Monetize your website but dont lost the content

Website is becoming one of the most important revenue generators. Not because it can cater to your customers directly, but because of indirect revenue from the advertisement that are strategically placed in the website. 

But lets not forget, our first target is to cater to our customer! 

Advertisements is the oldest revenue generation stream for news houses - print, radio, tv, online media - its always the advertisements that drive the revenue for news house. But lets not forget that you are catering to people who are interested in the content of the website. 

One of the sites that I think miss the point is IBNLive.com. The website is so much overloaded with advertisement, that I cannot even open the page to read an article without feeling frustrated and complaining of waste of time: 

1. The home page is overloaded with many media. There is advertisement block, video snippets, alternating-tab frame, auto-playing video. End result - the home page takes forever to load completely!  If the site is taking so much time with my 18 MBPS home connection, I wonder what happens in places where speed is relatively slow. 

2. Next open an article and you will have 3 big advertisement - an almost quarter page advertisement (ok a little less than that, but you cant read the article completely unless you close the advertisement) at bottom left, a one standard frame on the right/top, and an advertisement overlay over the article! This makes the website so slow, that in my frustration I have clicked so many advertisement without actually meant to.  The advertisements are not reaching to the right crowd and companies are paying for the accidental clicks. 

In nutshell, few tips for website makers: 

• Do not overload website with different media. The seconds spent after the website address entered and website opens and ready to use are critical to ensure your viewers do not shift to other tab
• Have a strategic position of advertisement. Advertisement should not interrupt the way consumer wants to interact with the website
• Make sure the advertisements are placed in such a way that accidental clicks are reduced (not near the top right corner, and a clear distance from the scroll bar). 

How long a country can close border for international employees?

I cannot claim that I have traveled a lot. But, I do have my share of travels. Most of my travels were owing to IT boom in India - countries want our skills, and I was there to ensure they have the best. During these visits, the young me was amazed that literally the boundaries are diminishing. Jobs are there for anyone with skills. Only thing that stops anyone is there own limitations. Admittedly, this observation was before the world turned upside down i.e. before 2007.

Presently, I am doing my MBA from a college I am fond of and very proud of - hail Tar Heels. And I was also jerked to reality. Just having right skills is not enough. No I am not talking about different hiring process that is very different between India and USA, nor I am talking about cultural or other barriers that an international student face here. I am talking about much trivial reason - visa to work here!

In US, you can work here if your name was drawn from a lottery. Your skills are of no use for the draw. In fact, lottery has put so much misgivings among employers that even they seem reluctant to sponsor visa. I can understand companies misgivings. They don't want to invest on an expensive resource only to let them go because his/her name was not drawn in a lottery. A company that hedges all its risks, does not seem to have any answer for this risk. How can we hedge the "chance" which has odds that you are one of 65K out of 250K applications. Let the hunger games begin - and odd be always in your favor!

But what it means for international student trying to study in USA, or in any other country beside the homeland! I know European visas are almost as stringent as US. UK Business schools has already declared a low number for international students. As the higher studies became too expensive and the job prospects are diminishing - are we looking into the future where international students will not be moving out of their country for studies?. Is the exchange programs, online courses and immersion studies only way left to understand the culture and business of the other countries? Isn't a barrier created to learn from diversity? "Diversity" - every organization: for-profit, not-for-profit, academic, industrial - are trying to achieve respectable diversity to gain perspectives. But I see losing the edge. Because of one trivial reason - "unable to get visa to work". I have come from a country that was closed to external competition for a long time. But once it opened its arms and market - we are thriving! Competition never brings misery - it brings excellence, it brings ideas, it brings development, inventions! I hope we can overcome this final barrier soon!

Are logic and emotion mutually exclusive???

As it always does, this thought came to me during an innocent conversation. It was a night before my good friend Ankit was leaving for exchange and we were together to bid him good bye. Don't know how the conversation took place but soon we were discussing whether life is meaningless. 

As per him, if we cannot have universal truth about a statement, then that statement is false. We cannot claim that life holds meaning for everyone. So by the law of negation, we can claim that life is meaningless. And I replied, that you cannot combine physics and emotion to justify. 

However, 2 days later, I am sitting on my room, thinking about the very same thing? Why logic and emotions are claimed so mutually exclusive. I am remembering all my MBA teachings. Beware of  unconscious bias while making decisions. Look into all the facts before the decisions. Do not jump to conclusion before evaluating facts. Look beyond your anchoring and framing. Well, they are sound advice no doubt. But all they are saying is that keep your emotions away while making a decision. 

If emotion is so bad, what would you called to instincts? or unconsciousness by itself? I have read lots of blogs on the power of unconsciousness and how they help shape our psyche. First thoughts of the day. Words became flesh. Thinking can help you in making. If unconscious emotions can change the psyche of human being drastically, then why not take advantage of that? There are many times when I am not sure the logical connections or facts for the decisions, but my instincts guide me whether the decision is right or wrong. Somewhere in my unconscious mind some logic connections have been made, which I may or may not remember in the present consciousness. So, why should I wait for digging data if I can make something right because I trust my emotion. I am a matured person. Why I should shy away from emotional decision because I felt it rather than I know it? 

The answer seems to lie with the nature of emotions itself. Emotions seems to be highly complex logic that cannot be easily explained. Also, everyone defines each emotions in their own ways. "Happy" is when your lips twitch automatically to smile or when your eyes start tearing up or just a feeling of peace that may not even reflect in your face but a calmness that you feel or just make you feel good even if hurt you somehow? If happiness can take so many forms, how many forms "danger", "right" or "wrong" will take? It is so difficult to put all those outputs into binary nature of logic "right" or "wrong". Was Ankit claims truly based on logic or was it triggered by emotion? hHas is subconscious made some logical connection that my consciousness is not able to fathom? 

I am sure there is a scientist somewhere who is doing almost the similar research. I hope to get in touch with her, to understand - shall we ask schools to start asking students trust your guts? What if there is a course that let you follow your instinct and not factual data? How will the case study look like then? Just take decisions based on what your instincts are telling you right. And work the hell out to make sure you can decode your instincts properly and crown your decision a success.