India is a vibrant country with more than 1.1 billion people. It comes second to China in terms of population. With more than 150 million Indians speaking English, India is a excellent prospect for the Internet Marketers and all those business that want to open up to a new vibrant market. India's middle class is young and they are well aware of US brands. The American effect is increasing in India with people now becoming more and more brand conscious and doing more things online from buying items to paying bills and even getting mobile contents.

India is growing very fast and has turned its economy from no where to world's second fastest growing economy in just a decade. Marketers in US think that India is fast developing economy but the truth is that it has developed in a quiet small scale and there are lot more areas still to be touched by development of technology and internet.

Demographics & Internet Usage

India's gross national income per capita is only US$630 for 2004, Though there are 150 million English speaking Indians but this is just 14% of total population, so this leaves a huge room for more development. Hindi is the official language of India, along with other 22 regional language. About 500 million Indian are under age of 21 and 70% of them live in the India's 5,00,000 villages and remaining in 200 towns and cities. The light of development has only touched the major towns and cities and still huge numbers of villages still wait to receive first electricity connection in their village.

India is a very traditional and conservative country. Family values and norms are highly respected and children live with their parents even after the marriage. The business of marriage is a big business in India. Websites like, Shaddi.com, Bharatmatrimonial.com are few sites who find marriage partner for those people who are looking for spouse online.

By the start of 2006, India had only 1 million broadband subscribers which is less that 0.1% of total population. Till today only 4.5% of the total population is online 55% of them are from households and remaining 45% accounts for business. Typically, 60% of Indians who use internet routinely use the 20000+ cyber cafes scattered all over India. It is rare to find internet connection in most Indian households, though this phenomenon is rapidly changing.

According to the survey done by Paul Budde Communications, an average Indian spends only 3 hours per month on internet. On an average 89% of those who use internet are using it for emailing, 86% regularly read blogs, 57% send e-cards through internet and 53% look for jobs online. Besides this Indian consumer's online activity also includes music, video and software downloads, playing online games and instant messaging.

Though, internet has taken a backseat in Indian economy but mobile technology has been embraced hugely by Indian consumers. By the end of 2005 India had 77 million mobile subscribers which is growing at the rate of 60% per year.

Challenges for Westerners Working in India

Westerns find very tough to start their business in India. Though its tough but there are tricks that can make business run smoothly in this close society. Business has too embrace the culture and tradition of Indian society to flourish in this market.

Indians like to feel the product before buying

Indian people want to touch and feel the product before they buy it. That is why very few people tend to go online for shopping. They feel it more secure to buy products from their store rather than buying it online.

Delivery issues

Most people feel insecure while buying online. They fear of lack of timely delivery and damage of product while delivery. This creates problem for online shopping site to raise security among their users.

Online fraud hinders ecommerce

Indian consumers have credit cards, debit cards and they use it frequently but they avoid using it online. They fear of online fraud and since the cyber law is not so good in India so majority of people don't feel safe to use their cards online. There are certain startups in India like Wallet365 that are trying hard to change it through high secure system but they still find it hard to implement in masses.

Price factor

Indian consumers have a habit to bargain while shopping. Even if the sellers quote the lowest rate, they will still try to reduce it through bargain. Since people cannot bargain online so most people avoid shopping online for such reasons.

Three India-Specific Online Marketing Tips...

1. Go viral

Viral marketing is one of the strong options to promote your product in Indian market. Spread your words among people and they will further spread it within their network. Rather then using banner ads, its better to send SMS messages directly to consumer's cell phone and emails into their inbox.

2. Learn Hinglish and get local approval on copy and creative

Indians have their own style of speaking English. It's a blend of English and Hindi which brings up a new language Hinglish. Most popular brand in India use this language as it easily relates to the majority of English speaking Indians. Hinglish is more and more becoming popular because it is being spoken by most urban youth and has a direct effect on their mind set when translated into ad jingle.

3. Static banners and telemarketing

The Indian version of Yahoo!, MSN, Google and portals like Rediff.com, Indiatimes, com, zapak.com are high traffic Indian sites. These sites are lot similar to sites in US with same type of content, design and news feeds. Moreover the Indian and US version of Yahoo and MSN have normally same advertisement running since the advertisers are same. The click through rate on banners is between 0.5% to 2% on these sites. People easily enter their contact information on the landing page but fear not to enter any financial information.Once the information is in the database, now its telemarketers job to call the consumers to promote their product.

One more thing marketers should know that India is a huge country with 28 states and more than 100 local languages. Its is not necessary to translate your ad campaign in all these language but be sure that campaign for one region doesn't hurts the sentiment or values of other. Ultimately, India was a former British colony so people still use British spellings. "Color" is spelled as "Colour" in India.

ExoClick has just released a beta version of its market place.
This allow advertisers to browse the different sites of the Network in a friendly way and get detailed information about each site.

Advertisers have total control as the campaigns targeting is very deep. Ads can be displayed on the FULL network, or be restricted by country, category, or to specific sites.
This open a new way for publishers and advertisers to create relevant advertising and generate the highest revenue for both.

Please, join us on ExoClick Forums to give your feedback on this new feature! Your thoughts are always much appreciated.

Just to make sure you didn't miss any important news this week, here is a super-quick summary!

Google Trends get hourly updates

Finally, Google Trends are updated every hour. Before, it was updating on monthly basics. From now we can get pretty new data and spot fresh trends in affiliate/SEO market.

DMOZ Open Direcotry Lounched a Blog

DMOZ Open Directory (owned by Netscape) has lounched thier blog. They will share there information about news and changes on DMOZ, describe some of their categories etc. They also want to recruit new editors in this way and get feedback from community. http://blog.dmoz.org/

Google Founders In Top 5 Richest People in USA

Forbes have published the list of 400 richeast people in United States for 2007. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Googe, are in top 5. Each of them owns $18.5 billion USD.

Rumor: Google going to buy Sirius Radio

There is a rumor around the net today (TechCrunch, Motley Fool) that Google is going to buy US Satellite Radio provider - Sirius. They propably want a radio station where they can sell their voice ads. What is more important (in my opinion) is that that Sirius owns three satelaties and if Google would buy them they actually would own those satelites!

Google 10th Birthsday

It's Google 10th birthsday and 9th birthsday of Google Corp. Google has some birthay logo today on thier main page.

Google Book Search get new design

Google Book Search get fresh look and this time I like it!

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool is BACK!

One of my favorite keyword research tools is alive again. Overture Keyword Selector Tool is back on-line and working! Yahoo finally made a good move (Overture is aquired by Yahoo).

Flickr Photos inside Yahoo Image Search

Lately Yahoo has annoucned that from now photos from Flicker will be included to Yahoo Image Search. Yahoo Image Search algorithm will be check such things like title, tags and comments on Flickr. Photos signed as private will not show up on YIS.

Live.com Gets New Design and New Algorithm Is Coming Up

Few days ago main page of Microsoft search engine was redesigned and now we know that it's just a begining of the changes. There is coming a total change of Live algorithm. Search results will be presented in a completly new way, here are few screenshoots and more background on changes: http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/09/20/live-search-2-0-begins-rollout.aspx

MSN Video Search - new fres look and new features

MSN Video Search has got new look and new features. It supports Split screen, drag and drop features, it allows to watch video and still do searching. Pretty nice I must admit.

Facebook worth 10 billion US$?

Microsoft is willing to buy 5% of Facebook stocks for up to 500 million US$ which gives unbelivable high price of 10.000.000.000$ for whole Facebook!

Baidu stocks are HOT

I thought that Google stocks are really hot but it seems like there is yet another search engine with really hot stocks. It's Baidu.com, Google main competitor on Chinise market.

Blogs and Blogging are growing as a new fashion on internet. There has become a trend of blogging and it seems everyone is starting his or her own blog. Well, most do it for fun and some do it to showcase their talent while many wish to make money out of it. Blogs are an easy way to open your identity on internet. You don't have to be too web savvy to get a blog and run it. All you need is a simple signup on any free blog provider like wordpress.com or Blogger.com and you are of to start a blog.

Well, running a blog is something and making money out of it is something else. You need to have some extensive knowledge before you can make some decent money from your blogs. You will need a basic training on some technical parts like to maintain and update blogs code, customizing the data and on top of it hosting it one your own server. While you can choose free blog providers like bloggger.com to host your blog but its lot better to host it on your own server which will give you more flexibility to customize the blog.

Running a blog is easy but making money out of it is a bit hard. You have to be consistent with your blog to get some decent traffic which in turn will convert into clicks. There are many ways of monetization that you can implement on your blog and test which one works best for your blog. Following are few tips you should always try when you plan to make money out of blog.

Contextual and In-page Ads

This is the most common way to make money from blogs. You can use contextual ads from Exoclick.com to monetize your blog. If you are a famous blog and have a good amount of readership then your traffic will automatically turn into clicks which will bring in more money. But just inserting ads into blog does not complete the process. You have to use the ads according to your site and in the best way so it increases the Click through Rate. Your users have to click your ads in order for you to make any money. SO, it's very important that you mix-up your ads with the content to have more clicks. You can always have the professional help of ExoClick to monetize your blog through contextual advertisement.

Affiliate and referral links

Affiliate links have been one of the most interesting make monet online tool. There are people making 6 figure income only through affiliates and referrals. You can too use affiliate and referrals links of other products that you like and can promote it through your site. If your visitors like your product and buys it then you are going to have a good income through the commission. It is very easy to add affiliate links on your blog but it is hard to find people buying your product. Your product has to be very good which strikes the user and he buys it. So, when you decide on the product, think carefully on what you choose and whether it suits your blog theme or not.

Soliciting though blogs

In this process you won't be selling anything to your viewers, but rather will depend on their kindness and will seek their help. You can ask donations and contributions either in form of money or goods for a charity or things like that. If your viewers like what you write and what you are offering them then they are certainly going to help you. Though this does not seem a ethical way to make money but there are people who do it.

Blogging to market

Blogs make it easy to market your product or service. If you have a product or skill to do something like designing or programming then you can promote your service through your blog. Blogs are a great way to find new potential clients and if you can have decent promotional campaign then it wont be too late that you will have tons of projects flowing to your way.

Blogs have turned into a powerful tool for marketing world and it has got great potential to change the way companies do their business. Blogs have brought customers closer to the companies and have made direct conversation easier. So, never underestimate this power and start blogging now.