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Q: How much is this
going to cost me?
A: First thing to note is that we do not aspire to "cookie-cutter"
solutions. We offer some entry-level options and we do this
with a mind to helping those at that level to grow to a more
powerful and sophisticated level. So yes we can offer you an
entry-level hosting solution if that is all you need at this
time. The cost will be anywhere from FREE to around $25/month
if you've chosen some add-on options. (FREE hosting is normally
limited to non-profits)
Aside from that, each solution is unique just as each situation
for each organization is unique. There are dozens of large companies
out there trying to sell cookie-cutter solutions. You'll get
this!, and this! and that! - but really all you are getting
- is lost in a million other "solutions" that
look exactly the same as yours. Is this really going to help
you? (see the UAQ section)
Q:
Are these cookie-cutter solutions offered by all these big name/big
hype companies targeting small and medium-sized businesses,
really going to help me?
A: NO! Of course, not. How is creating an identical web site
and canned promotion that will make you exactly like a million
others, going to help you to stand out and distinguish yourself?
Their goal is sheer volume i.e. you are simply a number to them
and to your intended audience you are just one option among
many others that look almost exactly the same. When they are
looking for what you are offering, they are sure to be drawn
to the unique and compelling rather than the processed and monotonous.
Wouldn't you?
Q:
What about the guy down the street who can offer me a complete
"custom" web site for $399?
A: As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Sometimes
it seems that a cheap solution is your only answer. But it really
isn't an answer. Is finding a so-called "bargain"
that gets you minimal results at best, what your organization
needs? It's really no bargain at all if it has no value returned.
This could be a case of purely throwing away money only to have
to spend more money down the road when you realize that you're
getting nothing returned - or worse, representing your organization
in a poor, unprofessional manner. The wise choice is staying
away from the two extremes of the mega-corporation and the small
operator who has neither the resources nor appropriate vision
and skills. Seek out experienced professionals who can give
you dedicated attention as well as services that return a value
commensurate with your investment. If you spend $100 dollars
and get a $1,000 return isn't that much better than spending
$25 and getting $10 or nothing in return? Hiring a professional
is an investment and bargain hunting will only get you inferior
products and services. Why would true professionals with services
that are high quality and in demand, sell themselves short and
offer their services at a cut-rate price?
Q: Isn't the network
and equipment offered by these large companies better than what
you can offer as a smaller organization?
A: This is a good question and it goes to the heart of our approach
as well as the approach of these large corporate mega-companies.
Generally speaking, these mass production companies have good
network connectivity. This is to say, how they connect to the
Internet is normally through a high quality, high-bandwidth
connection. That is the extent of the good news however. These
companies are multi-billion dollar organizations. They think
of doing business with small and medium sized organizations
purely in terms of getting as many possible customers as they
can possibly squeeze onto a web server and they do not dedicate
their best equipment to this purpose (far from it!).
When they
speak about small and medium sized customers in their corporate
meetings they do not name names - because to them you are not
individuals. It is all talk of "inventory turnover","maximized
server ratios" etc. They are purely focused on getting
the highest amount of customers on the least expensive hardware
and expenditures. Last year for example, one of the largest
web hosts in the country had tens of thousands of customers
lose all their web serving because they had only one single
server dedicated to DNS (domain name serv(ing)) for dozens of
web servers. So when that server crashed all of those customer's
web sites were down. It would have been a very small thing for
this giant company to spend some money on a second DNS server
or for that matter to run DNS software on an existing server
as a secondary DNS server - for a backup measure. (they actually
had their "secondary DNS" on the same server
box! Now how is that for logic?) It just wasn't important enough
to them however. It was a "calculated risk".
Having tens of thousands of customers potentially (and actually)
lose service compared to the relatively minor cost of a second
server or even simply the time to install, configure and administrate
a secondary software solution.
Contrarily
our approach is just the opposite. Our servers are in fact better
than what you will find in these cookie-cutter server farms
that these mega-companies offer. We choose high end, brand named
servers from IBM, Apple and HP, where industry norms are often
"custom built" which in essence means they
went for the cheapest parts they could find and slapped them
together. We also add additional hardware and software as well
as tweaking our operating systems and set stringent ratio limits
(the amount of sites/applications that can run on an individual
server) to improve the performance and security of each server.
Adding additional NIC cards and additional hard drives for caching
- separate from the RAID arrays (many mass-market servers don't
even run RAID arrays), to a server for example, to increase
"load balancing" performance is something that
you won't typically find in the mass-market approach. To them
it is just another "expense" and as long as
they can cram a sufficient amount of sites onto a server they
don't really care about the performance gains that their customers
will see. We take the skilled artisan approach, with pride in
attention to detail while the other approach is more akin to
the processed chicken parts approach. And yes we also run on
high speed, high bandwidth, redundant, fibre optic connections
to the Internet. We don't own this multi-million dollar networking
equipment but lease space and service from high end data centers
with burstable bandwidth - so there will always be more than
enough. This is the same kind of connectivity and networking
used by the giant mass-market companies. Our network is at least
as good as the mass market approach and combined with our high-end
hardware and skilled networking and server administration, our
overall package is at a much higher level of quality!
Q:
Why should I use the services of a small operation such as Xenocast
when I can afford a large Madison Avenue ad agency or marketing
firm? How can you possibly compete with them?
A: The best media doesn't come from huge agencies. Smaller size
= individualized attention. In just the way that great and revolutionary
ideas don't normally come out of government programs or corporate
think tanks. On a practical level those types of organizations
exist with people rising to the top by attrition. That is, the
good people leave to move onto bigger and better opportunities
while the mediocre tend to stay around a long time and move
up the ladder based upon being around longer than anyone else.
As one former
large agency executive noted, large agencies are not built around
rewarding the most creative and effective people nor are they
focused upon results. They are built around the longevity of
the employees - seniority. For that very reason, the most creative
and talented people end up leaving at any opportunity for a
larger salary or starting their own projects and companies,
while the mediocre people stay around and become the leaders
of these larger companies.
Bottom line
is that with a larger ad agency or media company you get big
budgets and very often mediocre results. They have great sales
people who will tell you about how great your brand will be.
They have complicated formulas and all sorts of mumbo jumbo
to dazzle you with and you may end up with a really impressive
bit of multi-media that has dazzling special effects and theme
music (but what the heck does it do for you?). As a client you
are singularly weighed in value by how much you can spend with
them. Unless you're a major client, you will not receive individualized
attention and despite all of their "awards"
that got you interested in signing with them, most of your work
will probably be done by junior staff and even by unpaid interns.
With us
you get blooming creativity and vibrant people who know that
they are critical to success. We have the necessity of achieving
results to survive. We know that; We welcome that and thrive
upon it. We are creative, we know we're creative but we're not
here to simply impress you with how creative we are. Creativity
is a benefit to us only in terms of how it best meets the needs
of the project mission. It is a tool and not an end.
Hey, for
some people it's great to be a tenured professor or a government
employee who only has to punch a clock in a timely fashion to
get paid and eventually retire. And maybe you have the luxury
of spending your money on "art for art's sake."
If you're in a competitive industry however, do you want people
working for you based upon how long they've managed to stick
around somewhere or do you want people who thrive on creativity
and are rewarded based upon results? Our people choose to work
in a small business environment. They thrive on being integral
parts of every project that they are a part of. They don't work
on Madison Avenue - and they don't want to! Dollar for dollar,
we will beat the Madison Avenue types every time. If you don't
have a multi-million dollar budget, then talk to us and see
how you can compete and outperform those companies that do.
We operate
at the street level - street smarts. This is where the action
is. This is where entrepreneurs outwit and eventually outpace
the establishment. Where David slays Goliath. We can help you
to achieve your results cheaper and more effectively.
NEXT - UAQs >
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