The internet is the future. There’s no questioning that in today’s business market, the world over. You’ll probably notice this in pretty much every area of your daily life. You may be involved with work that doesn’t involve constant e-mails, or conference calls and webcam meetings with people in multiple time zones in different countries, but those are very common practices for many different businesses. Even just in terms of entertainment and killing time, you might be surprised just how much money is made from all of the constant advertising. I’m not a fan of those virulent pop up ads that all just seem to try and install adware, spyware, malware, and generally anything unhealthy for a computer (if you’ve ever had a Trojan horse virus hit your computer then you know exactly the kind of pain I’m talking about!). But as much as I hate those ads, I do know that they are just one branch of the whole business model for big corporations and I can’t blame them for doing something I know I would use if I was in the same position.

I don’t think there’s a better argument for how useful search engine optimization can be than this photo. © SEO.

Parts of India, primarily noticeable in the major urbanized and metropolitan sectors (like Bangladesh or Bombay to name just the most obvious examples) and other parts of Asia have been seeing a huge boom in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) business and also in call centers that focus on boosting business for markets based on the internet. I’m not completely sure what it is about the government, or the culture or the general business practices in India (or perhaps some other combination of factors I’m not even really aware of) that causes it to have such a strong market in those businesses. But the numbers don’t lie in the nation with the highest population especially.

This image is actually rare to me simply because it’s both witty and funny, not just a cute picture of a cat with a poorly spelled one-liner! © Z Jason.

Just taking a look at the short list of what comprises most websites on the internet, it makes me instantly think, wishing really, that I could be in on the ground floor of a website that really takes off, like Google or Facebook… But then again, the responsibility and stress that comes with managing that sort of business does sound pretty intimidating. I think the smart thing to do if I was going to set up the foundation for an internet-based business would be to simply make it go public on the stock market and set myself up to receive periodic ‘residuals’ or ‘royalties’ without even lifting a finger. Getting paid without having to work sounds morally reprehensible though so I think I’ll just stick with working for a living and actually liking myself!

Here’s a nice prismatic diagram of the different formats of websites that comes with several of the big name examples in each category. © Brian Solis.