ClepStore | Blog of Work at Home Business Opportunities and Internet Marketing WebLog

Home Business - Online Opportunity

2006-01-27T14:52:00.000-08:00

Home Business - Online Opportunity
by Alice Nero

If you have a fantastic idea you can gross it up with profits and make a fortune, beginning with a small online home business. It's better to be a dreamer (not a day dreamer) and realize the dreams steadily.

Individuals from all walks of life are turning towards 'work from home'. There are unlimited numbers of home based business ideas. However, the internet has proved to be the most potential of those ideas. Now, a well planned personal site may generate money. Consider the following points with respect to online home business opportunity:

* Judge yourself - what you enjoy doing and what you are really good at. If you are going to do what you enjoy the most, then there is no problem. Unless, you need the help of an expert mentor. Never go with the hype that everything will be outsourced, though, modern online home based businesses automate many processes. You are still required to be well aware of the different web tools to manage the system or to be in line with the affiliates. * You like online business and you started your own. But what your motive or purpose is? Define the goals. Question yourself... why do you want to start an online home based business? Is it for common reasons like, financial freedom, luxury vacations, flexible timings, more money, etc? Once you understand your motivation you will keep on going. This is the driving force. Little bit of complacency might slowdown you. So foster your most favourite dream. You might even stick your goals on the wall. * It's great to start something on your own. But no home business is bed of roses. You might face several road blocks and most of all competition, though you will be more attached to your business. Have patience, small online home businesses really pay. If you are on the right track and start earning steadily for few days, the chances are that you will grow. Because success online is like wild fire. * Stick to your business plan as far as possible but always be prepared to be flexible and open minded. Be open to all around to seize the unexpected opportunities. * Winner is a winner, rightly said. So, get a successful mentor, learn from someone's experience who had actually done it.

Knowledge Base for Online Home Businesses

Being the owner of a small home based business, online you should have operational idea of the web.

As the owner of an online business most probably you will be running some kind of affiliated programs on direct marketing, education or business processing. You should be aware that web in itself is not a market, it is a medium. It gives exposure to our product, generates leads for you and does transactions.

Above all else, everything over web is virtual. So, personal contacts are also less. That's why, ensure everything fare well and are flawless - from choosing a domain name to taking your business to autopilot.

Time Is Money For Real Estate Investing

2006-01-27T14:51:00.000-08:00

Time Is Money For Real Estate Investing
by Derek Pierce

A popular phrase is that time is money. I'm sure you've heard that - right?

Well let me ask you something, if time is money, then how are you investing your time in your real estate investment business? Is it a profitable investment?

Are you doing things that will bring a return on your investment or are you wasting the one equal resource among all of us? With so many opportunities available to us, sometimes it's easy to get caught up watching what everyone else is doing instead of minding our own business. See, as a real estate entrepreneur you must constantly be on guard to always respect and honor your time.

So, allow me to go over the areas that you should be investing your time. These areas are the most important areas for you to see real growth in your real estate investment business.

First, you should focus on your marketing systems to continuously bring you leads of motivated sellers every single month that will beg you to buy their home. The marketing of your business is the lifeblood to its growth. As you are first starting out, you may have a limited budget; therefore you must focus on low cost, direct response strategies to get people to act immediately. Then, as you complete a few deals, re-invest a percentage of your profits back into your business for marketing.

Next, you must focus on building relationships. Everyone that you meet may know of someone that you could help out. When you think of building relationships, think about the people that see motivated sellers all day long and work to build alliances with these people as they can refer you business every single month. After all, many of these businesses are advertising and it's impossible for them to assist everyone that comes through the doors. For example, if you develop a relationship with a mortgage company, they could refer you leads of homeowners that are in default that call trying to refinance before they are foreclosed on. You could by their house to stop the foreclosure. See, these types of loans are almost impossible to do and you could be helping the mortgage company by taking care of their customer. And as a result, you'll get repeat business.

The next area I want to discuss is mastering the art of negotiations with motivated sellers. You must first learn to build rapport with each seller before talking about any numbers relating to the house that you're looking to purchase. It's a proven fact that negotiations will go better for you if the party likes you. So, find an in that you can talk about with the seller, then slowly move into talking about the house focusing on a solution for the pain they are going through by owning the property.

Finally, last and certainly not least, your exit strategy becomes one of the major pieces to this puzzle that you must master to creating big paydays. Many times this can be a tougher area to crack because all your focus has been on how to acquire the deal and not on how to sell it. Just look at most real estate forums and you'll see everyone wants to focus on the latest, greatest way to acquire a deal. Master your exit strategies and create a systemized approach to getting out of deals in record time.

So, if you want to grow your business to where you are doing 1-2 deals or more per month then you need a system that is constantly working for you bringing you deals in every month. These systems help to take the guesswork out of what you should do next. Now, invest your time wisely creating systems in these four areas and watch your real estate investment business grow!

Stay At Home Mom's Need To Work, Too

2006-01-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

Stay At Home Mom's Need To Work, Too
by Gena Biem

It is just about every mother's dream to be able to stay home and care for their children. Unfortunately, this dream is becoming harder and harder to obtain. Within every minute of every day the price of our necessities is rising. It's not just the fuel that we use in our cars and to heat our homes, but every other utility, household product, and now more than ever, the food that we eat.

Because of this, many stay-at-home-mom's are now scrambling and searching for a "perfect" home-based business. They don't want to lose their dream. They finally managed to cut-back to the bare-minimum, they have learned how to frugally cook and thrift shop like the pros, there is no way they can trim the budget any further; and yet, after all their hard work they are finding themselves in a panic over their finances once again.

The variety of home-based businesses is much larger than it used to be, and according to my research a new online business is created every 10 seconds. You can imagine how confusing this can be for someone with very little business experience. Because so many mothers are now looking for online businesses I have pin-pointed some questions you may want to ask yourself before deciding on a particular business.

1. How much do I have to invest?

2. On top of the initial investment, do I have to purchase a certain amount of product each month?

3. Do I have to sell anything? If so, how do I go about selling my products? Will anyone be available to help me when I have questions?

4. How will I be paid? How often will I be paid? Who will pay me?

5. Am I paid on commission? Is the company considered to be an MLM? What is an MLM? If it is an MLM, how many levels will I be paid for?

6. How do I advertise? Do I have to pay for advertising? How much will I be able to budget for advertising? Is it possible to "successfully" use free advertising?

7. Do I have to have long-distance available on my phone? Can I afford to pay for extra fees on my bill? Do I need call-waiting, DSL or three-way calling? Will I be able to keep my children quiet while I'm on the phone?

8. How long will it take before I start to see a profit?

9. Do I need a website? Does the company supply a website? If not, who will help me create a website?

It's important to understand that ANY business online can be successful as long as you learn it, practice it, and master it. Whether it's a business that requires 12 hours of your time a day or just 2-3 hours, you will have to commit to learning it inside and out. An online business is still a business and it should be taken seriously.

If you're thinking about starting your own online business I suggest you do your homework. Explore as many areas as you can and most importantly ask questions. Decide what's most important to you, is it the amount of hours you'll need to work each day or how much you will have to invest just to get started? It may be confusing, but it's actually a good thing there are so many business opportunities available to us, it means there really is a "perfect" business out there for each of us!

Work at Home - Stay at Home

2006-01-27T14:49:00.001-08:00

Work at Home - Stay at Home
by Mohd Zulfaezal Che Azemin

Work at Home - Stay at Home by: Mohd Zulfaezal Che Azemin http://www.Call-It-Cool.com/pips

Working at home has been a dream of many that goes back many years. Staying at home and enjoying watching the kids grow up is a goal worth fighting for.

Let's take a look into making a living or part time living from the comfort of your home. You owe it to yourself to gain the freedom a home business can offer.

In the past, there have been multi-level marketing plans to sell everything from vitamins to soap. There have been mail order catalog opportunities. Many tried buying and selling real estate. Each of these opportunities made many people a lot of money, but each of them also cost many people a lot of money.

More people have spent money than have made money in every business venture. The problem is many inexperienced people get into moneymaking schemes after attending a meeting somewhere. The offer may be legitimate, but most people fail in business.

According to the US Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail with the first five years. That is a scary statistic.

This means that the average business is doomed to fail from the beginning. It also means that you will lose a lot of money if you start a business. WOW! No wonder you are leery about putting up your hard-earned cash for what is statically a crapshoot, a roll of the dice.

So, what is the answer for the average person who does not want to lose their savings and even their home investing in a business? Start building a "digital business" online. Create a website that generates its income without you needing to invest in inventory or even lease a building to house your business. Then create two or ten more websites generating income for you.

You may not know how to create a website today. It is an easily learned skill. There is software you can buy or download free that will help you. There are tutorials on making a website profitable. You can do this.

Once you have a website online you can put other people's advertising on your site and be paid when someone buys one of their products. If this was my baby toys webpage and I mentioned a great baby toy with a link to my advertiser's toy page you might go there and buy the toy. If you did, I would get a commission.

You could also put ads on your pages that only require someone to click on the ad for you to be paid. Again, if you were on my baby toy page and an ad talks about a toy. You click on the ad to go see it and I am paid for you clicking on the ad. The advertiser feels their sales page is compelling enough for them to sell enough of that toy to cover their cost of the clicks that got you there.

Some advertisers do not require you to buy the product when you click on an ad, but I will not be paid unless you fill out their application. This is usually seen on sites like insurance sites or loan application sites. You do not have to get a policy or take out a loan for me to be paid. When you fill out the form, I qualify for my commission for sending you to the advertiser.

These are typically the ways a beginning website entrepreneur starts generating income on the Internet. Once you understand that part of internet marketing, you may move on to selling your own digital products.

A digital product is one that can be downloaded from your website. You can sell your own ebook you wrote yourself or an ebook you purchased and have the rights to sell online.

If you are a programmer, you can sell you own computer program from your site. You could also sell someone else's program that you purchased the rights to sell.

Notice that not all of the above ideas require you to invest in a lot of inventory. Even the products are free if you create them yourself. Not everything you are doing so far requires a large investment of your hard earned money. It does require a large investment of your time.

All of the material you need to create a website can be found free online if you do not want to purchase some popular program. Your only expense SHOULD be a domain of your own, such as yourdomain.com. You can get free hosting from various places but for moneymaking venture, this is not advised.

For a small investment, you too can be PRESIDENT OF YOUR OWN COMPANY. Maybe the statistics are the same for success online as they are in other businesses, but this is a chance to find out without losing the farm doing it.

-------------------------------------------------- My mentor can be reached at... http://www.Call-It-Cool.com/pips ---------------------------------------------------

Card-making With Recyclables

2006-01-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

Card-making With Recyclables
by Belinda Osgood

Crafts are often expensive to set up, but they do not have to be. Card making is one craft in which it is completely possible to operate just for the cost of some card stock, envelopes, a good pair of paper scissors, glue, and your imagination. It is unnecessary to buy additional supplies unless you want to, and can afford to. With these basic supplies and items from around your home, you can create wonderful, personal works of art. You save money making them, and you save money by giving them away, instead of purchasing printed cards from the store.

Card-making is a rewarding hobby, and everyone likes to receive something that was made just for them. The tips listed below not only save your wallet, but are also beneficial for the environment. Exploring recycling in the art of making handmade cards is an incredible resource -- for your creativity and your fingers.

Some of the tips listed mention additional resources like stamps and punches. They are not necessary, but do make the most of opportunities. Local craft groups, friends, or a family member may have resources you can borrow. Use spare paper to punch, cut, or stamp a supply of images and designs for later use. Check out your children's craft supplies, too - children's rubber stamps make a great background when stamped repeatedly over the surface of a card.

Here is a list of Top Ten household items to recycle. Why not springboard your own unique ideas from these?

1. Old Greeting cards

The backs make good bases for layering or stamping of images. The front can be cut up for borders, wording, and images. Take smaller elements from an image to complement your own design. Received more than one card of the same design - use repeated elements for your own form of paper tole.

2. Wallpaper

Do you have some old wallpaper lying around after finishing the children's bedroom, or the dining room? Cut out the individual elements of large patterns to make into decoupage or paper tole. Use medium-sized pictures and patterns spaced symmetrically to create new patterns. For smaller patterns or no pattern, use for backgrounds, layering and paper piecing.

Extension tip: If you are fortunate enough to know someone that works in a home decorating store then you may be able to get, either free or for a small charge, an out of date wallpaper sample book. These are rich in textures, finishes, and colours. Some contain border strips as well for added creativity.

3. Magazines

If you do not but them yourself, ask around your friends and family. I'm sure they will soon be deluging you with their off casts.

Magazines are a wealth of pre-coloured wording, pictures, and colours. Pictures can be used effectively by combining with other complementary elements to make a stunning card.

For example, I cut a picture of a giraffe from a magazine. I made a stencil of a giraffe's skin, then transferred the pattern to my card with a sponge and some black ink. In the center of the card I layered a piece of cork sheet (wood-grain patterned paper or corrugated cardboard would work just as well) with glossy, black paper cut from a magazine advertisement. Then I glued the giraffe picture on top. I finished it off by adding a couple of small leaf shapes, cut from a picture of someone's lawn, in the bottom corner.

I find the greatest advantage to magazines is the textured colours, such as the leaves in my example above. It is often difficult to match a colour piece of paper or card to the effect you are wanting. Rather than buy special printed products, scout through magazines for suitable colours and textures. Blended colours on advertisement backgrounds often make for great punch art. If the punches will not cut through properly, insert a piece of plain used printer paper with the magazine page and it will cut perfectly.

Also consider: used wrapping paper, advertising leaflets, and old business documents.

4. Sewing Supplies

Buttons, zips, ribbons, and small pieces of fabric, tulle, or lace all make for great accents on a card. Plait the left over lengths of embroidery cottons to make smart trims, or tie several colours into a bow to match the main card design.

5. Used A4 paper

Some paper is suitable for use in your card making - e.g. punching and layering. A lot of paper is not usable, either because it has been folded or crumpled, or text is visible on both sides. These sheets of paper I use as gluing surfaces for glue sticks, liquid or spray glue, or with a brush. Discard the piece of paper when it has no space left that isn't sticky. I find this works better than newsprint, which may leave black smudges on the good side of your card.

6. Plastic lids, bottles and pottles

Instead of buying a special template or cutting system to enable a perfect circle, save up a variety of different sizes of round containers or lids - from a small pill bottle to a cottage cheese pottle lid. Ensure they are well washed and thoroughly dried first, then use as a cost-free template for drawing circles. Stack inside one another for easy storage. Look for oval pottles too, which make a nice change.

These containers are useful to hold leftover punched shapes. When I visit people who own punches I do not, I spend time punching shapes out and then store in separate containers for use at my leisure.

7. Cardboard

Old coloured card folders can form the basis of the card itself, if it is clean and undamaged. Otherwise cut smaller pieces from it for layering, punching or making borders.

The kind of plain brown or grey card that comes in packaging, such as business shirts, is also useful. With this you can make templates from colouring book pictures or images offered on-line for the purpose. If you cut shapes out from the card, use it as a stencil.

Corrugated card has a great texture; I prefer the kind that is not sandwiched between two flat sheets of card, for the crinkles are what make it interesting. There are specialised tools to recreate this corrugated effect, but you can colour the brown kind easily using paint.

8. Lolly and chocolate wrappers

Bright and sparkly; colourful and fun! There are numerous ways to use these delightful little scraps of paper and foil. Use in layering and paper piecing, or cut into shapes to add a shimmering accent to any scene.

Try this fun idea: Draw on your card the simple outline of a fish. Cut circles of foil wrappers - I don't recommend punching - and stagger them to fill in the body of the fish. It doesn't matter if the circles are imperfect, elliptical, or uneven sizes. Use smaller ones to do the narrower pieces of the fish and the larger ones to fill the middle. Overlapping the circles means that most imperfections can be hidden, but the flaws do add charm to the overall effect. Glue strips of paper, foil, or ribbon in a fan pattern to fill in the tail. Lastly, draw an eye. Add background detail such as seaweed, air bubbles, or smaller fish with coloured pencils or pens and you're done.

9. Business Cards

Changing jobs these days is quite a common occurrence and what do you do with all those old business cards from the previous place of employment? These are ideal for using on cards since they are uniformly-sized, perfect rectangles, on good card stock, and usually the back has no text. Used plain they are great for layering. If the cards are textured, accent it by sponging lightly with coloured ink. Alternatively, stamp an image directly onto the card and colour or decorate as desired.

10. Old Jewelry

Broken or unusable chains, fake jewels, beads, and simulated pearls all make elegant embellishments. Bought embellishments are pretty and effective, but can get quite costly. Items from last year's Christmas crackers make great 3-D additions as well.

Many other materials around the home have a use in your card making. Before you throw something in the trash, consider how you could use it to add texture, colour, interest, and embellishment to your cards, or storage for your supplies.

Happy creating!

The days of 98% failure rate for online business opportunity seekers may be over!

2006-01-27T14:48:00.001-08:00

The days of 98% failure rate for online business opportunity seekers may be over!
by Vincent Molelekwa

Did you know that 50% of the population have their annual incomes between $10-35 000, while today's average 50 year old has only $2 300 saved towards their retirement? Yet the internet is full of thousands of home based business opportunities that have the potential to improve monthly income earnings for a lot of people. The reality for those who have ventured into internet business is that only 2% of them succeed, the rest providing the fuel for success to the well established internet gurus!

The 98% failure rate for opportunity seekers has been up to now a rule...that is until the successful launch of completely automated home-based hybridized success systems. The rule of thumb in internet business is that the experienced marketer dumps products on the unsuspecting newbie who buys products with the hope to resell. The need to setup, market and close a sale is insurmountable. The newbie is led to buy often expensive marketing products for which he/she has no skill nor the time to learn how to operate. He/she may be required to send emails, to use search engines, banners and the like to promote his product, all which come at a considerable cost.

The recent move away from the traditional internet marketing schemes to 100% hands-free automated home-based business systems means internet business will never be the same. These success systems literally afford marketers to set up and leave the system to do everything. These new arrivals promise to do all the prospecting, marketing, emailing, customer service, and closing the sales for you while all you need to do is call the operators once in a while to say hi! This new trend in internet marketing is truly mind boggling! Needless to say internet Guru's are rushing to cash on these effortless money making machines well ahead of online opportunity seekers who are often skeptical and often jump onto the band wagon when the guru has had his portion! But to be fair to the opportunity seeker, exploitation by the experienced marketer means over time the seeker develops a thick skin and becomes impervious to all hype without results that often characterize the internet guru's sales' pitch.

For the very first time in internet's history however, the newbie has been put at par with the experienced marketer by new technology that drives these new Mighty Behemoths! Now the newbie is no longer needed to buy leads and to engage in expensive bulk emailing. No longer are they required to do search engine submissions, website optimization, MLM, or cold calling!

These new hybrid of automated home based business systems are simply 21st century business automation gone mad! Not surprisingly, with the majority having been launched within the last 1-3 years, it is rightly predicted that these Mighty Behemoths are going to produce their first 6 figure income earners in 2006. What is even more nauseating is the thought that these income earners are now making 5 figure incomes without having to lift a finger! This observation is what makes them way too good to be true, and much more offensive, an object of suspicion to the newbie seeker! The new breed of 100% automated home based businesses are truly a remarkable achievement thanks to their developers. These systems simply use the power of the internet to propagate across the net to whoso will! You see when you and I search the web we use keywords to look for whatever at all we are about. These new Mighty Behemoths somewhat mysteriously hook themselves to search engines (like Yahoo, MSN or Google) waiting patiently for people across the internet to start typing into their address bars. This is where these amazing hybridized internet driven technology-machines come in. They quickly direct you to their clients' business opportunity while simultaneously presenting themselves to you.

Not only does this new technology do all the prospecting and advertising for you, it then sorts out your prospects and sell the product for you while all you need to do is check your bank. It is like a scene from a science fiction movie! Only two years ago this sort of automated marketing, sorting and closing would have been completely inconceivable.

Website traffic is the biggest impediment to online success. If website traffic can be overcome then any online marketing and prospecting should pay huge dividends to any Jack and Jill out there. What we now see in the new trend of traffic software development is a fairer effective and legal traffic generating system. The implication on their recent initial success on possibly taking over and completely changing website traffic generation cannot be over emphasized.

One of the most recent of these new arrivals, the MegaWealthy system is truly in a league of its own! The MegaWealthy system is a real business on its own, as well as being a powerful traffic-generating tool for one's product. It accomplishes both functions simultaneously. It makes you an effortless side income($3000-9000 per month) while it sells your product making sure you have no option but to succeed, all this supposedly hands free! For the opportunity seeker these mighty Behemoths are a honey of a deal, a heaven sent cash generating venture that guarantees a sale everytime.

Twenty first century business online marketing at this level of automation objectively eliminates all reasons why online businesses fail. Website traffic is no longer a problem. Marketing and prospecting are a thing of the past. Cold calling is no longer in the cards and closing a sale - a good riddance!. It is a fascinating set-and-forget revolutionary work of genius that truly beats the competition right on your marks!

While we wait with bated hands the successful takeover of internet marketing at all levels by these Mighty Behemoths in the coming 3-5 years, those left behind in the scramble for these real pearls of great price will be forced to dig much deeper to finance their online business.

The future for online marketing looks much brighter, but the challenge goes on..

So You're Thinking About Starting An Online Business?

2006-01-27T14:48:00.000-08:00

So You're Thinking About Starting An Online Business?
by Lee Dobbins

Many people dream of working at home in their pajamas but few have the drive to take that dream into reality. Are you one of the few?

If you have been thinking about starting your own online business then here's some thoughts you can use to turn those dreams into a real business.

1. If you don't already have an idea of what type of business you want to do, then try listing out 5 hobbies, interests or areas of expertise. If you want to start a new business, you'd better choose a subject that you like and a subject where you can show expertise. You will have more fun and you will be more competitive.

2. Since running a business isn't all fun and games you should think about what you are good at and what do you enjoy doing. Make two lists - one of all the jobs you like and/or are good at, and one of all the jobs you hate and/or really don't do very well. Take the second list and have a look at what you might outsource or automate. Do you really love doing those accounts or would your time be better spent in forward planning while your accountant does the sums? Must you personally reply to every last enquiry or could you create a FAQ which you can post on your website and refer people to by autoresponder? Obviously in the early stages of your business you might find you don't have the money to pay someone to do the jobs you hate but you've got to think about what is best for you and your business long term. The more routine jobs you can outsource or automate the more time you have to plan and to market your business, and to think about even more ways to bring in all that lovely cash - not to mention you get to spend more of your time doing the things you really enjoy doing.

3. Since every online business needs a website, you may need to brush up on your web skills unless you can afford to hire someone to do all the website work for you. Regardless, you need to decide the outlay of your site, if it will have a shopping cart, will you need auto responders, how often to update the site, if you want to send out a newsletter etc... Don't forget about the details like picking a domain name, registering it and finding affordable hosting.

4. Be prepared for failures. Not everything you do will be perfect - sometimes things you've tried will be a total disaster - but it's the way you react to problems that matters. If you curl up in a ball and give up at the first sign of failure you'd better not be in business. "Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish." - John Quincy Adams. It's all about attitude.

5. Have a plan and stick to it as far as possible but always be prepared to be flexible and open minded. Sometimes the most unexpected opportunities come up and you need to be ready to seize them with both hands - as Joe Vitale says 'Money likes speed'.

The most important thing in starting an online business is to take action! Don't let anyone else inject self doubt - if this is your dream don't let anyone ruin it for you!

Put Your Marketing on AUTOPILOT

2006-01-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

Put Your Marketing on AUTOPILOT
by Fabienne Fredrickson

Would you be surprised if I told you I actually coach a LOT of marketing consultants and business coaches who help others build their businesses? Many of these consultants and coaches come to me because, even though they know how to put these steps into practice, they still don't have a full practice, or at least not consistently. WHY?

The reason is simple. They don't market consistently.

What usually happens (to most of us self-employed professionals) is that we get caught up in the everyday of our businesses and when we have clients, we focus our entire days on those clients. (Is that the case for you too?)

Until the clients leave and our well runs dry. So, we find ourselves digging our well when we're thirsty. This is the scenario my clients tell me about: because they know what to do, when marketing consultants need clients, they market, market, market, market, and sign up a bunch of new clients. Then, because they have all these new clients, they stop marketing. No time to market!

But, sooner or later, the well runs dry once again and they have to start marketing furiously again. So they, market, market, market, and they again sign up a bunch of new clients. Then the same thing happens and they start living this unbearable life of Feast or Famine, an intolerable rollercoaster they wish they could stop. Well, now they can.

The solution: you can eliminate "Feast or Famine" by being systematic about your Client Attraction and putting your marketing on autopilot.

The only way to make sure you always have a full practice is to always market. The best way to do that is to make all the pieces of your marketing pie run on a system, like a well-oiled machine that doesn't need you to be there the whole time, just once in a while to make sure everything's going smoothly.

As clients get to know me in our one-on-one private coaching, they tend to see how fanatical I can be about systems. I've created systems for EVERYTHING, probably because I wasn't always a very disciplined person by nature. (I know I'm not the only one, so don't start throwing stones!)

So to counteract that (because I need to have a full practice at all times or else I'd have to go back to being corporate, which is a big no-no for me), I make sure everything I do runs like clockwork.

Here's how I do it and how I've taught hundreds of clients how to do it too:

*Breakfast networking group (WEEKLY MEETING, paid for once a year and booked in my calendar for the entire year).

*Associations (MONTHLY MEETING, paid for once a year and booked in my calendar for the entire year).

*Free teleclasses on how to attract clients, MONTHLY.

*My own seminars (BIMONTHLY, paid for and booked at the beginning of the year).

*E-zine (WEEKLY, goes out ever week, without exception--my assistant makes sure that it does).

*Articles for association newsletters (MONTHLY, schedule of articles and deadlines are set by the association).

*Speaking for associations/organizations/conferences (OFTEN WEEKLY OR BIWEEKLY, I have a list of speaking opportunities that I'm constantly following up on to get booked regularly).

*Strategic alliances (OFTEN WEEKLY OR BIWEEKLY, I have a list of strategic alliances that I'm constantly following up on to do things with regularly).

Do you see a trend? Everything I do in terms of Client Attraction, every single piece of my own Marketing Pie, is set up to work automatically and systematically. I set these things up ahead of time and then all I have to do is show up. I don't ever have to worry about what I have to do next. It's already in my calendar.

This is the one thing that I have rarely seen in any book or course that teaches you how to get clients, yet I think it's one of the most crucial.

If you don't set things up to be systematic, then you won't stay on track. If you don't stay on track, you won't market consistently. If you don't market consistently, then you won't take action and get results consistently. That means you're going to have a much harder time keeping your practice consistently full, UNLESS you set things up to work on their own, with a little tweak from you here and there.

Your Assignment:

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Cyber-democracy or cyber-hegemony? Exploring the political and economic structures of the Internet as an alternative source of information

2005-12-27T12:28:00.001-08:00

Cyber-democracy or cyber-hegemony? Exploring the political and economic structures of the Internet as an alternative source of information
Library Trends

ABSTRACT

Although government regulation of the Internet has been decried as undercutting free speech, the control of Internet content through capitalist gateways--namely, profit-driven software companies--has gone largely uncriticized. The author argues that this discursive trend manufactures consent through a hegemonic force neglecting to confront the invasion of online advertising or marketing strategies directed at children. This study suggests that "inappropriate content" (that is, nudity, pornography, obscenities) constitutes a cultural currency through which concerns and responses to the Internet have been articulated within the mainstream. By examining the rhetorical and financial investments of the telecommunications business sector, the author contends that the rhetorical elements creating "cyber-safety" concerns within the mainstream attempt to reach the consent of parents and educators by asking them to see some Internet content as value laden (sexuality, trigger words, or adult content), while disguising the interests and authority of profitable computer software and hardware industries (advertising and marketing). Although most online "safety measures" neglect to confront the emerging invasion of advertising/marketing directed at children and youth, the author argues that media literacy in cyberspace demands such scrutiny. Unlike measures to block or filter online information, students need an empowerment approach that will enable them to analyze, evaluate, and judge the information they receive.

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According to figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau (2001), more than half of school-age children (6 to 17 years) had access to computers both in school and at home in the year 2000 (57 percent). With some 17 million children using the Internet in some capacity, including email, the Web, chat rooms, and instant messaging (Silver and Garland, 2004, p. 158), the Census Bureau estimates that 21 percent use the Internet to perform school-related tasks, such as research for assignments or taking courses online.

While these statistics underscore the growth and popularity of the Internet, particularly in schools and educational institutions, concerns have grown about the "safety" of using computer-mediated communication technology. Since the Internet became a mass medium in 1995, parents and schools have approached online content with reservation. As such, politicians, educators, child advocacy groups, and, most importantly, the computer industry, have been vocal advocates for patrolling the Internet and censoring certain kinds of illicit or objectionable content. Beginning in the late 1990s, Federal Trade Commission member Christine Varney summarized the emerging concerns about online safety:

All of us agree that children's online safety concerns are real and
pressing and that we must support the involvement of parents
raising children in this new, digital age. We understand that we
must all work together--industry, law enforcement, educators,
advocates--if American families are to realize the potential of this
new medium for enriching the lives of our children and fostering
their future success. (Rubin and Lamb, 1997)
Starting in 1997, an Internet/Online Summit was held in Washington, D.C., to enhance the safety and benefits of cyberspace for children and families. Key political figures, such as former vice president Al Gore and former attorney general Janet Reno, joined parents, as well as politicians, law enforcement officials, and educational administrators, to launch a national public education campaign, "America Links Up: An Internet Teach-In," designed to help Americans understand how to guide kids online (Rubin & Lamb, 1997).

On October 21, 1998, former president Bill Clinton signed into law the "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act" (COPPA). This measure was enacted by Congress on April 21, 2000, to "prohibit unfair or deceptive acts or practices in connection with the collection, use, or disclosure of personally identifiable information from and about children on the Internet" under the age of thirteen (Grossman, 2000). Along this trajectory, Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Neighborhood Internet Protection Act (NCIPA) in December 2000, which required schools and libraries that receive federal money for Internet connections to adopt Internet safety policies in 2001. The proposed safety measures include usage agreements for proper student use of this medium, audit-tracking devices to supervise student Internet perusal, and software filtration devices designed to block inappropriate sites in schools (Trotter, 2001).

In 2002 the Bush administration proposed a "National Strategy to Secure Cyber Space," offering security recommendations for U.S. citizens, businesses, and organizations using computers (Carlson, 2002). Since then the Federal Trade Commission has offered testimony before special committees and the House of Representatives about online pornography through a series of "law enforcement actions against fraud artists whose deceptive or unfair practices involve exposing consumers, including children, to unwanted pornography on the Internet" (Federal Trade Commission, 2004, p. 1).

In addition to these federal initiatives, many states have measures designed to protect children from online predators. In Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott added more investigators to the Texas Internet Bureau to keep kids safe from those who use online means to prey on children. As Assistant Attorney General Sparks explained, "The Attorney General wants the public to know that he's tasking people with patrolling the Internet and trying to make it safe for kids; the down side is that more and more children on a daily basis are getting online and on the Internet and as every additional child gets on, that's one more potential target" (quoted in Ochoa, 2003).

Likewise, educators have expressed concerns about online information overload. According to one school administrator, accessing the Internet in schools is less predictable: "If you used to bring your class to the school library, you pretty much had a sense of what was available for the children to research; now you have no idea ... they are going to hit sites that are appropriate and sites that are inappropriate" (quoted in Shyles, 2003, p. 176).

Despite a commitment to online "security" in schools, libraries, and homes from so many constituents, few recommendations have materialized into solid strategies or funding initiatives. Almost all of the proposed solutions and policies ignore the more relevant question of how private computer companies, Internet service providers, corporations, and governments stand to gain financially and politically by deciding what kind of information will be "censored" and what kind will be promoted. In fact, it could be argued that the Internet content "crisis" dominating public policy and mainstream media coverage has produced a cultural climate ripe for the commercial exploitation of parents and educators. In this article I argue that such a discursive trend manufactures consent through a hegemonic force that overlooks the invasion of advertising or marketing strategies targeted at young people online. By examining the rhetorical and financial investments of the telecommunications business sector, I contend that the mainstream articulation of "Internet safety" invites parents and educators to regard some Internet content as value-laden (sexuality, obscene language), while disguising the interests and authority of profit-minded commercial enterprise (advertising and marketing).

What is more, the democratic potential of the Internet as a means to accessing alternative information and perspectives otherwise absent from the mainstream media continues to be threatened by the consolidation of increasingly powerful global media giants, such as Time Warner and Microsoft, which have much to gain from controlling the content Internet users access at home or at school. Consequently, an examination of the political and economic forces on the Internet is necessary for librarians and educators interested in understanding the benefits and limits of the Internet as a means of alternative communication.

EXPLORING THE MEANS TO FILTERING ONLINE CONTENT

Parental Guidance

As a result of this discourse, a number of solutions have been advanced to ward off illicit content appearing on the computer screens of young Internet users, beginning with parental guidance. CyberTipLine grew out of the 1997 Internet/Online Summit and is currently in operation today. Run by the U.S. government and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, parents can notify authorities of incidents of online child pornography and child predation. Another derivative of the summit's "America Links Up" project is the industry-sponsored "GetNetWise" Web site, which was launched in 1999. The "user empowerment" service, which involves a coalition of numerous Internet industry partners and advocacy organizations, (1) offers parental advice, including information about filters to block sexually explicit material, as well as a variety of tools to help parents and caregivers monitor a child's online activities and find browsers for kid-friendly sites. As one sponsor, AT&T, notes in its promotional material, "Our involvement with GetNetWise reflects our commitment to help users have the best possible online experience" (GetNetWise, 2004).

A more well-known parental guidance initiative, passed in April 2000, was the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In accordance with COPPA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation offers "A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety," which advises parents to "utilize parental controls provided by your service provider and/or blocking software" and "Monitor your child's access to all types of live electronic communications (chat rooms, instant messages, Internet Relay Chat, etc.), and monitor your child's email" (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004).

Other parental guidance measures have been created to address online advertising and marketing as well as issues of privacy. Parent advocacy groups, such as Commercial Alert, Consumer Action, the Center for Media Education, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, have taken up the cause of parents concerned about online marketing measures targeted at children. For example, Commercial Alert has made requests to the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to require disclosure of embedded advertising in a variety of media and has created a "Parent's Bill of Rights" seeking to empower parents in the face of an aggressive commercial culture (Commercial Alert, 2003).

Proof-of-Age/Shielding Systems

In addition to parental guidance, many online providers and Webmasters have adopted proof-of-age/shielding systems that use credit card access as another means of content filtering. While COPPA sought to protect children thirteen and under, those located in the fourteen to eighteen year range were not covered by legislation. Providing proof of age before being allowed to access the content of a desired online site emerged as a means to address this gap. This system works in the same way that fraud-screening technology works: merchants collect user information at their Web sites for instant age or identity verification. Once online users submit their name, zip code, date of birth, and age, they are checked through an international electronic database of government-issued identifications. This allows site providers or merchants to determine the consumer's identity within seconds. Sometimes additional measures, such as online name signature, are required so that user signatures are bound to a public record.

Proprietary Environments

Another reaction to the discourse of online safety has been the advocacy of proprietary environments, where content is screened by editors into specific categories. For example, the leading Internet service provider, America Online (AOL), provides a blocking service that allows users (ostensibly parents) to limit a child's selected screen name to either a "Kids Only" area, which is recommended for children under twelve, or to a preteen/teen environment, with restricted use of chat rooms or newsgroups. According to the site, "Kids Only" is a collection of educational resources and entertainment areas as well as a preselected collection of child-oriented Internet sites, with AOL staff monitoring of message boards and chat rooms. AOL also promotes the company's "Parental Phone Line" for instructions and advice on choosing and maintaining the settings of this product (the premise here is that the settings are likely to be tampered with by savvy teens and preteens).

In addition to "Kids Only," AOL has aggressively marketed its AOL@School service, which had been adopted by more than 14,000 schools by 2004 (Williams, 2003). AOL@School offers six online learning portals for grades K-5, middle school, and high school so that students can access Web sites that have been preselected by educators as content and age appropriate. The software needed to access the portals comes with AOL's "parental controls" designed to "help ensure a safe, secure, age-appropriate experience" that can include school-controlled email, chat, and instant messaging (AOL, 2004). The popularity of "child safe" proprietary environments has not waned as Web browsers and popular search engines have created their own directories in an attempt to create safe havens for (and develop customer loyalty from) younger online users. Yahooligans' "Web Guide for Kids" is a collection of predominantly commercial links to online games, music, TV, science, news, jokes, "cool pages," arts and entertainment, and sports. Like most commercial proprietary environments, Yahooligans is riddled with advertisements and synergistic ties to commercial media products.

Internet Ratings Systems

For those seeking additional regulatory measures, Internet rating systems offer another approach. Unlike the rating system for television content that is uniformly and centrally organized by the television industry, Internet ratings are not assigned consistently by a centralized group of online content providers. The goal is the same, however: industry self-regulation over government regulation. According to ratings system advocates, many of whom work in the software and computer industry, Internet ratings are designed to make it "safe" for schools and parents to let their children access nonpornographic material without government directives. According to Paul Resnick, chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium group at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, which includes AT&T Laboratories and Microsoft, the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) was originally created to allow parents, teachers, and librarians to review questionable materials that they would not want their children to come across on the Internet (Resnick, 1997).

Resnick explains, "prior to PICS there was no standard format for labels, so companies that wished to provide access control had to both develop the software and provide the labels. PICS provides a common format for labels, so that any PICS-compliant selection software can process any PICS-compliant label" (Resnick, 1997, p. 107). Yet unlike uniform rating labels,

a single site or document may have many labels, provided by
different organizations. Consumers choose their selection software
and their label sources (called rating services) independently.
This separation allows both markets to flourish: companies that
prefer to remain value-neutral can offer selection software
without providing any labels; values-oriented organizations,
without writing software, can create rating services that provide
labels. (Resnick, 1997, p. 107)

One of the leading Internet rating systems that uses PICS is SafeSurf, a group that offers ratings along with other tools to help parents and "net citizens" filter online information. One means to achieving its goal is to encourage online content providers to fill out a questionnaire using content descriptors to rate their Web sites. Unlike government- or industry-wide regulatory labeling efforts that may "brand" content, SafeSurf is interested in maintaining First Amendment rights by offering content providers greater latitude to self-rate their Web material. For example, rather than branding content that includes nudity as pornographic, users can distinguish their inclusion of nudity as scientific, sociocultural, artistic, titillating, graphic, or illegal. Once content providers rate their Web sites or directories, they can download the SafeSurf rated logo of their choice. A SafeSurf staff member verifies the rating and sets up the chosen ratings label. Parents and educators can then use PICS compliant software/browsers to read the settings and to use the ratings to filter content that is not desired. As the SafeSurf group explains, "PICS allows content providers to rate their pages and parents to set passwords and levels for their children. Then, PICS compliant software/browsers will read the settings and use the ratings to filter content that is not desired" (SafeSurf, 2004a).

The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is another international, independent, nonprofit organization that seeks to "empower the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labeling of content" (ICRA, 2004). ICRA's dual aims are to "protect children from potentially harmful material and to protect free speech on the internet." Like SafeSurf, Web authors complete an online questionnaire describing the content of their site, upon which ICRA generates a content label using PICS computer coding, which the author adds to his/her site. Parents and Internet users can then set their Internet browser to accept or decline access to Web sites based on the labels and user preferences. PICS is now a standard feature included in Internet software and browsers such as Microsoft Explorer.

Third-Party Rating Systems

While ratings systems are designed to allow content providers to voluntarily label the content they create and distribute, third-party rating systems "enable multiple, independent labeling services to associate additional labels with content created and distributed by others. Services may devise their own labeling systems, and the same content may receive different labels from different services" (ICRA, 2004). In other words, online watchdog groups interested in protecting children from online predators or illicit material can offer their own set of restrictive control tools for material that they deem to be objectionable. One such group is WiredSafety, formerly known as CyberAngels, led by Parry Aftab, an experienced international attorney and author of The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace and A Parent's Guide to the Internet. Lauded as "one of Internet safety's most influential players," (Hill, 2000), Aftab has emerged as a nonprofit leader who has created coalitions with many governmental and nongovernmental agencies, including the FBI's Innocent Images anti-child pornography and exploitation task force. She was appointed the founding American director of UNESCO's global Child Safeline project and currently heads WiredSafety, "the largest online safety, education and help group in the world" (WiredSafety, 2004). With more than 9,000 volunteers worldwide, the group is a coalition of various Internet safety groups, such as WiredKids.org, WiredTeens, Teenangels, and CyberMoms and CyberDads, and their affiliate, WiredCops.org, all of whom patrol the Internet for child pornography, child molesters, and cyberstalkers. Additionally, WiredSafety offers a variety of educational and help services for online users. Some of its volunteers access and review family friendly Web sites, filter software products and Internet services, and post their findings on the Web. The group even has a "Cyber911 help line" that offers net users access to help when they need it online. SurfWatch is another online ratings system designed for parental supervision. It too prevents access to Web, gopher, and FTP sites that SurfWatch's team of "net-surfers" have found objectionable. They maintain an updated list of "not-for-children" Web sites that can be subscribed to electronically.

Commercial Filtering Software and Databases

A more intensive effort to censor "inappropriate" online content has come from commercial filtering software companies (often working in conjunction with powerful Internet content providers and third-party ratings systems). Also known as "censorware," these filtering products, which include Net Nanny, CyberPatrol, Cyber Sitter and N2H2, range in cost from $25.99 to $80 and are heavily marketed to parents, educational administrators, and libraries. Designed to be installed on home or school computers or to work with network routers or firewall, cache, or proxy devices, these products claim to offer safety measures for youth using computers for online research and recreation. Essentially, most of these programs work by using a combination of filtering and blocking strategies, such as the blocking of Web sites denoted through keywords and databases and the blocking of individual Web sites by specific URLs.

One of the first filtering programs--and most commercially lucrative--is Net Nanny. According to its promotional Web site, Net Nanny[R] 5 is "the world's leading parental control software, [and] provides customers with the broadest set of Internet safety tools available today. Our award-winning software gives customers control over what comes into and goes out of their home through their Internet connection, while respecting their personal values and beliefs" (Net Nanny, 2004). Launched in 1998, Net Nanny is a tool allowing parents, teachers, administrators, and librarians to screen incoming and outgoing Internet information, particularly pornographic material. By identifying and blocking various sites and subjects considered inappropriate, the program blocks the Web addresses of known pornographic and illicit sites. Parents can add to the collection of forbidden "code words" used to detect and flag sites. The program works with all major online providers and in email. It can also prevent children from accessing specific files on a PC's hard drive, floppy drive, or CD-ROM. Like audit-tracking software programs, Net Nanny keeps a record of a child or student's Internet perusal, meaning that parents and teachers can check up on the sites that a child has perused.

With all of these features, it is no surprise that Net Nanny's popularity and financial success has led it to offer additional blocking software such as Net Nanny's Pop-Up Scrubber, which blocks pop-up ads, Net Nanny's AdFree, which blocks a range of Internet ads, spyware, and profiling cookies, and Net Nanny's Chat Monitor, which monitors and filters Instant Messaging and other online chat.

Another commercial service, CyberPatrol, works in the same way as Net Nanny by filtering harmful Web sites, newsgroups, and Web-based email. Also commercially successful, CyberPatrol licenses its "CyberLIST" database of site ratings to several additional vendors. Among its ratings categories are violence/profanity, partial nudity, full nudity, sexual acts, gross depictions, intolerance, satanic or cult, drugs and drug culture, militant/extremist, sex education, questionable/illegal and gambling, and alcohol and tobacco. Likewise, Cybersitter blocks sites and subjects deemed unacceptable by Internet users. It offers site lists for automatic blocking and allows parents to have added input in restricting programs, files, and games. According to PC Magazine, Cybersitter offers the strongest filtering and monitoring features, blocking content related to violence, hate, sex, and drugs (Munro, 2004). It also allows parents to choose from thirty-two content categories, such as free email sites, file sharing, wrestling, cults, and gambling, for those interested in added blocking categories. As with other similar products, it lets parents filter and monitor their children's activities without their knowledge and can record both sides of Instant Messaging sessions.

Joining in the mix of filtering software providers is N2H2 (acquired by Secure Computing in 2003), a company endorsed by eTesting Labs and the Kaiser Foundation as "the most effective and accurate" filtering program and extensive database of objectionable Internet sites (N2H2, 2004). It offers two product lines: Sentian, which is geared toward helping businesses manage their employee Internet access, and Bess, a popular program and database adopted by many schools and endorsed by the American Library Association to help schools and libraries meet CIPA rules for young Internet users.

With so many companies vying to be the best provider of filtering software, it is not surprising that Microsoft would venture into this area by offering its own industry standard Internet filter aimed at regulating youth-directed online content. AS part of its monopoly on the Internet browser software Internet Explorer (which accompanies its Windows platform), Microsoft has also implemented a filtering system that can be configured to block or log all data transfers, including World Wide Web pages, newsgroups, types of messages within any newsgroup, Internet Relay Chat, or Internet hosts known to have objectionable material for children.

QUESTIONING THE VIABILITY OF ONLINE "SAFETY" INITIATIVES

Although some of these Internet resources and restrictions make sense for certain schools depending upon the age group and grade level of Internet users, there are some problematic areas within each method that should be cause for concern. The main underlying difficulty raised by these "quasi-solutions" is that they narrowly define what is "inappropriate," relegating most objections to issues of nudity, sexuality, trigger words, or adult content. This focus neglects to confront the invasion of advertising or marketing strategies directed at children. In many respects, Internet commercialism seems to be a more serious concern, but one would never guess this considering the ad-strewn and content-compromised "solutions" to appropriate Internet content.

First, although child-directed advertising might not be as blatantly offensive, it certainly fosters "values" that, at present, are not considered objectionable to most governmental, parental, and commercial watchdog groups. Although the first tenet of media literacy explains that all media are constructions, the problem with advertising and marketing strategies is that they are so much a part of our social landscape and our everyday life that they appear to be natural. Subsequently, the conceptualization of what is inappropriate for children or students only helps to sustain the interests of a commercial system through the omission of advertising; advertising is omitted and thereby deemed appropriate. Just as parents, educators, and anticommercial groups, such as Commercial Alert, have protested the commercial imperatives of satellite-delivered school programs such as Channel One, a company that offers schools free satellite equipment in exchange for a captive audience of students forced to watch its daily, advertisement-driven programming, and the computer equivalent ZapMe!, which tried to turn "the schools and the compulsory schooling laws into a means of gaining access to a captive audience of children in order to extract market research from them and to advertise to them" (Commercial Alert, 2000), we need to be equally circumspect about the amount of advertising and marketing proliferating on "Kids Only" sites and via kid-safe filtering software (Schiffman, 2000).

Moreover, sustaining an Internet-based market economy whereby consumer software programs and proprietary environments become the antidote to inappropriate material is directly at odds with democratic means of dealing with these issues through public discourse, political action, and critical media literacy skills. Most of the products previously analyzed are produced and distributed by profit-making and publicly traded enterprises, such as the media conglomerates Time Warner, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. Obviously, it is good business to create and sell blocking software products or to offer third-party rating systems that decide--for parents, educators, and librarians--what is in their (both children/students and the company's) best interest. In a self-fulfilling business transaction, reports of inappropriate content as well as media and political hype about the Internet as an "unsafe environment" lend credence to, or create a functionalist need for, such products. As stated earlier, advertising is overlooked as "inappropriate content" because it is part of everyday consumer culture, unlike pornographic and hate sites, which exist beyond the boundaries of what is deemed "good" for children and teenagers. As Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1971) has noted, hegemony works within the terrain of everyday life and requires the consent of audiences--or in this case, parents, educators, and librarians. Hence, the commonly employed rhetorical elements that create paranoia about Internet content within the mainstream attempt to reach the consent of parents and educators by inviting them to see some Internet content as value-laden or problematic while camouflaging the interests and authority of a profitable computer software and hardware industry.

Although serious discussion about government regulation goes beyond the purviews of this study, several concerns must be raised regarding commercial software programs. First, the decision to block some sites over others is a very subjective decision. The problem with this kind of regulation is that some groups and individuals might attempt to censor material (under the guise of concerns for "safety") that threaten their own political and/or religious agenda. Dependence upon commercial Internet service providers and related filtering products limits the democratic principle of the free flow of information and puts commercial enterprise at the helm of online navigation, a troubling fact given that corporate culture can often be extremely conservative and self-serving when it comes to making censorship decisions. In one instance, America Online was charged with using filters to block out several Web sites associated with "liberal" political organizations. One of the top stories featured in Censored 2001 was AOL's liberal blacklist, whereby sites for the Democratic National Committee, Ralph Nader's Green Party, Ross Perot's Reform Party, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Safer Guns Now were labeled as "not appropriate for children" (Phillips & Project Censored, 2001, p. 111). Ironically, the youth filters did not prevent access to nudity or to conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association. Designed for America Online by the Learning Company, an educational software company owned by Mattel, such filtering programs confirm suspicions about the process of labeling and omitting Web sites according to political and economic interests.

This kind of censorship raises flags about the capabilities of large media conglomerates to limit access to material deemed politically at odds with commercial interests. Inasmuch as Disney was in a position to rebuke the distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's political documentary produced through Disney's Miramax film division, large multimedia conglomerates are poised to censor content that is politically or economically damaging to their enterprise.

Second, some of the trigger words used to block Internet sites might be legitimate subjects for research. For example, the often-cited example of an Internet user not being able to access research on breast cancer or sex education (if these words were denoted as trigger words) is indeed troubling. As PC Magazine reviewers of Cybersitter 9.0 explain, "Cybersitter errs on the conservative side; by default it may block sites you would deem okay" (Munro, 2004). A telling example of this problem is offered in an article featured in Electronic School Online. Author Lars Kongshem writes,

CYBERsitter yanks offending words from web pages without providing
a clue to the reader that the text has been altered. The mangled
text that results from this intervention might change the meaning
and intent of a sentence dramatically. For example, because
"homosexual" is in the list of CYBERsitter's forbidden words, the
sentence, "The Catholic church is opposed to all homosexual
marriages" appears to the user as, "The Catholic church is opposed
to all marriages." (Kongshem, 1998)

Likewise, Karen Schneider, a librarian for the Environmental Protection Agency, has led a filtering software assessment project involving more than thirty librarians around the world. She has found that filters "are not reliable and they're hard to maintain" (cited in Gebeloff, 1999). In one example, recipes using "chicken breast" were blocked due to sensitive word triggers. Rob Gebeloff, author of Screening Zone: The Trouble with Net Filters and Ratings, continues to problematize the use of all types of "censorware" programs by pointing out numerous gray areas in judging content. He asks:

Do you want your kids going to Web sites that discuss birth
control? What about AIDS education? Or what about the
exploration of Mars? [A recent New York Times article pointed out
that one filtering program blocked out every Web site with the
word "sex" in it, including a site that had the word
"marsexploration" in it's title]. So clearly, if you're going to go
with filtering, be prepared to make tough calls. (Gebeloff, 1999)
Peacefire--a group critical of filtering software--explains, "We have always felt that filtering software is not only ineffective, but also a violation of the trust between students and staff... Unfortunately, most of the censorware companies block anything controversial, not just pornography. I find it very discouraging that this includes information like suicide prevention, safe sex, and gay youth resources" (g. Jenkins, quoted in Kongshem, 1998).

Third, students and computer hackers have already found flaws with such programs and have managed to acquire information from sites that have been blocked. When product evaluators at Consumer Reports tested over nine different Web content filters, including AOL's parental controls, they discovered that, although AOL offered the best protection, as much as 20 percent of easily located Web sites containing sexually explicit content, violently graphic images, or promotion of drugs, tobacco, crime, or bigotry slipped through the filters. In fact, "Net Nanny displayed parts of more than a dozen sites, often with forbidden words expunged but graphic images intact" (ConsumerReports.Org, 2001).

Fourth, there is an inherent conflict of interest when the main advocates challenging the government's attempts to protect children from online predation and pornography are the very same groups that seek to profit directly from a "free marketplace" of online smut. In its June 2004 press release, SafeSurf applauded the Supreme Court for its ruling in the Internet pornography case Ashcroft v. ACLU "because the High Court concluded that Internet filtering solutions, such as those originally proposed by SafeSurf over nine years ago, are a better way to proceed than the government restrictions imposed under the Child Online Protection Act" (Jules, 2004). As the chairman of SafeSurf, Ray Soular, exclaimed, "This decision has revealed that the High Court has seen the wisdom in protecting the Internet from governmental censorship and in enabling parental discretion through an intelligent filtering and labeling system. Maybe now, Congress will focus more attention on what has become known as the 'Safe Surfing' method of protecting children online" (Jules, 2004, emphasis added). Yet the court's wisdom is more the result of intense lobbying than constitutional insight. SafeSurf has been lobbying Congress about the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act since its implementation, arguing its case before the Congressional Commission on Child Online Protection (COPA) in July 2000,just a few months after COPA's passage.

Gebeloff addresses this conflict of interest in his critique of net filters and ratings for Money Talks:

I once had a chance to interview Gordon Ross, the fellow who
designed Net Nanny.... I asked Ross how he, with his background
in computer systems, comes up with the list of bad words and
unacceptable Web sites that his program blocks. Basically, he told
me, it started from a list he put together and then evolved over
time to reflect feedback from users. "And we have a disclaimer
saying we're not liable for the list." (Gebeloff, 1999)
This leads Gebeloff to deduce the ironic disposition of this practice: "We don't want the government to be our censor, so why should we turn the job over to a computer programmer from British Columbia? The answer, of course, is that we shouldn't, but that's what happens when a parent buys filtering software, installs it, and then walks away from their child's machine" (Gebeloff, 1999).

With laws mandating the use of various forms of censorware to meet government regulations like CIPA, and liability issues at school, the library, or work, it is no surprise that the marketplace of ideas has increasingly channeled its financial resources into for-profit filtering products. Companies easily win over school and library administrators by guaranteeing adherence to government legislation as well as liability protection and parental approval. For $14.95, SafeSurf markets Safe Eyes as an effective tool that "uses the N2H2 website database which has been proven time after time to be the most accurate database available ... In recent tests, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Kaiser Family Foundation found N2H2 to be the best" (SafeSurf, 2004b). Official endorsements from prominent governmental, industrial, and educational groups are an added selling point, such as N2H2's official stamp of approval from the American Library Association for meeting CIPA rules.

As for the pervasiveness of filtering products, a poll conducted as early as 1998 at the Technology + Learning conference revealed that 51 percent of surveyed teachers, technology directors, school board members, and other educators had adopted some form of censorware for all or some students in their district (cited in Kongshem, 1998). Another poll conducted in 2000 by MSNBC.com found that "many users rely on an Internet service provider, or ISP, to do the filtering for them. The big names in this market are America Online, The Microsoft Network, Mayberry USA, Rating-G Online and Getnetwise.com. Filters that are popular with Christians and conservatives include Family.Net, Integrity Online and Hedgebuilders.com" (Nodell, 2000). With no centralized board or groups to review the practices of these filtering companies or ISPs for their effectiveness or appropriateness, it is easy to see how those seeking to meet the needs of their schools, libraries, work, or homes turn to various programs without clear indication of their validity and reliability, especially institutions pressured to have some "safety plan" to meet CIPA legislation or issues of liability.

Accordingly, it is no surprise that filtering producers and marketers stand to gain financially by lobbying for nongovernmental solutions to censorship, as well as a deregulatory media environment allowing telecommunications firms to continue to merge and expand their online assets and streamline Web content. MSNBC's interest in polling Internet user preferences for filtering is not purely for newsworthiness given its partnership with Microsoft. The same is true for AOL Time Warner. What is more, in addition to cornering the market for libraries, schools, and homes, many of these companies have ventured into the work environment. As MSNBC.com reporter Bobbi Nodell explains, "many filter companies are moving into the corporate market, which is booming because employers are concerned about workers 'wasting time' on the job and want to keep them from shopping, checking investments and playing games ... the corporate market is expected to grow from $60 million in 1999 to $500 million in 2004" (Nodell, 2000).

Confirmation of this trend can be found with Net Nanny. Looksmart, a leading business firm in online search technology, recently acquired Net Nanny for approximately $5 million in cash and stock in April 2004. Indeed, in their ability to promote and streamline commercial content (while limiting "inappropriate" sites), monitor Internet user habits, profile users for direct marketing purposes, and market products to users, filtering software products can be considered stepchildren of the highly lucrative commercial search engines, which became the most lucrative Web properties in 2003 due to their increasing ability to promote commercial Internet content. As LookSmart CEO Damian Smith stated in 2004:

This acquisition is both strategic and prudent for LookSmart ...
Strategic, because integrating our search technology into Net
Nanny provides a stronger product for their users, while also
providing LookSmart with a desktop platform froth which to launch
high margin search and paid listings applications. Prudent, because
Net Nanny is expected to produce positive margin contributions for
LookSmart in 2004. (LookSmart, 2004)
In other words, this partnership, along with MSN funding, will allow LookSmart to apply its tracking and marketing capabilities to Net Nanny's software and related proprietary environments. As the company explains to its shareholders, such a partnership "will enhance the leading online filtering software and provide high-quality proprietary search traffic for LookSmart."

While filtering technology continues to thrive in the Internet's "free market" system, and as Web content continues to grow exponentially, the profits for filtering technology continue to expand commercially. Net Nanny's acquisition by LookSmart makes clear that one of the leading "protectors" of illicit online content is poised to become a predator of tracking and marketing to today's Internet users as it shifts its mission to "high margin search and paid listings applications" (LookSmart, 2004). With substantial profit predictions for filtering companies expanding their business within the corporate market, the goals to protect Internet users, including children, are becoming further marginalized at a time when schools, libraries, and businesses are becoming increasingly dependent upon filtering technology.

To make matters worse, "the Internet's status as an open forum for ideas" has come under attack since 2002 with a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling that shields cable companies from having to open their networks to smaller competitors and civil liberties and consumer advocacy groups (Wolverton, 2002). As Karen Charman (2002) explains, "without public policies mandating open access," cable will monopolize broadband width, denying access to other Internet Service Providers in order to capitalize off of hyper-commercialized services that make it easier to buy products. Troy Wolverton (2002) of ZDNet news explains that "lack of competition among cable Internet providers could be a form of censorship ... even if they don't completely block Web sites, cable companies could slow access to them to the point that they become all but impossible to reach ... while they could speed access to their own sites and those of preferred partners." Subsequently, if "the Internet content accessed by K-12 youth is patrolled by capitalist institutions, rather than by the government, educational institutions, public libraries or communitarian groups, it will inevitably become more difficult 'to turn the one-way system of commercial media into a two-way process of discussion, reflection, and action'" (Thoman, 1998, p. 3). As Resnick explains, no matter how well conceived or executed, any labeling or blocking system will tend to stifle noncommercial communication since the time and energy needed to label will inevitably lead to many unlabeled sites: "Because of safety concerns, some people will block access to materials that are unlabeled or whose labels are untrusted. For such people, the Internet will function more like broadcasting, providing access only to sites with sufficient mass-market appeal to merit the cost of labeling" (Resnick, 1997, p. 106). This form of censorship is a serious problem as the possibilities for a decentralized and openly available information network will once again be delimited by a top-down capitalist hierarchy where nondominant, noncommercial, or alternative sources of information will remain peripheral.

Finally, information filtering does not prepare students to learn how to analyze and evaluate information once they are no longer using the Internet within an educational setting. This point has gained momentum as media literacy educators, librarians, and scholars have been grappling with the need for solid media literacy curricula that include a critical and analytical approach to learning with and about online communications technology (Fabos, 2004; Frechette, 2002; Paxson, 2004; Tyner, 1998).

TESTING CONTENT CONTROLS FOR CYBER-CAPITALISM

The hegemonic impulse of online safety profiteers becomes clear when we take a look at some ratings organizations, online proprietary environments, ISPs, and databases recommended by parents, the government, educational institutions, and the industry. First is SafeSurf, a rating organization that claims to be "dedicated to making the Internet safe for your children without censorship." Through an information database of objectionable sites, a proprietary environment for children, and safety tools for parents, SafeSurf believes they "will enable software and hardware to be developed that will enable more effective use of the Internet for everyone" (SafeSurf, 2004a, emphasis added).

My skepticism about claims that "everyone" benefits through SafeSurf's methods developed when visiting the SafeSurf home page, where I reviewed their policies, claims, and method to create an environment that is child tested and parent approved. What first drew my attention to their Web site were the various advertisements centered on the page. One ad displayed a large colorful rectangle for Card Service Online, "the leader in online real time credit card processing," featuring Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express. Directly under it was an ad for Child Magazine, on sale at the reduced price of $7.95; its pitch: "One year for the price of a bottle." Beneath this was a bold advertisement link to "Update Microsoft's Internet Explorer to support SafeSurf Ratings." Combined, these ads validated my forewarning about the interconnections between powerful computer firms, such as Microsoft, and blocking software products.

My findings led me to presume that more advertising would emerge on the SafeSurf Wave link, which offers Kid's Wave, a list of "top sites" purportedly "devoted to educating and entertaining children." On the Kid's Wave front page, I was informed "There are great places to take your children online." Below was a grid of partial listings of SafeSurf-approved sites by category. The first category was the "favorite site of the month," which was Squigly 's Playhouse. By clicking on the cartoon graphic, my hypothesis was reaffirmed: the unfolding visual displayed a large color advertisement for Disneyland with moving graphics and a photo of the Magic Kingdom. The flashing text read "[frame 1: photo and text depicted Disneyland Resort] To really enjoy yourself here; [frame 2: photo of Mickey Mouse described as 'the Disneyland Trip Wizard'] Pick up your custom schedule here."

In case the ad was overlooked, each separate clickable Kid's Wave link for an activity or game was infused with the Disney Resort campaign. For instance, the "Squigly's Games" page had another large, flashing, color ad for Disney at the top that read, "[frame 1: photo of Mickey Mouse] Are you the Ultimate Disney fan?; [frame 2: photo of Goofey] Click here--enter to win"; on the bottom, a three-frame flashing ad targeted at parents read, "[frame 1 ] You know what you put on your card; [frame 2] but do you know what he put on your card? [picture of a crowd with a man circled in red] ; [frame 3] Find out with your free credit report online." Other pages, like "Squigly's Writing Corner" or "Brainteasers," featured separate Disney ads as well as credit card ads (presumably targeted at parents, but also at a new generation of consumers).

Disney, it seems, is a frequent advertiser on filtering software products. In addition to selling nonsoftware products, such as $40 embroidered golf shirts, Net Nanny's Internet Web site had an advertisement for Disneyland featured on its front page. Most troubling, however, is that advertising clients are also the sponsors of Net Nanny content. Among its "safe-sites" for kids were "fun" links to Disney, Crayola, and Kids Channel. Under the category "Education" was a Colgate "Kidsworld" link with prominent product advertisements for Colgate toothpaste. Describing its mission in philanthropic terms, Colgate Palmolive Co. purportedly maintains the Internet site "as a service to the Internet community." A closer look at the page proves otherwise. First, I had to type in my first name and specified password of the day, "toothpaste," in order to enter the "No Cavities Clubhouse." There, I was greeted by "Dr. Rabbit" who appeared in his clubhouse holding a toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste. Although this Web site offered "interesting oral care facts, games, and stories aimed at raising children's awareness of oral health," I could not get away from Dr. Rabbit and his Colgate endorsement no matter what activity I clicked on. Moreover, in spite of its "intention" to adhere to the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) Guidelines for advertising on the Internet and online services, my name and email were still requested so that the "Tooth Fairy" could send me an email message--no doubt carrying her Colgate toothpaste and brush in cyber-flight.

Although not nearly as plastered in advertising as SurfWatch or Net Nanny, CyberPatrol's Web site unquestionably catered to/partnered with commercial Web sites, including Disney's Internet empire of kid-targeted Web addresses. A recommended "safe" site was "Toy Story Games," a game developed by Disney based on its Toy Story movie. Not surprisingly, Disney's home page was saturated with child and adult-directed advertising. Although the advertising contained here was "2nd level," meaning that I had to click on the recommended sites before being inundated with ads, the sites contained on the page remained uncontested as child appropriate.

As evidenced within these kid-designated Web sites, the far-reaching clutches of advertisers are rendered invisible in the discourse or underlying rationale of Internet protectionism. While children are deemed to be impressionable when it comes to sex, pornography, adult content, and nefarious language, concerns about manipulative advertising campaigns go largely undetected within "kid-safe" Internet domains.

CONCLUSION

Media literacy scholar Len Masterman's explanation of critical autonomy, to "develop in pupils enough self-confidence and critical maturity to be able to apply critical judgments to media texts which they will encounter in their future" (1985, p. 24; emphasis added), does not fit within the logic of commercial filters and the self-regulated corporations attempting to control and streamline Internet content. As Elizabeth Thoman (1998) clarifies, "the media have become so ingrained in our cultural milieu that we should no longer view the task of media education as providing 'protection' against unwanted messages." Hence, a learning model of awareness, analysis, reflection, action, and experience leads to better comprehension, critical thinking, and informed judgments.

Contrary to filtering mechanisms designed to censor or reduce student exposure to "inappropriate" Web sites and online information, a much better approach toward new information technologies is to go beyond teaching students about how to use computers, email, Web browsers, etc. First and foremost, the goals of media literacy must go hand in hand with computer training and online access through the instruction of critical skills by which students learn to discriminate all types of information. While there are hazards to over-regulation and under-regulation of the Internet, educators and librarians have an important role to play in developing online media literacy initiatives so that students can become discerners of the types of information they need. The goals for taking media literacy to the Internet must go beyond the critical evaluation and use of information to include an analysis and understanding of the impact of political and economic forces that drive and control much of the Internet. Within a "media literacy in cyberspace" model, the issues of ownership, profit, control, and related effects are essential to helping students formulate constructive action ideas that will lead to their own Internet choices and surfing habits (Frechette, 2002). As PICS chairman Paul Resnick (1997) admits, "no labeling system is a full substitute for a thorough and thoughtful evaluation." In the end, if the power of Internet content labeling, ratings, and restrictions are left to a third party or profit-making companies, then educators, librarians, and parents need to lobby that they serve the public interest rather than private commercial interests.

How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding

2005-12-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding
Information Outlook

Summary

This is the second of three articles. Part 1 appeared in the August issue of Information Outlook.

Search engine optimization and marketing covers a wide range of activities, many of which are similar to what a reference librarian, systems librarian, or market researcher does. Although the focus is the World Wide Web, many of the tools that are used have broader applications for special librarians.

Internal corporate processes. Web analytics tools measure and analyze corporate sales, customer preferences and problems, viable products and channels, and other issues that may provide answers for questions received by special librarians.

Competitive intelligence/market research. Keyword research, Web site saturation and popularity tools can provide information on a company's competitors: how they are marketing on the Internet, what they are spending on online marketing campaigns, how they are pricing their products.

Legal issues. Who Is tools can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues. Link Popularity tools can show who is deep-linking to your site. Log files, in conjunction with Who Is tools, can tell you who may be committing click fraud on your paid placement campaigns or spamming your e-mail servers.

Back end knowledge of how Web sites work. These tools can show you what may be keeping search engines from indexing your site and can highlight customer service issues.

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SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES

Web site saturation and popularity tools show how much presence a Web site has on search engines through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on each search engine (saturation) and how many times the site is linked to by other sites (popularity).

If your company wants to generate leads from Web site traffic, you need to understand your organization's Web presence, particularly in relation to that of your competitors. Generally, the more Web presence you have, the easier it is for people to find your site; that is, if those pages contain the keywords people are looking for and if they rank high enough in search engine rankings for people to see them. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. Pay attention to this so you can learn the number of sites that are linking to yours, which is very important. Knowing where your site stands in these two areas can give you a good idea of what you need to do to improve your Web presence.

Many tools measure various aspects of saturation and link popularity. My favorites are Link Popularity +, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.

Link Popularity + (http://www.uptimebot.com) shows much more than its name implies. It measures the number of back-links (incoming external links to your site); linked domains (all pages that link to any page in your domain, including internal pages); pages of your site that are indexed; and pages that contain your URL in the Google, Yahoo, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Hotbot, MSN, Teoma, Lycos, AOL, and Alexa search databases. (See Figure 1.)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Once you register (it's free), you can also see overall Google page rank, the number of pages you have at each Google page rank, and whether your site is listed in the DMOZ Open Directory, one of the major search directories. Page rank is one indicator of a page's popularity and authority. Registration lets you do mass reviews of up to 16 domains and have the results e-mailed to you. (See Figure 2.)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

This has become one of my favorite tools, because it provides one of the most comprehensive snapshots of Web presence as far as the number of search engines it covers and the type of information it shows. The one area it doesn't cover is competitor comparisons. When I need to do a competitor comparison, I use the Top 10 Google Analysis and Marketleap tools.

Top 10 Google Analysis (www.Webuildpages.com/tools/internet-marketing-google.htm) provides the top 10 search results for a keyword on Google, along with the ranking of the base URL. This makes it a great competitive intelligence tool. (See Figure 3.)

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The results also show the number of pages indexed by Google and Yahoo; the number of backlinks for the reference URL and for the domain as a whole from Yahoo, Google PageRank, Yahoo Web Rank, and AllInAnchor (query words in anchor text of links pointing to the site); body keyword density (ratio of keywords to total words); and link keyword density (ratio of keywords in links to all links).

This tool is a good indicator of the overall standings of your competition on the two major search engines and provides information about what gives them their rankings (keyword density, number of links to the site, number of links with keywords to the site, number of pages indexed, and page ranks). By analyzing the key characteristics of the top 10 sites for a keyword, you can get a good idea of what it takes for the term to rank well. (See Figure 4.)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

To use this tool, you need to have a Google API code, available free from Google (www.google.com/apis). The API code lets you run a limited number of specialized searches on Google.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Marketleap offers a suite of free SEM tools, including the Search Engine Saturation Validator, the Link Popularity Analysis, and the Keyword Verification Tool. (See Figure 5.)

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

The Search Engine Saturation Validator (www.marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm) shows the number of pages that several top search engines have in their databases for your Web site and the sites of up to five competitors. The search engines covered are AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Google/AOL, Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo. I use this tool primarily to see how the site I'm optimizing compares with specific competitors on the number of pages indexed by the search engines. In general, the more pages a site has indexed, the greater the opportunity to be found by searchers. (See Figure 6.)

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

What I like most about the Link Popularity Analysis (www.marketleap.com/publinkpop) is its ability to choose competitors with whom to compare link popularity, along with the ability to see the link popularity for 25 other Web sites in a company's industry category. If your company's industry isn't included, you can choose General, which shows the link popularity for 25 companies across a number of industries. What you get back is how your site compares with others in your industry on link popularity on the AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Google/AOL, Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo search engines. (See Figure 7.)

The tool shows your presence on the Web in terms of number of pages in each search engine's index that contain a link to your site, including your own Web site. Another valuable component of this tool is that it gives you an idea of whether your link numbers make your company a major player on the Web:

* Limited presence: 0-1,000 references.

* Average presence: 1,001-5,000 references.

* Above-average presence: 5,001-20,000 references.

* Contender: 20,001-100,000 references.

* Player: 100,001-500,000 references.

* 900-pound gorilla: 500,000+ references. (See Figure 8.)

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

Needless to say, there are very few 900-pound gorillas. In some niche industries, there may not be any sites that come close to having this many total "references" across all the major search engines. (Note: "Total" data are inflated, because they include the total of all links for the six search engines, which means many duplicates. Nevertheless, the total is a good relative indicator of what it takes to be a top site.) The General Industry category lists 14 gorilla sites; the top five are listed in Figure 9.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

By looking at the sites linking to your site, you can get an idea of the volume and quality of pages linking to you and who may be referring traffic to you. Once you know who is linking to you and the part of your site they are linking to, you can examine the areas of your site that are performing well and those that aren't. By checking out competitors who are outperforming your site, you can see who is linking to them and figure out what you need to do to improve your visibility. (See Figure 10.)

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

Marketleap's Keyword Verification Tool (www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm) provides a quick way to see if your site ranks in the top 30 keywords through keyword verification. Many studies have shown that the vast majority of people don't look beyond the first 30 search results. You may have numerous pages indexed with plenty of links pointing to your site, but if you're not ranked in the top 30 on keywords that people use to search for your products and services, you're not visible. The Keyword Verification Tool covers AlltheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, Google/AOL, Lycos Pro, Hotbot, MSN, Netscape, and Yahoo. (See Figure 11.)

Thumbshots (http://ranking.thumbshots.com) lets you compare the top 100 results for a term on two different search engines or compare two different terms on the same search engine. You can highlight a particular site to see where the site ranks on both search engines. (See Figure 12.)

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

The output is visual, with lines connecting pages that rank in the top 100 on both search engines or keywords. Pages from your site are in red, and those of other sites that have pages on both sides are in blue. Hover your mouse over any of the hundred circles and see the URL, rank, and, if available, a thumbnail image of the page. The text output includes the number of overlapping links and number of unique links. (See Figure 13.)

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

The comparisons also show how little duplication there is on the Web--there are usually very few connecting lines between search engines. In a search on "retail displays," only 15 pages ranked in the top 100 on both Google and Yahoo.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

I like this tool because it shows you where your site is ranked along a 100-dot line for a phrase on two search engines or how it ranks for two different phrases on one search engine. I use it more for seeing how two different terms rank on the same search engine than for search engine comparison, as there are other tools to do that. I've used it most often for demonstrating to clients the success of using one phrase over another in their site's content. (See Figure 14.)

Link Desirability

The next two tools are designed to help you determine the "desirability" of having another site link to yours. Not all links are created equal--some can even hurt your search engine rankings. Generally, a popular site that contains a few relevant links will be a better site to seek a link from than a "link farm" site that is nothing more than a collection of links. Although Google's PageRank is considered to be an important indicator of the link popularity of a site, I don't give it much weight when I'm looking for a site from which to request a link. Instead, I look at whether the site is a good fit for the one I'm marketing, and whether a link on that site would benefit both sites. (See Figure 15.)

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

One tool, Link Appeal by Webmaster Toolkit (www.Webmaster-toolkit.com/link-appeal.shtml), calculates the desirability rating of a link on the URL you specify. The calculation includes factors such as page rank, number of outbound links, and overall percentage of links to HTML. It is intended as a guideline for evaluating whether you should ask for a link on a certain page or not. (See Figure 16.)

[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]

The Class C Checker (www.Webmaster-toolkit.com/class-c-checker.shtml) allows you to check whether two domains are hosted on the same Class C IP range. Links from sites that are not on the same range as your site are thought to give more weight. (See Figure 17.)

[FIGURE 18 OMITTED]

Search engines don't like duplication in search results, so having a different IP address can help separate sites that are located on the same servers and may share databases or programming elements. Because EBSCO hosts many sites, I use Class C Checker more for the latter purpose than for link popularity. (See Figure 18.)

[FIGURE 19 OMITTED]

Other Ranking Tools

While the following tools aren't strictly SEM tools, I find them very valuable in my work.

The main Google search engine doesn't number results, which can make it difficult to figure out where you rank on a particular term. But Google Results (www.google.com/ie?q=&num=100&hl=en) gives numbered results. A disadvantage is that it only shows title and URL information, so identifying your site among the results can be difficult (unless your site name is in the title). I generally do a search on the main Google search engine and use the browser's Find option to see if my site's URL is in the top 30 or 100 results. If it is, I make a note of the title, then go to Google Results and redo the search. I check to see my site's numbered ranking. This is a lot easier than trying to physically count search results on a screen. (See Figures 19 and 20.)

Google Dance (www.google-dance-tool.com) has two uses. The first shows how you rank on the various Google servers; the second presents numbered results. I use this tool primarily for numbered results, unless I've discovered that I'm getting vastly different rankings when I search on a term within a short period of time. (See Figure 21.)

[FIGURE 20 OMITTED]

Froogle (www.froogle.com) is Google's shopping search engine. It allows companies to add their products to the site free of charge. I use Froogle in two ways: to expand a site's listings on the Internet and to illustrate price comparisons. Because Froogle is free, it is the simplest way for an e-commerce company to get all its products listed online. And because Froogle results sometimes appear at the top of Google results, it's a good way to get a site to show high in rankings if it doesn't do so organically. Currently, Google is generally not allowing new sites into top-ranked positions for at least six months after launch. (See Figure 22.)

[FIGURE 21 OMITTED]

Froogle is valuable in price comparisons because it helps me understand where my clients' pricing is compared with that of their competitors. You can do price comparisons on the other shopping search engines, but the only Web sites you find on those are companies that pay to be on them. All our e-commerce clients who meet the requirements for Froogle are added to it when ESWS redesigns a Web site. (See Figure 23.)

[FIGURE 22 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 23 OMITTED]

Figure 9

Marketleap Top 5 Most-Linked-To Web Sites

Most-Linked-To Web Sites Number of Links

Yahoo.com 51,624,212
Mp3.com 26,652,540
Amazon.com 24,213,964
Microsoft.com 18,340,881
CNN.com 10,777,438
RELATED ARTICLE: How to use keyword saturation and popularity tools

1. Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Search Engine Saturation and Link Popularity can help you identify some of your online competitors and determine how you compare in the terms you use to describe your products and services.

2. If you get a question about why your company Web site isn't performing as well as a competitor's site in search engine rankings, the Link Popularity +, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Search Engine Saturation tools can illustrate why--or show why your site is doing well.

3. Librarians often spend a lot of time explaining to people why it is important to use more than one search engine in doing research. Thumbshot is a good tool to graphically show the lack of duplication in search results.

4. The Google Dance tool is good to know about if two searches for the same phrase return different results. Use it to see if Google is in the midst of updating its index.

5. Use Google Results or Google Dance for a concise list of numbered search results.

6. Froogle and the other shopping search engines are an easy and effective way to find out what your competitors are charging for your type of product and how your pricing compares. Because Froogle is a free service, it has a broader range of companies to compare with. However, Froogle also has a smaller percentage of visitors, so it may not be representative of all shopping visitors.

Put the Pedal to the Metal - marketing and the Internet - Brief Article

2005-12-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

Put the Pedal to the Metal - marketing and the Internet - Brief Article
Brandweek

In his classic book, Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy writes, "When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product." Amen. Distressingly, there are too many professionals who have not internalized Mr. Ogilvy's message. During the past few years these people are the ones who have led the stampede to Internet advertising. And today, many of them are sounding the retreat.

In many cases these advertisers and marketers jumped into Internet advertising not because it was the right thing for their brands, but because it was the cool thing to do. And happy to take their money was a whole new breed of naive marketers, the Internet entrepreneurs, who were even more clueless when it came to marketing.

The mantra in this heady Internet boom time was "eyeballs." In the pre-Internet, pre-eyeballs era, lazy marketers concerned themselves with the same thing, only they called it "advertising awareness." Whatever it's called, the cold reality is the same: There is no correlation between a consumer's awareness of an ad, or for that matter the degree to which they like it or find it entertaining, and their intent to throw down cash to purchase the brand. Despite the fact that Mr. Ogilvy had this figured out 50 years ago, we still see things like the Super Bowl ads, the huge budgets of which are justified solely on audience reach and the hope that they'll be well liked in popular polls.

Despite all of this attention on misdirected metrics, some folks did start to measure ad clicks and, more importantly, desired consumer actions--registrations, downloads and purchases--instead of passive eyeballs. But they didn't like what they saw, and the retreat began in earnest. No great loss, however, because what was left for dead was never actually alive. Ineffective, lazy advertising doesn't sell. Never has, never will, online or off.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, however. Internet advertising is actually jam-packed with potential, but that potential is largely unrealized.

Marketing is an investment, not an expense, and advertising is simply one of many ways I can invest my marketing dollar. And like every other marketing investment, for my advertising investment to pay out it must directly motivate more people to buy more stuff more often for more money. The Internet inherently has the unique capability to sell at the individual consumer level much more effectively than mass media can.

Converting this potential into reality starts well before you develop ad creative and buy media. It begins with building a solid strategic foundation for your brand, which includes clearly defining what business you're in, knowing the short- and long-term destinations for your brand, how you are going to position your brand and to what target audience, and how this value proposition will positively differentiate you from the competition. Then you need to bring this strategy to life in ways that effectively engage your target consumer, build and deepen your relationship with that target, and motivate them to buy. To be truly successful you will not stop for high fives at this point, but will keep the pedal to the metal, converting triers into regular buyers and regular buyers into evangelists.

The Internet can play an effective role at every step along the way. It has the capability to be the most dynamic, flexible, customizable and precisely targeted medium out there. Like everything related to effective marketing, it takes hard work and lots of it. It means rigorously and smartly mining databases. It means knowing your target consumers very well. It means applying continuous pressure (never rely on "momentum"--the minute you do, your consumer relationship and the related business that comes from that relationship will begin to backslide). It means fully embracing the two-way interactivity of the Internet medium. Don't talk at your target consumers, converse with them. Listen. Recognize that context is critical, and then aggressively seek the context that primes the pump for your message like no other.

The bottom line is that the Internet is an effective advertising medium there for the taking. Know what you want, and be prepared to work hard to get it. If it does not work blame yourself, not the medium.

In-store & Internet Marketing

2005-12-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

In-store & Internet Marketing
Drug Store News

ATLANTA -- In many respects, the Internet has raised more questions than it has answered. This certainly is true in the retail channel, where many companies, both large and small, are struggling to develop winning Internet strategies by answering some basic operating questions.

Does the Internet represent an incremental growth opportunity? Will it change the way consumers get information and shop? Can it be a profitable business?

Those are just a few of the questions facing retailers today. To help find some answers, Drug Store News and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores co-sponsored the In-Store and Internet Marketing conference here last month. As part of the conference, a distinguished group of retailers addressed these issues and others during a panel discussion moderated by Drug Store News editor-in-chief and associate publisher Marie Griffin. Griffin led the panel of five retailers in a discussion of Internet retailing, electronic marketing and possible avenues of vendor participation in e-commerce.

The panelists included Larry Zigerelli, executive vice president of marketing for CVS; John Gleeson, vice president of corporate strategy for Walgreens; Tim Ziemke, senior vice president of marketing and merchandising at Drug Emporium; John Roehm, director of electronic marketing for the drug division of Albertson's; and Mike Concannon, director of manufacturer relations for drugstore.com.

Following is an edited report from that panel discussion.

Marie Griffin: How do you view the Internet?

Larry Zigerelli: Intuitively, we see e-retailing as a logical, natural channel extension of our overall convenience and value strategy.

Looking at our proposition of what CVS had to offer, it seemed clear from beginning that an integrated bricks and clicks model would be the best strategy. Our IT department has been integrating the CVS and cvs.com infrastructures so there will be one common business base, one centralized conduit to customers whether they shop in a CVS store or the CVS Web site.

Today, when a CVS customer buys a prescription and other items online, two-thirds of those shoppers elect to pick up their purchase in their neighbor CYS store rather than have it shipped to them.

Online shopping seems to be perceived as the same as phoning in a prescription refill to a store.

Online customers have a tendency to do more stock-up shopping. As a result, the online shopper buys in large quantities and generates a higher average ticket: the average front-end ring at CVS.com is $40 compared with $10 in the stores.

The model that has emerged is one we believed would happen from the beginning. It is a seamless shopping experience to the customer.

John Roehm: We had the same feelings as Larry. We wanted a platform that supported the whole organization. We have different name plates for our stores, so there were opportunities for our drug and food stores to take the expertise of both parts of our organization and to come together to provide more consumer value.

Mike Concannon: We are an Internet-centric business that has gone into partnership with Rite Aid. We use net technologies to build personal relationships with our customers so we can empower them to improve their health and well being. It was important for us to look for ways to work with partners like Rite Aid and with manufacturers to create added value for our customers.

Rite Aid has developed strong customer relationships over a long period of time. We think that's a competitive advantage for us.

We use our brick-and-mortar partner to create great service for our pharmacy-centric customers. It's worked out fantastically marrying those two things up.

We're the sole distributor of General Nutrition Center products on the Internet. Wellness is a very fragmented business. GNC with 5,000 stores is the biggest brand in wellness. Drugstore.com today has a GNC store within our online store. It's the same relationship we have with Rite Aid.

Tim Ziemke: Drug Emporium through its partnership with Vitamins.com and HealthCentral.com has the same kind of triangle base. For us to offer 10,000 to 12,000 SKUs of vitamins, nutraceuticals and related health products in our stores would be an inventory nightmare, but to have it sitting in a distribution center in Louisville, we're able to handle a global business. It's a pretty good deal.

Vitamins and pharmacy rank as No. 1 and No. 2 in what we are offering to our customers.

John Gleeson: Through our pharmacy, we have terrific relationships with customers. Over the past seven years, we built a large pharmacy database with over 45 million families, and leveraging that database has really extended over into our Internet business. Our big thing is not so much to have an Internet pharmacy per se, but to ensure that our customers are able to access our stores however they want, through a phone, a store, a fax. We want our customers to have all kinds of convenient access.

Griffin: Jupiter Communications projects that online consumer health commerce spending will climb from $200 million in 1999 to $9.8 billion by 2004. That estimate includes sales of prescription pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter drugs, nutraceuticals [vitamins and nutritional supplements], personal care products [health and beauty aids] and medical supplies. How realistic are such expectations? How big a role will e-retailing play in pharmacy?

Gleeson: I can't estimate how far e-pharmacy sales will develop as far as the general public goes, but it will grow.

But our hope is that it will become an excellent way to share information with our customers. I'm not sure I can call that a business you can quantify in dollars, but it is a way to create intimate sharing of information with customers about their health care.

It's very difficult in the retail environment to provide customers with that kind of relationship. The Internet will extend beyond what pharmacists can deliver today in terms of information.

Ziemke: Content will have a lot to do with growth. If the customers are not getting as much good content today as they should, then that becomes one more service we can offer them.

Concannon: Did anyone make the right prediction about personal computers, supercenters, drive-through pharmacies? You learn and progress from there. One projection is that health and beauty sales on the Internet are going to $18 billion by 2004 with 80 percent of that being from pharmacy sales. Does that come true? Does it come true in that time frame? I don't know. For consumers learning to shop online, it is almost like learning to use personal computers. It's still not easy enough for them. It's still too hard to shop. But what will happen when there is more marketing muscle behind the Internet? Today, it's still hard to predict.

Roehm: As content evolves and as it can be linked to patient medical conditions or disease states, people will be more receptive toward that.

We're beginning now to get the infrastructure in place. We're dealing with privacy concerns.

But if consumers understand the types of medications they are on, they could make better front-end purchasing decisions, particularly with respect to OTC and vitamin products and the way they can interact with prescription products.

Zigerelli: When we were contemplating launching an online presence by buying soma.com (which became CVS.com), the first question we asked was: Do we think this business will grow to be big enough to fundamentally change the business model?

If the answer is no, then whether it becomes 5 percent or 12 percent, doesn't matter.

We concluded the answer was no, and that's because the viability of Internet retailing has to be determined on a category by category basis.

If you're in the computer business, which entails heavy analysis of what to buy, you can really get that information over the Internet and then make a buying decision. That's a value proposition to consumers.

With us, the value proposition category is not acute prescriptions, it is mail order. Now the mail order business is about 12 percent of pharmacy sales, and the biggest share of that business on the Internet is Merck Medco and that's because Merck converted their mail order business to the Net. That is working because the Internet is a better value proposition for mail order consumers.

Vitamins are also high on the list of what sells on the Net. This is also a business with a strong mail order component. If you take a lot of vitamins, it's hard to keep up with trends. Shoppers have to go to more than one place to find what they need. If they find a good mail order business, they buy from it. So today, companies like Vitamin Shoppe are converting their mail order business to the Internet.

Look at the rest of our businesses, think about how much time it takes to get on a computer, go down a list, and order. For the time it takes, you could have already gone to CVS or Walgreens, gotten what you want, and you're home or at work.

How big a business will it get to be? For us, not big enough to stop building 400 brick-and-mortar stores a year.

Griffin: Today, the consumer is in the driver's seat more than ever and that's because, thanks to the Internet, they have more information than ever before. In relation to our channel, to what extent is there a revolution in customers; to what extent have they changed their shopping habits?

Ziemke: You can hear the distant hoof-beats, but can't see the horses yet. There have been all kinds of changes going on in the way people do business, club stores that didn't exist until recently, specialty stores, category killers, so I think this is another evolution.

We don't know how big it will be, but it will develop first primarily in areas where there is information and selection issues. As computer use gets better, and as people start to find the value in it, it will expand.

Concannon: If you look at our business, we had 1.2 million new customers coming into our third quarter.

Of course, you could say that since Wal Mart gets 100 million customers a week, what's so great about 1.2 million. But in a very short period of time and in a learning organization, we are showing good growth. And in our last quarter, 59 percent of our orders were from repeat customers.

So those are some underlying dynamics and fundamentals that are really solid. But we never believed that stores were going to be empty. For us to be a pretty big business in a relatively short period of time, there is a lot of growth and dynamics that will take place.

But you also will be doing more value added services on the Internet. You can counsel patients, provide personalized information, help them search and be very precise with purchases. But then the question is if CVS.com does a very good job on the Internet, what happens when that customer goes into a CVS store?

Does the store now have to deliver differently to match what the Internet offers? Does it mean better counseling by pharmacists in the stores? There are a lot if different ways to see what the influences will be, not just shopping online. The ripples will be from more than just transaction purchases on the Internet.

Multi-channel shopping

Griffin: Everyone is talking about customers who shop in stores and customers who shop online. What about the evolution of multi-channel marketing? Does it currently happen?

Roehm: Our challenge is to understand where it is today and service our customers in all our formats, whether physical or not. We have to provide services and figure out where our customers are going, then build the formats that will service consumer needs in ways that make sense for them and us. There will be higher expectations for our stores because of the Internet, and it's up to us to meet those challenges.

Zigerelli: In existing markets, the customer who is most likely to come back regularly to CVS.com is our key customer using us in a multi-channel way.

In markets with loyalty cards, the number of customers using their cards on the Internet is growing.

If you think about it, the average consumer today shops more multi-outets than ever before. Five or 10 years ago, a woman who shopped at Saks would never admit that she also shopped Marshalls. But today, it doesn't matter because you're a consummate shopper who might find something on the Internet as well as in the stores. This whole concept of shopping anywhere any time is true.

How hard is it to integrate?

Griffin: What does it take to create an integrated model where the consumer can seamlessly move from the store and back?

Gleeson: We made a $150 million investment in our pharmacy system and today that system lets people access us on the Internet, through the mail, through the phone, through the fax and through the stores.

Ultimately, we will also have to have the same type of integrated infrastructure for the front end.

Until we get to the point where we can provide loyalty aspects however, it will be difficult to tie them into stores through the front end.

We think the Internet is best for categories that are complicated or information intensive like cosmetics, computers, medicated shampoos. There are probably 80 products on our site that relate to that.

But they all relate to something that has to do with product ingredients, and when you get into that, you start to realize that consumers are looking more at solutions and less at brands. When a consumer can go in with a condition like dermatitis and look at brands across product ingredients, you've got a whole new approach at brand marketing.

Is one-to-one marketing working?

Griffin: How do you balance respect for the customer and their privacy without leaving on the table the opportunities to serve them better one to one?

Zigerelli: We are finding that when you ask people to opt in for health care, the results are much more positive when we say we are CVS. We have your prescription records, and we are keeping them to ourselves. We are managing the one-to-one relationship. We are not giving them to a third party. That's a big plus.

Gleeson: Our policy is not to share private information. We don't share this information with anyone. I don't know how many millions of dollars we've left on the table, all of us have.

It's part of the deal in pharmacy that privacy is way up on the top of the list. The issues being dealt with by people in more general merchandise categories on the Internet have been dealt with by us for many years.

It boils down to this: We share the information only with people within our company who have something to do with the actual services they are providing and nothing beyond that.

Concannon: Particularly as a new pharmacy building new trust and new reputations, we have to be that much more careful.

We separate the person's account from their credit card until they're at the end of their transaction. Even if they were intercepted, one wouldn't be any good without the other, and it wouldn't reveal anything.

And with the e-mail reminders, it looks a little unfriendly because it says: 'Dear so and so, prescription l23xyz is ready to be refilled.' There's no mention of what that drug is or what it's usage is for.

We saw from day one that the privacy issues on the prescription side and the privacy issues on the front of the store have a significantly disproportionate rank within the store. Anything you don't want to be asking your next door neighbor about does extremely well on the site. That's our currency. That's the one thing that can't be squandered.

Ziemke: We use target e-mail as a reminder so if it's a customer we haven't seen in a while, they'll get a reminder, a special offer, to come back.

Somebody who orders frequently, but with smaller orders, will get a targeted e-mail that will suggest that we will give a $20 discount on orders over $80 or more.

It's more of a targeted e-mail based on slicing and dicing of demographics and not so much product orientated.

Roehm: We tend to use the people who opt in for reminders and currently, about 97 percent have opted in for e-mail reminders for front of store products.

As time goes by, consumers will be more likely to log on and ask to consult with an online pharmacist in a secure environment rather than opt in to be sent e-mail.

The information relevant to pharmacy we keep close to our vest.

Zigerelli: In markets where we have in-store loyalty programs, we ask consumers when they sign up if they are interested in finding out more about certain information categories like stress or heart disease, and we found that service is tremendously popular.

If a consumer believes they are opting into something valuable to them that they chose, they are much more likely to see that as care-taking rather than going after them to sell more products.

Griffin: How are you changing the way you market and acquire customers?

Concannon: Because of the dictates of the market and because we're getting a little smarter, we've gone from a dozen affiliate or portal deals down to three or four.

One of our biggest deals is with our on-going partnership with Amazon.com. Amazon is a part owner in drugstore.com, and we bought the health and beauty tab at Amazon. And now we're part of the pervasive navigation at Amazon in each page of the store, and that has been a significant source of customers for us.

In today's tight capital marketplace, marketing is a matter of where we put focused resources to draw the most customers.

Rite Aid is currently marketing the drugstore.com brand in a half dozen ways, including weekly circulars, on register receipts, at the front end, in TV advertising and in pharmacies.

Gleeson: Because Walgreens stores have substantial traffic count, one of our major new marketing endeavors is to get e-mail addresses into our systems, and we are actively promoting that in our stores. That does create a good channel for customers to visit the Web site.

But the main thing is to use the site as a logical extension of the stores and people naturally gravitate there if they are Internet users for their prescription services and other things. So we have not really gone through a major promotional campaign outside of that.

It would be very expensive to do a major television campaign just for walgreens.com.

Zigerelli: In the past, CVS has done some special television commercials to build awareness for its Internet store.

Now instead of television, we market CVS.com by tagging the Web site in all of our circulars, and we sometimes do a special page in the circulars with offers unique for CVS.com, which drives a lot of traffic.

On the Internet, we have just a couple of select partnerships to drive traffic. WebMD drives traffic that converts into sales and they get a piece of revenues back for that, so we're not spending millions of dollars up front to create traffic. We give them a piece of the sale after it happens so that the traffic that is being driven is financially affordable, and we also give WebMD advertising in our stores.

I think that, like Walgreens, what's important to us is that we have 20 million people every week coming into our stores with e-mail addresses, and that's our best source of advertising.

Evaluating marketing strategies

Griffin: Which marketing vehicles have really worked and which haven't?

Ziemke: What hasn't worked for us are the AOLs of the world. It turns out that those types of things don't even come close to good affiliate programs and utilizing in-store opportunities. We've done selected e-mail, but we've never gone the TV route. Too expensive.

But banner advertising didn't seem to produce at all. They were extremely cost ineffective.

Concannon: We will work with the manufacturers to give the customer what they want and at the same time, the manufacturers can address strategic brand objectives. They can tell their brand story. They can provide consumers with the information they were seeking.

What we did is approach the manufacturers and say, listen, you know your brands, your categories and your consumers better than we ever will, and what we know is how to create a really great shopping experience and use the personal experience of the Internet to draw customers, so to merge these two is pretty potent, and we've been pleased at how successful it's been so far--a win for everyone.

Brands on the 'Net

Griffin: How are the branded manufacturers fitting in with what retailers are doing online?

Gleeson: We would all like to see a way for our customers and our store associates to have Internet access methods to get product information.

It's a terrific new avenue and it's a terrific opportunity to enhance not only the shopping experience, but the information content in the stores.

Beyond that, there are suppliers that have more direct involvement in this. There is digital photography. We will see deep involvement with suppliers on digital photography.

Roehm: We are in the process of developing brand strategies with manufacturers. We're looking forward to reaching the point where we can offer manufacturers an opportunity to market within our environment both within the stores and on the Internet.

Eventually, we want to slice and dice information, particularly on things like product ingredients, so consumers can make buying decisions not just on price and value, but on how product ingredients in different products might interact. We will see shopping evolve to include quadrants of different types of products to fit consumer needs in different areas of our environment.

Zigerelli: Marketing with manufacturers is an excellent way to further strengthen partnerships.

We're currently doing a brand marketing program with Kodak. We were the first, I think, with Kodak to combine what we are doing in the stores with what we are doing on the Internet.

So you can come into CVS stores and if you want to get two-day processing, you can get single prints. We give you a code, and if you come back two days later, we have already loaded the pictures onto CVS.com so you have pictures to send to family and friends, even if you don't have a digital camera.

We're doing similar things with the pharmaceutical companies. We have an allergy channel for Claritin on CVS.com. We put Claritin on the prescription bags in stores. We have an endcap for Claritin, so we're looking for ways to create an enhanced shopping experience for the consumer in an integrated way.

We tie in with the Web sites of our partners when we want to hype an event. If, for example, Coke is going to do a special celebrity event, then we will tie into that event on CVS.com by inviting consumers to enter the contest online much in the same way as we do in our circulars for the stores.

Griffin: Could a supplier become an Internet competitor?

Zigerelli: Most manufacturers that we do business with have concluded that trying to become a retailer is not exactly the expertise that manufacturers have.

But just as we have a right to sell store brands that compete with our manufacturer's brands, manufacturers have a right to sell on the Internet if they choose.

But the partnerships that I have with suppliers are very deep in terms of sharing information. With that deep a partnership, as a manufacturer, I would think twice about the death of the partnership because it becomes more complicated. I don't know of any supplier that we do business with today that I feel threatened with in terms of competing on the Internet. What consumer would want to go to Gillette.com to buy two razors or to Coke to buy a can of Coke? That's not the way the consumer shops. I just don't see it as an issue at this time.

Ziemke: I agree with Larry, They're not in the retail business. To try to get into a fulfillment process to take care of a limited number of people, it just runs contrary to their mission statements. I don't know of any manufacturer who is aggressively pursuing it.

Gleeson: It is difficult enough to sell convenience-oriented merchandise on the Internet, even as a retailer.

It is even more difficult to do that as a manufacturer without a full assortment, unless you're in a very specialized business with specialized products in which case, we are probably not carrying it anyway.

Opportunities ahead

Griffin: What is the biggest near-term opportunity on the horizon?

Ziemke: Providing a larger offering to a larger customer base, particularly with products that you cannot afford to put into your mix on a store-by-store basis.

You can take a category like vitamins and nutritionals, and you can have a huge offering. When you let people know it's there, it becomes a service issue. It lets you say to customers: Look what else we have for you.

Concannon: We're very fond of saying that our biggest competitor is not stores or other dot-coms. It's ingrained customer buying habits. They're use to driving to stores and picking the stuff up, so the opportunity to change customer behavior rests on us making it as easy, convenient and intuitive as possible.

We have the mechanisms to drive traffic to our site, so if we have what they want, and you're covering the four P's of retailing and making it easy to shop the store, I'm confident that we can win the customer. That's what it comes down to. It cuts into things like having the right items. That's how we're going to win the day by making it very easy and intuitive.

Roehm: You have to continue to evolve and redefine the site both on the drug and food side. There will be integrations with the distribution centers that are not commonplace today. We need further integration throughout our stores and service areas. We need expansion of product selection and more of an integration between food and drug operations.

Zigerelli: The key challenge is to continue to enhance the shopper experience and to grow, while at the same time making the economics work better and better.

We have integrated a lot. We still have room for integration. Photo is totally integrated. The same category manager handles the whole business for stores and the Internet.

We are getting tremendous success with incremental sales without incremental people. We expect to make money in the next year or so. To be able to accomplish that while keeping up with consumer demands on the Internet is our key challenge.

Gleeseon: Because of the pharmacy, drug store operators have a bond with our customer that doesn't exist in other types of convenience outlets, and a lot of that is because of the information that we store on their prescription history.

There's a very strong feeling on the part of consumers that those stores have my information. What we will experience on the Internet is the ability to extend that type of advantage with that customer relationship in other areas, as well.

I think as we go forward, the people who are able to leverage that customer technology to lock that bond in are going to be the real winners, and the Internet is the ideal medium to build these relationships. It is the No. 1 opportunity for the future.

Back to Basics: Making Sense of Internet Insanity - use of Internet-based marketing within art industry and online resources

2005-12-27T12:25:00.000-08:00

Back to Basics: Making Sense of Internet Insanity - use of Internet-based marketing within art industry and online resources
Art Business News

Learn what the growing presence of the Web will mean for brick-and-mortar galleries

A visit to the Internet search engine Yahoo! is all it takes to see how intertwined the art and Internet worlds have become. Type the word "art" in the search space at Yahoo! and you're told that there are 39,999 sites for you to visit. That's 39,999 now; at the rate that artists and galleries are creating new home pages, that number could topple 50,000 next year.

Amid the thousands of Web sites and millions of pieces of artwork for sale on the Internet, analysts say it is impossible to determine what revenue art has generated on the Internet. The growth of art Web sites is a sign that there is money to be made.

But if people are buying art on the Internet, does that mean it's coming at the expense of the local gallery or frame shop? Not exactly. While it's far too early to determine how the rapid expansion of art and frame sales on the Internet will shake out for "brick-and-mortar" stores, it is clear that the Web could add to gallery and frame shops' bottom lines.

What is clear is the art industry is making a decided shift into the online world. With a click of a button, a customer sitting at home or work can have a framed Ernesto Rodriguez landscape print with a black wood frame and ivory mat shipped to their doorstep for $400.

And online art buying isn't the only change the Internet is creating. In October OneMade.com launched an online art and crafts festival where Internet browsers and buyers shopped for one-of-a-kind handmade works. Many museums already have online stores and larger museums, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, allow an online visitor to view a number of paintings in various collections in crisp, clear color.

The Internet has gained importance in all levels of the art world, from $50 prints to $40,000 works of art. But where do you turn to get your feet wet before diving into the online art world?

First, it may be comforting to know that there are two distinctly different Web sites out there serving the art community--one, is the business-to-customer (B2C) site, the second is business-to-business (B2B).

B2B, sites are geared toward businesses working with businesses before products reach the end user. Those differ from B2C sites that sell items online directly to the customer.

FrameYourArt.com is one of those business-to-business sites in the industry. Charging a monthly fee to members, now approximately 1,000 `mom and pop' frame shops,

In this world of dot.com mania, there are literally hundreds of Web sites devoted to art, so singling out a single one is tough. But in an effort to get you plugged in, here's a glimpse at three sites that offer Web opportunities for galleries and publishers.

ALL ART PORTAL ART AFFAIRS
www.allartportal.com www.artaffairs.com

MISSION STATEMENT The site is A Web portal for the
dedicated to the global professional art
needs of publishers, and framing community,
photographers, art ArtAffairs.com features
buyers, a directory and exposure
manufacturers and and access to databases
the independent of prospective art and
frame shop and moulding trade clients,
gallery owner. suppliers and publishers
Meeting needs by with no third party
providing software, involvement.
support and service
and creating
profitable
relationships is a
company goal.

TARGETED FOR A true B2B and B2C The site is strictly B2B
site, it allows and is targeted at the
consumers to buy art art and framing
online but links industries, publishers
those customers and distributors and
directly to frame galleries, not the
shops in their area. general public.
The local frame shop
makes the sale.
AllArtPortal.com
makes its revenue
from participating
frame shops paying a
membership fee.

SETS THEM APART Under the ArtAffairs.com will be
AllArtPortal.com circulating a printed
umbrella is Frame version of its Web site
YourArt.com, a site to further promote
that offers members business activities and
exclusive sales on new product
wholesale art and announcements as they
framing products. take place online. With
The site is also the launch of
designed as a ArtAffairs.com's new
centralized site for e-commerce center, the
art professionals buying and selling of
and offers a variety art and art supplies
of features designed will become the primary
to help art focus of the site.
professionals
navigate the Web and
stay on top of the
news.

QUOTE FROM THE Al Marco, c.e.o.: Meir Gluzberg, director:
PRESIDENT "The moment I "Our site will soon
started the Web focus strictly on the
site, I had the business to business
small businesses in aspect. We have a more
mind. Our mission is global view with offices
facilitating the off in Europe and Asia, and
line with the online we believe we will offer
community." our customers the
greatest price
advantages."

SPECIAL FEATURE You can look up The "Take a Poll"
stock quotes and the feature allows visitors
site offers a direct to cast a vote on
link to the Weather certain art-related
Channel's Web site. questions. The site also
has a "Today in Art
History" section and a
"Quote of the Day."

ART WORLD COMMUNITY
www.artworldcommunity.com

MISSION STATEMENT ArtWorldCommunity.com is a place for consumers,
art enthusiasts, artists and businesses in the
art and framing industry to come together for
commerce, education, entertainment and
information. The community is separated into two
distinct sites called the Art World Marketplace,
which is open to the public and the Art and
Framing Exchange, a password protected site for
trade only.

TARGETED FOR The Web portal is attempting to bring the
fragmented art industry into one global online art
community marketplace and to uncover e-commerce
potential. The site has the feel of a financial or
commodity exchange where art is the commodity.

SETS THEM APART The site is very consumer oriented and offers
various auctions that offer fine art, jewelry,
housewares and a host of other products.

QUOTE FROM THE Steve Addi, c.e.o.: "We don't see a lot of new
PRESIDENT players coming into the online art world. The cost
to get involved is too prohibitive and the sites
are up and running now clearly have a huge
advantage."

SPECIAL FEATURE A host of features geared toward the financial
aspect of art, including a "Currency Conversion"
section and a news ticker.
Advice for Building Your Own Site

Steven Sams could be the new face of the modern struggling artist. By day, he is a Web site designer, steeped in the world of technology designing Web sites for businesses. By night, he switches gears to his passion and picks up a paint brush. He's a struggling artist--not financially, but artistically--hoping that an audience finds his work.

But Sams isn't waiting for customers to come to him. More than a year ago, Sams, who lives in Atlanta, used his day job to help out his evening passion by creating a Web site to showcase more than a dozen of his original works." I saw the huge potential the Internet provided," he said.

So did Haruo Kimura, owner of East Frames store in Brooklyn, N.Y. East Frames, a small, independent frame shop specializing in custom frame jobs, unveiled a Web site in 1996. Like Sams, Kimura built the East Frames site himself. Unlike Sams, Kimura isn't a professional Web designer.

"It took time, but I did it myself and I have gotten a pretty good response from it," Kimura said. "I get e-mails from all over the world that I obviously never would have received without the Web site."

As computers and the art world head down paths that appear to becoming more intertwined, many small gallery owners, artists and dealers want to have a presence on the Internet but wonder how to take the first step. While the easy answer is money--paying someone to design a home page for your business--there are ways to be "on the net" and not sink wads of cash into it.

While Sams is a professional Web designer, he's the first person to tell people that writing a big check to a Web designer isn't necessary for a gallery or artist to have a home page.

"Software that will walk you through building a Web site is available for under $100, and you can buy a scanner for less than $100. An ISP (Internet Service Provider) will cost $20 a month. An artist or gallery could get a simple home page up for around $200," Sams said.

Sams is partial to Microsoft Front Page, software ideal for creating a corporate Internet or Intranet site. A 45-day trial CD costs about $12, including shipping, at www.microsoft.com.

Time, more than money, is the cost of doing the job on your own, both men said. But the alternative can run thousands of dollars spent on a professional Web designer. Kimura gives this advice: don't expect a perfect Web site the first day it's up and running. The East Frames site improved over time as Kimura became more familiar with design and pulled advice from his friends.

Meanwhile, Sams would tell small businesses to give designing a Web site on their own a go before turning to a paid professional. "As a small business owner, I'd be looking to save money, and Web designers aren't cheap," he said. the site sells prints and frames to customers online. The orders are then filled at the closest member frame shop to the customer ordering the art.

Though the print, frame or both are ordered online at FrameYourArt.com, the order is filled at a member frame shop. Thus the online world and the brick-and-mortar worlds meet.

"Our mission is to facilitating the off line with the online community," said Al Marco, president and c.e.o.

A player in the business-to-consumer side in the online world is Artnet.com, featuring a stable of thousands of artists to choose from. Customers can click on any artist's name and see a sample of his or her work for sale. Buying is as simple as a mouse click and entering credit card information.

But ArtNet.com is also a business-to-business site as the company matches 1,100 galleries, 25,000 works of art and more than 10,000 artists with buyers worldwide.

GalleryRow.com offers work of hundreds of artists along with live auctions, exclusive art and featured works that change periodically.

"We provide artists with connections and speed with our backbone being marketing and advertising," said Wayne Melton, spokesman for GalleryRow.com. "For an artist to create what we provide them on the Internet we estimate it would cost $25,000."

What is a Virtual Gallery?

They're called "virtual galleries" and they are popping up all over the Internet as fast as you can say "www.buy-my-art.com." Some are beautiful Web sites with clear graphics and e-newsletters, others are simple Internet stops with little description and unclear images. The galleries also range in size from the massive Galleryrow.com that can show the works of thousands of artists all the way down to www.jasonejones. com, an online gallery for one artist--Jason E. Jones.

"The Internet is a wonderful tool because it allows me to reach people I would never have come in contact with," said Jones, an artist who lives in Chicago."I know that in the long run, the amount of people I could reach is enormous."

For those in the art world who aren't familiar with an online gallery, imagine visiting a traditional gallery and staring at a painting on the wall. Now shrink the painting down to a two-by two-inch square and imagine it appearing on your computer screen. While you walk from room to room in a gallery, on the computer each click of the mouse takes you to a new artist or a new painting. Sure you don't get to see the original up close. You can't view it hanging on a wall or run your fingers against the frame, but you can see all the works by Jones in a matter of minutes.

To get a larger scope of how prevalent art is on the Internet go to eBay.com and visit the Fine Art page. There, the type of art you want is broken down to dozens of subjects, styles and collections. On eBay.com, a search under "acrylic works" yields more than 50 paintings; in the prints section, customers can choose from more than 100 pieces. Ebay.com also provides links to auction houses, where bids can be made.

Still, the online art world is far from problem free. "There will always be a problem in selling original works over the Internet for a myriad of reasons," said Jerry Toefel, a private art broker. "But some of the weaknesses that come with buying work on the Internet could be turned around into positives."

Toefel compared buying art over the Internet to buying clothes online. If the company offers good service, a flexible return policy and competitive prices, people will use the Internet to buy.

"For someone to buy a $200 print online, have it mailed to their house and hang it on the wall and, if they don't like it, can easily return it, that will be tough for the brick-and-mortar stores to compete with," he said. "But the type of buyer I deal with won't buy online. But they would certainly research the painter and take a look at the photos of the pieces online."

"I didn't think [the Internet] would be met with such open arms by the art world. That said, the galleries will always be here, but they will compete more and more with the dot.coms," he said.

Taxing Internet Porn

2005-12-27T12:24:00.001-08:00

Taxing Internet Porn
Washingtonpost.com

I'm no free-market libertarian. You'll never hear me argue against a healthy dose of regulation if it helps consumers without stopping businesses from turning a profit.

Almost never.

A group of Democratic senators last week introduced a bill that would slap a 25 percent tax on Internet pornography sites to pay for a trust fund to "protect" children online. I'm sure they think this is a great idea, but as for me, I'm hoping it will end up at the back of the Senate parliamentarian's filing cabinet under the spare coffee filters.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on the proposal: "'Our children can literally stumble into adult Web sites that are inappropriate for their viewing,' said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who joined eight Democratic colleagues in introducing the Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005. 'As parents, it is our responsibility to protect our children -- and no longer does protecting our children mean only holding their hand while crossing the street.'"

The problem, according to the bill's sponsor, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) is that the Internet porn industry brings in $12 billion in annual revenues (think ABC + NBC + CBS, the Times-Picayune said) from 420 million Web pages frequented primarily by children aged 12 to 17.

"Lincoln said software is available that can help Web operators keep children away from viewing inappropriate material, but only 3 percent use them. Most only require a child to 'check off' a statement asserting that they are 18 or older, she said," the newspaper reported.

Strangely enough, Lincoln's Web site doesn't contain a single press release or statement from 2005. For some official touting of the bill, see cosponsor Sen. Debbie Stabenow's (Mich.) site . Other cosponsors include Sens. Kent Conrad (N.D.), Tom Carper (Del.), Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Ken Salazar (Colo.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.). Democratic Reps. Jim Matheson (Utah) and Robert Menendez (N.J.) introduced a similar bill in the House of Representatives.

The Bayou Buzz Web site noted that the bill was prompted by a report sponsored by The Third Way , which writer Steve Sabludowski described as a "a growing political organization, designed to energize the progressive base and end the partisan bickering that has overcome the United States. It has recently begun the New South Project, which is an effort to address the growing alienation of mainstream southerners from progressive ideas, leaders and groups. The New South Project is chaired by Sens. Landrieu and Mark Pryor, D-Ark."

In other words, the idea is to raise more southern voter support for conservative-sounding policies that any good Democrat can back. What a relief! For a moment I thought that their primary purpose was to save the children.

The Associated Press carried some expert commentary: "Tim Richardson, an Internet commerce professor at Seneca College in Toronto, said the actual number of pornographic Web pages is impossible to confirm because they are so often duplicated to force Internet search engines to list them more prominently. But he said the growth has been astronomical because the pornography industry knows how to use technology to stay one step ahead of popular government regulations. 'The whole launching of the porn industry in the 1980s was tied to the VCR and the ability to watch XXX movies in your own home,' Richardson said. 'There are precedents to how the porn industry has exploited technology, so the Internet is nothing new.'"

The Times-Picayune and the AP quoted Tom Hymes of the Free Speech Coalition for the porn industry's spin. "The report says 12- to 17-year-olds are the top consumers of Internet pornography, based on older studies that found adult Web sites make their money based mainly on how many visitors they attract. Hymes said that business model didn't work and was ditched by most Web sites around 2001," the AP wrote. "'This is completely offensive to this industry because it has matured over the last couple years. It is not interested in children coming to Web sites anymore,' Hymes said. 'We want verification, but we need a solution that works.'"

What we have on our hands here is a product of good intentions. No one wants to think about their kids spending hour after hour cruising sites for barely legal cheerleaders and smooth college boys. That's a privilege we get along with our voter registration card and our registration for the draft.

As Richardson told the AP, the kids looking at porn aren't the ones in real danger: "'It's not underage customers the government should be worried about,' but minors pictured on the sites."

Before that time, kids shouldn't be using the Internet for porn binges, even though they will. The solution, as advocated by so many Internet safety experts from the pantheon of political viewpoints, is simple: Move the computer to the family room, and make sure the monitor is visible to anyone who walks through the room. While you're at it, install a content filter.

I don't call that a total solution, but as long as the connection feeds the home, kids can use it to look at whatever they want. If we want a real solution, we need to talk to our children about sex, pornography and the difference between the two.

If that won't help them make more discerning choices about their Internet use, cut the connection when you're not home.

You can say one thing about Internet porn -- it won't make you fat. You cannot say the same thing about advertisements for junk food, which a new report warns are imperiling the health of children.

"Food-promoting websites aimed at children as young as six are using marketing techniques that are banned in print and broadcast media," the Scotsman reported. "The study for Food Magazine said foods high in fat, sugar and salt were being pushed at children via websites. It said young people are being encouraged to buy unhealthy food for prizes, or passwords that will let them take part in computer games. Advertisers are also promoting the idea that certain products will make children more popular, the report warns."

The study was sponsored by a British group called Sustain, which wants a ban on junk-food marketing to children, the paper reported.

Here is a little more from the story: "The report found that many sites were specifically targeted at children as young as six or seven. It said children, who often accessed sites unsupervised, were being asked to give companies their contact details and those of their friends in order to allow companies to target them directly. Concerns were also raised about Chupa Chups, a popular brand of lolly, advertised on a website which says they are 'good for you'. The advert goes on to say they are 'a tasty way to give your brain a boost', because some contain glucose. It also claims the vitamin C content can prevent and treat the common cold, fight bacteria and viruses, help speed up the healing of cuts and grazes and help to maintain healthy blood vessels."

With names like " Chupa Chups " (featuring the homepage admonition that "Sucking is good for you!" -- "It's natural," "It makes you feel good.") and " Flake," I'm surprised that any amount of Web advertising can make kids eat these sweets. Of course, they're probably wondering what would induce any self-respecting American to chomp on a "Chunky" or "Mounds." But I digress...

What do you think when you hear the word "CoqRoq?" Try playing around with it out loud for a second.

Yeah, not Coq au Vin.

AdAge reported last week that Burger King, the generator of a Web site designed to promote a new chicken sandwich, accidentally created a big beef instead.

"Even though it has suddenly removed sexual double entendres from its new Web site, CoqRoq.com, Burger King today denied it had received any complaints from consumers or other outside groups," AdAge wrote. "CoqRoq.com, created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami, the agency that created Burger King's Subservient Chicken site, is designed to look like the kind of crudely outrageous Web site created by a rock band. ... Among other things, CoqRoq.com, which is linked directly to the main Burger King Web site, includes photo galleries with Polaroid-style shots of young girls with the handwritten captions 'Groupies love the Coq' and 'groupies love Coq.' Since the site went live yesterday, those captions and others have been erased from the online materials."

The AdAge staff, God bless 'em, took a screen shot, but for the life of me, I can't find a single coq there.

AdAge also features two germane items: One on Motorola's "Strip Tease" ad campaign, showing off the naughty benefits of its Moto E815 phone; the other is on "American Idol's" Carrie Underwood and her appearance in the "Carrie Kit Kat" ad for Hershey's Kit Kat Bar.

Internet the marketing tool of choice for realtors - Technology Update

2005-12-27T12:24:00.000-08:00

Internet the marketing tool of choice for realtors - Technology Update
Real Estate Weekly

AgentConnect.com and RealtyNow.com, providers of distinct marketing solutions for real estate agents, and corporate parent Next Phase Media, the world's premier online referral source, announced the findings of a national survey demonstrating the degree to which real estate agents and brokers have become increasingly sophisticated and avid Internet marketers.

In fact, according to the survey, an Internet web presence has become the most important method for generating real estate sales leads, after hanging a "For Sale" sign on the front lawn.

Survey respondents, however, say they rely on the Internet for far more than a web site to promote their real estate services and sales inventory. More than of respondents are already using an online referral network to increase sales opportunities, and 50% of those who do not, say they are considering joining a referral network. In fact, agents and brokers cited Internet lead generation services as one of the top four most popular marketing techniques.

The complete survey results are available at the web sites of AgentConnect.com and RealtyNow.com. (The survey was fielded this summer. Questionnaires were sent to over 10,000 registered agents and brokers. A total of 200 agents and brokers from every region of the United States answered the survey.

"Real estate professionals are quickly becoming sophisticated Internet marketers who understand the importance of a multi-faceted approach to the Internet to reach buyers and sellers," said Payam Zamani, founder and CEO of Next Phase Media, parent company of AgentConnect.com and RealtyNow.com. "In fact, more than two-thirds of the agents we surveyed are either using or considering an online referral network to capture qualified leads."

Only 7% of respondents say the Internet hasn't affected today's real estate business. Meanwhile, 72% agree that an Internet campaign is critical to remaining at the top of the market in today's business environment.

Generating client leads is clearly a major business and marketing concern for the industry. Increasing client leads and home sales were virtually tied as the top marketing objectives of respondents.

Business concerns cited most often in the survey were 1) state of the economy, 2) supply of area homes, 3) level of professionalism among competitors and 4) lack of qualified new client leads.

Agents and brokers say that because of the economy, buyers and sellers are more particular than ever and there are more real estate agents competing for business.

However, despite concerns about the economy, some 65% of respondents expect the real estate market in their area to be "very strong" or "strong" over the next 6 months.

The new survey study by AgentConnect.com and RealtyNow.com offers sound advice to consumers about choosing a real estate agent, buying a home and staging a house for sale. Among the Study findings:

* Knowledge of the local area, personality and compatibility, and energy and dedication are the top three characteristics, respectively, cited as criteria for choosing an agent.

* Spring is by far the best time of year to sell a home.

* The kitchen, by far, is the most critical room influencing the sale of a house, followed by the master bedroom and then the family room.

* In descending order of importance, the top five improvements sellers should make before selling a house are: remove clutter, paint the interior, paint the exterior, deodorize the house and make general repairs.

* Beige, followed closely by white, is the best color to paint a house going up for sale.

* For sellers, the biggest hurdle to a successful transaction is coming to terms with the true market value of their home.

* For buyers, the biggest hurdles to success are (1) finding and concentrating their efforts with a single agent who they trust and (2) being realistic about price.

Knowing You, Knowing Me - marketing on the Internet - Panel Discussion

2005-12-27T12:23:00.000-08:00

Knowing You, Knowing Me - marketing on the Internet - Panel Discussion
Chief Executive

Use the Net to learn about your customers, and you might learn something about your company, too.

There's an old marketing adage about return on investment: You know you're wasting half your money, you just don't know which half.

Old, and maybe outdated, now that CEOs are beginning to recognize the marketing value of the Internet. More than any other marketing tool, the Net opens the door to identifying and communicating personally with your customers. With permission-based e-mail marketing, customers are allowing -- even asking -- companies to talk to them. Knowing your customers can help you fine-tune pitches and products.

Currently, about 40 percent of U.S. households are online, and the rest of the world is promptly joining them. With broadband and wireless communications just around the corner, more novel ideas for interacting with customers are sure to follow.

To explore this virtual and still largely uncharted territory, an E-Conference panel of experts shared their unique perspectives with a roomful of business leaders. The panelists: Michael Kubin, founder and co-CEO of Leading Web Advertisers, which has a proprietary tracking system that allows advertisers, agencies and publishers to gather competitive data; new media pioneer Tom Nicholson, chief creative officer of Icon Medialab, an interactive ad agency; and Pam Alexander, CEO of Alexander Ogilvy, one of the leading public relations agencies representing technology companies. Following are the major topics discussed, along with some practical advice from the panelists.

How is the Internet redefining traditional marketing?

"Web marketing allows you to go from initial message to sale and beyond, all the way out to customer relations," remarked Kubin. "It's accountable and measurable -- the perfect direct-response medium. If 50 percent of advertising isn't working, with the Web you know which 50 percent."

Nicholson advocated using the Internet to engage customers. "Invite the customer into your company to become a partner," he said. "Companies must take that idea and look at how to deliver greater value to the customer. It's about satisfying customer needs."

What is the evolving role of public relations in the Internet economy?

No longer is the function of PR merely to disseminate information to the press and to Wall Street. "It's not that communicating to the media and analyst community isn't important anymore," Alexander explained. "It's that the priorities have shifted so that Web strategy is focused more on communicating with customers, as well as with employees. The explosion of information on the Internet means that reaching key media people, in the business and consumer press, may be more difficult than ever before, because they're inundated with information:

To work the Web more effectively, the panel suggested combining the dissemination of information with the kind of relationship marketing "that happens at conferences like this," said Alexander. "That is a very powerful tool to begin to break through the clutter and reach the opinion leaders and influencers in your market segment."

Does Internet marketing demand different tactics in the B2B world than those used in B2C?

"I actually don't differentiate too much between the two categories for the purposes of Web strategy," Nicholson said. "When it comes to customers, it's a question of looking at each constituent and figuring out what his needs are -- the value propositions, whether he's an employee, a supplier, a partner or an end customer."

Regardless of whether you're operating in the B2C or B2B marketplace, use the Net to get information back from the customer. "Understand exactly what the customer wants and needs and is about, and then shift your enterprise to adjust to that," Nicholson added. Technology or not, those are traditional rules of doing business.

Is the Internet, then, essentially a high-powered conduit for classic relationship marketing?

Marketing still comes down to understanding your product and your customer and then figuring out the right tools for the job. "A huge challenge for the marketer on the Web," Kubin contended, "is to integrate everything. It's not just about driving traffic to your site or branding. It's a combination of things. It's not one size fits all."

To make sure your product fits every customer, Kubin emphasized using the Internet to facilitate better understanding of key customers and then to tailor personalized dialogues with each one.

Speaking of Internet marketing tools, the most ubiquitous are the banner ads that adorn pages all across the Web. Their effectiveness is often questioned, so how can they be maximized?

Banner ads are a big part of Kubin's business. "It kills me to see how little thought goes into a lot of them," he lamented, "because it's wasting dollars." For instance, a site with a light green background will feature light green banners, in effect camouflaging the ads.

Nicholson argued, however, that the Internet has not yet proven to be a terribly successful true advertising vehicle, that it's really more of relationship vehicle. "I'll go on record as saying that all the trend lines are down when it comes to the direct marketing piece [of the Internet], and even the branding piece to some degree, if you just focus on the things we'd call traditional advertising, such as banners and interstitials."

Undaunted, Kubin offered suggestions for creating more effective banners. "Use different colors," he said. "Use large type. The consumer is not looking for your ad. He's looking for anything but your ad; therefore, you've got to put something up there that's going to grab that consumer."

Nicholson put forth an alternative: "Take that media money that you're spending to buy banner space on Yahoo! and put it into building out the value offering to your customers on your site and on relationship building. Millions of dollars are being applied [to advertising] that might drive a little traffic, but if the traffic comes and they don't stay, you've wasted that media money."

Web marketers, the panel concurred, must continue to mine customer data in order to more accurately target their efforts. "A lot of it has to do with tracking," Kubin said, "to find out what kind of footprints consumers leave, what sites they go to -- mountain climbing, travel, cars, financial, whatever. Then marketers will be better able to aggregate consumers and target ads they think are particularly appropriate to their interests."

So is the Internet something every company should be using as a marketing tool? "That's a bit like asking how many companies could exist without a telephone," Alexander quipped. "We're in the communications age, and if you don't have the infrastructure, you're not going to be part of a network." Added Kubin: "Anybody who ignores the medium, which can take the marketing process from the announcement of a product or service to the initial sale, is missing a huge opportunity."

Marketing management: proactive Internet strategies maximize hotels' revenue, reservations - News

2005-12-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

Marketing management: proactive Internet strategies maximize hotels' revenue, reservations - News
Hotel & Motel Management

Miami -- Can typo-pirates, spammers and search engines filch online revenue? Is it legal? How does one find them, and more importantly, how can one fight them?

The Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International's Hotel Internet Marketing Strategic Conference, held in December at the InterContinental Miami, featured speakers and panel discussions about these and other issues about brand and trademark protection, and the pros and cons of keyword bidding and pop-up marketing.

Forty-five percent of travelers used the Internet during 2003 as their primary planning resource, and marketers who aren't keeping a watchful eye on their online branding might be losing considerable revenue, according to Brian Murray, v.p. of client services for Cyveillance, an online intelligence company.

Everything from misspelled addresses to spamming with mislabeled links (some of which are scams) are used to lure or misguide customers away from the sites they're searching, Murray said.

"Hospitality brands are abused prolifically to divert online customers and capture revenue," he said.

When one downloads certain software utilities, unauthorized adware embeds itself in one's browser, adding unwanted pop-up ads and logos. The adware examines keywords, URLs and search terms on a consumer's browser and then launches targeted ads to them.

"If someone is popping into your site uninvited, how do you work with that?" asked Bill Carroll, panel facilitator and visiting assistant professor at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University.

"We put a 'predatory attack' clause into all our [partner] agreements, but it's sad we had to ask," said Mike Wylie, v.p. of e-commerce for Wyndham International. "There is a place for [intermediaries], though, if we set strict guidelines and deadlines."

Jens Thraenhart, director of Internet strategy for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, cancelled a contract with one third-party site.

"They didn't think they had to stop [attacking our site]," Thraenhart said. "We're now working on rebuilding a partnership with them, but we have to create a win-win situation."

Michael Menis, director of global marketing services for InterContinental Hotels Group, recommended clauses to franchisees, even though many contracts are ultimately between the hotel and the intermediary.

Keyword positioning

Paid placement is another thorn in the hospitality industry's side, Murray said.

"The hospitality industry has embraced keyword purchasing more than any other industry," he said. "What has rapidly become mainstream has resulted in rampant abuse."

"The consumer does not care [about sponsored links] ... yet," said Peter Greenberg of The Travel Channel. "Consumers have lost loyalty and are cost driven. But hotel sites offering 'lowest rates guaranteed' are hoping consumers don't do the math. Sooner or later, we'll do the math. Once we do, it's war."

Keyword bidding panel members held various opinions about the value of keyword positioning.

"Up to 70 percent of business on top of hotel selling sites comes from keywords, which may cost $6 or $7 [per hit] for each word," said Don Smith, v.p. sales for WorldRes.

Gino Giovannelli, v.p. of e-business strategy for Carlson Cos., said that while 40 percent of Radisson.com's hits come from search engines, their direct submissions netted a return on investment ratio of $13 returned for every $1 spent, while keyword buys garnered a 12-to-1 ROI.

Managing a sizable keyword list is a full-time job, according to Jeff Johnson, director of media for iCrossing, whose keyword ratio is 80-to-20 for natural results versus paid keyword bidding.

"When someone wants a particular brand and is taken to a third party, we've already lost from 18 [percent] to 30 percent to a third party from a customer who was rightfully ours," said attendee Linda Ghaffari of FelCor Lodging Trust.

"In general, it is lawful in the [United States] to purchase a competitor's trademark name in the context of comparative research," Giovannelli said. "A local court in Nanterre, France, though, recently set a precedent by ruling that the sale of trademark keywords is unlawful."

"The people you are mad at are the same people you are selling blocks of room to," said Scott Hyden, g.m. of Travelweb.com. "Don't sell to them, or put it in writing exactly what you want them to do, and if they won't do it, don't sell to them."

Panel members suggested creating a logo or phrase for the tag line, identifying the site as the official hotel site and bolding the URL line for more visibility.

Ads and infringement

How do consumers rate online ads? When Andrew Sherry of USA Today.com's travel department surveyed 200 customers for online advertising preferences, sliding billboards rated the highest at 50 percent, followed by pop-unders, which appear after users exit a screen, at 38 percent.

"Responders were absolutely hostile to floating animation," Sherry said.

Panel members agreed relevance, such as a comparable product to the specific search, was essential to an ad's success.

The conference's final issue was trademark infringement. Companies are required to actively track and protect their respective trademarks, said Peter Ripin, attorney at law, Davidoff & Malito LLP in New York.

If someone infringes on a trademark, a company can send a cease-and-desist letter, which is 85 [percent to] 90 percent effective, but a company shouldn't send anything it wouldn't want to see posted online, Murray said.

If a cease and desist letter doesn't work, companies can file a lawsuit or pursue arbitration.

Young at heart: are you making the mistake of lumping older baby boomers with seniors in your marketing campaign?

2005-12-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

Young at heart: are you making the mistake of lumping older baby boomers with seniors in your marketing campaign?
Entrepreneur

IF YOU WANT TO FIND THE NATION'S DEEPEST pockets, look to adults aged 54 to 64. They have a higher estimated average net worth--at $210,000--than any other age group, according to research released by Interep, a radio industry advertising and marketing firm. And a higher percentage of 55- to 64-year-olds own their homes (81.4 percent in 2003) than Americans in any other age group, reports the Center for Media Research. But surprisingly, this group--along with most adults 50-plus--is overlooked by marketers pursuing the 18-to-49 demographic, or worse, is lumped in with seniors.

Every seven seconds, another American turns 50. Dennis Miller and Kim Basinger are 50. Robin Williams just turned 52, and Susan Sarandon is 57. You wouldn't call them or their peers seniors. Then why market to them that way? There's a big distinction between marketing to what are termed "first wave" or "leading-edge" baby boomers in their 50s and marketing to seniors. That's because consumers in their 50s and early 60s have entirely different self-images and lifestyles from older seniors and, consequently, must be approached differently. For example, leading-edge boomers are seeking financial independence, while seniors place a high price on physical independence. The boomers look for endorsements and industry ratings; seniors are most comfortable with testimonials.

Don't Call Them Old

It's vital to look beyond several myths. First, consumers 50-plus are no more or less likely to be brand-loyal than any other age group. So don't assume because they were your customers when they were younger that they'll stick with you. And second, ads that rely heavily on the monolithic cultural stereotypes of the '60s generation--peace, love and happiness, with rock 'n' roll playing in the background--won't necessarily win you favor. You need a marketing program that resonates with and reflects who these customers are at the present moment in their lives.

Americans in their 50s and early 60s are at the peak of their earning years. Some are part of the "sandwich generation," with children in college and elderly parents who may need care-taking, while others find themselves with their children out of school, more time on their hands and lots of disposable income. But one thing's for sure: They definitely don't see themselves as "old." According to a survey by The Boomer Project, a joint effort by Boisseau Partners and Southeastern Institute of Research, leading-edge baby boomers who are 54 years old consider themselves 41, and the most affluent (those earning $75,000 or more per year) have a psychological age of 39. So while you shouldn't expect this demographic to relate to a commercial showing thirty-something parents with children, your marketing must nonetheless reflect their youthful attitudes.

How to Reach Them

Adults in this age group are extremely marketing-savvy. After all, they grew up surrounded by media advertising and have had 50 or more years of exposure to it. They respond best to straight talk and reject over-promotion or spin, so avoid too much hype. It's also smart to stay away from absolutism. By the time consumers reach this age group, their experience has taught them to see things in shades of gray rather than black-and-white, which makes conditional copy messages and narratives more appealing than a hard-sell approach.

Not surprising, traditional media, from TV and radio to magazines, newspapers and outdoor advertising, can be used successfully to reach consumers aged 50 to 64. But don't overlook online marketing campaigns. According to Jupitermedia, 55 percent of the entire population aged 50 to 64 will be online in 2004, and it expects those numbers to reach 65 percent in 2006. Jupitermedia also predicts the number of adults in this age group surfing the Net will swell to 35.4 million in 2007. So you can call these folks youthful, smart, affluent and tech-savvy--just don't call them "Gramps" or "Granny."

25% of e-mail marketers continue to send messages to recipients who have requested to unsubscribe.

In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method—search engine opti

2005-12-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method—search engine optimization
Entrepreneur

You can't resist the temptation. Fixated on your computer screen, you anxiously type keywords relevant to your business into your favorite search engine. A list of search results appears. You cringe as you spot several competitors, then grumble because your company's Web site is nowhere to be seen. Where is it? That depends. Where is your search engine marketing strategy?

Gone are the days when adding keywords in meta tags to your site produced rankings. Search engine marketing has evolved into a complex and competitive program. It's also profitable--according to a March 2003 report by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, online search is the most cost-effective direct-marketing method. The average cost per lead from search is 29 cents, far less than e-mail (50 cents), the Yellow Pages ($1.18), banner ads ($2.00) and direct mail ($9.94).

Gather your Web design and marketing staff; both teams are required. Understanding search engine marketing basics will help your team execute a strategy in-house or outsource it to specialists. The sooner your site is visible for relevant keywords, the sooner future customers will find your company.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

Many business owners are unaware that search engines feed their results to each other. For example, if you type a keyword into MSN Search on Microsoft's consumer information and entertainment site (www.msn.com), the Web site listings displayed could be from Inktomi, Microsoft or Overture. Overture provides search results not only to MSN Search, but also to AltaVista and Yahoo! Could a top site on Overture then appear as a top site on a distribution partner's site? Yes. Unfortunately, these distribution relationships change frequently, making it difficult to determine exactly where results come from.

The challenging part, however, is figuring out how to land a top position in the search engines. There are two complementary yet completely different types of methods: optimization and advertising.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to enhancing your Web site design to make it more appealing to crawler-based search engines. An automated robot, also referred to as a spider, is sent out to crawl the Web looking for site pages to add to the search engine's database. A mathematical algorithm then determines the ranking of pages in the database for the keywords consumers use. These rankings are referred to as natural or organic listings.

Search engine advertising, on the other hand, enables you to buy listings for your keywords. Positions achieved this way are referred to as paid or sponsored listings. The most popular program in this category is pay-for-placement. These programs typically allow advertisers to open an account for $5 to $50, then bid on keywords for a minimum amount of 5 or 10 cents per click. Advertisers outbid each other for a higher position by increasing their bids by 1 cent per click. Only when a consumer clicks your listing is your account debited.

Are you disappointed to learn that search engines don't magically and objectively find the "best" sites on the Web? That's understandable. However, it was always possible to influence search results. Today, it simply costs more. Yet, for companies willing to invest the time and money, it's well worth it. The plan begins with the right set of keywords.

MAKING KEYWORDS COUNT

If you have the wrong set of terms, your site won't rank well in algorithm-based search engines. Plus, you'll waste money on pay-per-placement programs by attracting browsers, not buyers. To create an effective list of keywords, start with these suggestions:

* Company names: Start with the name of your company, products and services. Include misspellings and plural forms of words, if appropriate.

* Themes: Consider related words your customers might use to describe your business. People looking for an automobile insurance company might type in "car insurance" or "auto insurance." Perhaps drivers are likely to switch insurance providers when they buy a new car or used car, which would be good terms, too.

* Profile your competitors: Your competitors are excellent sources of ideas. Study the keywords in their Web sites and their metatags. From your browser toolbar, click on "View," and then select "Source." If they're using metatags, you'll see keywords listed at the top of the page.

Then, brainstorm ideas about how your customers are looking for your business. "Think like your customers," recommends Nacho Hernandez, 30-year-old co-founder of online Mexican grocery store MexGrocer.com, a La Jolla, California, firm that projects 2004 sales to hit more than $1 million. "A majority of our customers are English-speaking Americans, but most use Spanish keywords because they want the more authentic products. So they'll search for 'salsa verde' instead of 'green sauce,'" Hernandez says. "While we market hundreds of keywords equally split between Spanish and English, we were surprised to see [that] 440 percent more traffic and 200 percent more sales come from the Spanish words."

Of course, if nobody is looking for certain keywords, it's pointless to promote those. That's why a popularity check is important. Search engine marketers typically use Overture's free Search Term Suggestion Tool (www.overture.com) and the subscription-based program Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). These tools reveal how many people search for your keywords. Moreover, these tools and Google AdWords' free Keyword Suggestions tool (https:// adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd= keywordsandbox) will provide suggestions of related phrases consumers use. Finalize your list to include relevant yet popular keywords.

GETTING OPTIMAL RESULTS

Modifying your site to please the search engine spiders can be tedious. Be prepared to wait weeks or months for your site's natural rankings to improve. Although top listings aren't guaranteed, time-consuming efforts can pay off.

"The credibility boost is huge," says Gary Salzman, 47-year-old co-founder of coffee resource retailer site WholeLatteLove.com. The Victor, New York-based business projects 2004 sales of more than $10 million. "Consumers see that natural listings are awarded to highly relevant sites. That's the match they want."

To make your site relevant for your keywords, it's important to realize that sites don't compete against other sites for rankings. It's Web page against Web page. Therefore, each site page needs to be assigned a set of keywords. Focus on the pages that have valuable content for your visitors and are good for new visitors to land on first. A few places your keywords need to be include:

* Meta tags: This tactic alone has absolutely no impact on your rankings, but your keywords still need to be in the meta title, description and keyword tags of each site page you'd like ranked. The page title and description are often used as the Web site listing in the search results.

* Alternative text (ALT tag): Mouse over an image, and you may see a text box appear if the Web designer has used alternative text. Try to use a different, but related, phrase for each ALT tag on a page.

* Page copy: The keywords you want your site to rank well for must be in your page copy. The thought is, if your site visitors can see them, then your page is relevant for those terms.

* Hyperlinks within your site: Don't link "click here" copy to other pages within your site. Hyperlink keyword phrases instead, because search engines follow these links and the keywords in them.

Link popularity is also a chief ingredient in an SEO campaign. Your site needs to link to other related sites and, more important, well-ranked and content-relevant sites should link to yours. Run a search for your keywords in Google or Teoma (www.teoma. com) and evaluate the natural listings. Contact sites that aren't direct competitors, and offer to trade links or buy one. Marketleap (www.marketleap. com) has a free Link Popularity Check tool which shows you how many pages link to yours and how many link to your competitors.

You're not done yet. Once your site is optimized, a majority of search engines need to be notified to crawl your site. Unfortunately, most search engines now require an inclusion fee. It may be a per-URL fee, a fixed per-click fee on any site rankings you achieve, or a combination of both. Inktomi, Overture and Teoma are examples. Google is still free and will index your site on its own; however, you can use the "Add URL" form if your site isn't in its database.

"Analyze, optimize, submit, monitor, then repeat the process," says Shari Thurow, webmaster and marketing director of SEO firm Grantastic Designs and author of Search Engine Visibility. "Getting top-10 positions and maintaining them is an ongoing process. A site should always get consistent, high-quality traffic from the search engines," Thurow adds. "It's also an ongoing challenge to determine what competitors are doing to achieve search engine visibility."

Thurow recommends evaluating site statistics reports monthly. Once your site is fully optimized and submitted to the search engines, maintenance can usually be done on a quarterly basis.

Is your anxiety level increasing yet? Don't worry. There's a quick way to get any position you want. Just buy it.

BUYING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

Pay-for-placement is the easy way to get a top position in search results. Open an account, then choose your keywords, set keyword bids, write a title and description for each keyword or group of keywords, then designate a landing page for each keyword or group of keywords. Your ad listings will be live as soon as editors approve them. Typically, these listings are placed under a "Sponsored Listing" type of header to set them apart from natural listings.

On FindWhat.com, Kanoodle.com and Overture, positions are awarded to the highest bidder. A one-penny bid over an advertiser moves your listing above his. On Google AdWords, positions are given based on the combination of bid amount and click-through rate. That means the highest bid doesn't automatically get the number-one spot. Consumers are part of the voting process. Ad listings that aren't clicked will drop.

Wondering how often to update your bids? Watch your competitors. If they perform daily or weekly updates, you'll probably need to do the same to keep the positions you want. Maintaining a top-three to top-five position is important, because those generally appear as sponsored listings across the distribution network. That means greater visibility and resulting traffic.

Bid management tools such as BidRank and PPC Pro automate this process for you. Companies such as Atlas OnePoint (formerly Go Toast, www.atlasonepoint.com) and Did-it.com even offer tools that manage your bids based on your cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale goals. Pay-per-click is still time-consuming to manage, but at least the results are instantaneous and often rewarding. For example, these campaigns added more than 60 percent to WholeLatteLove.com's total growth in 2003.

Tools alone won't improve your conversion rates. Compelling ad listings and landing pages that persuade people to complete an intended action make or break your results.

"Don't misrepresent your offer," warns Salzman. He noticed that out of 60 competing ad listings for "espresso machine reviews," only 38 percent showed what they said they would in their ad copy. "Consumers make snap judgments in seconds. Lose their trust, and they'll back out of your site to click on your competitors' listings. The back button is not your friend."

Don't panic over this crash course in search engine marketing. In addition to the resources listed here, you can turn to SearchEngineWatch.com, the educational hub for search engine marketers. You can also meet with search engine representatives and marketing experts at Jupitermedia's Search Engine Strategies conferences, or breathe easier by outsourcing your campaigns. Just make sure your Web site can be found by using relevant keywords. Your customers are waiting.

GET PROFESSIONAL HELP

Do you prefer to let a team of specialists worry about fluctuating algorithms and bids? You're not alone. However, finding a quality search engine marketing firm is challenging, especially for search engine optimization (SEO), because much of it happens behind the scenes, and you can't easily tell if a company is using ethical tactics. Here are a few tips:

* Find the experts. Read articles and books, and attend conferences to identify the companies with strong industry visibility. Even if they're not good matches for you, they could recommend other reputable firms.

* Interview firms. Don't be afraid to quiz companies about their marketing philosophies, process, tools, reporting and results. Ask them to define spam, then refer to your resources to see if experts agree or disagree.

* Avoid responding to e-mail spam. The "Get a number-one position for $99" spam is likely from companies that will spare the search engines, too.

* Speak to client references. Ask them to describe their experiences, results and recommendations for working with the company you're interviewing.

* Outsource. Some companies manage their own paid placement campaigns in-house while other companies manage SEO. Find out what your options are.

Programs and pricing vary tremendously in this industry. However, with a little research, you'll find the right marketing partner.

TABOO TACTICS

There are good and bad search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Good methods can improve your rankings. Bad tactics put your site in danger of losing rankings, getting kicked out of the search engines' databases, and possibly being banned forever. The following activities are considered spam, and, if caught, your site could pay the penalties:

1. Stuffing keywords in your meta tags: Repeating a keyword too many times in your meta tags is a red flag. Study other top-ranked sites to see what seems to be an acceptable range.

2. Hiding keywords: For example, avoid hiding text on your pages by making it the same color as your background.

3. Using tiny text: Think tiny text is too difficult to read? Maybe by your visitors, but not by spiders.

4. Using redirects: This code is placed on a Web page to send visitors to another page without the visitors clicking any links.

5. Linking with free-for-art sites: These sites link to each other for the sole purpose of improving their link popularity. Don't link to or from them.

These aren't the only dangerous SEO tactics. But they're some of the oldest and most obvious forms of spam, so avoid using them.

The girlfriend's guide to E-marketing a blockbuster: how to savvy black internet professionals—Jen Hunt and Sanyu Dillon

2005-12-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

The girlfriend's guide to E-marketing a blockbuster: how to savvy black internet professionals—Jen Hunt and Sanyu Dillon—brainstormed an innovative online promotion for Stephen King's latest thriller over lunch - book bytes
Black Issues Book Review

Take two talented African American Internet professionals, add marketing savvy, a world-renown author and two media giants and season it with friendship. What do you have? Ground-breaking online book marketing success.

Sanyu Dillon, 31, an online marketing manager with Viacom's Simon & Schuster Trade Publishers, and Jennifer Hunt, 29, an online producer, at the time, with AOL-Time Warner's Time.com, are the creators of an innovative promotion for Simon & Schuster's best-selling author Stephen King's novel Dreamcatcher on Time.com's Web site. Getting two major media competitors to work together and defy traditional online book marketing practices may have sounded impossible. But not to Sanyu and Jennifer, two friends who spontaneously devised a plan over a casual lunch.

BIBR met with Sanyu and Jennifer for an exclusive table talk at the sleek lounge in New York City's Millennium Hotel. Dressed in eye-catching aqua, Sanyu, a native of Ohio, exuded confidence and charisma, characteristics of a top on-line marketing manager. But her career in online marketing was almost accidental. "I just fell into it," she explains. "I was working at Simon and Schuster for about two years, and then I quit to freelance. I worked for a year as a freelance editor and launched an Internet start-up with a friend of mine. Then my old boss at Simon and Schuster called me and offered me a position in the online division."

Jennifer, a native of New Mexico, who's affable, intuitive and stylish, also entered the online world because of an unexpected opportunity. "I worked at Random House at Crown as an editor. And before that, I worked at Money magazine and kept contacts there. Time Inc. corporate human resources manager Breena Clarke (who, incidentally, became the celebrated author of the novel River, Cross My Heart, Little Brown and Company, 1999) was running a program to help recruit minority editor, and she gave me a call about the position at Time.com."

According to Sanyu, incidents such as Breena Clarke hooking up Jen are commonplace among African Americans in publishing. "Publishing is such an incestuous industry and there are so few African Americans that everyone kind of looks out for each other. I heard Jen's name long before I met her" she recalls. "Anytime anyone would say they had a job opening and were looking for someone, I'd say, `Call Jen Hunt, she knows a lot'" But the two had a professional connection that eventually brought them together. Jen had written book reviews for BIBR and when she was invited to lunch by the reviews editor, Sanyu, who was freelancing with BIBR, tagged along.

Now Jen and Sanyu are both black women working in Internet divisions for corporate conglomerates, which is an ever-changing field with many challenges. "I think the Internet industry as a whole has changed" states Sanyu. "Since a lot of sites have gone out of business, it's more about making money than it is about content. It's more about partnership. And since publishers don't make a lot of money, it's difficult. We can only promote on a title-by-title basis."

In addition, there's a greater sense of isolation working in the Internet division of publishing. "Since there also aren't a lot of African Americans in the Internet industry," says Sanyu, "many, many times, I'm just the only one. I think that's my biggest challenge."

Jen also finds that aspect of the business wearisome. "You end up working with smart and interesting people, but it's just as difficult as it is in other corporate industries to be the only black--whether the pressure is internal or external. But I would say that the more specialized sites such as blackplanet.com are really trying to reach out to editors and people of color in the industry to make connections."

It's no surprise that the two women first came to know about each other socially, since they had mutual friends that invited them to the same parties. "We had been trying to catch up with each other" Jen explains. "Then one day we ran into one another in a tunnel beneath our work spaces. Before we headed toward our trains, we made a lunch date."

They chose lunch at Victor's, a Cuban restaurant in Manhattan that happens to be Jen's favorite spot. And between bites of plantains, black beans and rice, chatter between girlfriends blossomed into a conversation about a monumental deal. Who knew that an ordinary lunch between two sistahs would result in an online cross-promotion between two of the top media companies in the world?

When Sanyu met with Jen for lunch that day in October 2000, she already knew that she had to create an on-line marketing plan for Stephen King's upcoming book Dreamcatcher. The book was scheduled for release in March 2001, but Sanyu had to finalize online plans four months prior to its publication. This promotion was on her mind as she met with Jen. "I knew I had until December to come up with an online plan," she says. "I'd thought of speaking to Jen about it originally, but I didn't think she'd be interested. Time.com is so heavily news-oriented."

But while they discussed the various projects on their plates, Sanyu mentioned the King book. "Halfway through lunch, I told her that we wanted to do a big Stephen King promotion on the net, and that we'd be willing to give away an excerpt. And she was interested."

Although Sanyu was surprised, it made sense to Jen. This wasn't like any promotion she'd ever created before, but she knew it was right. "It may not have been the most logical thing for Time.com, but we wanted to do something really different," she says. "My boss was very much into pushing the envelope."

Over the next weeks, the two spoke with their supervisors, defined goals, wrote proposals and attended meetings to create the partnership that would culminate in a Stephen King/Dreamcatcher mini-Web site on Time.com, generating millions of hits. Then, laughs Jen, we "did the corporate thing. We brought in the bosses."

While department directors and vice presidents from both corporations conferred with each other and their legal departments, and publicists crafted press releases, Jen and Sanyu worked on the production of the Stephen King site. They decided that although one chapter would be posted on Time.com, it would be split into three pieces--one excerpt per week in the three consecutive weeks prior to Dreamcatcher's release. There would be flash animation, music, a biography of King and a linked teaser on AOL (America Online).

Amazingly, at a time when dot-coms were looking for ways to generate profit by advertising, this promotion was cash-free. Money did not exchange hands. This was "a content-for-promotion promotion" according to San)u. "From our standpoint, we knew that people would be excited about Stephen King, and we liked the traffic, the promotion, and the marketing muscle that Time.com would provide."

For Jen, the excerpt was the clincher. "It was a big deal for anyone to get that excerpt before publication."

Sanyu would provide the content, and Jen would supervise the design. Their friendship made the project move smoothly. Their trust in each other not only aided in their partnership, it helped to relax their bosses. "I think our higher-ups felt comfortable with us because we were friends, and there wasn't any company-to-company competition."

On Monday, March 5, 2001, Time.com's Stephen King Web site launched with a free peek at the future bestseller. On the 12th, another excerpt was posted. The final piece was posted on the 19th. Twenty-four hours later, the book that had tempted readers for three weeks was released to the public. The Dreamcatcher Web site launched to widespread attention and accolades. Press releases were faxed; AOL had a link to it from its welcome page. King, who had long been aware of the possibilities of online marketing, posted a banner on his personal Web site, www.stephenking.com, which directed his readers to Time.com. King also recorded an e-commercial for the Website, welcoming surfers to the site.

The number of hits to the Dreamcatcher Web site numbered in the millions. But, as San)u says, "Its hard to measure the success of advertising. It doesn't mean a direct translation into sales, but it does mean good public relations. We got a lot of press for it, a lot of traffic on Time.com and Simonsays.com."

And the accolades were indeed forthcoming. The online media site Inside.com ran a story about the joint-promotion, in which the women's names were mentioned. USA Today ran a story. News of the cross-company promotion ran across the wire services.

"This promotion definitely gave us a higher profile," Jen says. "Our names were mentioned in articles! Plus, it was really gratifying to do something so different, and it was nice to be able to do something beyond the norm. It was rewarding to prove that blacks in publishing could work on all types of books and not just black books."

Sanyu agrees. "It was great to do something like this for a commercial author, to see a big project through from inception to completion." According to Sanyu, it was definitely worth it for Simon & Schuster. The publisher's Web site, Simonsays.com, received increased traffic during those three weeks and its Stephen King e-newsletter received more subscribers. Readers could reserve their copies of Dreamcatcher with online booksellers, including Barnes&Noble.com (with whom Time.com had a relationship), and book sales were high.

Although Hunt has since left Time.com to work at Lee & Low, publisher of award-winning multicultural children's books, San)u says she would definitely be interested in creating a similar promotion again, she cautions, "It has to be the right opportunity, the right author and the right site." And the right personal connection helps, too.

--Sheryl J. Estrada and Michele D. Thomas are co-editors for BIBR's Book Bytes department.

Sheryl J. Estrada was an editor of SportsTalk, the Women's Sports Foundation's publication for teens. She has written for Black Expressions Book Club's Web site and worked in trade publishing as both a publicity assistant and advertising coordinator. She is currently associate editor at Black Issues Book Review for Book Bytes.

Michele D. Thomas is associate editor at Black Issues Book Review for Book Bytes and an Internet marketing manager for a book dub corporation in New York City. Estrada and Thomas captured the story of how two friends created an e-marketing blockbuster on page 52.

Strutting your Cyber Stuff: Learn how other magazines employ multimedia marketing to promote their Internet ventures - New Media

2005-12-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

Strutting your Cyber Stuff: Learn how other magazines employ multimedia marketing to promote their Internet ventures - New Media
Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management

Most magazines are clamoring to get on the Internet stage, yet when it comes to actually marketing their Web sites, many seem to be waiting in the wings. While investor-backed Internet ventures have been spending millions to plaster their brand names all over television, billboards and other traditional media--in addition to wallpapering the online environment with their logos--most magazine publishers, laboring under traditional budget constraints, are shying away from costly promotions, focusing instead on sensible efforts that promise a sure return on investment.

"Most publications have really taken a wait-and-see attitude about marketing their stuff on the Web, and rightly so, because their profit centers continue to be traditional publishing," says Jim Shulman, president of Marketing Results, a Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based marketing consultancy. "The Web is an investment for them at this point, and one that may not necessarily have a quick payback. We haven't seen a lot of aggressive promotion of Web sites out of this yet because it may not make economic sense for magazines."

PARADIGM SHIFT CREATES CHALLENGES

George Vrabeck, chief executive officer of Gr8Ride.com, a Primedia Co. portal that has integrated that publishing company's automotive brands, admits, "Every media company has had challenges with this. That's because it is a pretty radical paradigm shift."

Yet as they finally begin to feel comfortable with their Web offerings and with the online marketplace itself, more publishers are aggressively promoting their Internet properties. At a minimum, this usually involves leveraging the reach of their own multimedia assets. Some magazine companies are also beginning to push their Net properties via outside marketing venues where they believe the productivity of the placement is a foregone conclusion.

Here's a look at how five varied magazine publishers are marketing their Internet ventures.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Mitchell Prayer has the support of a global brand name and formidable multimedia resources to help spread the word, but the president of NationalGeographic.com is also pushing the envelope by marketing his site elsewhere online and penetrating newmedia platforms, including enhanced TV and the wireless Web.

"Right now, we have more than enough traffic to our Web site," he says. "And there's less of a need to go outside, because we're operating at a highly integrated level with our other properties." At the same time, Prayer insists on making NationalGeographic.com a pioneer in plumbing new possibilities because they are "relevant platforms for creating brand awareness and spotlighting the useful services and utilities that we're providing for readers."

There's no doubt about the reach of the National Geographic brand, with its four magazines, all of which are online as well as in print; about 70 new book titles each year; an international TV channel that is now available in 111 countries; and the launch of its U.S. TV channel this month. "Unlike many dot-coms that are spending 100 percent to 150 percent of their funds on marketing, we're in good position, because the National Geographic brand is one of the most trusted brands in the country, if not the world," Prayer says. "So we don't need to commit to that same level of spending that others do."

Praver makes ample use not only of ads in National Geographic magazine, but also of references at the end of most articles that direct readers to additional information that is available at NationalGeographic.com. The online operation is constantly cross-promoting with the TV properties, including a 30-second spot that has been running on the brand's international channel and will be airing on the U.S. channel right from the start.

NationalGeographic.com also has begun cross-promotional campaigns on the Web with sites in which the National Geographic Society has taken equity positions, including iExplore.com and Tripfinder.com. It also has struck deals with Yahoo! and plans to announce marketing arrangements with other portals. Now Prayer is planning to make his site a common presence on next-generation content and marketing platforms, including rich media on the Net, enhanced-TV services like TiVo and mobile Internet devices such as PDAs and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones. On devices like Palm Pilots, for example, many top brand names are striking marketing deals that have their brand icon pop up on the first screen, for easy access by users.

Praver acknowledges that many a marketer already has been frustrated because the wireless Web and other new marketing opportunities haven't reached fruition as quickly as has been projected. We've taken a methodical and scalable approach," he says, "and we'll just let the marketplace tell us when the time is right."

GR8RIDE

Primedia has funneled the Internet content of all of its 29 automotive magazines--including Automobile, Car Audio and Electronics, Lowrider and Mustang Illustrated--into this online site for hard-core auto enthusiasts. And CEO George Vrabeck is pursuing his single-minded focus on attracting car nuts by slapping Gr8Ride not only throughout all those print magazines but also on TV, at car shows, elsewhere online, and, soon, on flyers in a direct-mail campaign.

"When you're marketing to a real niche audience like this, you don't want to try to be all things to all people," he says. "You want to be very specifically targeted on your niche. The best approach is to go where these people are."

Vrabeck is still relying primarily on reaching readers of the print magazines to drive traffic to the Web sites. But Gr8Ride also is relying on marketing at many of the major car-enthusiast shows held around the country. It will be appearing at as many as 15 events this year, each of which attracts 20,000 to 25,000 people, Vrabeck says. Event sponsorship typically is a relatively inexpensive $100,000 to $300,000 apiece, he says, and additional costs to support the event often amount to two times the sponsorship fee. That works out to a mere $3 cost to reach each user who is registered for an event. "People sign up right there, so you can very directly calculate your return on the event," Vrabeck says. "And for most of these events, it's a great deal."

Vrabeck remains relatively conservative about splashing Gr8Ride's brand all over the place, because he feels it simply isn't necessary to achieve the site's business goals. "We don't want traffic to the site for the sake of traffic," he says. "We just want the true enthusiasts who are interested in our content and products."

INC.

Inc. magazine and the brand's other products and services have been informing, organizing and even inspiring customers for more than 20 years, says Paige Arnof-Fenn, vice president for Inc.com, the brand's Web site. Inc.com, she says, has become a very organic extension of a brand that already has been "trusted in the small-business arena" for a long time.

"We've been able to leverage that relationship with what we've been doing with the online property, so that unlike a lot of pure-play Net businesses out there--which are trying to establish their brand names and make sure their URLs stand for something in consumers' minds--we already stand for something. We already have a plateau. That's a big advantage."

Not wanting to presume anything, however, Inc.com is pursuing a multimedia approach to marketing that "surrounds the consumer at various points in their day, when they're making decisions or starting to plan their day or try to figure out their agenda," Arnof-Fenn says. That includes, for example, having magazine editors and site producers write weekly or twice-monthly columns on various topics that Inc.com then e-mails to willing subscribers. At various times and in different markets, Inc.com also has tried advertising on billboards, in industry trade magazines, in "new economy" publications such as Red Herring and The Industry Standard, in airports, even in taxis and on buses.

The feedback suggests that outdoor and radio ads have been particularly effective, as well as direct-mail pieces, and Arnof-Fenn's staff carefully monitors activity at Inc.com to gauge the impact of the various initiatives. "But there's not any one thing that has moved the dial a great deal," she says. "It's just a matter of surrounding folks at every part of the day."

Online advertising has been fruitful for Inc.com too: e-mail campaigns and the site's partnership with WSJ.com, the online version of The Wall Street Journal. "We're constantly optimizing the online component," Arnof-Fenn says. "When we see that something is working, we'll focus our resources to come down behind those banners and sponsorships. If we're not seeing the traction we need, online is an easy way to constantly be optimizing what we're doing."

TIME

Taylor Gray has been jump-starting the marketing of Time.com since he became the site's president. (He remains marketing director of Time magazine.) "When I came on, it was sort of a casual thing, where we'd try to get some links to Time.com, but there wasn't a real focus on the property," he says.

All that is changing. Positioning Time.com as an unrivaled brand for providing analysis of current affairs, based on the expertise that the magazine staff long has demonstrated, Gray has been able to append Time.com content to more and more news "headline" sites--and to raise the profile of Time.com in the process. For example, he has intensified Time.com's longstanding partnership with America Online by becoming more aggressive about promoting his content to AOL'S news editors.

"We find out what they need to do to complement their news coverage and offer that," Gray says. "Do they need supporting analysis? If it's breaking news, do we happen to have an article about the background? We're pretty adept at filling the analysis gap on the Web, and now we're getting better at promoting that capability--not only with AOL, but also with Yahoo! and other sites."

Along with Time.com's presence on other Time Inc. sites, such as Fortune's and Entertainment Weekly's, the AOL partnership has given Gray the luxury for now of not having to promote Time.com in traditional media venues--which could change, he says. His next challenge is to energize marketing of Time Inc.'s other magazine-related sites, for Time Digital and for the now-defunct print publication Life.

INTERNET WORLD

Because its Internet World magazine is so steeped in the online marketplace anyway, it's only natural for Penton Media to think of the brand as a multimedia property, rather than as a print magazine with tack-ons like a Web site and industry conferences.

"We try to really leverage those three platforms together, and the marketing of them, to reach and touch and serve customers when, how and where they want to be served," says Tom Kuczynski, vice president of Internet World Media. "Each platform has unique characteristics that make it superior or inferior, depending on the customer's needs at the time."

For example, articles in Internet World magazine solicit readers' opinions for posting on the Web site. Several different e-newsletters marketed at the Web site go out to a total of 100,000 subscribers weekly. At Internet World trade shows, the brand's booth contains multiple PCs that passersby can use to access Internet World.com, update subscription information and check industry news. The brand's URL appears on millions of pieces of direct mail that go out each year to solicit magazine subscriptions and trade show attendance.

Kuczynski says Penton executives have been skeptical all along about the insistence of pundits over the past few years that creating separate online-content entities and licensing content to dot-coin startups were the only viable approaches for publishers wanting to take advantage of the Net. "We said on an almost daily basis that we didn't believe in that," he says. "We said the future was truly integrated media companies, and we've been following that mantra for two years. And guess what: It works."

Work Smarter: New Opportunities With Internet Market Research

2005-11-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

Work Smarter: New Opportunities With Internet Market Research
By: Ken Jurina

The most integral part of any marketing initiative is market research. Comprehensive market research identifies the wants and needs of your potential target market, but also provides information that creates strategic and informative business decisions to target your most profitable market.

Market Research Collection

Where does this information come from? What are the most common means of conducting market research? Focus groups and questionnaires are two well-established methodologies. Both have the ability to record and examine quantitative and qualitative factors such as verbal and visual information. However, are they fully reliable as untainted sources of marketing information? There are a number of factors which may blemish these research results:

* Focus Groups: Participants may alter their own answers to mimic the responses by other participants, or they may be inadvertently influenced by focus group moderators.

* Questionnaires: Survey questions, formatting, & content may influence participants to select one answer over another. Distractions while completing the survey may also produce biased information.

In contrast to these two traditional research methods, a relatively new form of conducting marketing research exists, gathering information online and serving up timely, accurate, and - most importantly - unbiased data, directly from your target market. Sound too good to be true? Not at all.

Internet Market Research Collection

The Internet has opened the door and reset the bar for market research. Sometimes still (erroneously) classified as a new marketing medium, the Internet is growing at the astonishing rate of 60,000 new web sites per day! Virtually all markets and languages show continuous activity and growth. Gathered within this environment of high speeds, low costs, and near perfect anonymity, Internet market research is proving to be increasingly viable and insightful when conducted independently, or as a valuable complement when integrated with more traditional marketing research methodologies.

Roughly 450 million online searches occur each day (JupiterResearch, 2005). Search engines like Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and the ubiquitous Google capture and record the exact phrases that searchers are using to find a specific product or service. Search engine users, typing unprompted words and phrases into empty search engine fields, are impartial and uninfluenced when conducting their searches.

Consequently, the information gathered and leveraged from this medium is invaluable from a marketing research perspective. Imagine gathering impartial information from literally millions of people - each day - and basing your marketing campaigns on this data. In most cases, it is used for search engine optimization (SEO), to enhance the effectiveness of a web site for certain keywords and phrases highly searched for online. However, as the power of this marketing research is increasingly being discovered and recognized, it is also being used to power a wide range of offline activities.

So What, You Ask?

Well, considering that online research drives 70 percent or more of offline purchases (iMedia, 2004), it's undeniable that having a highly visible and functional web presence is vital. An optimized web site ensures that it is ranked high in the search engines for particular search phrases.

Ranking highly in search results is extremely effective in ensuring that potential customers will find you at the most opportune time within the buying cycle - when they are ready to learn, compare, and of course, buy! This is critical to any organization with an online presence.

How else can better research and SEO help your business? It can increase lead generation, reduce operational costs, increase customer loyalty, improve partner or channel development, and offer extensive market analysis.

Lesser Known Uses Of Internet Market Research

Let's take a look at offline marketing activities as well. Not only can online research be used for web site development, but it can also be a great benefit for many areas used within integrated marketing communication (IMC) elements such as advertising, PR, interactive communication activities, and numerous other business functions. Here are just a few examples:

* Branding: Increase your profile and brand awareness. Sixty percent of searchers' brand opinions were changed or enhanced as a result of online research (American Interactive Consumer Survey, 2004). SEO market research can be used to correctly understand the behavior of your target market. By using keyword research that reflects your brand positioning, you can both enhance your brand and increase your chances of getting found by web searchers.

* Competitive Analysis: Discover your market position. Market research can determine how your company and products measure alongside your industry competitors.

* New Opportunities: Satisfy your potential customers. Research can provide insight into new market opportunities you may never have discovered. As well, research can identify new business ventures, and offer the possibility to streamline your business processes.

* Public Relations: Be research ready. A press release can benefit from market research by ensuring that the appropriate content and language is used, allowing your target market to find it quickly and easily. With 98 percent of journalists performing research online (PR Web, 2005), take advantage of this opportunity, and have an online press release optimized with extensive market research.

* Investor Relations: Strengthen your business. You can build rapport with current and potential investors, and supplement marketing and strategic direction using information identified within Internet marketing research reports.

Applying Internet Market Research

The ultimate goal is to make the research work for you. While Internet market research is an integral step in improving your visibility online, its quality and flexibility of use allow it to be effortlessly applied to all aspects of marketing activities. Consider how doing better internet marketing research could work for you.

About the Author: This article has been provided by Epiar Inc. Author Ken Jurina (ken@epiar.com) is President of Epiar Inc., Canada's premiere search engine optimization company based in Edmonton, Alberta. For more information, please visit http://www.epiar.com
Source: www.isnare.com

Creating Ebay Selling Opportunities By Communicating With Your Buyer

2005-11-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

Creating Ebay Selling Opportunities By Communicating With Your Buyer
By: Kirsten Hawkins iSnare Expert Author

One thing many eBay sellers neglect is to actually communicate with their buyers – not with some automated ‘suggestion’ system, but with actual person-to-person contact. If you can be friendly and sound nice, then you can make them think you’re doing them a favour while you make a few extra sales.

‘I Could Throw In…’

When you receive an order for an item that costs a lot for shipping and needs some kind of equipment, this is an ideal opportunity to make a ‘friendly’ extra sale. For example, if someone has just bought a computer, you could send an email like this:

“I’m just emailing you to ask if you’d like a mouse or a keyboard – since you’re buying a computer from me, I can throw in any accessories you want without charging any extra shipping. If you’re not interested though, then don’t worry about it – it was just a thought.”

Note how informal this email has to be. It can’t stink of sales, or the whole ‘communication’ thing will be ruined. Would you rather buy something extra from someone who says “you might as well, since you’re paying shipping anyway” or from someone who says something like “our valued customers will also love our GREAT DEALS on mice – check it out!” I know what my answer is.

Know Anyone Else?

Here’s a simple thing to try: when you thank your buyer, simply say that if they’re pleased with you then you’d really appreciate it if they could spread the word. Many eBay buyers feel like they’ve got a real bargain, and combining this with good customer service could be enough to make your customer go out and start writing down your eBay store’s address on pieces of paper for their friends. If you notice a lot of orders coming from the same town, then you’ll know that this technique is working.

Any Problems?

If you contact the buyer a few months down the line to ask if their product is still working fine, you might find that they’re having a problem you can fix, by sending a spare part or an upgrade. This is another opportunity to make a sale – not to mention helpful for them.

Anything to Sell?

If you’ve just sold them a brand new item, ask your buyer if they have an old one that they might like to trade in. They will often be delighted to take you up on your offer, since they were wondering how they were going to get rid of their old one anyway. Give them a fair price for it and offer to pay their postage and you won’t believe how happy they’ll be – and the chances are you can make a good profit on what they send you.

When everything is going to plan with your buyers, it’s nice to be able to spend a while every week leaving them all big chunks of positive feedback. But how do you make this feedback the best it can be? We’ll take a look at the dos and don’ts of leaving feedback for buyers in the next email.

About the Author: Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online auctions.
Source: www.isnare.com

Understanding Turn-Key Online Business Opportunities

2005-11-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Understanding Turn-Key Online Business Opportunities
By: Joe Lloyd

For many would-be Internet entrepreneurs, the task of setting up their own business online can be very daunting. First you have to find and pay for a domain name. That's the easiest part. Next, you'll have to choose a web-hosting provider out of the thousands of choices available.

Then you'll have to either spend weeks learning how to build a website yourself, or hire an expensive designer and programmer to do that for you. Don't forget that you have to research your market, create a product, come up with a marketing strategy, and so much more!

The number of different things you have to understand and do in order to successfully start up an online business is simply overwhelming for many. And that's why more and more entrepreneurs are turning to what are known as “turnkey business opportunities.”

What is a turnkey business opportunity? Quite simply, it is a business that is ready-to-go if you just “turn the key” to start it up. It's as easy as starting a car. All of the work for development, research, and strategy has already been done for you, and you get to begin operating the business almost immediately.

Most turn-key opportunities have a start-up fee (which is usually much cheaper than what you would pay if you developed a similar business on your own), and an ongoing fee for maintenance and hosting.

Since turn-key businesses are an “all-in-one” package, you don't have to worry about all of the minor details of getting the business up and running and keeping it going from month to month. Instead, you'll be free to spend all of your time on the most important part of your business: promoting it.

There are a few things that you should always look for when selecting an online turnkey business. First and foremost, you need to have a healthy market and an in-demand product. Without this all other points would be moot. Look for items that people want and need in their everyday lives – that makes the process of “selling” much easier.

Second, make sure that you're truly getting an all-in-one package. A lot of opportunities that bill themselves as “turn-key” are in fact anything but. They might give you a design or a web template, and leave you on your own to find hosting, do the programming, or any other of dozens of tasks that they might leave up to you.

Be sure to understand what is required of you before getting into any turn-key opportunity. If you find out that you are going to have to do a bunch of work just to get started, then pass! After all, that's exactly what you're trying to avoid by going with a turnkey business.

Finally, make sure that the business comes with training. All too often, people get into a turnkey business opportunity and then are left hanging as to what to do next in order to promote their new business. Good turnkey businesses opportunities will provide complete training, with a detailed marketing strategy, and ongoing support in order to assure that your experience is a profitable one.

About the Author: Joe Lloyd, The Money Marketer™, is the founder of Zen Marketing LLC and the online marketing group, Profit Guild™, located at http://www.ProfitGuild.com. To find out how you can be a part of an exclusive and limited turn-key business opportunity for marketing credit cards online - known as Credit Profits™ - visit http://www.CreditProfits.com right
Source: www.isnare.com

Great Franchise Opportunities

2005-11-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

Great Franchise Opportunities
By: Trevor Marshall

If you are thinking of setting up a small business yet you are still unsure of what you exactly want to do or are scared to death of not being able to generate good business, then you must try looking into these franchise opportunities and choose the right one that will suit your taste and budget. An important factor to take in consideration is your ability to actually run your chosen franchise opportunity efficiently and successfully.

One of the most popular franchise opportunity nowadays is the "EmbroidMe" franchise opportunity wherein you can create custom-made apparel as well as merchandise which has embroidery on it. EmbroidMe actually has the tagline, "Casually Dressing the World" in its retail showrooms wherein it aims to make their company known through all forms of medium, in corporate marketing programs as well as over the internet. EmbroidMe is outfitting their customers with creatively customized apparel not just for work but for play as well. They also offer all sorts of promotional merchandise as well as advertising specialty items.

The catch point(s) of the EmbroidMe franchise opportunity are its sudden commercial boom. It’s a highly new and fresh revolutionary industry concept. This franchise opportunity's great and organized system allows the wonderful opportunity of being your own boss. You do not have to answer to anyone but yourself! According to Ray Titus, the president of the EmbroidMe company. They are looking for willing entrepreneurs who are dreaming of running and managing their own business but in spite of just having a small business, they are well provided with many benefits that a stable global company can offer them - not to mention, mass purchasing power as well as great advertising apart from the other possible additional help that your EmbroidMe franchise opportunity might be needing in the future.

EmbroidMe offers full service embroidery as well as screen printing and other promotional products to its customers. The EmbroidMe "empire" actually now has over 250 stores all over the world and has been rated as #1 in the industry for four consecutive years as well as being one of the 50 fastest growing franchise opportunities according to Entrepreneur Magazine.

When it comes to the EmbroidMe staff's training and support, a turnkey franchise the EmbroidMe company will actually assist in the demographic studies of the area that you want to put up your EmbroidMe franchise. A study on your site selection as well assistance on lease negotiations would be conducted. The EmbroidMe company will also coordinate with you for renovations that will be done on your store. This franchise opportunity will also provide an excellent 4-week training program for you and your staff. Not only that, this franchise opportunity will also assist you in conducting interviews, hiring and training prospective EmbroidMe employees since this is a service oriented franchise opportunity it is highly important that every employee must be able to comply and adhere to EmbroidMe's strict rules and regulations.

The special features of this franchise opportunity are the following: turn key, absolutely no experience is needed, it is not a seasonal type of franchise opportunity, it is a business to business franchise opportunity, it needs only two employees and is a part of a $20 billion plus industry.

Another hot franchise opportunity is the "SIGN*A*RAMA" franchise opportunity which is considered as the largest full service sign franchise in the whole world and has over 700 "SIGN*A*RAMA" stores in 30 countries while being rated as the #1 in the industry for 6 years running by Entrepreneur Magazine. Also headed by EmbroidMe's president Ray Titus, "SIGN*A*RAMA*" is just like EmbroidMe. "SIGN*A*RAMA*" is also looking for willing and able entrepreneurs who want to have their taste of being their own boss while having the incredible opportunity of being part of a well-known company.

When you sign up for this franchise opportunity expect to receive the following premium features: when it comes to equipment, they have the full service sign centers wherein they make the most of computerized sign making technologies. The "SIGN*A*RAMA" Sign Center actually allows the customer to have a look at the draft of the sign that they wish to be made before it gets the "go-signal" for it be printed. This franchise opportunity will also assist franchisees in picking out their desired franchise location, their lease as well as in the marketing aspect of the business.

About the Author: For more great franchise info and advice check out: http://www.great-franchises.com
Source: www.isnare.com