Syllabus
Management Department
Instructor Information
Professor: Terry Byrd
Department of Management
Office: 408 Lowder Business Building
Phone: (334) 844-6543
E-mail: tbyrd@business.auburn.edu
Office Hours:
Course Description
This course is a practicum on electronic commerce. Through the use of a popular content management system named XOOPS, we will explore many different facets of doing business on the World Wide Web (WWW). XOOPS is a program that allows administrators to easily create dynamic websites with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic marketing affiliate sites, community websites, information portals, corporate portals, blogs, storefronts (through plug-ins like OSCommerce), directories, and other common websites. In this case, we will practice many of the activities that are needed to make any website, no matter what type, successful. In fact, we will be able to measure that success to a certain extent by how many people actually come to our websites and how much revenues (if any) we can make developing and marketing our websites.
This is not a technical class. However, we will learn some HTML since it is the language of the web and you may want to use it in your website. You really don’t have to know anything about HTML to use XOOPS or to be successful marketing on the Internet but I feel strongly you should have some knowledge of this language. It can help if you want to introduce some “customized” features to the pages to your website. We will spend about a week (or maybe two) on learning basic HTML.
Probably the most important matter to any small website is the question of how to get “eyeballs”, that is, people, to the site. A primary component to solving this question is search engine optimization (SEO). We will explore this topic in some detail and you will utilize many of the strategies we discuss in promoting your own website. Getting ranked highly in Google, MSN, and Yahoo! can often times determine the success or failure of your Website. It is so very important to optimize your site for these search engines so people can find your website among the billions that are on the Internet.
Course Approach:
Students are required to be entrepreneurial in their approach to this class, in your assignments, and in your website project. You take control of your own destiny and determine the success and failure of not only your grade but of the success and failure of your website. You can take this project as far as you want it to go. You can actually earn revenue from your class project and create a residual stream of income (I would not plan on becoming filthy rich but who knows). Although I think the class will be hard work, it can also be a fantastic learning experience (and a profitable one). Through a project journal, you will inform me of your day to day activities working on your website (more about this later). I share everyone’s observations, strategies, experiences, techniques, insights, and general web cornucopia with all the other students through class work and a blog. Comments and other web cornucopia are more than welcomed on the blog to inform all the other students of things and insights I might have missed. In this way, everyone will be a valuable resource to everyone else in the class. Students are also encouraged to employ the systems perspective and wear the "manager's hat" in relating to all the issues we will discuss so that we will be able to think about them critically from multiple dimensions.
The University says I must evaluate you in some way or the other. I will not have exams in this class. That does not mean you will be given an easy A – far from it. Students will be evaluated in three ways in this class.
I. Students must develop business plans for their Websites. I will provide a template to all students to follow. The business plan for this class is not a one time development but a living, breathing document that will evolve over the course of the project as students gain insight into what they want their Websites to be. Students are required, however, to develop an initial business plan within the first three weeks of class so the Instructor will know which domains they have targeted for their Websites. This will account for 20% of your grade.
II. Students will be required to develop and maintain a detailed and thorough project journal detailing everything that they do on the project. When I say detailed and thorough, I mean detailed and thorough. Each student must submit their most current and unreported activities each week. Remember, these reports must be comprehensive. This will account for 30% of your grade.
III. The third part of your grade will be from the actual project itself. This will account for 40% of your grade.
IV. Students will be required to attend class and participate in the discussion. This will account for 10% of your grade.
V. The grade that you receive in each part is COMPETITIVE. All of your work is compared to everyone else and graded. I will, of course, have minimum requirements that all of you must surpass. However, beyond that, I will consider your grades relative to everyone else in the class. All members of the class will have all the information that is available to everyone else through my sharing of the insights reported in your journals and comments to the blog. Therefore, it should be only the effort that separate one person from the other in what he or she achieves in the class.
Schedule:
This document is active and every changing. Since we all will be learning new information (the Internet is such as vast place no one could hope to know everything about it) as we research, develop, and market our website during the semester, I will only add topics two weeks in advance of the actual date. This should give each of us time to research the topics and integrate the knowledge into our bags of tricks.
Week 1: August 22- 26
How the Internet Works
How Web Servers
and the Internet Work, How Stuff Works
Key technical concepts in this article will be covered in class. This
article is meant as an overview that you can refer to as a supplement to the
technical discussion we'll have in class.
Tutorial on Infrastructure for Electronic Commerce:
http://myphliputil.pearsoncmg.com/student/bp_turban_ec_2004/Turban_Web_Appendix_A.pdf
Source : Electronic Commerce 2004 by Turban
Launching a Successful Online Business:
PowerPoint Slides by Judy Lang, Eastern Illinois University - Chapter 16 - EC2004_ch16.ppt
Source: Electronic Commerce 2004 by Turban
The official XOOPS site. XOOPS is an acronym for eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. It can be installed on an Internet host with a PHP-capable web server (e.g., Apache) and a database (e.g., MySQL). Most web hosting companies that use Apache servers will already have XOOPS (and many other open source programs already on any Web space you might buy).
Tutorials for XOOPS:
http://houseofstrauss.co.uk/modules/wfdownloads/viewcat.php?op=&cid=4
Week 2: August 29
– September 2
The official XOOPS site. XOOPS is an acronym for eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. It can be installed on an Internet host with a PHP-capable web server (e.g., Apache) and a database (e.g., MySQL). Most web hosting companies that use Apache servers will already have XOOPS (and many other open source programs already on any Web space you might buy).
Week 3: September 5 – September 9
An extremely easy to learn HTML tutorial.
HTML: An Introduction: Class Notes
Week 4: September 12
– September 16
Guide
to Cascading Style Sheet
Cascading Style Sheet Tutorial
Week 5: September 19 – September 23
Review of XOOPS Implementation
Issues
Week 6: September 26 – September 30
Search
Engine Optimization Sources
Generating Traffic
on Your Website:
Major
Search Engines
Finding
and Generating Content
Linking
Strategies
Pay
per Click
Advertising
Strategies for Websites
Mainstream
Advertising
Others
Week 7: October 3 – October 7
Generating Traffic
on Your Website:
Major
Search Engines
Finding
and Generating Content
Linking
Strategies
Pay
per Click
Advertising
Strategies for Websites
Mainstream
Advertising
Others
Homework for Week of
October 10
Week 8: October 10 – October 14
Linking
Strategies
Information
On Link Strategies:
http://www.ericward.com/articles/specialtylinks.html
http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3485381
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2004/12/index.html#ONE
http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories/Specialty_Directories/
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=2783
http://www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com
http://www.linkingmatters.com/DownloadPDF.html
Link
Marketing:
http://www.cyber-robotics.com/ Download the 170-page e-book on this site.
You can also get a free copy of Zeus which is a program to help get related links
Interviews:
David
Notestine on Reciprocal Link Marketing
http://www.seoradio.com/20050315-reciprocal-link-marketing.html
Glenn Canady Banned by Google? Alternative Traffic Sources
http://www.seoradio.com/20050208-banned-by-google-alternative-traffic-sources.html
Week 9: October 17
– October 21
Pay per Click
Advertising Strategies for
Websites
Mainstream Advertising
Homework Questions for this
Week:
1. What is Pay per Click? Find
the Internet companies (e.g., Google) that offer Pay per Click and compare.
2. What are some of the other advertising strategies that can be
directly on the Internet?
3. What are some mainstream (off-the-Internet) advertising strategies
that can be used to promote your site?
4. Compare Pay per Click with other Internet advertising. What are the advantages? Disadvantages?
5. What are some other ways we have not discussed in the last couple of
weeks that you can think of to market your Internet site?
Week 10: October
24 – October 28
Commercializing Your Website
Homework Questions for the
Week:
1. What are AdSense Ads? Search
for and report on other click through programs offered on the Internet.
2. How might you use AdSense Ads and other click through programs on
your Website? Are you using them? Any results yet?
3. What are Affiliate Links? How
are they used?
4. Investigate some of the major Internet sites that organize affiliate
programs from various websites.
5. Do you think that a substantial income can be produced from
affiliate links? Why or why not?
Week 11: October
31 – November 4
Commercializing
Your Website
Homework Questions for the
Week:
1. What are Affiliate Links? How
are they used?
2. Investigate some of the major Internet sites that organize affiliate
programs from various websites.
3. Do you think that a substantial income can be produced from
affiliate links? Why or why not?
4. Compare Commission Junction ( www.cj.com
), Share-A-Sale ( www.shareasale.com
), and Linkshare ( www.linkshare.com
).
5. Go to Refer-it ( www.refer-it.com
) and Associate Programs ( www.associateprograms.com
) and read some of the articles on affiliate programs.
Jeremy’s Suggestion on Adding Links to the Main Menu:
This week I figured out how to add my own links to the main menu. I found out this can be done by cloning the main template and then setting the cloned template to the default template under general settings. You can then add all the links you want to the main menu by going to the templates section in the admin menu and clicking on List beside the word “System” in the Template Set Manager page. This will bring up a list of html documents that you can edit. You just have to scroll down to the bottom and find the one called system_block_mainmenu.html. Then you can add the links to the source code but the links should be below the end module menu loop tag. You also have to make sure you put the same class name as the rest of the main menu in the tag with your url. It should look like this:
<a class="menuMain" href="http://aucommerce.net/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1">
Linux Gaming News</a>
I found out you have to do this to add links because you can’t change the default template. I’m just explaining this because I think this was a question last week in class. I know I was unsure of how to do this and I think a few other people I talked to were also.
Week 12: November 7 - November 11
Homework:
1.
Look for other ways to
commercialize your site.
2.
What are E-Books? What are ways they can be used to generate
revenue on your site?
3.
How can classified ads be used on
your site? Can they be used to generate
revenue? If so, how and in what ways can
they be utilized?
4.
Do you think T-Shirts and other
customized items can be used by your site as a revenue generator? Investigate www.cafepress.com
. What services do they provide at
Cafepress? How can you use this service
for your own site?
5.
Check out some sites that accept
paid advertising for ads or sponsored listings.
Given sufficient traffic, do you think your site can utilized paid
advertising? Why or why not? Think about how you would market such a
service and what you charge based on different levels of traffic? What evidence could you provide to potential
advertisers to show that your service delivers on the stated traffic?
6.
Can you think of any novel or
distinctive ways you might offer paid ads, sponsored listings, or other paid
advertising to potential clients?
Discuss each.
Week 13: November
14 – November 18
Last week for
Journal Entry
Sites
for the Class:
http://www.themanbehindthemask.net
http://www.useryconsulting.com
http://www.supplychaininpaper.com
http://www.gunreviewsonline.com
http://www.holylandgiftshop.net
http://www.property-planner.com
http://www.columbusgeorgiaweddings.com
http://www.kidscookamerica.com
http://www.plumseriousfans.com
http://class7676.brachsolutions.com/html/
Weeks 14 and 15:
Homework:
Look for Ways to Analyze the Success of Your Website. There are many tools to help you, some commercial and some free. Google has a new tool to help analyze traffic and other success factors on your Website.
Business Plan:
Students must develop business plans for their Websites. I will provide a template to all students to follow. The business plan for this class is not a one time development but a living, breathing document that will evolve over the course of the project as students gain insight into what they want their Websites to be. Students are required, however, to develop an initial business plan within the first three weeks of class so the Instructor will know which domains they have targeted for their Websites. This will account for 20% of your grade.
Now that we have gone through several aspects of the development, promotion, commercializing, and analyzing our Websites, I want you to go back and complete the business plan for your Website – with a slight twist. You are to project the business plan for your Website out for a two year time period. Assume you have a small budget of $25,000 to work with to bring your Website to profitability over the two year period. In this revised plan, you are can introduce products and services to sell directly off your Website although the competition and the potential of these must be analyzed and discussed in some detail. I envision a document of 12 to 15 pages for this part of the project. All supporting analysis and documentation should be put into appendices. I will consider the business plan and your initial Website together when I grade the overall project. Together they will account for 60% of your final grade.