Research Before You Pay For Advertising

If you pay for advertising, ensure you do your homework!

I had a telephone call today from an Internet business directory services company who specialize in providing promotion services for small to medium enterprises in the UK.  I’m not going to name and shame the company since this isn’t the objective here.

The objective is warn you that if you receive these unsolicited phone calls from advertisers telling you they can get you 30 calls per month, do your homework before you say yes!

I’m not suggesting that every advertising company out there will hype up sales and your return on investment but my conversation today proved that the big advertising companies do it and there may be nothing but fluff behind their promises!  Lets face it though, someone has to pay for their TV, Sky and other media advertising campaigns.

Anyway, here’s what happened…

I received the call from a very nice young man who told me he could almost promise me a top position in Google.  When I challenged him, he gave me the search term "search engineering" to type into Google.co.uk so he could prove his point.  Uh Oh!  The company he was trying to find with this search term was no where to be found and after 7 pages, I gave up.

He embarresengly said "I did this up until yesterday and it’s worked every time."  So I asked him if he knew "how" he got the company to the top of Google?  He couldn’t answer.

But he’d not done yet, so he gave me the search term for a plumber in a local town and BINGO!  He was at the number one position on Google.  BUT… there was zero Google ranking, which does not have to be that big of a deal right but, neither was there any traffic stats.  Now again, I know Alexa is only a guage, but when it shows me "No Data" and there are zero links, the only suggestion I had to offer was that this plumber must be the only one in his town with a web presence!

But no, this wasn’t it either.  The ONLY reason this particular plumber got a #1 position on Google was because he was the only one using this particular keyword phrase, in this particular order and with that particular search term as his domain name.

And I wasn’t done yet!  I decided after the call to give the friendly plumber a call and he was very pleasant.  He told me he paid £300 for this two page web site.  He pays £11 per month on hosting and £29 per month for the directory service.  For my US friends reading this, that’s almost $600 for the two page website plus an additional $40 per month.

And this is the interesting part… how many equiriries has he had from this website since it went live a couple of months ago… a few!!  A totally different story to what I’d been told.  I.e. that he was doing very well and receives a lot of business from it! 

I bet this particular company uses sites like his on a regular basis to sell their services and I bet very few people contact the website owner - or company owner if it’s a physical ad - to correlate the facts. 

Now going back to our search term "search engineering",  only 72 searches were made for that term during the month of September according to inventory.overture.com and even more interesting, when you type the term into Google, most of the sites displayed on Google.co.uk are engineering specific and NOT search engine optimization related.

For this plumber, this is some expensive advertising since he is totally at the mercy of a big organization who has used search engine placement to get him to buy into their services, despite the fact that the keywords they use are scarcely being searched and may not even be targeted.  So the business generated from the websites and the services they sell may never even cover the advertising costs.  

Hope this post demonstrates how important it is for you to do your own research before embarking on any advertising campaign, or spending money with a web designer or web developer for that matter.

Good sales,

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3 Reasons Your Business Must Have a Purpose Foundation

How to stay motivated and focused when the chips are down…

One of my most trusted mentors Joel Comm wrote an excellent post for his blog a few days ago about living on purpose.

Essentially he challenged people not to create websites based on a niche that might earn them the most money, but to focus on what you’re passionate about which, ultimately should be connected to your calling - why are you here?

Maybe you’ve been struggling with some clarity of direction in your own life.  And, if you’ve found yourself jumping from one home study course to another lately, or even from one business opportunity to another, may be it’s time to ask "what am I really passionate about."  "What kind of things do I do that make me lose track of time because I’m so focused and so engaged."  "What things do I do that feels like childs play that someone else abhors doing.

This is the "stuff" that will keep you motivated when clinets aren’t banging on your door to do business with you, particuarly when you have that quiet confidence of knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

So, to keep you going, I’m going to offer you 3 compelling reasons you should make finding your purpose the "foundation" of building your business online:

1. Living on purpose is what will keep you focused on "winning" during the roughest times in your business.  It will keep you focused and keep your goals clearly in mind so that even when you’re told there’s a recession and you have that knowing within your heart that this is where you’re meant to be and what you’re supposed to be doing, you’ll just respond with "I aint going there!"
2. When you have a purpose, your business will have a purpose and this will stop you copying other people - irrespecitve of how successful they are.  But give me a moment to qualify this statement.  Principles are principles and they don’t change.  So yes, go ahead and follow the time tested principles of successful people, but remember that it’s who you become that’s most important, not having and achieving what others have accomplished.

   I once heard a speaker say "I was born unique so why would I want to die a carbon copy."  So what I’m saying is "remember to maintain your authenticity when copying other people because it’s this that will ensure you’re drawn to the right people and that the right people are drawn to you and your business.

3. Purpose will ensure you’re known for something!  Everybody has a desire to be known for something and in my view, you just as well be known for what you’re passionate about and what you excell in. 

   I’m telling you that as an MBA graduate, there are things I have no authority speaking about despite the fact that they drummed it into me at University.  But there are things they could never teach me but when I speak on them, I am the authority and you hear it in my voice, you see it in my body language and if you’re standing within 100 feet of me, you can feel it in my energy!   

   So take up your expert status today by finding your purpose and focusing on your strengths rather than trying to make your weaknesses stronger weaknesses.  If you think you can’t write (and I say "think" because most people are better writers than they give themselves credit for) hire a copywriter to do it for you.  And likewise, if you are a whiz at website copy, hire out your services! 

To your online Success,

 

   

Simple Truth about Success

Wow, having just made my last post, I received an email from a friend with a link to a movie on the simple truth about success.

http://www.212movie.com

The movie speaks of that "extra degree" and how that extra degree can literally be the difference between success and failure, winning or losing or experiencing greater achievements.

It’s short and sweet, but very powerful and demonstrates what little consistent effort is required on your behalf to move you towards living the life of your dreams.

After you’ve watched the movie, ask yourself the question "what do I need to do consistently on a daily basis in order to live the life I really want?"  And remember to ask yourself what it is you really want because without knowing this, your dreams become harder to materialize.  See my blog post "The Key To Success…" for more information about visualizing your dreams. 

You’ve probably heard, like I have, that success is all about taking giant steps.  Well I want to challenge you to just start with baby steps if you don’t feel ready to take the big steps just yet because taking baby steps on a daily consistent basis will turn into giant steps over the coming weeks, months and years.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself if you were born walking!! 

Enjoy the movie…

Trading Time for Money Online

Do you want to learn the detail or just make the money?

As a small business consultant and mentor, I love to teach people about building websites and getting the most from their websites.  And I must say, that most people are willing and keen to learn but… there is no get rich quick scheme in Internet Marketing.  Success online takes a lot of work and a lot of time and though it need not take a lot of money, there is no getting away from it, it will take some.

For most people when they get started on the Internet, they don’t have the money to outsource all or any of the jobs that will take time, so they have to spend more time learning and doing.  When they start making money then they can begin to outsource and trade some of their time for money.

The problem comes when you want your cake and eat it! 

If you don’t have the money to hire professionals to do the job for you, then you either have to ride this wave and do things yourself or, and I hate to say it, just quit!

There are places like Elance.com where you can find a range of professional service providers who will do some of the donkey work for you at a very reasonable price and if you really are struggling financially, I would suggest this is a great place to start when you begin outsourcing.  I’ve found some great web designers on Elance and I know there are a range of Internet Marketing services that you can tap into at a great price.

If you’re not even at the point of outsourcing at all just yet, it really is time to turn off the TV, suspend some of your other activities and start putting more time into building your business. 

No one else can build your business for you - unless you pay them - so it’s no point whinging about having no money but then refusing to do the work because it’s too much or too hard or because you don’t have enough time.

It can become a full-time job getting started on the Internet so please don’t look at the guru’s and think they started off having exoctic holidays every two months or that they’ve always worked for only 2 hours per day because it wasn’t like that!

Bill Gates when he started his business in his garage wouldn’t move from his computer for hours.  Didn’t wash at times and either ate junk food or nothing.  And yet the same people criticizing him for having millions - or is it billions - forget about those times! 

So make a conscious decision today to either trade money for more time or your time for money.  Whatever decision you make, ensure you get the best out of it and if it’s simply that you have to do it yourself, visualize the times you’ll have more people doing more for you so you have more time to do the things you enjoy.

To your online success,

 

Beyond Just Building A Website

Getting the most from your Website

Undeniably the two biggest questions I get asked are:

a) what’s the easiest way to get my website built
b) how do I get traffic to my website

I’ll cover some of the traffic generation tips in a future post, but for now, I want to tackle some of the considerations you’ll need to make when building your own website.

First of all, it isn’t always the cheapest option to build your own website, particularly if you have no idea what you’re doing.  If you fall into this category, go to www.elance.com and look for a web designer here.  But, I warn you, be in charge of the project!  By this I mean not to let the designer offer you a fancy, flashy website that looks good but will seriously damage your search engine rankings.

If it’s just a matter of knowing nothing about web design, your best bet is to pay someone to design your website exactly the way you want it or, more appropriately, exactly the way the search engines want.  In other words, make it easy for the spiders to crawl your site.

Once your designer provides the website template, you can then add your own copy and begin marketing your site.  And for this you will need a website editor such as Microsoft FrontPage.  For more tips on building your website yourself, check out my October 7th post - "Build a Website The Easy Way."

Choose your domain name very carefully.  Make sure it’s short, sweet and memorable and preferably, include your primary keyword in the domain name.  

One popular site you can visit to check what domains are available is http://www.whois.sc/  This is also a good site to see who owns a particular domain you are interested.  If the owner is not using the domain, you can offer to purchase it from them or alternatively add a relevant word - such as "live" or "online" to the end of the domain to make it unique. 

Probably one of the most important elements for an Internet company to consider, apart from the marketing strategies, is choosing a very good web host.  If your web site goes down, you are completely out of business. 

When searching for a web host company make sure they have secure server capabilities, fast servers, lots of space, unrestricted CGI access, SSH and FTP access, web-based administration, access to raw server logs, full email services, power and daily server backups, and no minimum contracts!

You may even want to test their technical support and see what kind of services they offer.  Some only offer email support, which I’ve used and have been very satisfied, but I now know who to deal with at the company and it also depends on what level you are at.

You also want to know what  scripts, and additional software they offer and inquire about their downtime and how long they have been in business.  Also, make sure you are not being charged for the extra services.  I almost got stung recently when I suggest my clients switch to a new hosting company.  It turned out that whilst they offered a few scripts within the monthly cost, additional scripts would cost $50 each!  The hosting accounts were cancelled pronto!

In essence, you want fast connections and an easy to navigate website that’s user friendly to maintain customer experience.

Two great hosting sites are www.lunarpages.com and www.thirdspherehosting.com

To your online success,

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