The next step if someone wanted to start AutomotiveClubs.com is to define your user audience. The business would obviously have two users:

• Automotive Clubs
• Car Owners Who Want To Join An Automotive Club

Automotive Clubs: In my research I estimate over 10,000 automotive clubs in the United States; 3x that in the world. I have been in contact with over 1,000 of these automotive clubs in the USA already. The reason we initially were in contact with these companies because our company sells automotive keychains.

The owners of the clubs are quite friendly, but strapped for cash. Most of the clubs our non-profit or profitably enough to stay in business. They stay in business because club members volunteer their time & sponsors help them financially. Their club websites are old & outdated. Interaction between club members and related clubs is non-existence; that is where the opportunity is.

Car Owners: I don’t need to quote stats on the number of car owners there are in the United States; everyone knows there are many. Granted, most are not too proud of their vehicle to join an automotive club, but high end automobile owners would be our target market as well.

So Step #1 to building a business Is Market Research

I have compiled a database of the known automotive clubs that have websites online today. You can download it here:

Download Automotive Clubs Database

Step #2 to building a business Is To Analyze that research

Of the many Automotive Clubs we spoke to National Council of Corvette Clubs (NCCC) provided the best market analysis. They were very excited about the idea that each of their clubs could have a free website where they publish news, events, pictures, videos, and of course give the ability to sign up new members; but they would not pay for it.

So, after all the research & analysis the data showed that Automotive Clubs would benefit greatly from AutomotiveClubs.com; but we needed to figure out a business model that would allow Automotive Clubs to sign up for free. What is more is the SIC code for Automotive Clubs (8699-12) does not provide any help in finding the clubs; the listings are all AAA insurance providers.

The database above is the largest list online for United States Automotive Clubs. Starting the website you would use this database to pre-populate the Automotive Club Database online.

Jeff

Online Advertising Spending (Automotive Market): Despite a struggling economy (especially within the automotive industry) 0nline automotive advertising increased by 17.70% from 2006 to 2007. In fact according to a report on the automotive advertising, produced by Borrell Associates, showed one of the greatest disruption in consumer buying habits was the internet; meaning consumers change their decision on what car they buy (right before they buy) by using the internet…That is one large reason why automotive companies are pouring money into online advertising.

Automotive Clubs (Market): I estimate 25,000 Automotive Clubs world-wide. I was able to produce a database of 2,500 U.S. Automotive Clubs by just searching in Google! If the average membership of these clubs were 50 people, it would bring the market to 1,250,000 automotive owners who are club members. Many of these clubs charge a yearly membership fee, leaving 1,250,000 potential customers paying a residual monthly or yearly fee.

Automotive Clubs (Website Design): I can say from experience automotive clubs have extremely poor websites. Many automotive clubs are non-profit organizations with websites created by a member with limited programming & design knowledge. End result, many automotive clubs need a website or a better website.

Initial Research: I talked to the marketing director at http://www.corvettesnccc.org/. Their organization encompasses over 100,000+ corvette owners world-wide! They disclosed that web development within their clubs is a large concern, but the club lacks the capital and time to build a custom site. They are looking for a free or inexpensive way to do this.

Automotive Club Community: (this is the idea)

I want to build a community for Automotive Clubs owners to help them manage their members. The website would be free at first to register for members & club owners. Club Owners would receive a ‘business’ profile and car owners would receive a ‘user’ profile.

Automotive Clubs would be able to create their own club website, post events, list sponsors, list members, recruit members, upload club pictures & videos, and most importantly manage their members.

Club owners would choose if their club would be public or private. They would be able to decide if how much to charge members for yearly membership fees. Each club would be able to mass e-mail all members informing them of events. They would have an easy & free way to manage their own club website.

Users would be able to search for clubs by city, state, and country. Users would be able to request to join clubs. Users would also be able to create their own profile and communicate with other car owners.

The website would make money (1) charging a fee to process yearly membership fees (2) charging a listing for classic cars for sale in a ‘classifieds’ section (3) Cross promotion within the Automotive Industry (4) Selling Customer Databases or Providing an Advertising Mailing Service to Targeted Car Owners (5) Advertising.

These are just five ways the community could make money. A good internet business owner knows that although he “owns” the website, the community also “owns” the website. A good internet business owner will analyze & listen to his members to find additional revenue models. As this business grows additional revenue models can be developed. We already have a great domain name, I am an expert in search engine optimization, and our company specializes in building social networking software.

If you have the capital to build & market & maintain this business we have the resources to make this internet business successful.

Finances Needed: $50,000-$120,000

Programming: Website Architecture & Blueprints are needed to determine (under 1,250 hours)

Graphic Design: Less than 100 hours

Initial Advertising Material: $5,000 - $25,000

Marketers: $500 - $5500 a month from WebBizIdeas.com

Domain: Already have talked & met with the owner of AutomotiveClubs.com

WHY WEBSITE ARCHITECTURE IS IMPORTANT IMAGE  click here

Multiple high quality images are the secret to any great jewelry website.  When I was ring shopping with my fiancée we must have looked at twenty different websites.  The jewelry websites that kept our interest and got our business had high quality images.  They didn’t have any crazy coding or fancy ecommerce application.  They were really simple with multiple images at different angles.

Keeping it simple focused our attention on the jewelry and if we wanted to purchase or not.  We could easily see pieces we liked and examine them in more detail.  The most important part about high quality images was it showed the differences between the jewelers.  We could see the craftsmanship between the different jewelry.  Without the high quality images all the jewelry would have looked the same to me.

Some of the websites had rotating features that panned around the entire piece of jewelry.  That’s a great feature but doesn’t need to be there if you’re on a budget.

Here are some examples of sites with high quality images and some with low quality images.  Which would you purchase from???

HIGH QUALITY IMAGES

http://www.knoxjewelers.biz/

http://www.shaneco.com/

http://www.zales.com/

LOW QUALITY IMAGES AND TOO COMPLICATED

http://www.weddingdaydiamonds.com/

http://www.eightstar.com/

http://jewelryspecialties.com/

Why Examine This Industry:

• Multiple Organizations, including the World Health Organization, encourages people to take precautions because of the

increase of sun exposure to humans: http://www.who.int/uv/sun_protection/en/

• Everyone knows that they should use sunglasses, hats, sunscreen, and other basic preventative products.
• People are aware of the threat of the sun; global warming / ozone layer / cancer
• Personal Health Care is on the mind of everyone; baby boomers & health care reform
• I like it

I hope you like the last one, I am already convinced there are “holes” within the “Sun Protection Industry.” I know there are already companies online that provide sun care products. I know many are well established and have great products. But I do not know of a market leader; I know no “McDonalds” of “Sun Protection Products.”

So I intend to find to research the industry, competition, search engine behavior, and the overall consumer market of sun protection to uncover what it takes to be that market leader. I am sure my research will find stiff competition but like most market research & analysis I do for WebBizIdeas, I am sure I will uncover opportunities!

Stay tuned, I will be posting my research on our blog over the next couple months.

Google is rolling out new applications since they now have a new platform; Google Caffeine. There new launch is a product called Google Social Search. This new search is important in two main ways for business owners which you need to be aware of:

If you want to watch the videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqWJxgp-_mU&feature=sdig&et=1256907962.57
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpTjP6h6Ms&feature=sdig&et=1256907962.57

Importance #1

Business owners need to heavily promote & manage social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,Linkedin, and others. It also means photo sharing sites such as Picasa Web Albums & Flicker are important. It also means means blogs & local search sites such as yelp and citysearch are important….SO PROMOTE SOCIAL SITES IN WEB DESIGN. sites like CJ.com are pretty obvious that they want people to follow them from their home page.

Importance #2

Business owners need Quality Content. Why? When you are signed into your Google account (many business owners are always signed in) Google is showing results from Social Circles in the result! How crazy is that.

That means if we get all of our clients to follow us on Twitter, or all interested business owners to connect with us on Linkedin, or people follow us on YouTube.com. THIS MEANS WHEN WE PUBLISH NEW CONTENT THEY SEE THAT CONTENT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS.

Wow? What a great way to target your target market. Google is practically telling everyone with this new addition that CONTENT is the new LINK VALUE online!

Sites To Register At - For Small Business Owners:

Google Reader
YouTube.com
FaceBook
Picasa Web Albums
Flicker
Twitter
Blogger
FriendFeed
local listing sites (yelp, judysbook, citysearch.com)

I posted

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Internet marketing expert Jeff Foster will host two free webinars designed to teach businesses and website owners how they can increase search engine traffic using proven internet marketing practices.

The one-hour webinar, titled ‘How to Increase Search Engine Rankings’ will be offered on both January 15th and February 16th from 11:00 AM to noon EST – at no cost to attendees.

A webinar offers the same educational benefits of an instructor-led seminar. However, because it is conducted entirely online, costs and logistical problems associated with live training are eliminated. Participants simply log into a secured website and have access to live video and audio.

Register: Increase Search Engine Traffic
Hosted by: WebBizIdeas

So you want to start a vlog. You realize blogs are great branding & marketing tools and you want to take that next step. Here are 5 easy steps on how to create a video blog for $105.

1. Download www.WordPress.com
2. Buy a Vlog template
3. Hire this company to Install Wordpress for $35
4. Download CamStudio for free, or buy Camtasia for screen capture / editing video you took from a web cam or a video camera.
5. I have heard the Logitech QUICKCAM PRO 9000 Web Cam is pretty good webcam for creating online videos and the Flip Ultra Video Series is pretty good for the money as a digital camera; has a built in usb drive for easy transfer.

SEO Implications

Although Google has publicly said SearchWiki will have NO affect currently on normal organic search results, the future could. Google is always looking to make their search results better and knowing if 10,000 users don’t want to see a Wikipedia result #1 for every search result may be great information.

There have also been instances where sites without sitemaps have also made it to the search engines without much difficulty. That’s fine, but if you have a website that is not well reputed yet on the search engines, and have fewer backlinks, then submitting a sitemap may help. And if you have a website with large amount of content, a site map gives you an opportunity to organize the content and get the best ones out there on the search engines.

BUT, site maps are not required. Site maps won’t guarantee all your pages are indexed. Creating a Site Map will not fix poor coding, website navigational, keyword research, and Meta Data. In fact, if you need a site map to index all your web pages it means your web developer & programmers did a poor job building your site. It also means that you are most likely not benefiting fully from internally links.

A good web design company & software development company knows how to plan, build, and organize a website so it doesn’t need a website.

Read this article about, The Difference between a .HTML Site Map vs. .XML Site Map