PM in Room 304. It's open to the public. All DaveNet readers are welcome, bring a friend and an idea, and let's have fun!
See you in Boston!
The title of this piece is an answer to the most frequently asked question I heard at Davos, both in the hallways and in the sessions. Yes, the Internet is cool, but how do you make money? This is the question that the Have-Nots ask those that Have, or another way, that the Get-Nots ask those who claim to Get. I am so smug in the belief that I can answer the question that I'll ramble my way there, knowing that it's so pregnant that you'll read all the way to the end to hear what I learned and experienced at Davos just to get an answer to this question that has so many people wondering.
But first, several stories from Davos.
Klaus Schwab, the Swiss professor who is the host of Davos, is a medium-height man, fit, always well-dressed, bald, formal in his mannerisms. Dr. Schwab is the head of the World Economic Forum and is the moderator of the most important sessions at Davos.
He has an interesting way of introducing speakers, one which I've never seen before, that I will try the next time I moderate a panel. He addresses the speaker not the audience. For example he would say "Tony Blair, you are the Prime Minister of Great Britain. In your six years in office you have had many successes in bringing your country into the new global economy. You were a Global Leader of Tomorrow, inducted in 1989. We are very proud of our association with you."
The speaker is beaming by the time he or she takes the microphone. The audience feels as if they are party to a private conversation. It may be an old-fashioned way of doing intros, I have a feeling that Mr. Schwab is old-fashioned in all his mannerisms, even if his ideas were and continue to be revolutionary.
An aside, Dr. Schwab reminds me how to speak with a German accent, a skill I learned from my grandmother Lucy Kiesler, who was as German as they come. I learned a phrase and tried it out on many of my fellow Davosers. "My name ist Klaus Schvab and I shpeak Englisch mit de Cherman agzend." When people hear me say that they say "You'll get in trouble!" (It vouldn't be ze firszt dime.) But it makes me laugh. I can totally visualize Schwab as I say it. I like phrases that reach deep into my memory in a clear way. This one touches my funny bone. Everyone else laughs too because I do it so well. I mean no disrespect to him, and if he reads this (I hope he does) this is the way we do things in America, perhaps with less outward reverence than the Swiss, but with no less respect.
US President Bill Clinton gave a great speech at Davos on Saturday at noon. The multiple tracks of Davos merged into one. Clinton, who had little sleep in the previous three days looked tired, with big bags under his eyes. He spoke softly, but his message was powerful.
Longtime DaveNet readers will know that I am not a big fan of Mr. Clinton. I called for his resignation several times. Have I been turned around on Clinton? Perhaps.
Recall that in my last piece, Two Days at Davos, I concluded that the message of Davos, globalization, was exactly equivalent to the message of the Web. Mutual respect, inclusion, digging up the old wires and replacing them with bigger ones that go different places.
I wasn't sure that Clinton and I were talking about the same thing until Schwab asked him a question after his speech. "Mr. President," Schwab said, "do you have a message for the business leaders here at Davos?"
After a long pause he said "Find a shared vision." He expounded, telling the story of trade negotiations and economic imbalances between developed and developing nations. I felt he was stating the problems of the Internet industry using terms that made sense to him. My interpretation: Without a shared vision, something we agree on, growth can never really happen. As soon as a layer of progress is complete, the wars begin, and years of stagnation follow. This is the cycle of the software-slash-Internet industry, and it looks (thanks to patents, more on that later) as if we might be about to loop around once again.
So, a shared vision? I thought about this for a few hours. I tried to imagine the leaders of the Internet industry sitting in a room and arriving at a shared vision. Is it possible? I thought about Steve Case and Bill Gates. Case is clearly trying to steer the users into the proprietary AOL world, instead of pushing them to the Web. Gates wants to emphasize the power of desktop computers, with all their RAM and disk space, and of course Microsoft's 20+ year investment in operating system software for desktop software.
Could Gates and Case get on a stage and share a joint vision that's anything more than lip service? Not now. Maybe in a few years, but certainly not in time to make a difference in the battle to keep the Internet open and free. Add the other personalities of the industry, Andy Grove, John Chambers, Scott McNealy, Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, John Doerr, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on, and it seems clear that nothing less than an external redefinition of the purpose of technology could get these men into agreement.
Then I realized that such an externally defined vision had already been forced on the technology industry. The standards of the Internet, HTTP, HTML and URLs; and perhaps XML, which is a simple formalization of HTML. To go to the next step the leaders of technology merely have to agree to stop struggling against these standards, and to share the knowledge they have developed around them. The web is ready-made for a shared vision. All that remains is for two or more of the leaders of the Internet industry to get what Clinton, Schwab and Davos are asking them to do.
(Shimon Peres, a longtime Cabinet minister and former Prime Minister of Israel would expound on this idea later, in a very eloquent way, at the end of the Davos 2000 annual meeting. "Peace is hard work," he said.)
After the Clinton speech, on Saturday afternoon, I walked to the Hotel Rinaldi for the first meeting of the Club of Media Leaders. Everything in Davos has an official upper-case kind of name. The members of the Club are CEOs, publishers and chief editorialists at media companies from around the world. I was the only web guy at the lunch.
We went around the room, each person says what their main challenge was in 1999 and says what their main challenge is for 2000. The most popular answers were The Internet and The Internet.
When I spoke, I said my main challenge for 1999 was ease of use and my main challenge for 2000 is to start 1 million websites. I encouraged my fellow media leaders to embrace the web fully and not look back. Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet. Follow this simple rule and you can't go wrong.
Of course the "How do I make money?" question dominated, as I expect it will at Seybold, and I have an answer for the media leaders that works, as I expect it will work in non-media operations. But that will come at the *end* of this piece. ;->
Now flip back to the Saturday Media Leaders lunch at the Hotel Rinaldi. We finished going around the room. Klaus Schwab appears briefly to give us a peptalk. Barbara Erskine, the leader of the Media Leaders takes the mike and says that the President of Argentina won't be able to join us because his hotel is surrounded by demonstrators. Wow! "Where?" I ask. She says the Seehof. I'm out of here, now.
I walk out the front door of the Rinaldi and immediately to the left is a police barricade with several thousand banner-waving demonstrators throwing snowballs mit firecrackers and charging the barricades. I climb on a snowbank to get a better look. Several polizei grab me, stick hard things in my ribs and push me back. The Clinton press entourage is there in force. A scene from Forrest Gump, all the publishing CEOs, editors in chiefs, CNN film crews, demonstrators crashing barriers, and it starts snowing hard, big wet flakes. On one side the haves, the people allowed inside Davos; on the other side unknowns, the ones who want to be heard. What are they demonstrating for? I never found out.
But I did document it, with the best pictures I've ever taken, which isn't saying a lot because I just started using a digital camera a few weeks ago. I think it's like writing. The first step is to have something interesting to say. The second step is to have good supporting technology. In this case a rich story of puzzles, color and contrasts appeared before my lens. All I did was click the shutter.
The next day, Sunday, was Sports Day at Davos, but it was also Blizzard Day. The demonstrators were gone, thanks to the polizei, and the departure of the Clinton entourage, so there was nothing else to do but attend the media leaders lunch with former Microsoft CEO, now chief software architect, Bill Gates. He gives a brief speech, followed by questions and answers from the cream of the journalism world.
Gates echoes many of the ideas you've heard in this column, the power of the personal computer must not be overlooked in the rush to the Internet. He debunks the "myth" of Network Computing as promoted by Sun and Oracle, he says we should check with their customers to find out if their vision had materialized. Gates is confident that it hasn't. I am too, but Bill, don't be so quick to write off Network Computing. It's the engine behind the growth of Yahoo. And while the web browser is a very limited user interface environment, it's not so limited that you can't build a powerful easy to use publishing system around it, as we have. It's good, perhaps, to promote your own company's products, but not at the expense of what's real. Network Computing is great because I can update my site from an Internet cafe in Amsterdam as easily as I can from my office. However, to write an essay like this one, I want great editing tools on my laptop. The Yin and Yang. Of course there's room for Microsoft and other software makers in the world of the Internet. It's not an either-or thing. Hey Bill I'm using your browser right now.
Before the meeting I prepared a couple of questions for Gates and was lucky to have the final word, my question came last, and believe it or not (Forrest Gump again) I had a conversation with Bill in front of all those editorialists. It can be hard to remember all that we said because I was in the middle of it, thinking a step ahead as I engaged with Gates before all those powerful people, but I'm going to try.
I referred to the previous day's challenge from Clinton to business leaders. Bill, can we find a shared vision? His eyes lit up. A well-rehearsed story. Our consistent vision for 25 years has been to bring the power of the personal computer to millions of people. "That's the past," I said, "What about the future?" With fist-pounding enthusiasm, he said that was their vision for the future too. I wasn't satisfied. "What about a *shared* vision Bill?" I kept hoping that he would say The Web, The Web that's the vision we share! In my wildest dreams he would say Ask not what the Internet can do for you. But he didn't.
He talked about SOAP, and said that the audience wouldn't understand it, and they shouldn't have to. I said it can and should be explained. He tried, I think half-heartedly and asked if that was OK. I said no. The audience laughed. He offered me the chance to do it, I did a quick mental calculation, it would take at least two minutes to explain, and this was not my forum, it was his, so I declined.
Gates closed by recommending that everyone in attendance read my column, which is one of things I find very dear about Bill, it's so hard to be critical when he's so enthusiastic about DaveNet. Anyway, before I move on, Bill I'd like to visit you in Redmond to talk about the shared vision thing. You've done something revolutionary in opening up your network to the standards of the Internet. But like the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove, it does no good if people don't know about it.
I'd also like to visit with Bill Clinton to talk about the same thing. But he doesn't read DaveNet. Yet!
Later in the Annual Meeting, Steve Case, Bill Gates, Sumer Redstone and MIT professor Michael Dertouzous would talk about the future of the Internet. Dertouzous asks us to focus on all the new people who will show up on the Web in the coming years. An A-plus for the professor. This is where the action is, in the million websites that will start in 2000, and in the millions, if not billions of websites that will come in the next decade. That my friends is what globalization is about. A voice for anyone with something to say. immunization
In the Plenary Hall on Monday, Bill Gates is on stage with the head of UNICEF, the chairman of Merck, the President of Mozambique, the top people from the World Bank and the WHO, announcing that the Gates Foundation, funded with $21 billion of his money, is making an investment in worldwide child immunization. This is laudable, but weird. I felt sad that we, in the software business, might lose the spark of Bill Gates. It's rare for the sponsor of such a fund to be alive while it's being disseminated. It's also a wonderful thing. Gates, the richest man on earth, is the ultimate trial and error guy. His first ventures into philanthropy will be toe-dips, as this $750 million grant is, for sure, but this is just version 1. When Gates finds a killer app, it's nothing until you get to version 3. Stay tuned.
As you know I am very interested in Internet patents, most people aren't yet, so I was the only real dissenting voice at a lunch on Monday to discuss the subject. They had an earnest but friendly dissenter scheduled to speak, representing people from indigenous cultures whose herbal medicines are being patented by opportunistic scientists, but I was not friendly, I was horrified by the absolute, irrational, smug, unsupportable, open greed present in the room.
I learned a lot in that session, so my position against Internet patents is even stronger now. First, you should know that there are organizations whose sole purpose is to define and patent new business processes that build on the Internet. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.Com, has 60 full-time people working in teams to do nothing more than generate patents. No engineering, no scaling issues, no customer satisfaction requirements (although Walker's company appears to be good at this too), they just a file a claim at various patent offices, and wait for the engineering of the Internet to catch up. A land-grab business. In normal times this might not be such a big deal, but the magic of the Internet, which Walker is exploiting, comes from being free and open, as Joel Klein says, a public space.
How will the patent economy effect open source projects? I was the only member of the open source world in that room. And I was shattered by the greed. After all, isn't there enough money for people who create successful Internet startups like Priceline.Com? Why do we have patents anyway? Is this system, designed for industrial processes, still applicable given the instant gratification reward system for Internet entreprenuers? When your company has a market cap in the billions, is it anything other than unmitigated greed to ask for even more money, for filing a piece of paper with a government?
It might be possible to negotiate with them, but we're going to have to gather some power. I want to be clear on this, I'm outside, I want to charge the barricades, but I don't want to do it alone. If patent madness is allowed to continue without restrictions, the Internet could die, open source or not.
If you want to read more on this subject, check out this article on the situation in wireless web access:
http://www.feedmag.com/daily/dy020300_master.html
"WAP offers a chance to rebuild the Web, without all that annoying freedom, and without all that annoying competition." It's just one example, and is so true.
King Abdullah of Jordan
Back to politics and the Middle East.
When I went to see King Abdullah of Jordan on Sunday, I was prepared to see an immature shadow of his father, the distinguished if short King Hussein, who died last year.
Instead I heard a beautiful speech about peace and friendship. He called the Israelis and Palestinians his brothers. Then he said something that gives me goosebumps to remember. "It's not enough to strive for peace for our children and grandchildren, we must have peace for ourselves." Ahhh the perfect contribution from a young man with most of his life ahead of him. There is nothing wrong with selfishness in the cause of peace. It's beautiful.
Fast-forward to Tuesday evening, the closing session of Davos 2000. Shimon Peres, the distinguished Israeli cabinet officer in charge of the peace process says "Peace is hard work."
No doubt! He recalls with affection many late night sessions at Davos with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "That man just won't accept a night cap," he says with a big grandfatherly twinkle in his eye. We all laugh. I can't tell you what a relief it is to me, an American Jew, to see peace in the Middle East. The wisdom of the Peres' years contrasts the youth of Abdullah. This is what a shared vision looks like. This is something the high-tech industry has yet to get. I hope I live to see that day too.
Softbank's Masayoshi Son is one of the least-known and most powerful people in the high tech world.
An early investor in Yahoo and the largest shareholder in E-Trade, Son also owns one of the richest VC firms in the world, and Comdex and so much else, including the Seybold Conference that I'm going to keynote on Monday.
I had never seen or heard Son until Davos. He's got the biggest damned grin I've ever seen. What's behind the smile? He's winning the game he plays, he's the perfect foil for the fear at Davos and Seybold, on stage is the man who Gets It in a 36-point font.
He asks the audience a question. How many of you believe there is an Internet Bubble? 70 percent say yes. Now, how many believe the Internet industry will be worth more than the PC industry? Every hand goes up. Now he points out the contradiction. All the dot-com companies represent $1 trillion in value. The PC companies are worth $6 trillion. So if you believe your own logic, the bubble won't happen at least until stock values go up six-fold. Of course the trick is to pick the winners, but it's sure that Son-San will win. Not only is he long on E-Trade, he's also starting his own all-electronic stock market! No trading floor. He doesn't pause to catch his breath. Right on.
(An aside, I attended an excellent panel on electronic stock markets, including Arthur Levitt, the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He said there's no time to waste in building the all-electronic trading floor. Developers in Europe and Asia are moving quickly. I also had drinks with the chairman of the Warsaw stock exchange. He asked for advice on firewalls and NT versus Unix, which I gladly gave.)
One of the last sessions at Davos, A Values-Added Century, was a totally inspiring and heart-grabbing set of stories told by people who are not rich or very famous, who have made a contribution to the world by helping children and refugees, or providing inspiration to women or entrepreneurialism in the developing world. A distinguished heart surgeon and the chairman of the Special Olympics were there too.
The stories were so incredible, the thoughts so deep. We learned about the aspirations of refugees, they want choice, freedom, hope. These were recurring themes throughout my Davos experience. I had lunch with media leaders from Russia, received a bear hug from a man who came in third in the Russian presidential election. They want free speech to remain in Russia, but they're not too sure about it.
I ate dinner with two women journalists from Poland who lived through the transition to freedom. I heard a stirring talk by Abdurrahman Wahid, the new Prime Minister of Indonesia, one of the largest countries on earth. He says it's not all about money; and he says it in a folksy way. "I am a poor man, but look, I'm president of my country!" Another deep laugh and sigh of relief. Indonesia, a country that needs a leader, has one.
The message of Davos is the message of love mixed with fear, which is to say it's a real message. The Internet provokes fear, I think largely because the message of the Internet comes to them from people who are scared. I heard concerns on the stage at the Values-Added session, fear of the Internet, and I asked for the floor and gave one of the best, most impassioned speeches of my life.
"I have something important to say," I said, and all the faces in the room turned to me. "The Internet is not about money. I've been inspired as you have by what I've learned from people on the Internet, from their creativity, humanity, hopes and frailty. Don't give up on the Internet, it is for you."
I said a lot more, but I honestly don't remember what I said. It was probably fairly typical DaveNet stuff, but they hadn't heard it before. I hadn't heard it in this context either. There is an Internet that wants to enable all the voices in the world, to empower people *and* help them create new businesses. I believe that the Web is not only the vision that's shared by technology leaders, it's the vision that we can share with political and economic leaders too. Just think about the Middle East. There are a few bumps, we can all make money on the Internet, and yes I do believe the soppy stuff about the Internet being the next step in the path of evolution of our species.
But now, finally, the part you've been waiting for, how you will make money on the Internet, so you can stop wasting time asking the question and get busy getting rich.
How to Make Money in the Internet
Suppose you run a newspaper in Singapore. This defines a community. Open a new server that allows people in your community to create their own Web sites. No editorial policy on these sites, except some obvious ones, don't support illegal activity as long as it doesn't relate to free speech. (I have no idea how the web can work without absolute freedom of expression, but we don't accept pornography or illegal trade on UserLand servers, and don't recommend that others do.)
Make it easy for your community members to sell goods and services on your servers. Provide a service bureau for accepting major credit cards. Of course, as a faciliator of this commerce you're entitled to a commission on each sale. But that's just half of the value equation, and I'd argue it's the less interesting half.
Encourage your community members to gather facts, draw conclusions, state opinions and organize others into action. Read the sites yourself. Require that every editorial person in your workforce read the sites. Have internal meetings where you only talk about what's happening in your community of websites. Have face-to-face meetings where you invite the leading webmasters in your community. Learn from each other. Get down in the trenches, in a sense, and listen, and then write about what you learn. Listen listen listen.
As you get to know your community, stars will emerge. Give them space on your home page and run ads on their sites. Be clever in choosing the ads. Link together problems with solutions, some commercial, others just for the good of your community. What's good for your community? You decide.
What just happened? You grew by an order of magnitude. And you grew into the Web, a business that pays a premium market cap, unlike the paper-based publishing system, and the emulation of paper publishing that most publishing websites employ in 2000. The people who run your home page are free to link to stories produced by the print publication, or not. My bet is that within several months, the community web sites will be producing content that's as interesting to your community as the copy produced by your current editorial staff.
Meet with the chairman of your local stock market, if he or she isn't already beating your door down. Issue a tracking stock, or, even better, spin out your new web operation. Collect several hundred million dollars, possibly more, to capitalize your new venture. With that money, buy infrastructure.
Wire up your best new editorialists with broadband connections. Buy them the latest digital cameras. Build a warehouse to stock goods that people can buy from your server. Lease a fleet of delivery trucks to make fulfillment virtually instantanous. Grant stock options to the best editorial people, including ones that come from your old print pub, and also give them stock that they must pass on to people whose sites they support.
Further, think in terms of a global audience. How many people want to know about Singapore? How many people in your city might want to host visitors from far away? Find a sister city in a land far away and find out what makes your communities similar and what makes them different.
Spread the new wealth around. And never ask what the Internet can do for you, always do things that just do one thing, grow the Internet, help it reach into the community you define. If you follow this formula, you can't lose, in my humble opinion, unless there is an Internet bubble that bursts before you get the money, but as Son-San says, there are good reasons to believe that there is no such bubble.
Again, in my humble opinion, no one has to lose, but no one gets to keep doing the same job they were doing before the transition to the Web. If you define success in terms of continuing to do the same old thing, you will lose. This is the message that causes so much dissonance at Davos and at Seybold. The people who had a good thing going before the Internet are angry. If they draw a line in the sand, as Sumner Redstone of Viacom did so insistently, sorry it's off to glue factory. But if you're willing to risk it all on your intelligence, experience *and* your enthusiasm for the Internet, you will win. But you have to be willing to change.
How this effects publishing
In the publishing environment, columnists and reporters will share their space with the people. The pros have to become ordinary people again, and let their writing and ideas compete with the expressions of amateurs. The old publishing standard "Everyone needs an editor," will soften in the age of universal publishing. "Editing can sometimes improve the effectiveness of writing" is more accurate. People who can self-edit, or have less formal editing processes, will not be held back. Judge the process by the end result. Some people can write without filtering.
We may sacrifice a little quality, both in terms of writing style and factual accuracy. This column is a good example. When I wrote for Wired the copy may have been cleaner, but the ideas were sanitized. It's inevitable when you prepare copy that must pass tests of political correctness. Let's say I was writing for a big publication whose CEO wanted to go back to Davos next year. Out goes the stuff about Speaking English mit de Cherman agzend. Now you might not miss that, but what else would you miss? Would my publisher let me reveal to all our competitors the blueprint for our growth? If I'm untethered, as I am, I am free of those kinds of concerns. If my host doesn't point to my column because of it's limited political correctness, perhaps his or her competitor will? And since I have my own community, I know in advance that this article will get flow. Even so, I don't go out of my way to insult people I like, and I will generally reveal my business model at a moment's notice because I practice the Ask Not What the Internet Can Do For You philosophy.
If the market places a high value on the cherished attributes so prized by print-era editorialists, then they will be proven right. But you must have the courage to put your ideals to the test. This isn't a choice you have. Your principles *will* be put to the test, your only choice is whether or not you want to bet against the Internet here. I recommend at least a bet-hedge. and if you really jump in, I think you'll see that the web has its own mechanism for quality. If you want people to return, you have to take the high road, the main person whose reputation you tarnish with weak opinion and incorrect fact is your own.
If you want to see this idea in action, compare Scripting News and Davos Newbies with the Davos site that Newsweek produced. This is a fair A-B comparison since we were covering the same story. We all had limited resources. Newseek had a group of writers and photographers and production people (today they're webmasters and HTML coders) -- a traditional publishing organization that dates back to the 1940s at least, perhaps earlier. Scripting News and Davos Newbies were written by sole practitioners, one the ultimate insider, Lance Knobel, and the other by an outsider who had been invited to have a look at what goes on at Davos, me. Judge for yourself. To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done before.
I think you'll find that Lance and I captured a personal view of the conference that goes into some depth, but there's room for improvement. While Newsweek had more resources, the result was more traditional, human interest color pieces, the kind of stuff you could get from watching CNN and reading Reuters.
I envision a Davos, maybe not in 2001, but certainly in 2002 or 2003, where every participant can have their own site, and many do. I imagine that out of 3000 possible sites, there will be 30 excellent ones and 100 very good ones. People outside Davos will be able to experience Davos real-time, from a dozen perspectives (no one person can read 130 different quickly updating sites). And the Davos process will continue year-round, as the community defined by EditThisPage.Com is 24-by-7 and roams the landscape of the web, morphs and grows, and never runs out of ideas for connecting different cultures with each other. As I understand the Davos philosophy, this is totally consistent with it.
This is at the heart of what I want to show at Seybold. We can all grow together, but first there has to be respect. At the heart of each print publication is a brand and a team that can lead a community into the web. It's completely human to not want to jump into the unknown, so being scared is OK, it's rational. But inevitably change comes, and you can't take it with you. So take off the parachute, forget what you know, and go ahead and jump. That's where fun comes. That's what we're all doing. None of us get out of this alive. It's later than you think.
Live session in Boston
As I write this it's 8PM in Amsterdam, and I'll be on a plane for London at 8AM tomorrow. There will be very little time to edit this piece. I will try to update Scripting News from Boston, and will post the outline of my Seybold keynote which is on Monday morning 9AM Eastern time. If there's a webcast I'll point to it as well.
I will also host a live session at the Hynes Auditorium, Tuesday, February 8th from 6 to 7:30PM in Room 304. It's open to the public. All DaveNet readers are welcome, bring a friend and an idea, and let's have fun!
See you in Boston!
billionaire successful secret
Pursues successfully is the life forever goal. Longs for successfully,way things should be. But actually only has the minority person in theboundless huge crowd to be able to turn on the successful front door,becomes human the outstanding people. With under the blue sky, whyonly has this minority person to be able to create the life themagnificence, but the majority person actually ? Underasks you to listen to the American 5 outstanding public figures'successful secrets, perhaps can have the inspiration to you.
Make Money on The Internet
Maybe you've heard people say that you can get rich on the Internet. But, if you are serious about XXXXXX money on the Internet, remember, it's not a get rich overnight business. Internet success takes time, effort and knowledge. There's no easy "get rich quick" method, so you need to spend the time for building income stream from your Web site.
You can find many kinds of Web sites that have the aim, directly or indirectly, to make money. Apart from the online retailers who are using their sites to directly make money, you can find many Web sites with various money XXXXXX features. Here's an excellent page describing realistic ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet from your personal Web site - Work From Home. No "get rich quick" schemes. Just proven, reliable ways to to build an online business or use a Web site to expand your offline one.
The basis for building serious income is the high traffic. If your site only gets a few hundred visitors per month, as most of personal Web sites, you'll unlikely make more than pocket change.
Here are some ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet from your personal Web site...
BannersThey were one of the first ways of XXXXXX money from hobby Web sites, however they are not so popular now since most surfers don't even look at them. In fact, the click-through rate (the percentage of visitors who actually click on a banner) has steadily dropped, from around 5% 4 years ago to less than 0.5% now.
In the Traffic-Building volume of Make Your Site SELL! 2002 (the best ebook describing all possible ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet), banners are called #1 "Time and Money Wasters." Save yourself months of poorly spent time. Read this essential manual first.
If you have highly relevant, cleverly designed banners, you can beat the odds. However, you need relatively high traffic to actually make more than pocket change. In fact, most banner advertising companies prefer to only pay for actual sales (even click throughs are no longer attractive, since many people click through because they are paid to, and not because they intend to buy anything).
FreebiesUnder this category are things such as free lotto tickets and various games where you can win prizes. Often, these are implemented as pop-ups and are much more annoying than banners.
Affiliate programsThey pay you a percentage of the sales you generate for them, or for each visitor you send. This is one of the best ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet. You don't have to spend time and energy creating your own product. And some of them pay 50% commission. See Affiliate programs for more information on building income from affiliate programs.
Google AdSenseThis is one of the easiest ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet for small and medium sites by displaying relevant, text-based ads from Google AdWords (Google's own advertising program) and receiving a share of the pay-per-click payment. For more information, go directly to their site...
Other toolsThere are many tools that can help you make some pretty big commissions without your visitors even realizing that you're building income from their visits.
For example, several search engines will pay you a few cents per search made from your Web site. If a few hundred people use your search box, you'll earn a few dollars a day - not bad for a few minutes of cut & paste a small line of code within the HTML of your Web page.
Selling a Product or ServiceThis is an obvious way of XXXXXX money on the Internet. To succeed in it, you have to succeed at three points...
Develop a great product that is of interest to others on the Web.
Write a professional Web site designed to sell.
Attract targeted customers to the site.
Ken Evoy's Make Your Knowledge Sell! is a very useful ebook for those who want to get a piece of the e-commerce pie but don't know how to come up with a product. MYKS! shows you that your knowledge, life experience, specialized interest or hobby can be packaged into an information product ("infoproduct") that other people want and are surfing to find.
You can find many kinds of Web sites that have the aim, directly or indirectly, to make money. Apart from the online retailers who are using their sites to directly make money, you can find many Web sites with various money XXXXXX features. Here's an excellent page describing realistic ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet from your personal Web site - Work From Home. No "get rich quick" schemes. Just proven, reliable ways to to build an online business or use a Web site to expand your offline one.
The basis for building serious income is the high traffic. If your site only gets a few hundred visitors per month, as most of personal Web sites, you'll unlikely make more than pocket change.
Here are some ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet from your personal Web site...
BannersThey were one of the first ways of XXXXXX money from hobby Web sites, however they are not so popular now since most surfers don't even look at them. In fact, the click-through rate (the percentage of visitors who actually click on a banner) has steadily dropped, from around 5% 4 years ago to less than 0.5% now.
In the Traffic-Building volume of Make Your Site SELL! 2002 (the best ebook describing all possible ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet), banners are called #1 "Time and Money Wasters." Save yourself months of poorly spent time. Read this essential manual first.
If you have highly relevant, cleverly designed banners, you can beat the odds. However, you need relatively high traffic to actually make more than pocket change. In fact, most banner advertising companies prefer to only pay for actual sales (even click throughs are no longer attractive, since many people click through because they are paid to, and not because they intend to buy anything).
FreebiesUnder this category are things such as free lotto tickets and various games where you can win prizes. Often, these are implemented as pop-ups and are much more annoying than banners.
Affiliate programsThey pay you a percentage of the sales you generate for them, or for each visitor you send. This is one of the best ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet. You don't have to spend time and energy creating your own product. And some of them pay 50% commission. See Affiliate programs for more information on building income from affiliate programs.
Google AdSenseThis is one of the easiest ways of XXXXXX money on the Internet for small and medium sites by displaying relevant, text-based ads from Google AdWords (Google's own advertising program) and receiving a share of the pay-per-click payment. For more information, go directly to their site...
Other toolsThere are many tools that can help you make some pretty big commissions without your visitors even realizing that you're building income from their visits.
For example, several search engines will pay you a few cents per search made from your Web site. If a few hundred people use your search box, you'll earn a few dollars a day - not bad for a few minutes of cut & paste a small line of code within the HTML of your Web page.
Selling a Product or ServiceThis is an obvious way of XXXXXX money on the Internet. To succeed in it, you have to succeed at three points...
Develop a great product that is of interest to others on the Web.
Write a professional Web site designed to sell.
Attract targeted customers to the site.
Ken Evoy's Make Your Knowledge Sell! is a very useful ebook for those who want to get a piece of the e-commerce pie but don't know how to come up with a product. MYKS! shows you that your knowledge, life experience, specialized interest or hobby can be packaged into an information product ("infoproduct") that other people want and are surfing to find.
Story Of Make Money
Achievement wealthy man: Makes money eight big
Achievement wealthy man: Makes money eight big laws
Makes money the first law: You must make the sheep, or makes the wolf?Forever is 10% person makes money, 90% person lose money in business,this is the market hard law, no matter is the stock market, or has thecompany, manages the enterprise, all cannot change।If everybody all make money, then who loses money in business, moneyfrom where?The world person is impossible all is a rich person, also isimpossible all is the poor person!But the rich person forever is minority, the poor person forever ismost!This is God decides, who also doesn't have the means.
On-line opens a shop all
On-line opens a shop all captures
The choice opens a shop form On-line opens a shop mainly divides into two kind of forms, onekind is oneself sets up the special website achievement to sell theplatform, from the website maintenance, the renewal, to thepropaganda, the sale all wants own to take care of everything, themerit is the website design may create own individuality attractioncustomer, may own set up the website forum, promptly receives thebuyer the opinion feedback, but invests the cost, the energy and thetime also correspondingly increase; But another kind is uses theplatform which other websites provides to sell own commodity, likepresent quite popular Yi Qu, washes website and so on treasure onprovides sales for the people the platform, but the net industrydesign quite is unitary, the deficient individuality, the merit isomits designs the website the time, large-scale website well-knownnessalso is helpful to increases the oneself shop clicking on rate, omitsthe propaganda expense।
IT profession SOHO
The IT-SOHO race with generally goes to work in the company occupyingof the race difference to go to work race to be more than someopportunities to the SOHO race, the person arteries and the space। TheIT-SOHO race initial period in order to can strive for compared to theothers more competitive advantage, the low price offensive often isthe market strategy application first step, after when the oraltraditions, the confidence gradually establish, only then has thefavourable turn which becomes profitable, therefore, the indomitablespirit is an only way which the IT-SOHO race only survival gets down.In addition, IT-SOHO race's work flow arrangement also very important,has the good work flow arrangement, the work is not naturally easy tomake a mistake, relatively also can increase the work the speed to beprompt, subsequently obtains the customer the faith and the approval.
"The networm" makes money like this
On-line hits the game to chat looked news you, are also every day onlycontribute the wide band expense, the telephone bill and own time?Some people gather the place richly gains. Do you have had thoughtalso makes a small business transaction in the network, anaccumulation small wealth, own also build "the electronic commerce"express train? Following two piece of Chengdu people access the netthe story which makes money, perhaps may give you an enlightenment
Achievement wealthy man: Makes money eight big laws
Makes money the first law: You must make the sheep, or makes the wolf?Forever is 10% person makes money, 90% person lose money in business,this is the market hard law, no matter is the stock market, or has thecompany, manages the enterprise, all cannot change।If everybody all make money, then who loses money in business, moneyfrom where?The world person is impossible all is a rich person, also isimpossible all is the poor person!But the rich person forever is minority, the poor person forever ismost!This is God decides, who also doesn't have the means.
On-line opens a shop all
On-line opens a shop all captures
The choice opens a shop form On-line opens a shop mainly divides into two kind of forms, onekind is oneself sets up the special website achievement to sell theplatform, from the website maintenance, the renewal, to thepropaganda, the sale all wants own to take care of everything, themerit is the website design may create own individuality attractioncustomer, may own set up the website forum, promptly receives thebuyer the opinion feedback, but invests the cost, the energy and thetime also correspondingly increase; But another kind is uses theplatform which other websites provides to sell own commodity, likepresent quite popular Yi Qu, washes website and so on treasure onprovides sales for the people the platform, but the net industrydesign quite is unitary, the deficient individuality, the merit isomits designs the website the time, large-scale website well-knownnessalso is helpful to increases the oneself shop clicking on rate, omitsthe propaganda expense।
IT profession SOHO
The IT-SOHO race with generally goes to work in the company occupyingof the race difference to go to work race to be more than someopportunities to the SOHO race, the person arteries and the space। TheIT-SOHO race initial period in order to can strive for compared to theothers more competitive advantage, the low price offensive often isthe market strategy application first step, after when the oraltraditions, the confidence gradually establish, only then has thefavourable turn which becomes profitable, therefore, the indomitablespirit is an only way which the IT-SOHO race only survival gets down.In addition, IT-SOHO race's work flow arrangement also very important,has the good work flow arrangement, the work is not naturally easy tomake a mistake, relatively also can increase the work the speed to beprompt, subsequently obtains the customer the faith and the approval.
"The networm" makes money like this
On-line hits the game to chat looked news you, are also every day onlycontribute the wide band expense, the telephone bill and own time?Some people gather the place richly gains. Do you have had thoughtalso makes a small business transaction in the network, anaccumulation small wealth, own also build "the electronic commerce"express train? Following two piece of Chengdu people access the netthe story which makes money, perhaps may give you an enlightenment
7 Ways to Make Money from a Blog
Get Started Making Money from a Blog With These Ideas
Blogs aren’t just mainstream any more; they’re ubiquitous. In Why Should My Business Have a Blog? I talk about how a blog can be a valuable adjunct to your existing business. But what about the flipside? What if you have a blog and want to turn it into a business, using your blog to make a profit?
Making money from a blog is possible and isn’t even particularly difficult any more. You don’t have to be famous or even have huge traffic (although how much money you make from your blog will depend on both of these factors to some extent). The seven ideas below will get you started. To make money from your blog you can:
1. Use advertising programs.
These are more advertising program options for bloggers than ever before.
Here are just five of the ever-expanding possibilities for making money from your blog by putting ads on your pages:
BlogAds
Chitika eMiniMalls
Text Link Ads
AdGenta
Besides placing ads on your blog pages themselves, there are also programs for RSS advertising such as Pheedo.
You might also try something such as Jim Kukral’s BlogKits BlogMatch Network, a network designed to match bloggers with advertising opportunities.
2. Use affiliate programs.
With affiliate marketing, a company agrees to pay you a commission for helping to sell their products. Visitors see the company’s ad on your Web pages and, if they click through to the company’s Web site and do a particular thing, you’ll get paid. The particular thing the visitor has to do varies; some affiliate programs pay per click while others pay per lead or even per sale. These are four of the biggest (and most established) affiliate programs on the 'Net:
Amazon
Linkshare
ClickBank
Commisison Junction
3. Get sponsored by a company.
Blog sponsorship is a growing trend as more businesses realize the popularity of blogging and the potential marketing reach of bloggers. Company sponsorship deals appear to range from obvious “advertising” blogs that are squarely focused on a company’s product(s) through adding a company’s name, logo and brand to an existing blog (“sponsored by….”).
The main problem with this way of making money from your blog is that you have to be known already (and have enough traffic) to attract sponsorship.
4. Get hired by a company.
Many businesses would love to have blogs, but just don’t have anyone currently on staff who has the time and the talent to put a blog together and keep it going. You could be the answer and make money from a blog in the process. The trick to landing such a gig is finding the businesses that want/need the services and persuading them that you’re the blogger they need; diligent research and some cold calling will probably be needed unless you already have a high profile and a track record that will bring the businesses calling.
5. Sign on to be a blogger.
Hubs or networks of blogs appear to be springing up all over the ‘Net, some of which are looking for people to write blogs and are willing to pay for it. Payment models vary. At Creative Weblogging, for instance, bloggers have the option of choosing either a fixed monthly payment in exchange for 10 posts a week, or a percentage share of the ad revenues. Two more examples of blog networks looking for bloggers at the time of writing are:
Weblogs.Inc.
AllBusiness.com’s Business Blogs
6. Create a blog to advertise a specific product/service.
Blogs are fast becoming the trendy alternative to the classic salesletter site. In this case, the format is the only real change; the message is the same. Typically, the pitch is woven into as many blog entries as possible – or even used a tagline to every blog entry.
Jim Kukral’s 99 Ways to Blog for Business blog is a good example of a blog designed to move a product (in this case, his strategy guide for creating blogs for businesses).
7. Sell other intellectual property, such as ebooks, telecourses or consulting services, through your blog.
This idea is closely related to the previous way to make money through your blog. The difference is that in this case the intellectual property you’re selling is just part of or incidental to the blog you’re writing; it’s not the raison d’etre for the blog. For instance, you might have a blog about beekeeping and be selling an ebook about how to build a mason bee house on your pages.
So the answer is, yes, you can make money from your blog. And with blogging becoming increasingly popular, there will be even more opportunities for making money from your blog coming – ideas that haven’t even been thought of yet. For the moment, for maximum income, you will need to focus on multiple income streams and perhaps even multiple blogs.
Blogs aren’t just mainstream any more; they’re ubiquitous. In Why Should My Business Have a Blog? I talk about how a blog can be a valuable adjunct to your existing business. But what about the flipside? What if you have a blog and want to turn it into a business, using your blog to make a profit?
Making money from a blog is possible and isn’t even particularly difficult any more. You don’t have to be famous or even have huge traffic (although how much money you make from your blog will depend on both of these factors to some extent). The seven ideas below will get you started. To make money from your blog you can:
1. Use advertising programs.
These are more advertising program options for bloggers than ever before.
Here are just five of the ever-expanding possibilities for making money from your blog by putting ads on your pages:
BlogAds
Chitika eMiniMalls
Text Link Ads
AdGenta
Besides placing ads on your blog pages themselves, there are also programs for RSS advertising such as Pheedo.
You might also try something such as Jim Kukral’s BlogKits BlogMatch Network, a network designed to match bloggers with advertising opportunities.
2. Use affiliate programs.
With affiliate marketing, a company agrees to pay you a commission for helping to sell their products. Visitors see the company’s ad on your Web pages and, if they click through to the company’s Web site and do a particular thing, you’ll get paid. The particular thing the visitor has to do varies; some affiliate programs pay per click while others pay per lead or even per sale. These are four of the biggest (and most established) affiliate programs on the 'Net:
Amazon
Linkshare
ClickBank
Commisison Junction
3. Get sponsored by a company.
Blog sponsorship is a growing trend as more businesses realize the popularity of blogging and the potential marketing reach of bloggers. Company sponsorship deals appear to range from obvious “advertising” blogs that are squarely focused on a company’s product(s) through adding a company’s name, logo and brand to an existing blog (“sponsored by….”).
The main problem with this way of making money from your blog is that you have to be known already (and have enough traffic) to attract sponsorship.
4. Get hired by a company.
Many businesses would love to have blogs, but just don’t have anyone currently on staff who has the time and the talent to put a blog together and keep it going. You could be the answer and make money from a blog in the process. The trick to landing such a gig is finding the businesses that want/need the services and persuading them that you’re the blogger they need; diligent research and some cold calling will probably be needed unless you already have a high profile and a track record that will bring the businesses calling.
5. Sign on to be a blogger.
Hubs or networks of blogs appear to be springing up all over the ‘Net, some of which are looking for people to write blogs and are willing to pay for it. Payment models vary. At Creative Weblogging, for instance, bloggers have the option of choosing either a fixed monthly payment in exchange for 10 posts a week, or a percentage share of the ad revenues. Two more examples of blog networks looking for bloggers at the time of writing are:
Weblogs.Inc.
AllBusiness.com’s Business Blogs
6. Create a blog to advertise a specific product/service.
Blogs are fast becoming the trendy alternative to the classic salesletter site. In this case, the format is the only real change; the message is the same. Typically, the pitch is woven into as many blog entries as possible – or even used a tagline to every blog entry.
Jim Kukral’s 99 Ways to Blog for Business blog is a good example of a blog designed to move a product (in this case, his strategy guide for creating blogs for businesses).
7. Sell other intellectual property, such as ebooks, telecourses or consulting services, through your blog.
This idea is closely related to the previous way to make money through your blog. The difference is that in this case the intellectual property you’re selling is just part of or incidental to the blog you’re writing; it’s not the raison d’etre for the blog. For instance, you might have a blog about beekeeping and be selling an ebook about how to build a mason bee house on your pages.
So the answer is, yes, you can make money from your blog. And with blogging becoming increasingly popular, there will be even more opportunities for making money from your blog coming – ideas that haven’t even been thought of yet. For the moment, for maximum income, you will need to focus on multiple income streams and perhaps even multiple blogs.
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