Have you been seeing the funky commercials on TV where everyone's innocent comments bring a flurry of babbling on about subjects that have almost nothing in common? Well, that's a take off on "search engine results"--those places you are given when you type into Google or MSN or Yahoo to find out where you can get tickets to a concert or find a gift for the boss or your favorite music or running shoes or...ad infinitum.
The phone book has gone the way of the dinosaur. Trivia can settle a bet in an instant. The title of that movie you can never remember can be found. So much of our days are filled with having so much information at our fingertips (literally) that we can feel just as lost when the "internet is down" as we do when we lose our electricity or our water in our home.
Where does all this information come from? Better question yet, how does it get on my screen? Without going into the tech aspects of this event, let's try to better understand, if I search for "pet supplies", there is a list of websites that offer pet supplies. Why is it that PetCo.com is listed first and ABCPetSupplies.com is listed on the third page? You see, it takes a lot of factors for a company like PetCo to get that first page listing so that you find what you are looking for.
That coveted "first page" listing means revenue for the website owner, right? So how does it get there? Well, these are a few of many reasons:
It has the keyword phrase I typed ("pet supplies") on the web page that comes up in this search.
It has a lot of other sites that link back to them with that phrase in the link.
There are news stories or articles about "pet supplies" that reference this site.
The site has many pages of its own linking to this phrase and
the site has been around for a long time.
These practices take time and are always ongoing but they ultimately make the difference.
Okay, so you may ask, if I want to have my website in the first pages of the search engines but the site is brand new, how do I compete for that first page listing? A shortcut for immediate attention is paid ads.
Next time you make a search, look over to your right at the "sponsored" listings. These are ads that are paid listings. The main body of the page, on the left, is what is called "organic" listings. These have battled their way to the top using the factors described above. But the "sponsored" listings also have a hierarchy. With bidding for positions, you can "buy" this space with an ad. More about that another time.
Most people find that by searching for a very specific "keyword", such as "8' chain link choke chain", they will more quickly find what they are looking for than searching "pet supplies". The search engine can narrow your request right down to the brand name, if you ask.
In part two of the search engines explained, we will examine this narrowing of focus and how anyone can compete with the "big dogs" if they know a few easy tips.
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There is a small business in all of us, just waiting to be put online.
This week's featured website:
http://www.GeorgiaDawgHouse.com
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The economy has everyone thinking beyond "yard sale" to bring in extra income.
eBay may have started it all but interest in making money online is growing...
As it becomes easier and easier to set up a website, more "everyday" people as making money online. In fact, you don't even have to have a website to make money from the internet! For the past few years, I have become engrossed in the options available and have used many of them to earn an income. For me, it's fun and challenging-two requirements that motivated me.
I became interested in the internet in 1998, when things were still shiny and new online. In tech years, that's an eon ago! A young man named Corey Rhudl was selling something called an "ebook" on the internet. At that time, a hard copy was sent out by mail to the customers who bought it. Corey's book was on his interest in cars--a book of car buying tips. He made quite a fortune on it and realized that the selling of information was the key to his success. He applied that format to other information and soon began to teach others how to do what he did.
Thus began something quite inspiring. Not only was information in demand, but products that were not available in brick and mortar stores were being sold. And before you knew it, mainstream products were being seen there, too (oh my Amazon...). The rest is history, as they say.
No longer was the internet a place for techno geeks only or an exclusive club of retailers--the average person could sell their books on fly fishing, building a solar panel, dog training or have a yard sale online (eBay) or buy items wholesale and sell from their own website or sell other people's stuff for a commission. Today there are even more ways to make money online. And you don't even have to print those ebooks anymore--digital downloads take all the overhead out of selling your product.
There is nothing more fascinating to me than to learn more about the whole process and see how it changes everyday; see the effects and new opportunities those effects bring.
For anyone here who has an interest in this marvelous internet experience, I will be posting each week with a, let's call it, beginner's guide to making money online. If you have been mystified by how that works, curious about what is going on behind the scenes, you will not want to miss this ongoing commentary. To subscribe, just send me a friend request and ask to be notified when my next post is online.
Whoever invented the phrase "cool", you made it possible to describe things of which people will understand, without a doubt, what you mean. The internet is most definitely "cool", first and foremost.
Julia is an online retailer and internet marketer--titles that will be explained in upcoming posts on this blog. Her motto is "The more you know--the more you DON'T know..."
As it becomes easier and easier to set up a website, more "everyday" people as making money online. In fact, you don't even have to have a website to make money from the internet! For the past few years, I have become engrossed in the options available and have used many of them to earn an income. For me, it's fun and challenging-two requirements that motivated me.
I became interested in the internet in 1998, when things were still shiny and new online. In tech years, that's an eon ago! A young man named Corey Rhudl was selling something called an "ebook" on the internet. At that time, a hard copy was sent out by mail to the customers who bought it. Corey's book was on his interest in cars--a book of car buying tips. He made quite a fortune on it and realized that the selling of information was the key to his success. He applied that format to other information and soon began to teach others how to do what he did.
Thus began something quite inspiring. Not only was information in demand, but products that were not available in brick and mortar stores were being sold. And before you knew it, mainstream products were being seen there, too (oh my Amazon...). The rest is history, as they say.
No longer was the internet a place for techno geeks only or an exclusive club of retailers--the average person could sell their books on fly fishing, building a solar panel, dog training or have a yard sale online (eBay) or buy items wholesale and sell from their own website or sell other people's stuff for a commission. Today there are even more ways to make money online. And you don't even have to print those ebooks anymore--digital downloads take all the overhead out of selling your product.
There is nothing more fascinating to me than to learn more about the whole process and see how it changes everyday; see the effects and new opportunities those effects bring.
For anyone here who has an interest in this marvelous internet experience, I will be posting each week with a, let's call it, beginner's guide to making money online. If you have been mystified by how that works, curious about what is going on behind the scenes, you will not want to miss this ongoing commentary. To subscribe, just send me a friend request and ask to be notified when my next post is online.
Whoever invented the phrase "cool", you made it possible to describe things of which people will understand, without a doubt, what you mean. The internet is most definitely "cool", first and foremost.
Julia is an online retailer and internet marketer--titles that will be explained in upcoming posts on this blog. Her motto is "The more you know--the more you DON'T know..."
Monday, February 16, 2009
Do You want your clients to know your Wholeale Prices?
It happened to me again! Upon checking my nearest competitor in the search engines, I find yet another "wholesaler" of my products posting retail AND wholesale prices to the public, for anybody, including my clients, to see. I don't know about you, but I believe that a retail business should have access to the wholesale prices of the products they sell only if they have a resellers certificate/sales tax number. The general public should not know the cost of an item and how much it is marked up. Geez Louise...
Okay, so some one finds my site with a thingy that I sell for $29. This wholesale company has the nerve to put both retail ($29) and wholesale price ($10) of the same thingy on their site. And I wrote to them asking for an explanation. Their answer was that the retailers they sell to find it "convenient" to see the prices they will have to pay. Wonder how many of those dunces have figured out that their prospective customers are looking under the same keywords and are a bit peeved at knowing what margins they are paying. Sounds like a lot of too lazy retailers who find it a little too inconvenient to create a private wholesale account.
Or maybe these lazy retailers aren't really working under a sales tax number...hmmmm.
Tell me what YOU think.
(signed-Perturbed in Atlanta)
Okay, so some one finds my site with a thingy that I sell for $29. This wholesale company has the nerve to put both retail ($29) and wholesale price ($10) of the same thingy on their site. And I wrote to them asking for an explanation. Their answer was that the retailers they sell to find it "convenient" to see the prices they will have to pay. Wonder how many of those dunces have figured out that their prospective customers are looking under the same keywords and are a bit peeved at knowing what margins they are paying. Sounds like a lot of too lazy retailers who find it a little too inconvenient to create a private wholesale account.
Or maybe these lazy retailers aren't really working under a sales tax number...hmmmm.
Tell me what YOU think.
(signed-Perturbed in Atlanta)
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