We skipped the last two weeks for the holiday season. Hope you had a terrific time and we wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

What else can we start the New Year with than talking about Google? These guys are planning something major by the end of this year, but let's talk about browser security first. Let's pick up where we left off. As you may remember, in the last month of the previous year we were doing an article mini-series in which we were comparing Microsoft Internet Explorer with Mozilla Firefox based on certain criteria that experts set to make the comparison fair. These criteria were:

• Speed
• Compatibility
• Security

We talked about speed and compatibility so far and now it is time to talk about

Security

When you do online banking or fill out an online form or simply type in a password you are always exposed to people who would love to obtain the sensitive information that is supposed to belong only to you. The Internet is an open, public place and unless there is encryption in the transferred data on-line, everything is public and can be accessed by anyone.

Both Mozilla Firefox and MSIE use pretty decent encryption technologies to make sure that the private information would stay private when it is looked at. by unauthorized third parties However, many people who either have bad intentions or just resent Microsoft, for whatever reason, attack MSIE a lot more often than Mozilla Firefox and usually they are more successful in breaching the security loopholes in this browser because they scrutinize it more. In the past few years for one Mozilla security breach there was at least 10 MSIE security breach that was actually featured in the news.

Do you still feel safe using MSIE? We do not and that is why we recommend Mozilla Firefox. You can download it for free by clicking on the button below so you can try it and compare it to MSIE yourself.

Why is it Google Again?

This is an Internet marketing blog and we want to make sure that you understand that comparing the above browsers gave you some insight why your website (your online salesperson) must be compatible with Mozilla Firefox. We also want to draw your attention to other existing browsers on the market besides Mozilla Firefox and MSIE that you should be aware of:

• Google Chrome
• Opera (made in Norway)
  
• Safari (made by Apple - makers of the Iphone)
  

At this point the browsers above do not have very significant market share. An average computer user probably never even heard about them. However, we want to make sure that you are aware that they exist and they work just as well (or even better) than the two that we just analyzed above. I personally like Google Chrome because of its noticeably higher speed, stability and very high security.

Many hacker forums tested Explorer and Mozilla for vulnerabilities.

They were able to crack Explorer in seconds, Mozilla in minutes, but they were not able to crack Google Chrome as of yet. That is why it is worth paying attention to Google because they really care about security. There are still some compatibility issues in Chrome that Google has to work out, but they are so minimal that they do not bother me.

It also should be noted that the European Union already forced Microsoft to sell its new Windows computers with a pre-installed selector program that asks the buyer of the computer to choose among competing browsers instead of automatically selling the computer with MSIE alone. Most likely, the US will follow suit in the near future. Once this happens and once Google rolls out some marketing, Microsoft's dominance in the browser market will most likely be broken.

It is also worth mentioning that in the fall of this year, Google will come out with its own operating system to challenge Microsoft Windows. This new operating system called Chrome OS will be used on netbooks first then a wide range of other computers including desktops later. This will seriously challenge Microsoft's hegemony in the PC market where the vast majority of Internet users come from. Google's operating system called Chrome OS is built around its web browser, Google Chrome and it is expected to take market share away from MSIE. So it is expected  that the market share of Internet Explorer will fall even further in the upcoming years.

At this point we still recommend Mozilla Firefox to everyone because it is doing better in all significant aspects than MSIE and it has a significant market share so some of your customers are probably using it already or they will switch to it in the near future.

Most likely the combination of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers will be the majority in a few years. This means that most of your customers will  most likely use one of them. Thus your website has to be compatible with these browsers too if you want to do business with the increased numbers of user Mozilla and Chrome users. Get prepared now and familiarize yourself with Mozilla Firefox. You can download it below for free and compare it to MSIE yourself.

Download Firefox

We hope you enjoyed this mini-series about the two most popular browsers. Feel free to disagree with us, post your comments, ask questions below. We love answering questions and more than happy to help.

Compatibility is defined as the capability of displaying web pages and web based applications (online  interactive forms, calendars, mortgage calculators, streaming stock quotes or other similar widgets) correctly.

Both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox is built on a modified codebase of the predecessor of all graphics browsers called Mosaic so a superficial outsider can easily assume that there is no difference in their compatibility.

However, there is a world of a difference in the areas that was developed later. The most significant and noticeable difference is the way Mozilla and MSIE handles Javascript, the program language of the Internet that is used by the majority of web based applications. Most web based applications are built on this language that the browser can understand.

We previously mentioned that Firefox handles Jacascript better as far as speed is concerned, but it is also better at displaying the Javascript based applications properly which is a compatibility issue.  Also there are some other ways that  that Firefox is better than MSIE such as:

• displaying HTML content properly
• rendering CSS style sheets more properly than MSIE as it can be proven with the so-called ACID test
• and updating the DOM tree properly which MSIE sometimes has issues with.

Thus, Mozilla is more compatible than MSIE in running web based applications. Web based applications are the core business of Creative Innovations Enterprises and we have significant experience to confirm and give first hand testimony that Mozilla Firefox is far superior to MSIE when it comes to running web based applications such as our Myetus Back Office System. Therefore, we highly recommend Mozilla Firefox to you. You can download it for free by clicking on the button below so you can try it and compare them yourself.

Download Firefox

As we mentioned earlier, this website is about Internet marketing. We compare the two leading browsers here in this article mini-series to prepare you for the upcoming change that can be expected in the not-too-distant future when MSIE most likely will no longer dominate the market.

If you want to argue with this statement, please feel free to make your comments below. Be sure to add this post to your bookmarks and sign up for our RSS feed as this blog is updated on a regular basis with useful Internet marketing information that a business owner like yourself can utilize for free of charge. Please be sure to read the final article that is about security.

As I mentioned earlier and you also probably noticed that after a while your Internet Explorer significantly slows down for no apparent reason even when you do regular maintenance on it. Why? Only Microsoft can tell. 

Mozilla made the Firefox code available to the online community and as soon as an issue is discovered, hundreds of programmers donate their time to fix the issue as soon as possible. Microsoft has a closed system and only their engineers can fix the problem whenever they feel like it.

Because of the appearance of Mozilla they became much better at updating MSIE on a regular basis in the past few years. Before then this was not the case. Before this change the user would have to go out, find the updates and install them manually. The technically not very savvy user (over 90% of computer users in the US who automatically get Explorer when they purchase a new computer and do not even know that there are other, better browsers out there than MSIE) did not do these updates at all thus MSIE rapidly lost its original speed in the machines of most users because of constant virus and malware exploitation that most of the times avoided Firefox.

Since Mozilla was doing its automatic updates from its very start, Microsoft soon had to realize that they needed to follow suit and start doing online updates on a regular basis as well because they saw MSIE's market share declining very rapidly.

Mozilla was able handle changes of speed requirements better than MSIE and that was why it usually stayed within its original speed range even when it used for a long time. We do not know how you are, but we like our computers and our browsers to stay at the same level of speed when we originally purchased them. By now Microsoft fixed many issues with MSIE, but still Mozilla is the winner of the speed comparison.

In the speed of reading modern web pages, in other words

• rendering the HTML content Firefox is the absolute winner
• rendering transparent images and trasparent elements MSIE seriously fails, especially MSIE 6
• rendering and scrolling large data grid (eg. a restaurant reservation list, either in detailed list view or in day view) MSIE is much slower
  
• and last but not least, processing Javascript Firefox is light years faster than MSIE, but the absolute winners are Chrome and Safari (we talk about them a little later) which are light years faster than Firefox

Because all of the above reasons we highly recommend Mozilla Firefox. You can download Mozilla Firefox for free by clicking on the button below so you can try it and compare them yourself.

Download Firefox

We would love to hear your feedback. Please bookmark this post, ask your question and make your comments below. And be sure to read our next article that deals with compatibility.

What does this post have to do with Internet marketing, you would ask. A lot. Trends show that Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) is losing its popularity as new players enter into the market. This is significant because your customers most likely will use one of the emerging browsers in the future instead of MSIE. This means that your website (your online salesperson) must be ready for them now before your competition. If you are not familiar with other browsers than MSIE, it is time to get a little education. So let's get started.

What are Mozilla and Internet Explorer?

They are two different, very capable web browsers. Most likely you know what Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) is as it came with your computer when you purchased it in the store and you probably already familiarized yourself with it. It is used for accessing the Internet and displaying web pages and it is usually represented a large blue-colored letter e on your Windows desktop when you first start you machine after purchasing it from the store.

MSIE is fairly easy to use and works well and it has a decent speed when your computer is new. But when your machine starts to get older and you put more and more stuff on it, you would notice a significant slowdown in the speed of your MSIE even when you do regular maintenance (clean your cache, dump your cookies and temporary Internet files, etc.). So you might think: "Oh, this is just natural, that is the way computers work".  Many companies make you believe that computers 'naturally' slow down after a while. And some companies even want to make you believe that you need to upgrade your computer (usually means spending your hard-earned money) to make it go faster.

Do you really have to do that or is there a better way?

You might have heard about Mozilla Firefox because many companies started to promote it a while ago and now they have a large enough market share that word of mouth probably reached you about it by now. Mozilla Firefox basically serves the same exact purpose as Internet Explorer. It displays web pages for you when you surf the Internet. Big deal you would say, you already have Internet Explorer and you are perfectly happy with it.

Many people like Mozilla Firefox however and their number is growing for a reason. It was not always like this. Between 2001-2005 Internet Explorer was pretty fast and pretty decent and worked fairly well. It did not have any real significant competitor as Mozilla was just starting up as Netscape was in the process of dying. So Internet Explorer ruled. However, people at the Mozilla Foundation (a not for profit organization) along with thousands of volunteer developers from all over the world decided to take on Microsoft's dominance in the world of browsers. Their purpose was to create a

• small
• easy-to-use
• compatible and
• fast

alternative to Internet Explorer.

So they did and since its start Mozilla Firefox keeps taking market share away from Internet Explorer (MSIE) and there is a reason behind that.

Why do many people like Mozilla Firefox is better than MSIE?

First I want to tell you that neither of these browsers are perfect and since they are only pieces of software that are created by human beings, they all have glitches and there is always a probability for an error. This statement is true even when a piece of software is made by huge corporations with millions of dollars of development budget. There is no such thing as the 'perfect software that is ready'. Anybody who states the opposite is not telling the truth.

Let's cut the chase now and let's compare Mozilla Firefox and MSIE. Before we do that we want to make sure our comparison is fair. Therefore a certain set of criteria must be established to compare these two competing pieces of software fairly. These criteria that most experts use are:

• speed
• compatibility and
• safety

In our next article we will compare MSIE and Mozilla based on the above criteria. Please bookmark this post and feel free to ask questions or make comments below and be sure to continue reading this series of articles.

Because currently about 70% of all searches on the Internet are done on Google.

It was not always like that. In the beginning there were thousands of search engines. You may remember the fierce competition between Yahoo, Hotbot, Webcrawler and Lycos, to name a few. Companies spent astronomical amounts of money to take the first positions among search results. Revenue was coming in and they were all thriving. Then Google came and changed the playing field. Google set new rules for search and now many people question the mere need for the ailing Yahoo.

What does all this mean to you and your business and your on-line sales?

Basically, you have to play by Google's rules if you want to make sure people notice your business on-line. Does it mean that you have to be afraid of the 'big bad' Google as many people (including the US Government) expressed serious concerns about Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000s? Remember the frenzy that surrounded the launch of Gmail, Google's e-mail service? Many said, that 'big bad Google' would read your e-mail and they would seriously violate your privacy. They did not. Remember the Viacom vs. Google lawsuit? Google stood by its customers and refused to give out personally identifiable data on users who uploaded questionable material by Viacom on Youtube, owned by Google. When the US Government tried to force Google to disclose information on certain groups of people who look at websites with questionable content, Google stood by its customers and refused to share even after all major Internet Service Providers (such as AOL, Comcast and AT&T) did so.

Google's philosophy is simple:

privacy is the number one priority and money can be made without doing evil. They have a very strong ethics code and they do not share private information because they know that in the instance they do it, they will break the trust of the majority of their users who see them as a useful and powerful partner in their Internet ventures whether it is search or doing business on-line.

The most important rule in Google Search:

the more relevant you are, the better your chances are to get your business to the first two pages of the search results. Statistics show that over 80% of the people who search on the Internet are looking for a certain product and service and ready, willing and able to pay for it. Now it is OUR job, to show YOU as the business owner:

• How to play by Google's rules and get YOUR company listed on the first two pages where your potential buyers look
• How to create on-line trust that makes people buy from YOU instead of your competition
• How to stay relevant and stay on the first two pages for a long time
• How to actually make a profit (after all expenses are deducted)

What does all this mean to YOU during the economic meltdown that most off-line businesses still currently feel? If you act now, before your competition wakes up, you have a good chance to weather the crisis and come out on top. Many companies are confused and trim their advertising budgets and they are AFRAID. This is the time of action and reconsidering the direction where your advertising dollars should go. Industry experts say that...

...over 80% of advertising dollars are totally wasted

Why? The advertiser usually does not track or has no clue how to track the effectiveness of his or her ad. Would you still buy advertisement though if you knew it worked and you are able to track it and profit from it? There are scientifically proven methods that our company employs that will let you know whether your ads would work or not even before you spend serious money on them.

The economic meltdown is your wake up call:

 it is time to act now, before it is too late! If you want to stay on the surface, redirect your advertising dollars towards advertising that is proven to work and let your company take advantage of the re-emerging

New Economy.

This New Economy will be strong this time and it will be here to stay because there is substance, expertise and hard work is behind it. In the last 8 years the on-line marketing industry learned a lot and thanks to Google, search became more relevant. The majority of the companies worked out their logistical issues and their customers now feel comfortable buying on-line. And most importantly: the younger generation almost exclusively uses the Internet for almost everything in their daily lives. If you want to stay in business for the long run, you'd better be equipped with 21st century tools and methods to conquer the hearts and the wallets of the new generation who will help the New Economy thrive.

So, can Cyber Monday save the US economy and give a boost to YOUR business?

 Well, it certainly can next year. The shopping season is just starting and now it this is the time to make your New Year's Resolution. We are ready to talk to you about it. Our Web Application and Internet Marketing Specialists are standing by. Call now!

1-888-969-3887

The reason why the social networking business model is still questionable is because of the mere existence of Google. By now that school project in the late 90s became a multi-billion dollar company and they dominate the on-line advertising market. How did they do that?

One word: relevancy

Google built its business model on that. Did you know that today the majority of people go on-line to find something that they want to purchase or find a service they want to use? Now that is a far cry from the Internet's "toy for kids" status, isn't it? Google made this possible because it delivers relevant results, because people find what they want and they are happy with what they find. Of course there are ways to "fool" a search engine and Google is not perfect either, but nowadays they "slap out" companies who try to "fool" (use tricks to deliver irrelevant results) it.

Web 2.0 is great because it increases relevancy.

There is another form of web 2.0 that forms its majority and that is called blogging and blogs. Blogs are certain web pages that initially the industry called web logs and later they just simply called them blogs. In other words, blogs are on-line diaries and they usually have something to do with a very specific topic and they are personal. A blog has a main area where the editor(s) can write and there is the comment area where people who want to make a comment can write. Therefore blogs are very relevant because they are usually topic specific and created by real people. Almost anybody who writes a blog nowadays is considered as an 'expert' on a certain field. Whether that expertise is valid or not is sometimes hard to tell. However, when many other people agree with the blogger in the blog's comment area, the prestige of the blogger gets higher. Blogs are also organic which means the entries are usually made on a volunteer basis and usually people who enter their opinion in a blog are not paid. Therefore, the opinions in blogs and the links to or from blogs are natural and relevant and that is what Google wants. Google also stressed that it wants to keep the Internet open and it will not favor paid back links coming from blogs to your site. 

There is more coming up so do not forget to come back. You can bookmark this site or just simply subscribe to our RSS feed. If you like this article, you can even share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, the possibilities are almost endless. Just click on the little + sign in the upper right hand corner of this post.

Do you have any questions or comments? We are happy to answer them. You can also give us a call and talk to one of our Web Applications and Internet Marketing Specialists.

Call now: 1-888-969-3887

In the early 2000s (up to 2005) Flash pretty much dominated the Internet especially the small business websites. In the meantime CMS was considered to be 'not fashionably' or 'overly geeky' and it was somewhat forgotten.

Mostly some college kids, the so called 'geeks and nerds' used it and continued developing it. Some of the bigger users of the CMS were the few of the dotcom companies that survived the bust. At that time (all the way up to 2005) Flash was thriving. Everybody wanted a Flash website. However, many business owners soon realized that they did not get the bang for their big bucks and many of them abandoned their websites and wrote off the huge expense as advertising cost. Many of the web design companies started to have problems selling Flash. So, easy by easy they started to look at CMS and web based applications a little more in depth. Many web design companies recognized the importance of these and nowadays they are very aggressively and heavily pushing their template based websites that look very 'modern' to unsuspecting clients.

Regardless, how 'modern' an offer that you come across with may look, one thing you must not forget as a reasonable business owner: Do you remember the 'good old days' when web design companies came to you and told you that they would design you a website that would make you rich?

The same guys are doing their trick again,

this time with CMS systems. If a fast talking salesman comes to you promising that their company will design a 'modern looking' CMS based website and provide Internet marketing 'service', just ask them if they have this questionnaire or anything similar to that.

Have you heard of Myspace?

Your kids most likely have. Since the birth of Myspace almost everything changed overnight in the way business owners and Internet users (your customers) look at web design and the way they should look at web design companies. A new concept called the Web 2.0 was developed.

What is Web 2.0?

In a nutshell: the content of the Web no longer belongs to the web design companies, but belongs to, made by and constantly updated by you, the consumer or the business owner. Many social networking websites followed Myspace (Facebook is the biggest one and now it overtook Myspace as it has a neater interface that users like better) and they are in fierce competition for your advertising dollars. Their business model and the chance of survival is still questionable, many experts say. For example, Linked-In, a prestigious social networking website for executives and business owners just recently got a substantial capital infusion from an investor.

The good news is

that the consequence of social media and web 2.0, a new concept called 'cloud computing' was formed. Cloud computing is nothing else but your business doing lead generation, fulfillment, communication, placing and tracking of all business participants and activities on an easy to use content management system on the Internet. Why is this important? You as the business owner do not need to invest heavily on equipment and infrastructure on your business location and you pay only when you use the services. Personalized web based applications can do almost everything you can imagine for your business in the 'cloud' (in other words, on the Internet). We specialize in developing many of these applications for you based on your circumstances and we do take your strained budget into consideration.

There is more coming up so do not forget to come back. You can bookmark this site or just simply subscribe to our RSS feed. If you like this article, you can even share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, the possibilities are almost endless. Just click on the little + sign in the upper right hand corner of this post.

Do you have any questions or comments?

We are happy to answer them. You can also give us a call and talk to one of our Web Applications and Internet Marketing Specialists.

Call now: 1-888-969-3887

What went wrong?

After almost 9 years later and finally figuring out how e-commerce really works we can safely say that during the infancy of the new economy companies

• did not know what they were doing
• far less than honest
• did not have a long term vision

Those companies who survived the dotcom bust lacked the previously mentioned negative properties. They were success driven, had a long term vision and wanted to do business honestly. Among them was Google that was just a startup around that time and consisted of two kids in the basement at Stanford University working on a school project that later turned out to be the predecessor of the sophisticated search algorithm that underpins today's Google's search technology.

In the infancy of e-commerce, logistics and handling it properly became a major headache that turned into a nightmare to most of the companies. It was not unusual that someone ordered presents for Christmas only to get them in March in the following year. Why did this happen? Many dotcoms did not have good order tracking software. In fact, many of them only had the good, old fashioned way: pen and paper. Imagine: a

multi-million dollar software company with pen and paper

order tracking.... Amazon's founder was one of the few people who recognized that he needed to do something different than the rest the guys. In its infancy, Amazon was selling nothing else, but books and they did their order tracking by hand. But as they grew, they realized really fast that they need to implement a way that ordinary people (their order handlers) with minimal computer knowledge need to be able to handle the orders from an easy to use web page through a network. So this recognition gave birth to the first generation of so-called on-line or web-based applications that became popular in the commercial world within a few years. Sure, there were web-based applications before: they were used by the military, banks, power plants and traffic controllers. These were clumsy, required expert users and the underlying systems were beyond an everyday startup company's pocket. So it was not until the mid 90s when the first widely used web based applications started to gain ground. And even then most of the time, only 'intelligent' on-line merchants used them. One of the first on-line merchants who let their customer use their web-based applications heavily was E-bay with its unique approach of brokering deals between people selling and buying on-line.

Venture capitalists pulled the plug

on the dotcom companies and the so called 'new economy' collapsed. Over 95% of these companies disappeared overnight. Many of their owners got lucky and cashed in before the bust and 'parachuted' into companies with a different approach to e-commerce and on-line selling. Instead of trying to make money on the Internet themselves they went out as 'consulting experts' and found small business owners and promised them that the professionally looking websites that their companies design would make those small business owners very rich in a very short period of time. Their methods actually worked initially and they were tremendous successes indeed, in the beginning. As you may imagine, shortly after the initial successes, almost everybody started doing web design. That was when web design kits started to become popular and even a kid in the basement was able to design a professionally looking website. The underlying software for these website was overwhelmingly Flash which gave highly graphically intensive, many times absolutely beautiful web pages that moved around, played music and looked really professional. There are companies that even today want to sell Flash websites. Flash does have its place as it is a useful tool for a well-established business to reaffirm brand awareness and brand recognition.

However, Flash had and still have a few setbacks:

• It is a proprietary software that still does not work right in many browsers (the software that is capable of showing web pages from the Internet)
• It took too much bandwidth (data that could be transferred from the website's storage computer to the computers of the people who were looking at the site)
• It was too clumsy to handle e-commerce effectively from it
• Search engines were not able to recognize and index the content of Flash web pages (they still cannot do that)
• It required a lot of tedious work from the part of the web designer (or they said so), therefore they charged way much more than the site is actually worth (and they are still overcharging).

Stay tuned. There will be more coming.

Questions or comments? We are happy to answer them. You can also give us a call and talk to one of our Web Applications and Internet Marketing Specialists.

In the following mini-series we will talk about some very important things that YOU as a small business owner MUST understand if you want to be successful in the 21st century.

It is the on-line version of Black Friday, right after Thanksgiving, the official start of the holiday shopping season in which most merchants make their profit for the whole year. This day became a widely celebrated day in the on-line community in spite of the gloom and doom that was predicted by some analysts back in 2000 after the bubble, created by the 'New Economy' frenzy, burst.

How did it all start?

On-line shopping started as early as the origination of the 'user friendly', or so-called 'public' Internet. How did this whole Internet phenomenon that makes your life so easy (in most cases) come along? You may not know that the Internet was originally a military project in which the main goal was to get computers to talk to each other even when they were in the different part of the country. The military leaders envisioned these interconnected networks as part of the defense system. They wanted a flexible network in which certain parts of the network are still operational even when the other part is hit by the enemy.

So ARPANET was born.

Eventually this military project, similarly to other previous ones (just like the radar or the television), the predecessor of the Internet made its way to the civilian life. By the end of the 1980s all major universities, bigger public and private institutions in the United States were interconnected. Many users used a so-called bulletin board system (BBS) to send messages, share information and even files with each other electronically from the distance. In those days personal computers just started to evolve and they were difficult and clumsy to use so one had to be a technical expert, in other words, a 'nerd or geek' to be able to use them.

Then everything changed.

The user friendly, graphical interface that was initially developed, but then actually scrapped by Xerox got picked up and tweaked by some very talented software engineers at Apple. Their creativity, innovation and hard work lead to the development of the first Macintosh computers that were the predecessors of today's convenient graphical user interface (GUI) that an average user with minimal technical knowledge is able to use. To make the long story short, eventually Microsoft's Windows operating system revolutionized the way computing was done and gave way to millions of people to join the action and eventually have a small part of the phenomenon called the kind of Internet that an everyday person can easily use.

Many skeptics initially called the Internet just a toy for kids...

...or adults who wanted to be kids again. However, most of the participants in the cyber action had actually something else in mind. They wanted the Internet to be a useful tool for the masses. Something that can be used to assist solving problems, delivering information and sharing files (just like in the good old BBS days), but on a much larger scale with many more people involved. There was also a movement that rapidly started to develop in the newly created cyberspace in the mid 90s that focused on utilizing it for generating income and eventually setting up a business model that can provide a new way of doing business in many areas. Yahoo and Amazon were the pioneers in that. Yahoo focused on generating revenue from advertising other businesses on its portal. Amazon was one of the first on-line retailers giving grounds to today's massive e-commerce and on-line advertising. Basically the Internet and e-commerce developed hand-in-hand. This development was not without pain, however.

Many venture capitalists saw a big opportunity...

...to make a quick buck on the Internet in the late 90s so they started to invest heavily in the emerging so-called 'new economy'. The buzz was on. They gave billions and billions of dollars to new startups with no real business plans and no strategic vision for the long term. As you may remember, this era was called the dotcom boom or craze. In 1999 and early 2000 the Internet all of a sudden became a hot commodity and everybody started to jump in. And that created an enormous bubble (almost as big as the housing bubble lately). In 1999 there were 4 times more IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) on the NASDAQ than in 2001. Over 90% of the new IPOs doubled in price in 1999 whereas only a few of them made close to doubling in 2001. There was even one more factor that contributed to the bubble. Remember the Y2K scare? In 1999 many companies got huge sums of money for fixing a problem that affected some computers mainly in the banking system. After fixing the problems, most of these companies disappeared along with the money that was given to them.

During the dotcom craze many analysts (interestingly, sometimes the same skeptics who, a few years earlier were ready to write off the Internet as a toy for kids) now envisioned a bright future with the new economy in the center. They pointed out that in this new economy there would be no need for physical stores or shopping malls, no need for cars because everybody would shop on-line and work through telecommuting from his/her computer.

Then came March 11, 2000.

What happened on that day? Find out from the next episode of this mini-series.

Questions or comments? We are happy to answer them. You can also give us a call and talk to one of our Web Applications and Internet Marketing Specialists.

Call now: 1-888-969-3887

In this article we are exposing some of the techniques that is currently still sold by some companies to unsuspecting business owners. We want to make sure that you get the information you need in order to make an educated decision and be aware what you spend your hard-earned money on:

There is a common technique that is employed by some of our 'competitors' that is known as

Business owners fall for this scam because most of the salespeople of these unscrupulous companies present this technique in a way to make the numbers look very big when in fact the numbers are still very small compared to the size of the Internet. And even when they pushed out the business to millions of directories it still would not matter if the directory names were not known by the majority of web surfers when most of these directories have zero visitors themselves.

In the latter case (when repeat content starts popping up very fast in a lot of Internet places) most likely Google would pick up on it and even ban the site advertising itself this way forever from their search engine result pages (SERPs) because Google does not like repeat content.

So what do these 'pushers' do?

They are actually putting the same exact content to thousands of places on the Internet and endangering their very own Client's reputation in the eyes of Google. So technically they do more harm than good.

In short: Getting listed in thousands of directories is totally irrelevant if the vast majority of the Internet users never heard about them. If they never heard about them, they will never look for them, so the business owner ended up paying a pile of money for completely nothing.

This technique worked very well before Google came into the playing field, just like the technique called listing a company's website in thousands of search engines. And still there are these same companies who used to push small business to thousands of search engines now pushing them to thousands of directories. A search engine was basically nothing else but a giant directory and whoever paid the most money to them had a chance to get on top and reap all the rewards.

After Google came to the scene, directories that only allow browsing practically died overnight. Why? Because Google gave one thing that no directory was able to provide before: that was and to this day it is relevancy. It does not matter how much money a company has. Google does not care. Google wants to get paid gradually and prefers a long term relationship because they know that they would make a lot more money off of a company that is with them for a long time than from a company that goes broke after a few sessions.

They care about how relevant a given web page is for a given search term that an Internet user types in. They care about whether the searcher finds what they want to find. Google does not care how the data to be searched is actually organized whether it is neatly arranged in a directory by humans or it is randomly spat out by machines. As long as the data complies with Google's indexing requirements, the data will be indexed and becomes searchable in Google's database.

Before you believe any fast talking salesman

who come to your door trying to push some sort of service that you do not quite understand, please make sure you get a second opinion and do your own due diligence and do your own research before spending your hard earned money on things that you are not quite familiar with. You owe it to yourself and your family.

• be very happy to answer any of your questions
  
• work with you at your own pace
• work out a solution just for you based on what you really need

Please feel free to ask any questions and post your thoughts below the Comments section.

I am sure you receive

• e-mails in your Inbox almost every day
• get flyers or postcards
• or a salesperson shows up at your door

trying to do one thing: sell the 'latest and greatest' techniques out there to get your company exposed on the Internet. They all tell you that you should listen to the word of the times, they cite you neatly compiled statistics and make it look like that you REALLY have to do this because you would lose out to your competitors if you do not.

And they are right in most cases.

However, there is a big question you might want to ask that most of these advertisers fail to answer:

How can you tell the difference between a real expert and a snake oil salesman who would tell you anything just to make the sale?

It is tough when you are not an expert, not informed and kept in the fog. So let us educate you here a little bit.

We are sure you heard about this 'latest and greatest' technique called online directory listing.

Here are some things that you really should know, but most of the advertisers fail to let you know.

Simple common sense tells us that directory listing is a great way to get exposure for a business if the directory is

• well-known
• highly targeted
• relatively small and
  
• heavily advertised.

However, when any of these factors is missing, the audience is simply not going to be there to justify the money spent on the advertising in that directory.

If a directory is not well-known, then people simply would not find it on the Internet. An online directory is nothing else, but a big website with many pages. However, even the biggest website on the Internet is dwarfed by the billions and billions of pages that make up the Internet in today's world. Back in 1996 when Yahoo's directory services started, anybody who got in their directory was almost guaranteed to be an overnight success because Yahoo's directory was very big in relation to the size of the whole Internet back then, but still relatively small so almost all participants had a good chance to get enough exposure.

Now in 2009 their directory is way much bigger then it was back then, but the Internet grew a million times faster to such an enormous size that today it is almost indifferent for a company whether it is listed in Yahoo's directory or not. Why? Because Yahoo's directory is very tiny compared to the size of the whole Internet, but it is too large to get enough exposure for each participant because exposure dramatically decreases as the size of the directory increases.

Today many very large online directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, E-bay, Craigslist, Zagat, Citysearch, Opentable are so huge that it is almost impossible for a company to get on or STAY on the fist couple pages with their listings without paying huge sums of money. They MUST be on these pages where the great majority of Internet searchers have the patience and time to look. Otherwise they will not get enough exposure that would justify their expense. Directories know this fact and that is why they developed their own search engines to address this issue and help their users find their members based on certain criteria quickly. Developing their own search engines also encourages their members to stay on board with them because this way they can sell their services to their members under the pretext that every member has the same chance to be found because of their search engine. That is technically true, but the sheer existence of the directory itself can be questioned then. If it takes a search algorithm that uses certain criteria to navigate a directory, then why bother building a neatly organized (but otherwise useless) directory, paying employees to do that and charging unjustifiable charges to their members? Why do not they just simply throw a large pile of data randomly together and let the search algorithm sort it out on demand?

One more thing: the search engines they are using are quite mediocre compared to Google which still delivers the most relevant results and is still being used by over 70% of the Internet users. So anyone who is trying to sell directory listing in today's Internet environment is most likely not telling the whole story and cannot be considered as an expert, but a snake oil salesman and should be treated as such.

If a directory is not precisely targeted then it would just take way too much time for a searcher to find what he/she is looking for by just browsing around in different categories without a built in search feature because of the aforementioned reasons. DexKnows is a good example. This directory would list any known business under the Sun and they claim that they are the be all and end all solution for small business advertising on the Internet. What they fail to tell the business owners is that they do not care about relevance, but they care about money. If a business has more money to blow on advertising, then they will have the advantage in a not very targeted directory because they can buy more advertising space, more frequent exposure and better overall position regardless whether they sell the best product or service and whether they are actually relevant at all. Thus, this kind of directory listing would give unfair advantage to big corporations, but not to small businesses with limited advertising budgets. Of course DexKnows knows this very well so they advertise heavily in Google Adwords to promote their 'best' clients (being best is whoever pays them the most money) and to push their own directory listing services to unsuspecting business owners. They also collect their testimonials and they make it very believable for small business owners that this would also work for them. However, they do not disclose how much an advertiser who gave the testimonial actually spent and what their ROI was so they are technically committing misleading advertising because they make small business owner who usually do not have the budget believe that they would get similar results when they buy into their listing services.

Those who do not pay enough, will never get advertised enough and will never be found, but DexKnows does not care. They provided the advertising interface, the uninformed small business owner took the risk and now he owes them $3,000 or even more without getting one single phone call from the money he paid to them. We have a Client who can actually tell his story about DexKnows.

If a directory is not heavily advertised, then we go back to the start. People just simply will not find it because of the sheer size of the Internet. So it is very difficult (almost impossible) for a company to bring in new customers by simply getting listed in a not-well-known directory.

All in all, if the purpose of the directory membership is to get exposure to acquire new customers, then the directory must meet those requirements above that common sense dictates.

Should your company get listed in online directories?

We suspect you already know the answer.

To find out what alternatives you have and to schedule a demonstration and a highly rewarding educational session with one of our experts who would

• be very happy to answer any of your questions
• work with you at your own pace
• work out a solution just for you based on what you really need

1-888-969-3887

Stay tuned as the second part of this article is coming soon. In the meantime, please feel free to ask any questions and post your thoughts below the Comments section.

This post is about a company called http://www.seohaus.com. It could be about any company that pushes its SEO services very hard though.

As a small business owner you probably already shopped around for new ways to advertise your product or service. And you probably found many SEO companies promising you that all you need is their wonderful SEO service and your site will be on the first page among among search results in no time.

I would like to use a little word of caution here before signing up with them.

Even though as many SEO companies state, search engine optimization is NOT the most effective way to go for a brand new website that just starting its web presence.

It is true that only 40% of the traffic lands in Adwords and 60% comes from organic search on average.

It is also true that most organic search traffic goes to a tiny percent of all existing websites and all these websites has one in common: they are ranked very high in link popularity and relevancy and in many cases belong to large corporations (when I am talking about the most commonly used search terms).

But for a beginner website SEO alone is not enough and website definitely cannot be optimized for the most common search terms because that is just a waste of time. Why?

Because a beginner website in no way can compete with a website that is ranked high for the most common search terms in a given industry. The highly ranked website has a very high page rank (PR score) (many high PR sites provide inbound links and it probably has thousands of deep links) and it was probably started years ago. There is absolutely no way for a new website to compete against this by using SEO alone.

Example:

World Class Transmissions. The only thing they ordered was SEO service from us, but no other Internet marketing and maintenance service was provided to them. We advised them against ordering SEO alone, but they insisted. That was their choice, and we did offer them the freedom of choice instead of trying to shove a package down on their throat as many of our competitors try to do.

So, yes they have a website, but they have NO INTERNET PRESENCE whatsoever. The good news is that our system is very flexible and we can always go back to them and ask them if they feel their site is doing its job for them and we can always improve their situation if they want.

To make things even worse for a new website from the SEO point of view:

Search engines change their algorithms on a regular basis and they keep it a secret. What is an algorithm? A process or a formula that is implemented in the search engine to determine which web pages are the most relevant for certain keywords that searchers type in. The previously mention Pagerank (PR Score) is a significant part of this algorithm that determines the final ranking of all competing website on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). What does this mean? The websites with high pagerank already have competitive advantage against those who just started (because the starters usually start with 0 pagerank), thus they will automatically be ranked lower on the final SERP for a given search term that the searcher typed in.

These search algorithms are patented

and carefully guarded and almost all marketers can only make educated guesses what criteria the algorithms are based on. Now the search engine company discloses certain information to guide marketers and to encourage advertiser competition, but they never disclose all of it because this would give unfair advantage to those who have the most money and the vast majority of people (including the search engines) want to keep the Internet open and free.

These algorithms are constantly changed and refined to produce better search results.

What results are considered better? It is an entirely subjective matter and even though search engines do their best to standardize the notion 'better', in reality it all depends on the mindset of the searcher. Of course, they use sophisticated methods and real live testers to try to figure this out, but the results are still far from perfect. That is the reason why the algorithms are constantly being changed, tested and refined. One day a website can be among the top search results for a given keyword, the next day it can show up only on the 3rd or 4th page (which practically equals with zero visitors).

 Thus keywords and landing pages must be constantly tested until the result producing keywords are found.  

The best place to test them is Google Adwords as they are providing the interface for scientific advertising which savvy marketers started to use even in the early 1900s. In the 21s century Google provides the testing platform that is based on the same old concept Claude Hopkins and his team invented. Today Google  uses the tremendous leverage provided by the Internet to get test results in much faster for their advertisers.

Once the producing keywords are found, the website can be optimized around those keywords and the likelihood that the site will be dropped from first page position will be much lower than the likelihood of a website that did not do any testing before their SEO.

Therefore, search engine optimization should be the ultimate goal AFTER the right high ROI producing keywords are found. Once these keywords are found, most likely the SEO will be effective, but it is still going to be a rsiky business as Google, Yahoo or Bing can change their algorithm at any time that would throw out the optimized web pages from top positions.

Now, of course, on-going SEO can be performed and constant improvements can and must be made during the testing phase and even later.

Every business owner has an idea of what keywords they should use when advertising their business and initially the site can be optimized for these keywords. However, these keywords might not be productive (most likely they will not be at all because of the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph) because they turn out to be either too expensive or way too competitive (example: mortgage companies, travel agencies, real estate, online trading).

With careful initial research we can find keywords that might produce very well even initially so the testing phase can be significantly shortened. This careful initial testing coupled with higher bids in the Adwords system gives the backbone of our

AOA which has one purpose:

significantly shortening the time of finding the keywords that yield good ROI.

Can a beginner site start from a pagerank other than zero? 

Absolutely. This means that they have to obtain links from high pagerank websites. This way their pagerank will be higher than zero even when they start. A not well-known site can obtain these links by purchasing them and there are many SEO companies out there who are actually, buying and selling links (backlinks from a high pagerank sites or many high pagerank sites) (as this company also seems to be doing). However, this practice is not only unethical (because it puts unfair advantage for those people who have more money, but not necessarily have the best product or service), but also considered illegal in the eyes of Google as these link farms directly threaten Google's core business which is to provide unbiased and relevant search results for the searchers using Google's search platform.

So Google is doing whatever it takes to stop the linkfarms

that sell links and they ban the owners AND their clients forever from Google's search results. And still over 70% of the people search on Google, so a potential client of a company that sells links can risk automatically losing 70% of its internet traffic that would have come from Google's organic search. Selling and buying links is a shortcut for a startup company to obtain high pagerank in an unethical way, but just like spam or other black hat techniques it is very risky and quite expensive (especially when you get caught).

The following page tells me a very important thing: very specific keyword phrases that they use for optimizing a given site shown in their examples.

We could technically analyze each of their example sites in Domain Tools and Wayback Machine to see how long they have been in existence, but

how many of this company's average potential clients would know about this possibility and would actually do it?

The main thing it tells me how many results they got. OK, that is great. I am not saying that the results are bad because the more webpages a company is listed on the higher its reach and the better its web presence is, but these results omit the most crucial factor:

the actual date

when these results were produced and included on the SEO company's website.

As I mentioned earlier, search engines often change their algorithms and on one day they deliver x number of results for a given keyword, on a later day they could deliver much more or much less (depending on how Google validates the pages that contain the results). For example: one company can produce 5 million result pages on a given day, but when Google finds out that 90% of these result pages were pages belonging to a link farm and the links were all purchased Google bans all these pages from the results causing them to drop to 500,000.

Major blow,

but we do not know that (especially non-experts do not know that) because the website that sells their SEO still shows the results before Google 'slapped' them out. One of their example companies is doing great for the 'luxury electronics' keyword phrase (this is a good niche keyword phrase), but they are doing not so great for the 'bottle water supplier' term. They say that they are on page one on Google, but in fact they dropped to page 2 (but still not page 1 as they state on their site) which is still not bad and maybe just temporary if they know what they are doing.

Also these clients of theirs seem to be bigger companies who can afford paying them more for ongoing optimization and probably for a lot more.

All in all, this seems to be a decent Internet marketing company with a little bit of misleading in their sales. Please check out the Myetus Marketing Process to see what needs to be done for a beginner website (zero visitors, no e-mail list) to get started. No SEO for a reason.

Almost all successful Internet marketers agree that...

…your success or failure in making money off the Internet depends on your success of building a list of faithful buyers. Otherwise, you have to have a double opt-in (in other words a CLEAN e-mail list) that you can successfully and legally use to make money on-line.

Who buys from you over and over again? Those who

• like you
• trust you
• like your messages or
• make money based on your advice.
  

Just think about it. Remember how Barack Obama's campaign using the internet marketing techniques mentioned above was able to raise money very quickly whenever they needed some? His Internet marketers would just send out an e-mail to get those people already on his e-mail list to donate just a little more.

The massive e-mail list made it possible to raise a lot of money even when each individual donated only a few dollars. You do not have to like the President's policies, but we think he writes history about the way he puts his message on the Internet using the same techniques that YOUR BUSINESS can use too.

As we pointed out...

...Your business can do exactly the same

Once you have your CLEAN e-mail list, you need to send out relevant, informative, even entertaining messages, with a very modest sales pitch at the end. People on the list will respond to that. They do not want to receive ads and promotions. Your customers want to hear information, news, something interesting. Your marketing message should be very subtle and it should be hidden inside a good story accompanied with a lot of useful information. If you send them relevant, helpful or even entertaining information, they will read your newsletter, recommend it to their friends and eventually buy from you.

However...

...the best Internet marketing strategies could be pointless, useless and could end up wasting a lot of money, if you have poor content on your website.

Keep us posted as we will continue writing this newsletter on a regular basis, giving you some useful information that you can implement for your business' web presence. In our next newsletter we will explain how relevant content or the lack of will make or break your business.

Add your comments or questions below and let us know what you think. If you are a business owner and would like to know how you business can benefit from the Myetus Marketing System, please fill out the survey now.

Complete Survey

When you hear the word focus group,

you probably think about some corporate big shots sitting around in their office and bringing in a few 'selected' lucky people who would receive all kinds of perks just by taking their time to answer some questions. Most of the time the questions are written by very highly paid market research specialists who usually have very high degrees in psychology and marketing. In this phase the big corporation blows a lot of money on research and testing and retesting again before they hit the market.

As a small business owner with a limited budget you would probably have

your attention focused on one thing: Dollar signs.

A lot of them that your company would have to pay out to create your own focus group to determine whether you can roll out your own product and service or not. You would probably think that we are total nuts just mentioning this to you.

The good news is that with the advent of technology and the Internet, the playing field flattened and the rules have changed to your advantage. You HAVE a chance to compete against the big boys. There are very cost effective ways to test your idea, product or service, before you start rolling it out.

Now you can go on line and start a blog and put up a survey together where you can ask some questions and if a large enough number of people answer positively, then you have a chance for a successful product roll-out.

That's great. Everybody else says that. Online testing is a way to go.

Everybody says what to do, but nobody says how to do it. Nobody says what kind of questions are needed to be asked either. We will. Here is the step-by-step process.

• One of our talented graphic designers can put a small site together for you or you can select a website editor software that usually comes with any good hosting company
• Write a very good and powerful sales letter. If you have never done this before, one of our professional writers can show you or write it for you
• You actually want to create two versions of the same page and just change one minor thing at a time. Use different headlines in each version or place a picture differently in each version
• Set up a good tracking software (we recommend Google Analytics because it is free and it comes with a free Google Adwords account that you or one of our qualified professionals can set up in minutes).
• Put a BIG call for action button on each of your test pages. Once that button is clicked just aooly a very simple survey consisting of the following questionsL

1. What were you looking for when you found our site?
2. Why were you looking for it today?
3. How difficult was it to find what you were looking for?

That is it. Leave them plenty of room. If they answer thoroughly, they are truly interested. The most important thing is that now after reading many of the responses, you can figure out the EXACT buyer's language that you can mirror back to them in your final sales copy once the testing is successfully completed.

Of course you have to get people to find your survey

So you need to write a few small ads that include the most important keywords about the product or service you wish to test. Submit the ads to Google Adwords. If you did it right and your product or service is truly interesting, you will get some pretty accurate results pretty fast.

Just remember one thing

Many of our 'competitors' say that your website is supposed to be the image of your brick and mortar store. Nothing can be further from the truth in 2009. This statement was maybe true in 1999, but hey, things changed. Time goes 5 times faster on the Internet then in the 'real world'. The reality is that you want to find one or two very good niche products that you know the best and sell that on-line. Those who stuck in the world of display sites and online directories will have a hard time taking advantage of the paradigm shift that is currently happening in the world of advertising.

We hope the information above helped you understand

some basic things about Internet marketing. Fill out our survey now to get a lot more free insider information about Internet marketi in a form of a newsletter that tells you things as they are and the way they work on the Internet.

Take Survey Now

We are sure it was much less than a little over a year ago. Yeah, we know, the economy. Well, we have to disagree. It is NOT the economy, stupid.

IT IS THE MENTALITY

It is the collective fear from the uncertainty that people feel because of a significant part of their investment evaporated about a year ago and either they lost their job or are on the brink of losing it now. Everything would be all right if people started blowing their money again many say. We cannot agree more than that with this statement.

You as a small business owner probably wish that people just drop by and have a little fun, a little good time, some nice conversation, little entertainment and buy something in the meantime.

People used to go shopping to have fun.

For entertainment. Not any more. They go shopping now out of necessity and they really watch what they sepnd their money on because it could be the last money they spend before unemployment hits them too.

You wish the good old times would come back. But you know they won't. People became savvier. People are afraid. YOU are afraid. Their mindset changed.

THEIR MENTALITY CHANGED

It is NOT the economy, stupid! Time to wake up! Time for you to become savvy, time for you to arrive at the 21st century and start using 21st century tools.

How about using the Internet for a change? Putting your business on-line? Over 65% of people search on-line nowadays and this number grows by the minute. You have to be smarter than your competition. Are you the one who is up for a challenge?

Your competition is just starting to wake up from the nightmare

that they had in the last 12 months. Those who wake up sooner and start a little education about Internet marketing will understand the new tools and will not be afraid of using them. The sooner you start, the more competitive advantage you will have.

WAKE UP BEFORE YOUR COMPETITION

We are here to help. The Myetus Marketing System is designed for a small business owner, just like you, who has a lot of questions, who just starting to wake up, but somewhat lost in the jungle of jargon and information overload that can be experienced online. That is why you need to become familiar with Internet marketing and be savvier than your competitor. We can help.

Here is how you can get started. Fill out the short survey below and tell us what were you looking for and why you were looking for it today. Tell us as much as possible so we can get to know you and help you.

Complete Survey

There is a lot of confusion

about the effectiveness of certain techniques in Internet marketing. Many people say it is

• Search Engine Optimization, others say it is
  
• Pay Per Click advertising some others stand by
• E-zine advertising and some say it is
  
• social media marketing
  

The overwhelming majority forgets to mention that it does not matter what technique you use as long as you are able to

• measure it
• track it and
  
• refine it and
• determine what kind of ROI it brings to you.

Based on the statistical information collected from large numbers of Internet marketers, the general conclusion is that the best ROI generating form of Internet marketing is

E-mail marketing

It is said to be the most effective way if it is done right. There is a lot involved in doing e-mail marketing right. It has to start with building a large, responsive e-mail list where participants signed up on a volunteer basis and they eagerly wait to hear from you and buy from you repeatedly.

How can I build a responsive e-mail list?

Building a list organically (through blogging, writing e-zine articles, commenting on such articles, building your presence in social networking media, etc.) takes a significantly longer time than doing it through paid on-line ad submission.

Based on our experience and research, your on-line ad submission can bring in significant results if you sell goods and services worth less than $20. However, a significant trust factor and multiple communications are needed to be built if you sell products worth over $20. So on-line ad submissions will bring faster results, but in line with other experts, we stress that this method should be primarily used for e-mail address collection to form an e-mail list.

Once your list is built, your results will come in fast

from professional e-mail campaigns. The results are not only fast, but they will grow exponentially as your marketing cost still stays flat.

Example

Let us say it cost you $100 to get 100 people to sign up to your e-mail list. Your conversion rate (the percentage of people who buy out of these 100 people on your list) is 10%. This means 10 people will buy from you. So if you sold something with a $10 profit, you broke even for the first time. However, when you sell something else (or even the same thing) to the same person for the second time with only $5 profit, (giving a chance for discount to return customers) you still made a profit and your ROI actually will be larger than 1, thus you made money and will keep making money as long as this same person keeps buying.

Each time you e-mail to your well-built, responsive list and sell something to the same people that are on your list already, you will be making pure profit because your cost of acquiring those customers (who is already on your list and buys from you) will be $0.

Treat your list as one of the most precious piece of your assets because it is a true goldmine for you.

Add your comments or questions below and let us know what you think. If you are a business owner and would like to know how you business can benefit from the Myetus Marketing System, please fill out the survey now.

Have you received spam lately? You know, e-mail advertising Viagra or some porn site? We do not say that all e-mail advertising Viagra and porn are spam. We are pretty sure that there are folks out there who are genuinely interested in that stuff...

Spam is actually a piece of e-mail that you never wanted to receive. However, spamming is a very lucrative business and that is why many companies tempted to do it. There are companies out there who sell 10 million e-mail addresses plus 10 thousand infected computer identification numbers plus some tools allowing the spammer (the individual or company sending out spam) to send out 10 million e-mail messages in less then 2 hours. They sell this as a 'package deal' on a DVD that maybe cost the spammer $1,000. Now if we look at the numbers, you will see why spamming is so lucrative. Say the spammer sends out 10 million e-mails. Let's say he gets a ridiculously low response rate: 0.01 %. This is a hundredth of 1 percent. That is how many people would buy from the spammer. Out of 10 million this means a thousand people. Say the spammer sells his merchandise for $20 each. So he made $19,000 in less than 2 hours...

There is only one slight problem: Spam is illegal

Besides: it is costly, dangerous and unethical too. Many spammers who got caught had to pay astronomical amounts of fines plus many of them serve several years of prison sentences as well.

Why spamming is outlawed?

It puts an unnecessary burden to the mail servers on the computers on the Internet. Did you know that more than 80% of the e-mail delivered on the Internet is a spam e-mail message? This high amount of data requires extra storage space, extra cables, extra processing power from the internet service providers (like AOL, AT&T, Comcast, RCN and COX, just to name a few) and extra people to monitor all this. The extra staff needs to get paid. All these are extra expenses for the ISPs who, without hesitation, will eventually pass them to you, to the consumer.

Ever wondered why your Internet service cost so much?

That is why. A few spammers make everybody else pay the costs of sending their spam out, but they are the only ones reaping the rewards. This is unfair, unethical and dangerous.

Why is it dangerous? Spammers use malware to infect unsuspecting people's computers to turn them into spam sending zombies without the computer owner's knowledge.

We deeply condemn spam, spammers and the companies (including hosting companies) who let spam exist and

we never, under any circumstances, recommend spamming to any of our Clients or anybody else.

We have to let you know about spam because we feel that you as a consumer have the right to know all options out there and we want to fully disclose everything about the benefits and the dangers of working with certain methods. Spam is certainly a method that you do not want to work with.

Tips to avoid receiving spam:

• Make sure you set your spam or privacy filter in your e-mail program to high
• Do not give your e-mail address to strangers (How many times did you forward the latest and greatest urban legend about something that was debunked by Snopes.com two years ago? Did you know that each time you forward stuff that other people forward to you you expose yourself to spam/scam/viruses/malware?)
• Never sign up with your primary e-mail address to any website unless you trust them 100% that they would not sell or share your e-mail address.
• Do not show your e-mail address on your blog. website or social networking profile. If you absolutely have to show an e-mail address, create one for that purpose instead of using your primary e-mail.
  

If you are a business owner who would like to make money by usng legitimate e-mail marketing, keep us posted. We will return soon with a new article explaining the most effective way of Internet marketing.

I want MY BUSINESS TO GROW! We hear you. We understand that you have no time reading chicken and egg stories.

HANG ON.

Did you know that

there are ways to increase your profitability with 236% by just using ONE simple Internet marketing method?

Before we start discussing the methods we want to make sure that you are aware that

There are two camps of Internet marketers

The first camp favors Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising the others stand by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to drive initial high quality traffic to your website.

High quality means that YOUR visitors easily become buyers.

The vast majority of Internet marketers only do SEO and the vast majority of them do it very poorly. Their result: NO high quality initial traffic for most of their clients The vast majority of PPC people fail to do enough research before they start blowing your money.

No matter which direction you try to go first chances are they will try to rip you off.

Only one thing is for sure:

If you are a struggling small business owner, you definitely want to

familiarize yourself with certain Internet marketing methods to make a wise business decision about the future of your business. Chances are that if you take a little time to listen and educate yourself a little bit about the tools necessary in the 21st century, your business will survive and thrive, if you do not, your business will most likely fail. Simple as that. That is the bold reality.

Take a look at the current state of the economy today. It is a major mess and many people say that nobody really has a solution. Once you examine the current situation you can suddenly realize, that no other company than those who have solid Internet presence or the ones who actually make the Internet happen as it is today are not on the brink of bankruptcy because they still have a lot of cash. In fact, many of these companies are still hiring even when most others are currently laying off people by the thousands.

Companies with solid Internet presence have cash and they are still hiring and will keep thriving

What is a solid Internet Presence?

You probably heard the 'magic words' before:

• Interactive website that is focused on a nitche product or service
• SEO, Search Engine Optimization
• PPC advertising, Search Engine Marketing - SEM
• Social Media Marketing - Blogging
• E-mail Marketing, CRM - Customer Relationship Marketing

What all this technical jargon means? I am not familiar with this stuff.

Let us show you. Here is he explanation of how the actual Internet Marketing Process work

• You tell us what you want to achieve.
  
• We ask simple questions.
• You provide detailed answers.
• We make recommendations and implement the solutions

Understand the Myetus Marketing Process

It does not have to be complicated. It does not have to be mystified. Simple common sense that is.

The Bottom Line is

How do intelligent small business owners like you drive traffic to their websites?

Many of them use Internet marketing experts like us who create pay per click and/or social media campaigns for them and they make sure that visitors who come to their websites will become buyers by providing highly relevant content.

Cash rich companies like the big corporations that still have huge advertising budgets can easily do both at the same time.

But if you have a limited advertising budget because you are not Amazon.com, but a small business owner who are just trying to learn about Internet marketing, then you really need to watch where your advertising dollars go.

start wasting your money now on newspaper or Yellow Pages ads because the proven fact is that they no longer work. If you have ads in those mediums that work, keep them, but if you experienced a significant drop in their effectiveness, you need to explore other ways. These other ways are pay per click advertising or search engine optimization coupled with social media advertising on the the Internet.

Question is: which one should you start using first when you have a limited advertising budget?

Tell us what YOU think. Post your comments and questions below.

Keep us posted, we will continue discussing this interesting question soon.

What is better? Setting up an e-commerce site or a membership site?

The answer is not so obvious as you may think. Many people would say, well if I own a retail store, I want an e-commerce site, but if I have some crucial know-how information, then I should get a membership site.

Well, there is a point to this approach, but let's define first what we are talking about here:

An e-commerce site is usually nothing else that an online store where many items (sometimes thousands of them) are available

So even when you have a small retail store that you run locally in your neighborhood, but you know some information that other people do not than you can really start looking into a membership site where your cusomers sign up and pay a recurring monthly fee for a service or for a new product for each month.

An example

Your store sells your grandma's most delightful spaghetti sauce that is worth dying for and it just flies off the shelves in your neighborhood store and everybody raves about it, but you cannot ship it because shipping is too expensive.

Selling spaghetti sauce or any other perishable or even canned food item on-line is quite hectic. You need

• a manufacturing facility
• a warehouse
• a shipping method
• insurance
• etc.

All these logistical costs make the sale totally unprofitable. So what do you do?

Why do not you just sell the RECIPE online?

We know, there are thousands and thousands of recipes are available on line for free. But not YOUR GRANDMA's. Who would buy a recipe? There are always people who are interested in trying something new and once they are hooked they would buy other things. What about that exclusive pizza dough that she was so proud of? Anybody cares for ice cream?

See you find many items that are exclusive and only YOU know and you create an online newsletter or a membership site that only members can access for a monthly payment. You only sell the know-how information that is electronically avalable for an instant download.

If you keep coming up with good stuff each month, your members will LOVE you and they will happily pay the month fees to access your site or read your electronic newsletter.

This way you do not need to worry about

• manufacturing
• packing
• shipping
• storing
  
• returns
• paying all the employees who handle the above

and a host of other issues that can happen when you have an e-store that sells large items on a small margin in a very competitive environment. Yes the environment is very competitive because even though you would not have many online competitors, but you would have to compete with huge offline corporations whose brand names are already conditioned in people's minds. Big corporations still have not figured out the best ways of online marketing so even though they start moving online quite rapidly, you still have a good chance against them if you sell something exclusive through a membership site.

Moreover, when you have an e-store you would need to work a lot harder to make the same amount of sales every month than you have to do with your membership site.

We created a spreadsheet for you to illustrate the difference between a membership site and an e-store.

In today's rapidly changing world where everything is fluid and nothing seems to be secure any more you, the small business owner, find yourself in the middle of a paradigm shift where traditional roles and rules no longer apply. Everybody keeps telling you basically the same thing. You should go online and try Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), E-mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing. Everybody talks about what needs to be done, but nobody tells you how to do it.

Before we go any further, we have to tell you a secret.

 It may not be the case that for YOUR particular business any form of Internet advertising would be a viable solution. It all depends, the type of business you have, the type of products you carry and your market. It is great to have a website and a connecting sophisticated information system, but if nobody searches for your particular product or service on-line, there is no pointH in blowing money on Internet marketing. So you have to do some research first before you can determine what your market would say. You have to do a test run, a pilot program, or an online focus group to make sure your product or service would sell on-line.

One very cost effective way to do this step by step:

• Write an article about your product or service that you want to test
• Put that article to your website along with some crucial information about that certain product or service you test that you did not include in the article.
• You have to set up tracking in Google Analytics (which is free) or some other website to track the results.
• You need to create two versions of your test page and include an almost identical version of your information on both pages, but put a slight difference somewhere (different wording in the headline on each page for example).
• Send your test letter to all journalists you know through snail mail and give them one version of your website address.
• Send the second version to some representatives of the online media familiar with your product or service (you need to do your research to find out who these people are in both cases).
• If you wrote a good enough article (in other words: press release) and your product and service is truly interesting, some news people might pick it up. Once that happens you can almost be certain that you have a good product or service and you can start a full blown campaign.

If you already have a product or service that you plan to sell on the Internet, there are other ways you can test them before you want to do a full scale roll-out. We will talk about those methods in a different article. We will also talk about press releases and why they are very important in this new 'fluid' world.

Nowadays the Internet is full of Internet marketing offers. Everybody is promising the latest and the greatest and the small business owner who is inexperienced in the mysterious world of Internet marketing can be easily made believe that the promises and claims most of these great Internet marketing 'gurus' make are true.

Here is an example

On the other day I received this wonderful e-mail into my Inbox from a noname company with some really interesting statements embedded in some amazingly powerful sales language:

Attention Business Owners. Special Google offer! For immediate help putting your business on GOOGLE simply reply to this email with your name and phone number and a consultant will contact you within 24 hours. ****************************************************************WE PUT YOUR COMPANY ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE, YAHOO AND MSN. **************************************************************** No matter what business you are in we guarantee customers. {{{{ Attention BUSINESS OWNERS }}}} WE PUT YOUR COMPANY ON THE VERY FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE, YAHOO, AND MSN GUARANTEED IN WRITING!!!!! We guarantee 1200 new customers that need your service! Our corporation professionally develops, implements and manages Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter accounts, enabling clients to maximize Internet advertising results while saving time and money. Proper setup and management of these complex, confusing and time consuming programs will likely make the difference between your success or failure. Working with us ensures that all components of these powerful programs are effectively implemented and optimized from the start. Our full-service solution enables you to focus on your core business while we attain the best possible results from your online advertising campaigns. For immediate help putting your business on GOOGLE simply reply to this email with your name and number and a consultant will contact you within 24 hours. We put your company on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN so when your customers type in a keyword related to your business or any of the other 1000-2000 keywords we make sure your customers find you before they find your competition. This is a guaranteed fixed price performance based model. You get a guaranteed amount of new customers each month. Aggressive search engine marketing is critical for the success of your website and ultimately your business. So we submit keywords related to the your industry and make sure you are found before your competitors. Our packages include: 1. THE MOST AGGRESSIVE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING SYSTEM IN THE WORLD WITH FRONT PAGE PLACEMENT ON GOOGLE, YAHOO AND MSN. 2. Guaranteed amount of new qualified customers that need your type of service. 3. Website development. (if needed) 4. Monthly visitor tracking and anylitics systems. 5. Free online Yellow Pages listing. Our company: 1. Is a Authorized Partner with Google. 2. Is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Exchange. 3. Has been in business since 1995. 4. Is B+ rated with the Better Business Bureau

Totally believable? Enticing? Exciting? Firm? Absolutely! Scam? You bet.

Wow! You would ask: How can you make such a blunt statement? First of all, this e-mail came to your Inbox, not into to your Bulk folder so it is not spam, right?

WRONG!

Why? If an e-mail like this came to your Inbox, it does not automatically mean that it is not spam. It means that the spammer was smarter than your e-mail program's spam filter.

What is spam anyway?

Just ask one simple question when you received an e-mail message in your Inbox to determine if it is spam or not. Did you want to receive that e-mail message in the first place? Have you previously signed up for the sender's e-mail list? How do they know your e-mail adress which is supposed to be fairly private?

If you

• never heard about the sender before
• never signed up for his/her e-mail list
• you never wanted to receive his/her e-mail

than you are dealing with SPAM or in other words, unwanted e-mail even when it lands in your Inbox.

How can you stop spammers raping your Inbox?

Train your e-mail program's spam filter to do a better job. How can you do that? Just send the unwanted message to your e-mail program's Bulk or Spam folder. If your e-mail program does not have that feature, switch to a different e-mail program instead.

In most cases SPAM = SCAM

The above e-mail uses some really powerful sales language to trick you into replying to them. They use the word 'Guaranteed' many times. But when you read it more carefully, they do not say what their guarantee is.

You get a guaranteed amount of new customers each month.

What does this mean?

Well, we all know that if we spend money on advertising and we are not total idiots, we would get some customers each month. Duh....

Gotta love this one:

THE MOST AGGRESSIVE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING SYSTEM IN THE WORLD

They do not say a word about what their aggressive marketing entails. Sending spam? That is aggressive indeed, but it is illegal and unethical too. Black hat marketing? Fooling search engines? One famous guy once said:

There is an old saying in Texas, no I think it is in Tennessee....

Shall I continue?:-) Anyway search engines cannot be fooled any more and the consequences are pretty harsh.

The truth of the matter is that I could go on and on analyzing and scrutinizing every sentence in this e-mail, but then this post would be way too long and I am sure you have other things to do than reading my never ending rants:-)

The point is: if it sounds too good to be true, then it is.

I know this is a cliche and I am not supposed to use cliches in a classic sales letter. This is not a sales letter though, just a blog that wants to call your attention to some of the practices out there done by the sharks who care about one thing: How can they make themselves rich by taking your money.

See, we do not want you to pay us

Try us first for 30 days and see how you like our services than we talk about money. Fair enough?

Before You Go

Since you made this far why do not you go ahead and take our small survey and tell us what you were looking for and why were you looking for it today?

Take Our Survey

You keep hearing about:

• Professional SEO
• Expert Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Exceptional E-mail marketing
• Automated On-line Directory Submission
• Easy Social Media Advertising
• Web 2.0 marketing and design
  
• Modern graphics
• Back link optimization
• Page Rank (PR) Scoring

And this list is growing by the day as more and more people set up 'Internet marketing websites' in their garage and claim that they know it all.

Nowadays Internet marketing is the new 'trend', the new 'fashion' some even may call it a fad, the next best thing, or the next 'bubble'

And you just keep turning your head and trying to figure out

• What is happening?
• What all these terms actually mean for YOU, the small business owner?
• Who is real who is fake?

Who should you believe?

Because EVERYBODY IS SAYING THE SAME THING:

YES, we are the latest and greatest, sign up with us today, we will make money for you! One question though: Have they?

Why should you believe us? Why should you read OUR blog instead of the other guy's?

YOU KNOW DEEP INSIDE that you MUST change the ways you want to do your advertising to survive because

• You have seen many of your friends going out of business in the past year
• You are in trouble yourself and you are desperately looking for a way out
• You have gut gripping FEAR every day when you think about the future
• You got burnt many times by some advertising agencies who promised you everything but did not deliver

We know change is not easy.

We are here for the long run and want to listen to YOU.