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Join and learn FrontPage
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Successful Web Market (part 2)
First let's review our research status.
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Product or service that is in
demand. |
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Price is fair and
competitive. |
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Solutions to product delivery
and returns. |
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You need a well designed site
with e-commerce capabilities. |
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Web Traffic. |
If you have all of the above,
your chances of success are greatly enhanced.
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Driving customers to your
site.
This consists of the
following techniques.
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Search Engines |
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Web directories |
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Local media - Newspaper,
radio etc. |
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Affiliates |
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Web-rings |
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Usenet services |
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Pay for clicks |
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Online auctions |
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Free Classified |
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Permission e-mail
marketing |
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Vertical portals |
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Banner |
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Banner Exchanges |
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Comparison shopping
portals |
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E-stores like Yahoo
Stores and Amazon zShops |
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Don't be too obsessed with
search engines, they are important but should represent only one of the
above methods of generating customers. In a recent seminar I attended on
Internet marketing, the presenter told us that the average web site only gets 10
unique visitors per day. He also said that the average conversion rate to
sales for Internet sites is about 2%, and that even the best convert at around
3%. Doing the math, that means that on average, the number of items you
sell per month is around 6. This is not good. So how can you
beat this average? By using all of the above techniques to generate
customers.
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Search Engines |
Ah, the holy grail of the
Internet. How do I get listed? And then, how can I get a better
ranking? Web Search Engines use programs called crawlers to follow links
throughout the Internet to classify and rank sites. There are submission
programs to submit your site to several at the same time (see our home page for
free submission). The main thing I want you to remember, is that search engines
alone will not get you the success you want on the web.
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Getting listed
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No matter what anyone
says, there are only a couple dozen search engines to worry about. |
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Use the above mentioned
multiple search (free) submission engines to list your site. |
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Go to the search engines
and manually apply to these:
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Google |
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DMOZ |
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Yahoo |
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Lycos |
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Looksmart |
These are the critical
search engines for submission. Why? Because most of the
other search engines list off off these five. |
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For example, Yahoo uses Google to
list their sites. The search criteria are different, but if you get listed
in one, you'll be listed in the other.
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What are search engines
looking for? How do I get a better rating? |
That varies with the search
engine. The best approach involves the following:
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Check points for search
engines
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Meta tags which identify:
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The title of the
site. |
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A meta tag
description of the site. |
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Keywords about the
site. |
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For the above mentioned
Interactive Tools site, here is their Meta Tag listings:
<title>interactivetools.com - Web Content Management Software Systems</title>
The Title.
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Interactivetools.com offers web content management software systems, including real estate, auto and news management systems, free CGI Perl scripts, publishing software and more.">
The Meta description.
<META NAME="KeyWords" CONTENT="web content management software systems free scripts cgi perl programming resources">
The keywords
<!-- Offers web content management software systems, including real estate, auto and news management systems, free CGI Perl scripts, publishing software and more.-->
More descriptors for bots to read.
Now the visitors can't see this
information (unless they select View | Source on their browsers), so it is
intended for search engines only. Look at your competitions Meta tags and
follow the successful ones.
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Does your site actually say
something about the keywords listed. Reuse the first five of these
keywords at least five times on the home page. This can include links
to other pages. |
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Use large type for phrases
containing keywords. |
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Use keywords in links to
other pages. |
Link your site to other sites and
other empowering strategies.
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The more sites link to your
site, and the more popular these sites are, the better ranking you'll get. |
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Use ALT tags for images and
charts. Remember web crawlers can't see, so if you don't describe it
in an ALT field, the crawler won't know it's there. This is another
place to use keywords. |
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Don't re-list sites more than
once a week. It's considered spamming and may get you banned. |
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It will take a while for the
search engines to crawl your site. With several billion sites, the
rate of a Google crawling cycle is around 2 months. |
There are a few ways to help get
links to your site on other sites.
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Use affiliates.
Affiliates come in two varieties, free and paid. Soliciting free
programs is as easy as typing free affiliates in the Google search
bar. Probably the most famous one is Amazon. On our toy site we definitely
want to have a few children's educational books with links to Amazon.
But the best kind, and the most rewarding,
are affiliates you solicit for your site and pay a small percentage of
generated sales to for putting your link on their site. I'm going to
post the code to track incoming URL's and enter them in a database to facilitate
this process. (soon) |
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Join a web ring. Look
for a web ring of companies doing sales of products like yours.
If you can't find one, start your own. Look for sites similar but with
some differences. In our toy example, look for on-line toy
companies that specialize in outdoor gym and play ground equipment or other
non-competitive areas. Use the site contact number and ask if they are
interested in joining your ring. This shared customer technique works
wonders. |
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Link Trading. Anytime
you visit a site that you like, don't be afraid to use the contact number to
ask for a link swap. After all, the worst they can say is no. |
The above techniques will get you
listed usually with a 4 or 5 rating from Google. This is good enough
as a starting place. Next, we need to look at the rest of the Internet
marketing process.
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Pay for clicks. This
involves paying a site for each time a click passes a potential customer to
you. Now, I know what your thinking. If I sell only 1 in 50 of
the visitors to my site, how can I make money? Here's how it
works. |
The major site dealing with pay
for clicks is Overture. Overture has contracts with other search engines
like Yahoo and Lycos. The trick to Overture is first, never pay over a
nickel for a click and second, if your in the top three places on a search term,
your listing will go at the top of most major search engines. Over
80% of all web searchers will see your add in the top three positions.
This source of customers is not
for the very first few months of business, but can make you big bucks after
you've answered some questions. You'll need to know what your average
gross profit is per sale and make sure your getting at least 1 sale for every 50
unique visits to your site.
Suppose, after six months, our
toy site is averaging 1 sale for each 50 customers and the average gross profit
per sale is $15.00. If we can get additional customers at 5 cents each,
our additional cost per sale will be $2.50. Now wouldn't you make that
deal? But you ask, how can I get on top of a page for only a nickel?
Let's first enter Overture in the
Google search bar. The first site up is the main Overture site, bookmark
it. The second listing is the Search Term Suggestion Tool. Open it
and enter educational toys and you will get about 40 terms listed with the first
being 'education toy' and showing 11624 hits in the past month. Now we
open the main site and enter the search term. At the end of each listing a
sponsored listing link will open a window for advertising. Near the
bottom of that popup you'll find a link to listing prices. Click this
link. A new popup comes up with a box for the term you want to check and a
number you must type in another box to assure that the process can't be
automated. Enter your term and you can see what it cost to be on this
page. The price was around .48 cents today and to list for a nickel would
put you off the front page. By the way, if you can't be in the top three
of a page, get on bottom or number 40. In this case even the bottom is too
much, so we have to find another term. The next term I tried was teaching
toys. Bingo! Teaching toys had only three listings...and the second
place was .05 cents. I then went to check the popularity of the term and
found that 241 searches were made using Teaching Toys in the last month.
Even if you only get 1/2 that number as clicks to your site, it should sell an
additional 2 to 3 shipments per month.
By continuing in this manner and
getting at least 25 term listings, you will increase visitors by
thousands and sales by several hundred shipments per month (and profits by
around $3000 per month). Remember, you only pay if they click to your
site.
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Newsletter campaigns.
These are permission based e-mail letters and as you may know, there are
thousands out there. The click through rates are higher than banner
ads and since the user is usually an impulse buyer, sales rates tend to be
higher. There are some great bargains out there. |
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Usenet. Usenet is a
great source of super targeted and free advertising as long as you obey the
rules. Always find out how and what you can do to advertise on a
Usenet group. These are a continuing source of customers and should be
a part of any web marketing program. |
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Free classified ads.
Search your area and state first for sites geared to 'local'
businesses. These are free and only take a little time to find. |
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Permission Marketing to your
own customers. Always make sure they have opted in for catalogs and
ads, but who will be the easiest person to sell to? The person you've
already sold to. As you sell product, your list will grow.
Whether you use e-mail or direct snail mail, return on effort will be the
highest with this group. |
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Comparison Shopping
Portals. These sites charge you only if you make a sale. The
charge is often a percentage of the sales price, so make sure you can handle
the charge. The traffic you get will usually convert to sales at a
high rate. |
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Traditional media.
Anytime you place a local add, be sure your web URL is on the ad.
Obviously, this can be more expensive than web advertising and unless you
have a bricks and mortar store, results can be spotty. |
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Yahoo and Amazon shops on
line. These are fee based and can give you a high conversion
rate. The question of efficacy depends on your gross profit per
sale. My advice is to do nothing that will reduce your gross profit
margin by more than 30% on actual sales generated. |
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Finally, on-line
auctions. Ebay and Yahoo Auctions are a great place to direct promote
items you carry. these other auctions (some free and others fee) are
available with active participants looking for items to buy. I
certainly recommend using them for clearance items and name promotion. |
Well, that about rounds out the
high points of Internet Marketing but allow me a little self-serving
promotion. If you're looking for a place to host that web-site and people
to help you setup the processes covered above, consider Ladatahost. Thank
you, and best of luck.
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