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The Gazette ... Issue: 210 (03-17-2004)
Get Over it ? |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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That was a quick month, wasn't it? A lot has gone on, both online and off in the last 30 days or so that bear some discussion. Let me start rambling right away on a pretty polarizing issue... the conservatives among you refer to this as "The Defense of Marriage Amendment," while those on the other side of the political spectrum are using the phrase "Banning Gay Marriages act of 2004." Don't be frightened, I don't want to talk about this issue directly (well, I do... but I won't...). Rather, I want to use this as an example to illustrate a few points. This is a pretty hot topic here in the United States right now, and very much like abortion, capital punishment, and who really won the 2000 election, there is no middle ground at all. You're either all the way for it, or all the way against it. Can you think of anything on the Internet that bears the same sort of outright "Yay or Nay" attitude from people? Should SPAM be illegal, or should it be simply another cog (albeit annoying) in the economic machine? Do pop-up windows really cost money, or are they, too, just the wheels of commerce in (constant) motion? Is SEO, on any level, really ethical? Is your HTML actually your property or is it open source? I'm sure that you, just like me, had answers to those questions before you even finished reading them. I had the same immediate reaction when the whole gay marriage thing first hit the news a few weeks ago. I had a preformed opinion, and what I saw simply confirmed it for me. But, the debate didn't die, and suddenly the issue was not as cut and dry as I originally figured it to be. In fact, the public debate spurred an internal debate, which is quite a change for someone as hard-headed as I usually am. I wasn't so sure at first if the change was a welcome one or not, but I decided to go with it, and see where it took me.
I found that in examining the marriage issue, I was given reason to re-examine my belief system, to both challenge and reaffirm my faith, and to do some serious interspection. What's a right and what's a privilege? What's right and what's wrong? Fair or not? Wow! I gave myself the chance to take a step back and really look at the issue top to bottom, and put myself in the shoes of all the parties involved... the mayor, the people wanting to be married, the priests that are going nuts, the President and the wanna-be. Everyone's saying what they think they ought to, but none of them really hit the heart of the matter. After a few weeks of thinking about it, I did. No, I'm not going to share my findings with you, that's not the purpose of this article. What's important, is that I gave myself the chance to disagree with myself, and really examine the issue without blinders on. Regardless of what I discovered in that time, the important thing is that I did discover something. I encourage you, and challenge you, to do the same. Not with the marriage issue, but in everything that you have to deal with (such as the questions I asked earlier). Take a step back and really examine your current opinion, and for grins, challenge yourself a minute and play some devil's advocate. You might not change your mind, but you'll have a much greater appreciation for the issue as a whole, and maybe, just maybe, you'll approach your SEO and design work with the related concerns of both the search engines and your clients involved in your process, and not just your bottom line. |
| In the Crosshairs |
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So, you have decided to sell your business, now what?
Part 1 - Pricing
So, you have decided to sell your business, now what? Not only is that the title of this article series, but it is also the main question any business owner needs to answer if considering selling a business. Arriving at the decision to sell is difficult enough, (especially true if further complicated by ownership structures, family involvement and employees that may count on you), without adding questions about pricing, process, and of course, legalities. We will touch on these all a bit later and throughout the four parts of this article - first though, pricing!
OK, you have made the decision to sell your business and the first thing that needs to be established is the asking price. Much like selling a house, the asking price is the main sales and marketing arm of that "product" and can not be arbitrarily arrived at. If priced well below where it should be, two things will most likely happen: First, you will not sell the business for the profit you should and you and or your co-owners/shareholders have been poorly served. And second, you might find that you will have more trouble selling it than if priced appropriately higher (please note, this does not mean all prices should be raised - quite the opposite in most cases). Perhaps you are thinking I'm working on a bit too little sleep at the moment (and I am), but let me explain. If priced too low, it will appear to most buyers that the deal "must be too good to be true." And we all remember what we have been told about that. So seller beware, low pricing may actually scare away otherwise interested buyers. Of course, the opposite is also true and if priced too high - everyone will run for the hills. Why? Because the seller appears to be greedy, inflexible, or worse - crazy! Seriously though, an overpriced property is not going to help you achieve your goal of finding a buyer. I have had sellers arrive at extremely high prices and when I questioned them on their valuations the answers are usually something along the lines of, "I want to retire on that" or "Well Google is going to go public and raise the market" and so on. And while those might be true (except the Google comment unless of course you are Google) and you can price your sale however you want, that does not mean you should and it certainly does not mean you will find a buyer. Now that we have discussed the importance of pricing and what not to do, let me next say there is no exact science or formula for coming up with the right number. Are we having fun yet? Much like antiques, baseball cards and other collectibles, the sales price is ultimately an amount that a buyer is willing to pay and that a seller is willing to accept. Sounds simple enough right? The trick is putting the sale in an appropriate asking price range so that you will attract the correct potential buyers. And how do we do that? We use guidelines, experience and "rules of thumb." One of the most popular "rules of thumb" being used today is the Cash-flow or Revenue Multiple Method. Essentially you multiply your annual net earnings by some multiple of x and you have your price range. When profits are not usable (often true in high-tech companies per heavy startup and R&D costs), a similar method is applied using the gross revenue or gross profit numbers. Both buyers and sellers widely use this method because of the relative consistency and measurability (similar to P/E ratios for stock trading). Also for buyers, they can easily determine their ROI (return on investment) as the multiple can be viewed in terms of years. For instance, XYC.com has annual net profits of $500,000 and they will start with the range for a low-end of two times (or "2 X" as you will often hear) and an upper range of six times. This will give the business a wide, but an appropriate asking price of $1,000,000 to $6,000,000. Ultimately you will want to settle on something more specific but you are now in the ballpark. How do you choose your multiple? That requires a bit more thought, but again some basic guidelines that will help for selecting a multiple: 1x = electronic sales which have razor thin margins, little room for error no entry barriers or perhaps the business is very flat or even declining (or very poorly organized and difficult to prove financials). 2-4x = b2b and b2c ecommerce retail (higher multiples for proprietary or exclusive product lines and marketing channels). 4-6x = ISP (though traditionally these are reviewed at a multiple of revenue), web hosting and other businesses where there are residual revenues monthly or annually, established client base and or high barriers to entry. Can prices go below or above this guideline? Absolutely, and the reasons why vary greatly (from the assets included, to the condition of the business at the time of the sale and the terms of the sale, etc.). That being said, the vast majority of sales will occur at this price range and the average would be right in the middle. So start the sale of your business off right by putting the price in a solid asking range and then be prepared to discuss how you arrived at that number. From there, it's in the hands of the buyer and seller ultimately and what one is willing to pay and the other is willing to accept as before mentioned. Next up we'll discuss preparing the business for the sale. Good luck and stay tuned for the next addition. About the Author: Ross Whittaker is a Managing Partner at eBizBrokers, Inc., an e-business specialty brokerage firm located in Waltham, MA. For further inquiries or questions, please visit Ross in the "I Want To Sell My Website" forum: http://www.virtualpromote.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::topiclist/forum::buy-my-website/ |
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| Forum Watch |
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This week, I'd like to introduce you to some new JimGuides that have taken up positions in the forums. We've added three new JimGuides and transferred a veteran to a new position. You'll now find me serving as the JimGuide in the "Keyword Research and SEO CopyWriting" forum, so stop by and ask any questions you might have about selecting the right keywords for your Web site and putting together the information to go with them.
You'll find that Barry Lloyd, aka makemetop has shifted from the "Other Search Engines Forum" to the new "Yahoo/Inktomi" forum where he is leading discussion on the new Yahoo! spider-based engine and paid inclusion program. Taking his place in "Other Search Engines" is long-time JimWorld staffer Mike-Levin.com, while fellow old-timer (no offense Ron!) Ron Carnell has taken on the "Community and Traffic Building" forum. The above said, we're still looking for a few good staffers. If you think you've got the right stuff and can devote a bit of your time each day to checking in on the forums and helping lead conversations, spark debate and answer questions, we'd love to hear from you. If you're interested in volunteering to help out at the forums, please drop me an email at thejenn@jimworld.com with your username, some background information and how you'd like to pitch in. |
| Coders Corner |
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PHP 5 ... worth the wait, or a disaster in the making ... Part 1
The jury is still out on this one. It's definitely (and obviously) still in BETA mode, but the folks at PHP are pretty confident that it's getting close to becoming stable enough for an official and final release. I generally try and stay away from full-on version upgrades of programming languages until they've had the chance to mature, but in this case, I thought it would be fun to chronicle the release through interested eyes. It reminds me a lot about 1996 or so, when Perl moved from version 4 into version 5, introducing objects, and a much beefier engine. Perl 5 was bigger, slower, yet infinitely more powerful than the previous versions. It was a good and much needed upgrade to the language at the time, but it was wrought with problems. Notably, most of the code written for Perl 4 was simply not compatible with the newer Perl 5. CGI's all over the Internet were breaking, bringing down entire Web sites (Amazon, for one) when IT staffs across the globe upgraded -- A prime example of piss-poor planning and severe lapses in communication between development staffs and IT departments in thousands of companies. I wonder if PHP's new version will cause the same headaches when "the switch" happens?
So, your faithful correspondent downloaded the latest PHP 5 beta release for a test installation on my development server. As I had previously compiled PHP 4 into Apache from source code, I knew that I had all of the prerequisites on the machine, so I didn't foresee any troubles getting it installed. About 4 commands and 20 minutes later, I was done. Quite literally, it was an "unzip," a "configure," a "make," and a "make install." I had to edit my Apache's "httpd.conf" file to comment out the "LoadModule" line for "php4," and then restarted Apache. So far, so good... now to try out some applications. As expected, there were a few hurdles to cross. All of the applications that I write (well most of them) are done in OOP (Object Oriented) constructs, so I am probably a bit more ahead of the game than most. PHP 5 found a few errors in my code that PHP4 had previously ignored (some double variable declarations), but after about 10 minutes of editing, I had Hyperseek and Jackhammer, all 40 modules, 100,000 lines of code, fired up and running without a hiccup. I also, for grins, tried out vBulletin, IPB, and about 15 other free and commercial PHP applications that I had downloaded over the last few months. By and large, there were no major compatibility problems, most programs worked without modification, or, as was with the case with Hyperseek, just a few minor edits here and there that PHP 5 required, but that once done worked in both PHP 4 and 5, so ... assuming that the developers out there take their medicine and make a few changes, users that upgrade to PHP 5 (or are upgraded automatically by their ISPs into it) shouldn't experience any major problems as we did back in the days when perl made the big move. Based on my initial tests, a big "Thumbs Up" to the PHP folks for making the transition between 4 & 5 pretty seemless. So, aside from some of the new features that PHP 5 introduces (such as improved XML handling, SOAP, Integrated SQLite database, etc), how does it perform? Given that it's still in BETA, it's tough to know for sure, as I'm sure they've got lots of extra code in there, internal debugging, etc that won't be in the final version. Just for fun, though, I ran it through my load balancer, and you'll see in the chart below, that PHP 5 is about 50% slower than PHP 4 and about 200% slower than PHP 4 with an accelerator. The results below are for a search in Hyperseek that returns 12 results from a mySQL database ... a known data set, on a known set of hardware (my development server, which is a Single P500, with 512 MG RAM). Take these results with a grain of salt. Typically, beta versions are much more bloated than the final releases. Accelerated PHP 4 Transactions: 30 Elapsed time: 3.764 sec Bytes Transferred: 212820 bytes Response Time: 0.34 sec Transaction Rate: 7.97 trans/sec Throughput: 56541.08 bytes/sec Concurrency: 2.7 Status Code 200: 30 Standard PHP 4 Transactions: 30 Elapsed time: 6.620 sec Bytes Transferred: 212820 bytes Response Time: 0.58 sec Transaction Rate: 4.53 trans/sec Throughput: 32150.41 bytes/sec Concurrency: 2.6 Status Code 200: 30 Standard PHP 5 Transactions: 30 Elapsed time: 10.660 sec Bytes Transferred: 212820 bytes Response Time: 0.87 sec Transaction Rate: 2.81 trans/sec Throughput: 19964.26 bytes/sec Concurrency: 2.5 Status Code 200: 30In the next gazette, I'll be examining the XML/Soap architecture in the new PHP. Part 3 of this series will likely focus on the new SQL Database engine that's a built-in part of PHP 5. Stay Tuned... |
| Hosting Hotsheet |
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| Scumbag of the Week |
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When it comes to issues regarding Unsolicited Email (SPAM), I've always been the leader of the "Get over it" crowd. Some people (our own government included) just go completely haywire when it comes to dealing with SPAM. Each month, when we send out The Gazette, even though it's the best newsletter on the Internet, and even though everyone that gets it had to basically beg to get it (we're now triple-opt-in), I still get about 100 screaming phone calls in the wee hours on the day it's sent, about a half a ream of "Black Faxes", and loads of expletive-laden email responses to it. As someone that probably gets more SPAM than our entire readership combined (over 9,000 emails last Friday alone), I say to you, simply "Get over it" ... it's not rocket science, nor is it overly strenuous to simply hit the delete button and move on with your day. That said, there is an annoying new trend in SPAM that just irritates me to no end, so much so, that I'm actually giving it time in this publication.
Most spam, I can handle. Porn, Viagra Ads, MLM schemes, etc. Pain in the butt, yes, but not the end of the world. Even viruses don't aggravate me all that much. With the proliferation of good anti-virus software out there, 99% of the viruses are trampled before I ever see them, and I'm not dumb enough to open up an attachment in an email that I wasn't expecting to get. Since most viruses that you get aren't really spam (ie: someone's not paying to send them out to make a buck), I can't lump them into the SPAM category anyway. No, this new thing is a much more severe threat, one that's not really gotten much coverage, other than scrambling press releases by the affected companies trying to put their customers minds at ease. This new breed of SPAM is the second generation of the "Nigerian Millionaire" scam, one that prey on the trusting, perhaps innocent nature of the casual internet user. What I'm referring to is the Company Impersonation Scam. This scam comes in a variety of formats, and is basically impossible to detect, unless you employ a bit of common sense into your daily routine. Although differing in appearance, the scammers are all after the same thing: authorized access to your credit card information as well as your social security number. The most common form of this scam is an email that is sent to you "From" someone at paypal.com. It looks quite official ... using paypal.com's actual logo, actual email HTML format, and paypal.com's actual .css style sheet definitions. It's such a good forgery, that the scammer even uses some of the same HTML mistakes that paypal.com itself uses in the construction of their emails. If you trace the headers of the message it appears to actually route through paypal.com's servers. The message itself is an ominous warning. "Your paypal account is due to expire. Please login to your paypal account and update your records immediately" or something to that effect. At first, the scammers were putting a form in the email that, for your convenience, you could fill out and submit directly. What information was on the form? Your paypal login information, your bank routing number, your social security number and your credit card information. Yikes. It looked very, very official, and I almost gave it a second look ... until I hit "Send and Receive" again, and got 6 more copies of it, all from different "@paypal.com" From addresses. (Whew). Paypal learned of it quickly, put an announcement on their website, and sent out a massive email stating quite clearly that they would never ask for such information directly over email. Problem solved, right? Nope. The scammers got wise pretty quick, and the next round of emails that they sent actually re-iterated paypal.com's announcement, and provided a link for you to click to login and take care of your expiring account. Clicking the link brings you the scammers website which appears to be, in every single way, paypal.com. All of the links appear to resolve to paypal.com, the layout is identical .... an entire mirror of paypal.com, and they used an apache trick to actually make your browser think you were AT paypal.com. They provide a login form that works, and immediately present you with that same form asking for all of your information. The scam would work quite well, had they not made 2 blunders .... first, the login form will take any email address and any password, so when I fat-fingered my own password, and it still let me in, that was "clue 1". Secondly, your navigation path dies at the information form. The real paypal has all sorts of links on every page, but the scammers made sure that once you see the form, you can't get anywhere else. I'll give them an "e" for effort, it's a pretty convincing ruse. I wonder how many people fell for this? I've seen the same thing replicated for other services: American Express, Citi Bank, US Bank, Bank of America, eBay, etc. The latest one is one that appears to be from ICANN (the guys that are in charge of all the worlds domains), that warns of your domain expiring if you don't pay right now. Since (I hope) most of you know that ICANN isn't actually a registrar, this was easy to sniff out, but I wonder how many people that don't even have domains responded to that one? Many of you use a service like "Spamarrest", where people that email you are required to click a link in the email (or respond to it) and then enter some sort of challenge phrase to prove that they're real people, so that their email is forwarded to you. Kudos to the guys that thought of this idea. However, as this has grown in acceptance, and as people get used to doing this, I'm starting to get emails from "services" that I've heard of asking me to confirm before a recipient can read my mail. Fine, I'm used to it ... and given that I send out about 400 emails on a given day, I go through this all the time. But recently, I've started getting these emails at 2am and 3am, to confirm emails that I'd just sent. Hmmmm. Seems that the masqueraders are into this business too, now. Posing as an anti-spam confirmation service, they're preying on our trustworthiness to build giant email lists of actual live people. This is all just sickening beyond belief. Throw all the naked ladies and pecker pill ads that you want into my inbox, I don't care. But once SPAM becomes pure evil like this, a line has been crossed. Quite frankly, folks, I don't have the answer for you on it. There's no way to legislate this stuff out of existence, and there's no way for you or I to prosecute it, unless you can afford to find out who stole your identity. The best that you can do is forward the emails to the appropriate people (usually "abuse@" the domain that was being impersonated), as well as your local FBI office, and let the experts hunt them down. In the meantime, I leave you with this one simple piece of advice: Surf The Internet, and read your email with your eyes open .... and don't ever click anything in any email that someone you know didn't send to you. If you get a warning mail like that from paypal, or some other company that you actually do business with, and didn't request an email from them, don't click anything in the email. Instead, go right to the domain in your browser, typing in the address manually, and login yourself. If the announcement is for real, you'll see it there in your account once you log in. If not, consider the email to be a scam, forward to the right people, and then "move on" |
| Payment Due Notice |
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The Gazette is not free.
It is 'Helpware.' This means that you are granted the right to participate, read, and learn from us, if you agree to contribute. Learn something, from here or anywhere else, and pass it on. If you see a Webmaster who's struggling, help them up. If you see someone making a mistake, offer some fix-it advice. In short, you get out of JimWorld, and the Internet, what you put into it. The more you give, the more you get. Even if you get nothing in return, it's important that you share. Karma always comes back around. Trust me, this will make you feel better, and will help a lot of people get their sites running better. OK, you're on your honor. |
| Summing It All Up |
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The opinions expressed here are purely those of the editor, John Cokos. All other small print clauses apply. Such as: Use at your own risk. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Let the buyer beware. A stitch in time gathers no moss.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, without the express written consent of the author. Feel free to send this document in its entirety to as many of your friends as you want. We appreciate that and thank you. Our sites are generously hosted by the Hosting Experts at SimpleNet: http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=simplenet For information on advertising in the Gazette or any of the JimWorld properties, please refer to our advertiser information page: http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=advertise ** This publication is registered with the Library of Congress, Washington DC - ISSN: 1099-8438 To unsubscribe, simply click this link: Gazette Subscription Manager You will be removed and will not ever be resubscribed again. |
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