100 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies !

1 Akamai Technologies
2 iMergent
3 Palomar Medical Technologies
4 InterDigital Communications
5 CyberSource
6 Perficient (more…)

Email is the key !

As a smart email marketer I’m sure you’ve read articles on how to increase opens, how to write catchy subject lines, and how to create compelling offers. If you’re looking for a powerful way to win over your customers, consider the timing of your email messages. The timing of your email messages is as important as the content. Send too many emails at the wrong time and you run the risk of alienating the customer. Don’t send confirmation or welcome emails on time and you risk confusing the customer. Timing is the essence of great customer service.

Consider the case of email communications pioneer and ClickZ writer Al DiGuido who planned a stay at a Westwood W Hotel. Mr. DiGuido discusses his delight with the hotel’s superb email timing here. The hotel sent a welcoming email two weeks before his trip asking if they could do anything to make his stay extra special. They followed this message with an email a week later that gave a view of his room, then completed the exchange by timing several emails during and after his stay to ensure he was receiving the best service. It’s all in the timing, which is definitely a fine line between being intrusive and establishing a dialogue that shows the customer that you care.

If you’re a Netflix customer you likely enjoy how they time their customer emails. For example I get an email asking me “When did you mail back your movie?” and they list several dates. All I have to do is click on the date and I’m done. They also send an email saying “When did you receive your movie?” Again all I have to do is click on a date. Such ease of communication shows me they care when I get my movies, which is a key component of their service. The best part is that I am not inundated with Netflix monthly newsletters and extraneous email messages that I don’t want. That makes me really happy.

One last point – timing email messages is worth little if the customer service isn’t there to back it up. Westwood W hotels not only engaged Mr. DiGuido in a dialogue, they backed that up by providing outstanding service during his stay. Netflix not only times its emails well, it doesn’t turn a hair if your dog chews up a DVD; they just say “Stuff happens. No problem.” Email can help begin a personal engagement with customers, but it’s the human element that closes the deal.

Music Sales Dropped 10 Percent in 2007 !

Sales of music fell at a faster rate in 2007 than 2006 despite digital sales soaring, and the gatekeepers of the Web must act if the industry is to beat piracy, the international trade body said on Thursday.

Global digital sales grew by around 40 percent in 2007, the IFPI group said, but this was not enough to offset the sharp fall in CD sales, meaning the overall market is expected to be down around 10 percent for 2007.

As part of its response, the industry is calling on Internet service providers to take more responsibility for illegal file sharing by either disconnecting those who repeatedly upload music or preventing illegal tracks from being downloaded.

Many ISPs have so far proved reluctant to engage on the matter, but the music industry is hoping this could change following a move by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to block Web access to those frequently downloading music or films illegally.

“It is hard to persuade anyone to be a pioneer but what we have with the French government is a very energetic government understanding how important the French music industry is to French business and culture,” IFPI Chief Executive John Kennedy told Reuters.

“That leadership shows that it’s not as dreadful or as problematic as people think,” he said in an interview.

The industry has also been boosted by a landmark ruling in Belgium which ordered a service provider to block illegal file-sharing — although the company is appealing — while in Britain, the government has said it could impose legislation if an agreed settlement between both sides cannot be found.

A year-long negotiation period expired at the end of 2007.

The music industry says it has been forced to turn to legal remedies after rampant Internet piracy rocked its traditional revenue model.

Physical sales of music have dropped, with total album sales plunging 15 percent in 2007 in the United States, the world’s biggest music market, and falling over 10 percent in Britain.

The IFPI said tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007, with the ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold at about 20 to 1.

“If the ISPs played their role it would have a dramatic effect,” Kennedy said, explaining that research shows people fear having their Internet service disconnected.

A spokesman for the UK body which represents providers of Internet services said his members preferred self regulation and warned that legislation could often be too rigid, but he said they were still holding negotiations on the matter.

Away from the legal disputes, the industry has seen encouraging signs from the growth of legal sales.

Global digital music sales were estimated to be approximately $2.9 billion in 2007, a roughly 40 percent increase on 2006, and single track downloads, the most popular digital music format, grew by 53 percent.

Digital sales now account for an estimated 15 percent of the global music market, up from 11 percent in 2006 and zero in 2003. In the United States, online and mobile sales now account for 30 percent of all revenues.

How ugly will it get ?

When leading tech companies offer their earnings numbers this week, Wall Street’s focus won’t be on how healthy their overseas businesses are, or how strong sales were during the holiday season. Instead, with global financial markets in turmoil, analysts will be sensitive to hints that executives are losing their sunny optimism.

Indeed, as the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis rippled across the U.S. economy in recent months, tech CEOs sounded immune, trumpeting the idea that their businesses no longer rise and fall with the spending habits of big U.S. customers. Booming economies in Europe, Asia and South America would continue growing despite any U.S. slowdown, their argument went — so even if the U.S. economy stumbles, the tech industry would prosper.

But then global markets tanked Monday on fears of a U.S. recession, and the Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate by three quarters of a point to stabilize things. That signaled that investors in Europe, Asia and elsewhere aren’t convinced that their growth will zip along without help from free-spending Americans. So with their old prosperity story looking less plausible, tech executives will have to tweak their stump speeches.

What will they say now?

If history is any guide, not much. When Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), eBay (EBAY), Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and others report earnings this week, they’re likely to emphasize their positive momentum and simply say they’re closely monitoring global markets. Jittery analysts, who so far have been slow to trim their 2008 earnings forecasts for the companies, may respond to the caution by ratcheting down their earnings projections.

Just look at Wall Street’s response to the results Intel (INTC) announced last week. The chip giant has as much of an international story as any company out there; the PC boom in Europe and Asia helped fuel its recovery in 2007. But Intel disappointed analysts with sales numbers that came in on the low side of the range they’d been told to expect. Intel blamed weakness in flash memory prices, though realistically, even if flash prices had held up, analysts probably wouldn’t have been thrilled by results that merely hit the midpoint of Intel’s projections.

So investors, viewing this as a sign that Intel executives have limited insight into troubles ahead in 2008, immediately shaved more than 15 percent off the stock’s value in after-hours trading. Analysts cut their 2008 revenue and earnings targets for the company.

CEO Paul Otellini clearly saw this as an overreaction. “You hear all of the pundits saying that the world is going to go to a trash basket, and you worry — it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Otellini said after the earnings report. “At this point though, we don’t see anything on the horizon. Our customers don’t see anything on the horizon.”

Such comments might be reassuring, except that CEOs hardly ever admit to seeing trouble on the horizon. Part of their jobs as visionaries and motivators is to view every glass as half full. In a CEO’s world, customers are always excited about his upcoming product line. The new growth markets he or she has identified always show unlimited potential. And if the economy should turn sour, the company is always positioned to fare better than its competitors.

Alas, things rarely turn out so well. And that’s probably why down the hall from the C-suites, vice presidents and division heads in tech companies are prepping for a trying year. In conversations with industry watchers over the past few weeks, many have begun putting more emphasis on how their offerings will save enterprise customers money during tough times.

“I think there’s going to be a general downturn in the economy, and that’s going to cause a tightening in budgets,” said Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group, who has been talking to companies about their outlook for 2008. “That means that people are going to have to make do with what they have. So my expectations for this next year are kind of grim for the tech market.”

When budgets shrink, said Rick Becker, vice president of solutions at Dell (DELL), “what customers struggle with is, how do they maximize their IT investment in these trying times?”

Business customers aren’t the only ones struggling; investors are having a difficult time, too. In this market, stocks like Apple and Research in Motion (RIMM), which trade at price/earnings multiples above 40, are very much emotional plays. That makes them especially subject to the market’s wild mood swings — Apple stock for instance lost $35 billion in value last November, gained it back by January, and has since lost much of it again. Google (GOOG) has seen similar fluctuations.

It doesn’t look like many folks expect things to perk up soon — at least not in a sustainable way. With the White House and Federal Reserve scrambling to find ways to give the U.S. economy a shot in the arm, the question isn’t whether the U.S. economy will sag this year, it’s whether it can bounce back in the second half of 2008.

So should you bet that tech stocks will hold up despite the economic gloom? That depends on whether you believe the CEOs who say the rest of the world will keep growing no matter what happens with the spending habits of American consumers and businesses. Here’s the danger, though: If U.S. spending slows, that could mean less money in the pockets of overseas businesses. And if they have less money, it stands to reason that overseas businesses might just slow down on buying lots of things — including Apple iPhones, Cisco routers and Google ads.

Make Online Profits !

Whether you’re just beginning to develop your business model or simply analyzing an existing business, your chief focus should be on how you’re going to generate income. There are seven ways to generate revenue on the Web:

#1. Sell your own products. The main advantage to selling your own products is that you ultimately control how much profit you make on every sale and you therefore have the potential for the biggest profit margin. You know exactly what each product costs, and you can try out different price points to see what works the best. People appreciate good value, and removing the middleman is a great way to provide your customers with competitive prices that keep them coming back for more.

#2. Sell your own services. Whether you’re a small-town dentist, a high-priced online legal consultant, a real estate agent, a tutor, a landscaper, a bed and breakfast owner, an auto-mechanic, a caterer, a fitness trainer or anything in between, you can profit from selling your service online. It’s easy to get started selling a service online, but your revenue potential, in most cases, is limited. That’s because, unlike someone selling a physical product that can be stored and shipped on demand, you can only provide as many services as your time allows.

When you sell a service, you’re essentially selling a relationship with yourself. And this requires that you spend more time and effort establishing your credibility and developing rapport with your visitors than is typically required on a site selling a physical product. You not only need to establish the benefits of the service you’re offering, you also need to establish the value of you providing this service.

#3. Drop ship products. If you want to sell products without the hassles of tracking your inventory, setting up warehouse space and maintaining a confusing shipping/receiving infrastructure, drop-shipping may be the choice for you. Drop shipping lets you sell quality, brand-name products on your site for a hefty profit, while the drop shipper takes care of fulfilling the order. They warehouse the stock, pack the orders and ship them out to your customers.

#4. Recommend affiliate products. Recommending affiliate products creates a “no-risk” partnership that allows you to promote another company’s products or services on your site to earn a percentage of their sales. As one of the company’s “affiliates” or promotion partners, you earn a commission each time someone you’ve referred to their site makes a purchase. To advertise their wares, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate program’s site, or you might publish an article about the company and their products in your newsletter.

#5. Sell ad space. Once your site has lots of highly targeted traffic, or a large, targeted opt-in list, you may be able to sell advertising. Advertisers are willing to buy ads when they’re being directed at large numbers of their target market. Nowadays, though, advertising revenues are a lot less than they used to be, so I don’t recommend you plan on making this your sole source of income. Selling ad space can be a great additional profit stream, but it’s unlikely to keep your business afloat on its own.

#6. Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses. Joint ventures are all about related businesses teaming up and combining skills, products, services and resources to create new streams of income and profit. One great way to profit through joint ventures is to seek out products or services that would benefit your visitors, and then approach the companies that provide those products or services. Ask them if you can recommend their product or service on your site for a portion of the profits. Most companies will gladly agree to this arrangement–after all, there’s no risk for them since they only pay you when you refer a paying customer.

#7. Start an affiliate program. With your own affiliate program, you can recruit an army of people (your affiliates) who will recommend your product on their web site for a percentage of any sale they refer. You have the power to exponentially increase your income as more and more affiliates sign up and you continue to teach your existing affiliates how to increase their commission checks (and your income).

It’s one of the most powerful forms of online advertising I know. It allows you to grow your profits while keeping your business small, since you don’t have to go out and spend money on salespeople and advertising. Your affiliates do the advertising for you, and you only pay them when they make a sale.