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August 29, 2006
Marketing on the Internet: A Primer
Imagine that you're an author of a book on Internet marketing and that you need to get your book into bookstores so as to get the word out to the offline folks about how to do marketing online the right way.
You walk into the bookstore and after finding out who the store manager is you proceed to have a brief conversation with her. A conversation something like this...
"Hello, my name is Johnny (Janie) Marketer and I just received 10,000 copies of my 300+page book that I would like you to sell for me."
"Oh. How many do I have to sell?"
"Well, preferably as many as you can, the more the better. But let me explain a little bit about the book to you first..."
"Okay."
"The book is titled: Making Your Business Work on the Internet and it consists of 303 information packed pages of how-to's, tips, and guru advice from your's truly on how to succeed at marketing any type of business online. The book has 31 chapters and a full biography of myself at the back of the book."
"Can I take a look at one copy to see how it comes across at first glance?"
"Sure. Here ya go."
"Hmmm....it's heavy enough. But, why does the chapter index state that chapter four is about fixing your television using the latest techniques and chapter nine is about finding the best magazines that provide the best movie reviews."
"Oh, um....ah....that's just in there to give people er, ah, a...a well-rounded view of what happens when they aren't doing Internet marketing and their t.v. breaks down while they're searching for a late-night movie."
"Ah...yeah, right. Now, why is every page in Chapter 17 completely blank? Wait....and every chapter after that? What's up with THAT?!"
"Um...ah...you see...ah...I didn't get time to finish the book but I needed to get it published so, ah, um...I figured the reader could fill in the pages... yeah, they could fill in the pages with what they learned in the first 16 chapters! Pretty smart eh?"
"Hmmmm... Okay, what about the back of the book? You said that your biography was on the back of the book and this picture isn't even you. It's a picture of a 'Hugo Blandfish' from Tuktoyaktuk up in northern Canada and the writeup below his picture says that he saves beached whales on Arctic beaches and that he's done this his whole life."
"Well, er....I figured that his life was, ah, more entertaining than mine so I put a writeup about him in there instead. Pretty interesting reading, wouldn't ya say?"
"Ah...yeah, right."
"So, can you help me get known as a quality Internet marketing expert and auspicious author and buy all these books from me to sell to your offline readers and customers?"
"Mmmm...I think I'll pass."
~~~~
Now, is that story too far-fetched from what is really happening online today? I think not.
How many websites do you come across that focus on a potpourri of topics all from the one same website? Truckbed covers, microwaves, Monte Blanc pens, and diapers for adults are all related and can be detailed from one site, can't they? For the average person doing business online, I think not.
How about the websites that are forever project's 'under construction', if at least partially? The site looks pretty darn good but then there's the ubiquitous 'we're still writing this particular page so check back soon' text making one think, well that was a waste of my time to go to that page on their site.
And how about the websites that don't have any indication of who developed the site and go to great extents to have the reader NOT contact them directly. No toll-free number to call. No email address to be found anywhere. How about a physical address to show what continent the owner lives on? Forget it.
I ask you, why put up an off-topic, incomplete site on the world-wide-web and then hide who you are? Doesn't make sense to me.
But this is exactly what many, many people do with their sites. Especially Internet marketing newbies, that is, the people who follow most everything they come across regarding Internet marketing teachings online.
The Internet is one humongous retail store/reference library. If one wants to buy something, somewhere on the Internet it can be found. If one wants to research a particular topic, information most likely exists in multiple websites.
Think about going into a retail store and finding a boys Avatar toy on the shelf yet after opening the box you find a girls Powerpuff Girls action figure inside. This is akin to my off-topic analogy detailed above.
The product needs to match the expectation. The information needs to match the search. One wouldn't go to a library and find a shelf full of books with empty pages on them (unless they're a joke book titled Everything A Woman Needs to Know About A Man and they're filled with empty pages ;-).
Again, this would be akin to my analogy detailed above about the empty chapter pages. Make sure your site has all it's relevant pages finished and that the information is actually useful information that the seeker would actually be able to use.
Do this when doing your Internet marketing and keep this in the front of your mind when building your websites and you'll be sure to give the Search Engines the type(s) of website that they'll love to spider.
And just how can I be so sure of this tactic? Because that is what one of the longterm Internet guru's like Ken Evoy, whom I have followed seriously for years now, has been espousing since the late 1990's.
Sure other Internet marketing guru's have taken different stances to marketing online; however, after following their teachings for a number of years one will find that the vast majority of these teachings sway like trees in a strong wind.
The backbone of the Internet was always the sharing of information. Relevant information that people want to learn about once found. This hasn't changed in over ten years now.
So, keep your website efforts on-topic, focussed, and relevant and you'll do just fine over time. Forget about the 'secrets', the 'tricks', the 'hype', and all those darn $1,487 value free 'bonuses' you might be missing out on.
You see, the need of the Internet is not going away and as long as you provide evergreen information for people seeking out your information you'll still be marketing online ten years from now.
And won't that be good for you.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com
'Learn About Life From Another Perspective'
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
Posted by Andre Best at 12:17 PM | Comments (2)
August 19, 2006
A Tribute to My Parents
No matter how one may try to configure it, we all have parents. Two of them. One male. One female. Call them Ma and Dad, Mom and Dad, Ma and Pa, Mum and Dad, Mama and Daddy or whatever local term you may use in your country. But no matter how the monikers are sliced and diced - they're still our parents.
Fortunately for me, mine are both still alive and kicking. And I'm glad for that since so many of us have already lost one or both of our parents especially by the time one reaches the age of this writer, which is now of the middle-age baby boomer realm.
I dreamt about my parents recently, I don't know why but I can surmise a potential reason.
I'm going through a life situation that is at times stressing and trying, but that's life. And because of this I've been in more constant contact with my parents for the last couple of years now. And like clockwork, when I call home to Canada they're both inevitably on the phone conversing with me about 'how I'm doing.'
I'm thinking that perhaps my mind was telling me that my parents and my relationship with both of them is not something to be overlooked or taken for granted. Especially since they're now both septuagenarian's and time can be of the essence when one is of that age. No dilly-dallying, just get to the point. Basically.
I realized that I've had an over four-decade long relationship with my two parents and we've all matured and grown up throughout that time. Our needs, wants, desires, expectations, demands, and lives have all changed significantly throughout that time. Especially considering my aging into my own parenthood and them entering their own grandparent hood more than two decades ago through the birth of two of my siblings' children.
My relationship with my parents started out based fully on need. I needed them to survive. I was young and they had the means to provide for my needs as I grew up.
But what I learned as I became more self-aware during my teenage and young adult years was that I was not too particularly fond of the 'needs' that they had made and kept trying to make a part of my existence. This is what all parents do, myself included, however the issues start to arise when the water gets muddied up as to what is a need and what is a demand.
Of course, with me being the typical burgeoning adult I knew what was best for me and what my world was becoming. After all, I was a 'teenager'. And doesn't the world revolve around teenagers the world over?
Facetiousness aside, I broke loose from my parents physical grip as fast as I could when I was financially able to. I went to university. In another city.
This began my journey to cut the umbilical cord: but as I've learned it is never truly severed. Except physically at birth.
Parents are the role models we have when we grow up. Birth parents, foster parents, step parents, grand parents, fantasy parents. All adult figures that are involved in our lives throughout our development over time are the persons that we model our-selves after whether we're aware of it or not.
In some cases we make good choices who we model after and in some cases we make not so good choices, or in fact aren't even given a choice whatsoever.
There was a time that I thought that my parents were a pretty bad choice that I was presented with. They had their vices, they had their idiosyncrasies and their quirks, and their lifestyle choices which of course were completely unacceptable to my young developing mind that somehow thought that it just knew better.
But throughout the years of growth and my maturity and personal entry into adulthood alongside my parents I too learned that a parent is a human being. And that is what makes this perfect relationship so imperfect.
There was a time that I was very angry at my parents for the choices and decisions they made and forced upon me through my existence into their lives and having to co-habit the same household with the rest of my family. After all, these weren't choices that I had any say in since I was a child: so I did have my compelling reasons for being angry at them. Or so I thought.
But what turned everything around for me was my realization that my parents may have been the imperfect set of parents to me but that is no reason to hold the relationship they tried to carve out with me against them.
They, like all of us, myself as a parent included, do our best when we become parents. When we, through choice usually, become responsible for one or several other human beings we understand that this is what we want at the time - to be a parent. But we don't understand that we are now becoming the upline to that human. That soul-mirror for that human. We are what carves that soul or destroys it through our complete imperfection.
There was a time that I thought I had every reason on this green Earth to hold this relationship my parents brought me into through my entrance on this planet against them. But my realization that they were doing the best they had with what they themselves had been given was what changed it all for me.
My parents did what they did because they honestly believed it was best for me and my future. I know this unwaveringly and unequivocably because I'm doing the same with my young children. Are many of my current parenting decisions anywhere near close to what my parents chose with me in certain areas? Not by a long shot.
Are many of my current parenting choices in sync with certain values my parents instilled in me through their relationship to-date with me? You bet.
You see, parents love their children no matter what the parent is forced to do in the best interest of the child. I know this for a fact now that I have relationships of this type. There is a special bond that is forged when a human being comes into relationship with a child. A bond that is not even taken away by death as this bond lives on in the child, no matter how old that 'child' becomes.
So what am I espousing here? I love my parents. I know my parents love me. We don't agree on everything because we are human, because we are separate beings on this plane. But we still have this relationship that has been forged and strengthened over time into a solid loving, caring, and thought-filled tie that not even time will break.
I love you Ma. I love you Dad. I can say that I appreciate everything that you have brought into my life. Yes, everything. The so-called good. And the so-called bad.
Why? Because my life is the way it is because of the way it was. For a time this included when I was under your care but nevertheless this contributed to resulting in me becoming who I am now. And even though I may have struggles with my personal journey along this path I still understand that the two of you were the beginning of that journey and you started carving it out before I was even born into your arms.
I am a parent now too. And I understand that I'm am going to be the parent to whom someday my boys will be holding my proverbial 'feet to the fire', regardless of the decisions I make or don't make about their well-being. I may have the best intentions for them at all times and only want the best outcomes for all of them as they grow into manhood but that still won't negate the fact that they won't be holding those choices and decisions against me someday when they realize that my choices at times conflicted with their own desires as humans.
I know that someday they may hold me to the same extreme level of scrutiny that I once held the two of you. I know that they may not at the time be able to understand why it was that I made the choices and decisions that I did, especially when these choices and decisions involved them.
But I can only hope that I am able to stick around here long enough, like the two of you have so that they are able to grow into adulthood enough and to see that I too was an imperfect human being but that this doesn't take away that I only wanted what was best for them and that I did the best I could with what I was given. Hopefully they too will understand that this is not an excuse, just the truth.
I matured enough to see it a number of years ago about the two of you. And you're here now reading this writing of mine hopefully understanding that I truly understand why the three of us relate as we do.
I just hope that one day, as a parent, I am able to be given the same understanding from my boys that I was able to give to you for a fair number of years now.
Thank you for 'sticking around' as long as you have. Thank you for staying together as a parental unit as long as you have. Thank you for being my parents and for the existence you brought me into.
Thank you for making me into the person that I have become, and even at times try to forget about. Why? Because it's all good regardless.
Again... you contributed to making me the man I am now.
Thank you Ma. Thank you Dad.
I love you both.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com
'Learn About Life From Another Perspective'
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
* P.S. HAPPY 71ST BIRTHDAY MA! *
Posted by Andre Best at 2:52 AM | Comments (4)
August 3, 2006
Internet Killed the Retail Store
Trivia Question: Remember the very first song played on MTV in 1981?
Answer: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' by The Buggles
Hypothetical Trivia Question: In the early 21st century what led to the ultimate demise of the retail store concept in use around the world for several hundred years?
Answer: The Internet
Think about that for a minute. Can the Internet actually lead to the downfall of offline retail stores? For example, defunct retail store chains that were in business for perhaps, like The Hudson's Bay Company was in Canada until about a decade ago, since the late 1600's?
I surmise that it can, it will, and it is doing just that.
Let me explain through a couple of personal experiences...
~~~~
My first experience: I wanted to replace my now 10-year-old NordicTrack Skier Elite with another exercise mode that my body could work with as part of the ever-increasing struggle to keep the fat off my midsection. I realized that doing what I did before I started using the NordicTrack would be the answer to this struggle which seems to have hit a roadblock as of recently.
I decided that I needed to go back to using a modified road bike converted into a stationary bike using a special magnetic contraption that made this possible. Doing this back in the early- and mid-1990's was what was primarily responsible for me losing almost 40 pounds off this carcass at that time.
So, seeing as how I wanted to again pursue this exercise workout methodology I would need the proper equipment - in this case a road bike and another one of those magnetic contraptions to strap it to so I could use it conveniently and frequently indoors.
The road bike was easy to get at the local WalMart Supercenter; however, the magnetic thingy was a little more unavailable so I had to search for it.
I went into one of the local retail bicycle shops here in Phoenix that has been around for almost a century in the Valley of the Sun and I inquired about getting another one of those magnetic thingies (which I came to learn were called magnetic resistance trainers and were pretty much now manufactured by a company that coined them with the moniker of Cycle-Ops.)
However, in the store I was told that the only Cycle-Ops model that they had in stock that had the features of my old magnetic (now-defunct) magnetic resistance trainer model would put me back about 229 green ones from my checking account. Ouch.
After hearing that sticker-shock price, I told them I'd get back with them. Needless to say, I never did. I'll explain that in a bit.
~~~~
My second experience: I also needed to buy a rooftop carrier for my new SUV since I wanted to be able to carry a lot of stuff during long trips and also have my boys packed in their carseats too, and have room to breathe inside the vehicle. And since room inside an SUV is at a premium with this many needs to be met, the solution to these needs was: I needed an external rooftop carrier for the vehicle.
And in case you're not completely clear as to what a rooftop carrier is it's one of those plastic shells (like a big piece of luggage) that is strapped to the top of your vehicle and onto the roof rack. However, I decided that I didn't want the plastic type since it was too bulky to store when I didn't need it.
So I went to the local sporting/camping retail store chain in Phoenix and inquired as to what they had in stock in the collapsible fabric-type of rooftop carriers. The only model they had in stock that was of decent quality to withstand a 400 mile road trip was made by Thule and costed out at $185 US. Again...ouch.
And after hearing that sticker-shock price for the only model they had in stock, I told them I'd get back with them. Needless to say, I never did. I'll explain that next.
~~~~
So what does all this mean? Well, for starters I saw that a pattern was occurring here with these two recent inquiries and so I realized that I needed to do some sleuthing on my own, instead of simply relying on the expensive in-stock supplies of these retail stores.
Essentially, I surmised that I had to use the Internet for these somewhat out-of-the-ordinary purchasing needs. And, wow, did it come across big-time for what I wanted. And at prices I could afford.
I ended up getting the same model of that Cycle-Ops magnetic thingie, okay, 'magnetic-resistance trainer', for $167 US with free shipping and no taxes. I saved over $80 overall.
Also, I ended up getting a lower model of the Thule rooftop carrier at just over half the price of the one that was being offered to me in the local camping retail store. That was another $80 saving.
~~~~
So, what's my point with all this rambling?
Well, in the one instance I was able to get the item I wanted through an Internet purchase at a substantially lower price overall. And I received it in four days from my order day. And in the other instance, I wasn't limited by and didn't have to purchase what the retail store had 'in stock'.
Those are both cool concepts to realize. Why?
Because with the Internet one is no longer limited to paying for an offline retail store's higher overhead (employees, property taxes, leases, insurance, etc.) through higher product prices. And one is no longer stuck with what the retail store has in stock as to evidencing what their buying choices are.
Instead, with the Internet one simply has to 'Google' that item's title or manufacturer name and up pop thousands of places to view the entire product range of that manufacturer and in most cases available websites where one can buy it too.
Another way to say this: There are no store shelves on the Internet which translates into more product options for the product buyer. And there is lower overhead on the Internet which translates into, in some cases, substantial savings for the product buyer.
However, commerce is still commerce. And one cannot do all their shopping online (until Amazon figures out how to ship automobiles via UPS ;-) so the local economy is still supported in most instances via local taxes.
But it's just so neat to be able to have that ever-powerful resource called the Internet literally at one's fingertips via the 'Search' button.
So, getting back to my original trivia questions...
DID video kill the radio? No, but it certainly forever changed what humans do to satisfy their entertainment needs. Think mp3, ipod, dvd's, and the hundreds of televised music stations.
WILL the Internet kill retail stores? Maybe, in time. But, for now at least retail stores are being forced to realize that today's consumers have a LOT more choices than what the retail stores are able to stock on their store shelves.
Now, if only someone can explain to me why it was when I went into a huge national electronics retail store chain and inquired if they would be able to meet the $100 US cheaper price tag on THEIR OWN WEBSITE for a Panasonic surround-sound system and they said they couldn't do that...
The Internet.
Ya gotta love it.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com
'Learn About Life From Another Perspective'
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
Posted by Andre Best at 7:28 PM | Comments (0)