madlep

SEO and online advertising are a *very* small piece of the online strategies Australian businesses should be encouraged to examine. I'm disappointed that they were specifically named here, as there is a growing belief in the online entrepreneur community that SEO and advertising based business models are outdated and unsustainable. Instead, I'd love to see a focus on innovative, sustainable methods that actually generate wealth. Ideally, the government should be looking at ways to encourage *new* ways of working online, not just taking traditional businesses, and slapping an e-commerce front end onto them. The opportunities granted by the web for small startups which can be bootstrapped for a low cost should be encouraged by government, possibly by more accessible and publicized industry grants and loans. Not all online investment requires large capital investment, especially in the last few years with the availability of cheap hosting, and mature, high quality open source platforms. It seems from this post that the usual buzzwords and vague hand-waving are still in vogue in Canberra. It is deluded thinking like this that caused the 2001 dot com bubble and subsequent bust. A blind faith in "just putting it on the internet" is not a recipe for success in the online world. It's lucky that there are talented, and skilled online innovators working in this country, as there seems to be little to no leadership from any level of government. (also, why is this comment form so small?)