| Internet Marketing - Are You Tired Of The Hard Sale? |
| Written by Damian Papworth | |||
| Wednesday, 11 February 2009 09:11 | |||
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I got into internet marketing back in 2003. Like most of my ilk I was tempted not by the riches, but by the perceived better way of living. Setting my own hours and full automation is what appealed to me. I started with the old "Google Cash" business model. Promoting other peoples products on a commission basis using pay per click (PPC) advertising.
I got into internet marketing back in 2003. Like most of my ilk I was tempted not by the riches, but by the perceived better way of living. Setting my own hours and full automation is what appealed to me. I started with the old "Google Cash" business model. Promoting other peoples products on a commission basis using pay per click (PPC) advertising. Having had some great initial success, I got a little disappointed as I watched new entrant after new entrant come into the market, copying my campaigns and forcing the cost of pay per click (PPC) advertising up. This combined with Google's enhancements (which did make their search engine work better, just not for affiliates) made the time involved in managing a Google Cash style business, to be way in excess what the diminishing returns would compensate. So I changed tack. I'd pretty much learned all I could with pay per click advertising anyway. At this juncture I started building and optimising websites. I spent thousands working out the most successful and enduring methods of search engine optimisation (SEO) and applied all the techniques to my own businesses. I still own about half a dozen successful websites. Only one promotes my own product, a tourism service I set up a couple of years ago. All the others sell products in affiliate programs or advertising space. Over the 6 years I have been active in internet marketing, I have picked up quite a few clients who wanted help with their web presence. I never promoted this service, they all came to me on referral or by word of mouth. They all had two things in common. Firstly they wanted a website that sold their product. Secondly they had been ripped off by an unethical internet marketer who took their money and left them with a website that didn't work. There is a real issue with the internet industry, it is packed with these bogus operators. There are graphic designers who put together internet masterpieces, charge a fortune for the website, yet no-one can find it. There are marketing professional who apply all their skills, yet they know nothing about the internet so their message doesn't find an ear to fall on. Our industry is unregulated and we are largely self trained. Unfortunately this has left the industry open to the unscrupulous and ignorant. Our clients have been damaged and the industry suffers also. These charlatans contact me every week trying to sell their services. I can see clearly their modus operendi. They base all their actions on the fact that most business owners are pretty ignorant when it comes to the internet. Therefore, a few nice graphs and some confusing industry jargon is all they offer and expect it to be enough to make a sale. This is despite their general lack of substance when it comes to delivery. Gold Coast Surfboards is a great example to prove the point. This is my travel business. Its the only website I run to date which sells its own product, a long-term surfboard hire service. Do a Google search on Gold Coast Surfboard Hire. You can find me easily. Or even use the less specific search phrase Surfboard Hire. You'll see how well this website is optimised in the search engines. Despite the fact that this business is optimised in the search engines for the phrases that are relative to the product, I still get SEO "professionals" contacting me trying to sell their wares. I get contacted every week. Its crazy. You can see exactly what they do. They find a small business website with the assumption they will know more about the internet than the websites owner. (He after all will be busy running his business) They will look at the main products and then trawl through Google to find a search phrase that the website doesn't compete well with. Then they try and scare the business owner into signing up for their services. This sort of thing really scares me. It makes me realise that there are people in my industry who manipulate our clients to make a quick buck. They are quite happy to modify a website to attract irrelevant traffic in order to make some money, with little care of the damage this does to the customer's business. To embellish, if I had have listened to these hard selling conmen, my website would either be attracting lots of people who needed surfboard wax or fins, or in the Holiday Rentals case, people who are looking for hire cars or accommodation at goodness knows which destination. One thing is for certain, people visiting the Gold Coast would not be hiring my surfboards. If you are a small business owner and get approached by an internet marketer who is going to "turbo boost" your business by getting it up to the top of Google, look carefully at the words they are suggesting they will do this for. There are lots of phrases which anyone can get to #1 as there is no competition for them. This is because no-one uses them to search. So before you sign up an internet marketer, try and get a good understanding of what your clients search for on Google when they are looking for your product. If on the other hand you are not being hassled by these salesmen, yet understand the potential the internet has for your business but don't know where to start, I recommend you start asking around your circle of friends. Try and find an operator that someone will recommend first hand. Just make it clear to them though you are looking for an internet marketer, not a designer. There are plenty of students or graphic artists out there who will be happy to take your cash and build you a masterpiece. It will be such a pity no-one will be able to find it. And to all the shonky operators in our wonderful industry, please make an effort to bring some standard of ethics into your operation. You need to stop selling for the sake of sales and start selling to add real value. If you can add real value to a potential client's business, great, please do so. Its so nice when businesses speak highly of the internet marketing industry. If you can't add value to them though, leave them alone. They are better off without you. About the Author: Damian Papworth, concerned with the lack of ethics displayed by todays internet professionals, promotes ethics over greed
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