Starting and keeping an online business is no different to any other type of business. You do not work in a vacuum and the success of your online venture, whether it is a business or a blog website or the promotion of an eBook  or a proper print book you need to market, depends on the ability of your potential customers to spend money.

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In the corporate world careers are won or lost by one’s ability to hide who they are and, in the process, they often forget that the best commodity to use in order to get where they want is honesty. We have, in the world of business, become so good at hiding our true selves that polymetric tests and personality-stress questions, the old tools of headhunters and HR executives have become a little passé as we have become adept at guessing what the right answer might be and then providing the expected question.

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Imagine, for an instance, your perfect house. Total opulence, fantastic use of space. Roomy to the extreme, custom-designed to cater to your every whim. Now, look at it from the outside and as you approach notice the horizontal opening placed eight feet above the ground which is the only way in. You need a ladder to get in there. Nothing else will do. The designer, in keeping with the innovative nature of your requests for an extraordinary, innovative, home thought that a door, placed vertically, at ground level was way too traditional and designed something else instead.

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It’s rare that a simple announcement comes with a price tag but in the age of the web, web-based business have the ability to make or lose fortunes pretty much overnight. Google moved into China in 2006, it agreed to abide by Chinese government censorship laws and has, since, worked quietly to open up the market and gain a foothold for its business.

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This is a tale that begins back in 1999 when eBooks first made a brave and, as it turns out, premature appearance and then set about doing a roller-coaster ride of high expectations and dashed hopes as they failed to take off. Like so many things yesteryear’s failure (or last century’s in this case) is the success tale of today and eBooks are no exception.

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SEO, we say in-house, is like the movies: “Nobody knows nothing”. That’s not strictly true of course and it would be disingenuous to suggest so. Search Engine Optimization has been walking the tightrope between being a science and an art for some time now and this book is probably the first step towards taking it away from the latter camp and putting it firmly into the former.

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When it comes to online payment systems PayPal has become synonymous with ease of use and security, allowing anyone with an email address to send and receive money online and through their website. The company made history when it became the first dot com start-up to be listed in the Stock Market after the September 11 attacks in New York and it has never looked back since.

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Every time Google updates its core search engine code it spoils the day for website owners and search engine optimizers alike as they all race to see what the impact will be. This time is no different. Google Caffeine has been implemented though the update is not likely to be complete until the beginning of 2010 by which time there will be a jump in trade in valium as website owners and anyone else active in SEO try to get their nerves under control. 

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It’s true that a rolling stone gathers no moss, and Google have elevated the old saying into an art form. In the past eighteen months the company has been active in search, mobile phones, a new programming language called Go designed to make web servers run faster, a bevy of free online tools, modifications and improvements to their Gmail and Google Docs accounts, the rolling out of Google wave (albeit still in Beta), modifications and improvements in Google Analytics and, since it’s already so near Christmas, a partridge on a pear tree.

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One size fits all is the sign of an out of date mentality which delivers sub-standard products and services nit really suitable to the job at hand. This sweeping statement cuts across very front, whether you’re getting a facelift across the border in Mexico as part of the medical tourism phenomenon, or getting some SEO done on your website by some student who’s read the latest book on it and hopes to make some quick cash.

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