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 Website Promotion
 What every business website owner needs to know (in my opinion) by Webmaster Mitch Cohen During the last two years of being Webmaster here at SiteRightNow.com, I have seen business websites succeed, and I have seen others quit before they even give themselves a chance. I feel a great need to share my ideas of what I think new business website owners need to know. I do not claim to know everything about the subject, but I do think I have learned quite a bit about web site promotion and starting businesses from my experiences over the past 20+ years. Let me get right to the point. Here are some of the things I think are necessary for starting a successful online business:
This article will concentrate on point number 1:  A customer says, "I’m going to have to go out of business, I’m not selling anything." I reply, "How many hits have you had on your website?" The customer replies, "It looks like we have had 10 hits this month." Obviously, this customer hasn’t had enough traffic to know if the business will work or not. After talking more, the customer points out that he hasn’t really thought about promoting his website. The most common misconception about online businesses is that people will magically find you. This just isn’t the case. If it was that easy, do you think some companies would bother running TV commercials for their websites? Now, I don’t think it is necessary to go to the expense of running TV commercials for most online businesses, but I do think it takes some effort and at least a small budget (under $50 will get you started) to promote your website. How do you promote your website to get enough traffic? This is the critical hurdle for almost all new business websites. The same thing can be said for offline businesses. You may have the greatest product in the world, but if no one knows about it, you’re going to have an awfully hard time selling anything. I think there are three services you can use to get immediate traffic.
Inktomi Express Submission: The problem with most free search engines submissions is that they take their time to index you. Most will take 4 to 6 weeks. Now you don’t have to wait. You can get on many of the major search engines in only 48 hours! For $39, Inktomi will get you indexed on Hotbot, MSN, and others. This is a once a year fee. Here’s a link to the offer: Inktomi Express Submission AUTOMATIC REINDEXING HELPS YOU GET HIGHER RANKINGS! One of the great features about the Inktomi plan is that not only do you get listed in 48 hours, but your page gets reindexed ever 48 hours for the entire year! You might be wondering why this is such a good feature. What this allows you to do is make changes to your home page to get higher rankings. If you don't like where you are showing up (how high up), you can change around your home page and Meta Tags, and in 48 hours your page will be reindexed again. You may very well show up higher in the rankings this time. This is really a fantastic feature. It gives you the chance to experiment with key word phrases in your meta tags and get almost immediate feedback to see how you did. If you can only afford to try one of these plans, I recommend the Inktomi plan for only $39. This will get you on many of the most popular search engines in only 2 days, and you will get the chance to work on your search engine position as often as you wish, since your site is reindexed every 48 hours! IMPORTANT: Before using one of these submission services, make sure you click the META TAGS button on your control panel and fill in the requested information. Our control panel will generate these special hidden codes that the search engines will use to index you. You will find more information about Meta Tags in my earlier article, Marketing Your Site Ask Jeeves: Ask Jeeves is an extremely popular search engine that people use to find what they desire. They now offer an express submission plan that will get you indexed in only 7 days for $30. This keeps you in their index for 15 months. At SiteRightNow, we get a tremendous amount of hits from Ask Jeeves. I would recommend getting on their directory. Ask Jeeves Express Submission Overture.com: Do you want complete control over where you show up on the search engines? Overture.com gives you a way to do this. Overture.com offers a pay by performance plan, where you can bid on particular search engine phrases. If you have the highest bid for the search phrase you would like, then you show up #1 on most of the major search engines, including Yahoo, MSN, and many others. Here's a link to the Overture.com signup page: Overture.com's Premium Listing Service It takes about 5 days to get your account setup. I think this is the best service to get immediate traffic. Here’s how it works:
Overture has a few options on payment plans and levels of service: Signing up with Overture: When signing up you will see "Full Service Advantage", "Full Serve", and "Self Serve". I would recommend just going with the "Self Serve" plan and saving the setup charges. Payment Plans:
Tips for Overture.com: 1) Use their recommendation and bidding tools to figure out what phrases you should bid on. These tools will tell you the popularity of the various phrases and the current bids. 2) Don’t always go for the obvious phrases. These will most likely be more expensive. You can do just as well picking a larger number of less popular (and less expensive) phrases. This will definitely take you more time and effort than just picking the obvious ones. You may need to be creative to figure out some of the alternate phrases people are using, but it’s worth it. 3) The top 3 spots will get you on almost all of the search engines. The top 5 spots will show up on Ask Jeeves and many others. You will still get traffic with lower spots on a number of search engines. How much should you bid? The first month, it’s difficult to figure out exactly what you should bid. I think you need to go ahead and bid enough to generate traffic for you to get some history. Once you have a month or so of history, you can figure out exactly how much you should bid based on the rate of return. You figure this out by calculating on average how many visitors it takes you to generate a sale. If you know the average amount of a sale, you can figure out how much it takes to break even. For example, if your average sale is $100 and it takes you about 100 visitors to make a sale, you can bid up to $1 a click to break even. Relevancy Guideline: Since Overture signed a deal with Yahoo this past year, they have made their submission guidelines much stricter. They are likely to reject your first few listings that you submit based on these guidelines. You will have to resubmit them again. The main guideline that gets most people is “relevancy”. You have to make sure that the link for your listing goes to a page that has to do with the phrase you submit. For example, if you submit the phrase “diamond necklace”, you should put in a link to a page that has a diamond necklace on it. They will reject the listing if you just put in a link to your home page, and your home page doesn’t have a diamond necklace on it. I think over 90% of the shoppers on the Internet type in what they want to find using a major search engine, such as Yahoo or MSN. They type in a phrase, such as “diamond necklace” and a list of websites display. If you are serious about doing business on the web, it is critical that you get listed on these search engines immediately. You can always use the free submissions if you wish (you will find some on our marketing your site page). The problem with the free submissions, as I stated earlier, is that they take time, and you have very little control over where you show up. Using the services I discuss in this article, you should be able to start getting traffic to your website within a week or less. I think that those who are serious about making money need to have at least a small marketing budget. By small, I mean you can get started with as little as $39 with the Inktomi express submission, but some people are not willing to spend anything at all. How much should you budget for website promotion? Using us an example, we spend less than 10% of our gross revenues on website promotion. I think most businesses can afford to spend at least 10% of their revenues on promotion, and many businesses spend much more. Remember how much money you are saving when you have an online business as compared to an offline business. With an offline business, you usually have to pay your salesforce's salaries and commissions along with printing costs for brochures and other expensive pieces that you have to mail out! Making it through the first few months is always the most challenging, since you are spending money you don’t have yet. I think you will find that the services I mention in this article will pay for themselves quickly. Exactly when you break even will often depend on the price point of your product or service. If you have an expensive product with a large profit margin, it may only take one sale to get in the black. If you have a less expensive product or a low profit margin, you will need to generate more volume. The popular search engine Google.com is now competing with Overture.com’s service. They have a similar service, called "AdWords Select" that you may want to consider. So far, I have found it to be more expensive and more challenging to navigate than Overture’s, but they are gaining popularity with some of the major search engines. Here is a link to their service: Google's AdWords Select Email campaigns and other options: For a new website business, I would recommend concentrating your funds on the search engine campaigns to start. I think you are likely to do better with the Overture.com plan, since you only pay for performance. You only pay when someone clicks your listing. Most of the other website promotion techniques out there charge you for just displaying your ad or sending out an e-mail ad. You get charged whether anyone visits your website or not. For this reason, and the fact that most new businesses have limited marketing funds, I recommend concentrating your efforts on the express submissions and Pay for Performance plans. I think it is vital that as a new business website owner, you are committed to promoting your website. I don’t think it’s enough to use the free submissions to get immediate business. I would at least try the express submission plans that I mention, and I would highly recommend the Overture.com plan for those who are serious about getting business. If you would like free advice regarding your website promotion campaign, you can e-mail me directly at mitch@siterightnow.com Mitch Cohen - Webmaster  The Story of “Music Machine”, Mitch’s first business venture
For those interested, I’m going to indulge with a story of my first major business venture back in the 70’s. There may be a point to be learned from the story, but I also enjoy remembering the early days of computers, when I didn’t have any bills and Windows wasn’t invented yet. Back in high school in the late 70’s, I sold a computer program I wrote, called “Music Machine” for the Atari 800. Back then, my girlfriend (now my wife) convinced me to spend my life savings on a mail order computer, so we could play computer games. Of course, I did. I ordered my Atari 800, which by the way, I still have, and it still works! Back in the olden days, not many programs were available in stores. For the Atari, most people typed in program code that was printed in Compute magazine. You typed in a few pages of code and as your reward, you typed “RUN” to see what would happen. It was a great way to learn programming. After typing in pages and pages of code, you would start to pick up how it all worked. Most business ideas start with solving a problem: I was heavily into music at the time (I still am). Living with my parents back in the 70’s, I had a problem of being able to play piano after they went to bed. I didn’t have an electronic keyboard, but my computer used headphones! I thought it would be a great idea to be able to play music on the computer and listen on the headphones. I was able to write a program on the Atari that turned the computer keyboard into a musical keyboard complete with a rhythm section, chords, melody keys, and more. It worked great. I was able to play music at night and never disturbed my parents. The “Music Machine” was born. The stores didn’t have much: I remember visiting my favorite computer stores, Gadgetronics and Microwave Magic (Microwave Magic was an Atari computer store that also sold Microwaves! An interesting combination). Back in the 70’s, there wasn’t much software available on the shelves (especially music software). I decided it might be a good idea to offer my “Music Machine” program to the stores. I talked to a few of the store managers, and they agreed to take my program! They needed more titles. People were hungry for more software. So, I found myself learning very quickly. I had a few dollars from my summer jobs that I would have spent on more computer games. I had to figure out how to quickly package my program. I was able to buy some plastic bags for my package at a good price. I created a simple manual, and I was able to figure out how to get the cassette tape copied for a reasonable price at a local duplicating house (computers didn’t use disks or CD’s back then. They used cassette tape!). With package in hand, I went door to door to the area computer stores. They were more than happy to put my product on the shelves. (Here’s one point to my story: Timing can be everything. When you see a need, get your product out as fast as you can before it’s too late! The stores were hungry for software titles, and Atari users were ready to try anything new they could find on the shelves. Of course, I think my product was pretty cool too.) I also remember making a deal with a midwest distributor to sell my product to other stores. They agreed to take it, and I was on my way. Now, I didn’t make a fortune from my first venture, but I did make a nice profit that paid for plenty of computer games and upgrades to my Atari! I made back the money I spent on the computer, and I was able to buy a brand new single floppy disk drive, when it was invented to replace the old cassette tape! Looking back, would I have done anything differently? There were plenty of things I could have done to be even more successful. But, I think I did pretty well, because there was a tremendous need for software titles at the time, and mine was unique. I also wasn’t afraid to go directly to the stores and get my product out there quickly. I think getting your product or service out there when there still is a need for it is the most important lesson I have learned over the years. I wish everyone much success with your online business! I hope that using our SiteRightNow.com service will help you get your idea out on the Internet as quickly as possible. You won’t have to take months waiting for your web designer to finish your website. With a little work promoting your website, you can start generating the income you desire. Mitch Cohen - Webmaster | Return Home | SiteRightNow Pricing | START HERE | SiteRightNow NEWS! | FAQ Page | Virtual Tour | Marketing Your Site | Free Graphics | Contact Info | Customer Login | |
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